Excellent Tuesday Lunch - A Fried Feast.

Oh my. Do I have a delicious little treat for you today. Fried green beans.

I decided to make 2 different batters.

For the first batter, I already had my dry ingredients mixed and stored in my pantry. Here are the ingredients: 3/4 cup cornstarch 3 cups cake flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon Kosher salt For 3 parts of the mix, add in 2 parts sparkling water.

For my second batter, I mixed equal parts flour and beer and added salt and pepper.

My first batter turned out a bit thin, (OK. I didn't measure. I eyeballed it. Bad Rosie!) so I added a little bit of the too thin batter to the slightly too thick beer batter and ended up with a perfect batter. Added in the greens to coat.

Mr. Hawthorne dropped the beans one by one into the hot oil, in two batches, for about 3 minutes.

Drain on paper towels with stupid designs. Immediately salt and pepper. Now this started me thinking: They must actually pay people to come up with these lame designs for paper towels. "What do you do for a living?" "Oh, I come up with craptastic designs for paper towels, since God forbid they should just be plain, because you know, people don't want plain paper towels, they want arbitrary frou-frou designs on them because it makes them happy in the kitchen when they can look at their pretty paper towels with my cutesy crap on them while slopping up a big greasy mess on the counter top." I decided to pursue this. So I got out my family 8-pack of paper towels, which I can assure you was the cheapest paper towel pack Food Lion had to offer. Now, I'm thinking to myself (Who else would I be thinking to?), "Self? If there are designs on the paper towels, then the paper towel company had to hire someone to do the designs, although I daresay a talented kindergartner could come up with something with a bit more style than these insipid designs. And if the paper towel company had to hire somebody, then that's going to make the paper towels cost more, first in the hiring, then in the manufacturing thereof. Which, bottom line, means I'm having to pay more for my paper towels which are used to wipe up nasty spills and kitchen crap and end up in the trash can." Now, here's the first towel that caught my eye. It's like the one the green beans were draining on but I had to go into the trash to retrieve one since I had finished the roll. That's why it's all wrinkly-krinkly.

It has an ice cream cone, what looks like a piece of cheesecake, and a cake. And the copy. What can I say about the copy? "Yummy!" "What diet?" "More please!" I guess that's why they get paid the big bucks.

Ice cream cone with "Yummy!"

Bottom of the cake pedestal with "What diet?"

Slice of cheesecake, and way underneath it, it says, "More, please!"

At this point, I was getting curiouser and curiouser,

so I went to get the whole bag of paper towels

just to see what was in it.

Out of eight rolls of paper towels,

there were five different designs.

And of course, I have pictures of the other four:

A pear and some leaves and what looks like a sand dollar.

Some leaves, flowers, and dragonflies.

More dragonflies, a butterfly, some lady bugs, and a couple of potted plants. A decorative border with circles and 6-point figures. Then I go to the Sparkle bag. Look carefully.

The artiste is actually featured on the bag, I guess as a selling point. And in case you wanted to know more about Jennifer, here she is! Of course, Sparkle has a fascinating web site too.

And this would not be complete if I didn't include the blurb on the back of the bag about Jennifer. Now, everyone, please continue reading this blog post, although I know the temptation to run right out and buy some Sparkle paper towels featuring the designs of Jennifer Brinley is overwhelming. By the way, Orchidgal, is this a long-lost family member of yours? End of rant. Back to the beans.

Here's the second batch of green beans. I salted and peppered and sprinkled some homemade ground hot pepper on top.

Delicious green beany goodness on the inside. Wonderful salty and peppery crunchyness on the outside.

Here's today's lunch - a fried extravaganza. Softshell crab, crab cake, and fried green beans. Sometimes your body just screams out for fried food, but hey, I got my green vegetable in there so it's healthy, right?