Fried Green Tomatoes and Sam Houston!

The rodeo is in town, so after the rally on Saturday, I drove to the Travis County Exposition Center to see what it was all about. 


The entire day was an immersion into the soul of Texas, with my foray into political activity at the rally, and my visit to a quintessential western tradition.


Texas is a mix of Southern American Culture and the Cowboy Culture of the American West. In this post I will focus on the Southern American part of the Texan soul. In the next post I will show some pictures from the rodeo.

I found some gorgeous green tomatoes in the grocery store, and my mother likes to fry them to make a beloved dish of the south, Fried Green Tomatoes. I researched some recipes and found a recipe attributed to the wife of Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas, and a war hero who helped win the independence of Texas from Mexico. I was fascinated!


Mrs. Houston made her fried tomatoes by dipping the slices in well beaten eggs, then corn meal. She then salted and peppered them to taste and fried them in bacon grease until brown.

We made ours with some slight differences. We did not use bacon grease because we wanted to use healthier vegetable oil. Also, we dipped the slices in Panko crumbs after dipping them in egg. 


The tomatoes tasted wonderfully, but we didn't have a lot of luck getting the crumbs to stick to them. You can see our results to the right.