I consider myself lucky to have grown up on the fringes on Appalachia. In fact, my mother came from deep in Appalachia and I visited my grandparents often as a child and a teenager there. She cooked the food common to the region with possibly a nod to health along the way. When my dad’s relatives from Michigan came to visit, they loved my mother’s cooking and begged her to fix the dishes she grew up with.

When the Michigan relatives came in the summer time, they would ask, especially, for one dish – fried green tomatoes. It’s not a fancy dish nor is it a difficult dish. Even though I’ve modernized my cooking, I still fix fried green tomatoes in the summer as a special treat for us. Let me share the recipe with you:

Ingredients:

A few green tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, white corn meal, one egg, a pinch of Splenda

Mix up some corn meal with a beaten egg and a pinch of Splenda. Spread a piece of waxed paper on the counter top. Slice up as many green tomatoes as you want to fry into thick slices. Use an iron skillet if you have one. Heat some olive oil in the skillet. Heat it on low-medium as olive oil has a low smoke point.

Carefully roll each slice of tomato in the corn meal mixture and place in the skillet. You will have several batches. Fry each batch separately until the slices of tomato are a light brown. Remove to plates covered in paper towels for drainage.

Voila! You have fried green tomatoes, a favorite dish in the South and Appalachia! Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.