Fried Okra

Fresh okra
Salt and pepper
White corn meal
Oil for frying

Wash okra and slice off top and tail.  Cut into 1/2 inch slices.  Add salt and pepper to corn meal and shake in paper bag with the okra.  Fry in hot oil until golden brown and crispy. 

When Market Days were first held at the Fairgrounds, my friend Roberta (Durden) Powell and I were inspired by a suggestion made by Malcolm Johnson in the Tallahassee Democrat to the effect that fried okra would be a good addition to the foods sold.  The next year we and another friend, Carolyn Gamble, prepared and froze many hampers of okra in the summer in large plastic bags and signed up for a food booth at Market Day.  We rounded up reluctant husbands and fish cookers, gallons of oil, and paper cups or cones to serve the okra.  Market Day dawned cold and windy. Lines soon stretched from our booth to the horizon with people waiting patiently for the Southern specialty which smelled so good and popcorny in the cool air.  We sold every last piece of okra, barely breaking even.  The problems of increased cooking times because of the cold and wind, okra that shrank by half when fried, temperamental fish cookers, emergency replacement of gas supplies, and increasingly short tempers, were enough to make us shoppers and not sellers at Market Days for the rest of our lives.