In this episode of the Feed your Fire podcast, we celebrate you—exactly who you are when no one's watching and there's no one to please. We explore what it means to know and choose yourself, as we take inspiration from the Fried Green Tomato, a food with a story that has evolved over time and been shaped by pop culture.
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Feed Your Fire Podcast Episode Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm your host, Kim Baker. Today, we're gonna talk about what it means to have a strong sense of self, and why that's important. Knowing who we are is not just descriptive. It affects our choices, our interactions, and our self-worth. Today, we're gonna make Fried Green Tomatoes. And you might think that's an odd choice for me. Perhaps you'd imagine that I would make some Italian recipe for my childhood. But our sense of self has nothing to do with other's perceptions. It is entirely our own. And when we know who we are, and we live into that conviction, we bring so much to the table.
I want you to take a few minutes and think about who it is you know yourself to be. Truly, not who you think you should be or who people want you to be. When no one's watching and there's no one to please, who is it that lies underneath? That's the person I'm speaking to today that I'm inviting to this table. Come exactly as you are.
So many factors affect our self-concept. We're influenced by our culture and heritage, societal norms by our family and our friendships and the roles that we take on in our lives, as well as our experiences, for better or for worse. And sometimes we have to shed those things in order to get to the person inside, to a truth beneath our conditioning. And typically, adversity is what takes the hammer to that facade.
When I was younger, I really didn't know who I was without my family. We were tight-knit, or you might say, codependent. And as a middle child that took pride in being agreeable, who I was at my core kind of got lost in the mix. And that lack of knowing led me to make some poor decisions early on, chasing acceptance and validation. And then it all shattered. It was traumatic, and it was devastating, but it was also a gift. It was in that stack of rubble that I had to find myself. And as I shoveled my way out, I could see what I was made of. And even with that insight, it took me years to be able to express who I truly am without feeling the need to apologize, and to withstand the pressure to conform to someone else's idea of who I should be, and to truly know ourselves, we have to know where we came from.
Our heritage provides a foundation for all of that. And I chose the recipe that we're making today because of what you might not know about it. Fried green tomatoes are celebrated in the South. But what's interesting is that the history of the fried green tomato comes from the Jewish community. Historians have traced it back to cookbooks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it ain’t Southern. It's believed to be that the movie from the 90s, Fried Green Tomatoes, is what really created that connection. And since then, it's become a fundamental part of Southern cuisine.
Now, my sisters will laugh because our whole lives, we grew up thinking we were fully Italian, only to learn from 23andMe and ancestry.com that our great-grandmother…Minerva, suddenly made that matzah smeared with butter that my grandmother served us make a whole lot more sense.
And it was right about the time that movie came out that I made my way to the South, assimilating into Richmond culture. And as the weather's gotten colder I've been tending to sort of what's the last bits of my garden, and I was struck by these green tomatoes—the food I had grown with my own hands.
It's believed that this recipe originated from wanting to make the most out of what was grown.In the Northeast and the Midwest, the frost comes sooner, leaving more of these green tomatoes on the vine. And frying them was a way to put them to good use, to appreciate their value. And that value is what we're celebrating today.
Now, if you don't have underripe tomatoes sitting outside in your yard, you can probably find some in your grocery store. This is the perfect season for them.
We're going to start by cutting them into quarter inch slices. Then we're going to place them on a paper towel lined tray and sprinkle them generously with salt. Then place a layer of paper towels on top and sort of gently press on them. And let them sit like that for just a couple of minutes.
This will help draw out the moisture so that you end up with really crispy fried tomatoes. Then sprinkle them with just a smidge of sugar and some black pepper. Now we're going to set up a dredging station.
In the first bowl, just put some plain flour. In the second, put buttermilk spiked with just a little bit of Frank's Red Hot. In the third bowl, we're going to put flour and cornmeal in a four to one ratio.
I'm using two tomatoes today. I'm going to use one cup of flour and a quarter cup of cornmeal. And season it with some salt, pepper, and just a pinch of cayenne. Then take your tomatoes, dip them in the flour, then dip them in the buttermilk, then dip them in the cornmeal mixture. Now in this case, I like to double dip, meaning after I've gone through that process, I go back to the buttermilk and then back to the cornmeal. And this creates a really nice thick coating.
Then we're going to pan fry these puppies. Heat some peanut oil in a large skillet over a medium heat. The oil should be about a quarter inch deep.
And once it's hot and ripply, we're going to place those dredged tomato slices right in there. You'll want it to get golden brown on the underside and then gently flip it over. And once it's nice and crispy on both sides, take it out and place it on a paper towel lined plate and then season them with salt.
You'll want to do this in batches. These are often served with a pimento cheese or something like a Cajun dressing. I like them plain or maybe with a corn salad.
I've even had them with some tzatziki. This episode is all about you, so you choose what you prefer. Now, of course, as I was creating this episode, I had to go back to the movie.
I don't think I had ever actually seen it to completion before. And I was delighted at what a girl power movie it is. It's about finding your voice.
It's about friendship. I realized that Fried Green Tomatoes are the food equivalent of my spirit animal. Our self-concept is completely interwoven with our values.
And for me, the sense of female empowerment and advocacy is super important. This is a part of our self-concept that isn't inherited. It's completely ours to define.
A week or so ago, I was at this women's conference. It was a room full of very successful professionals, all female. And one of the hosts mentioned that just five years ago, that conference would not have been possible.
There simply weren't enough women in the industry. And one of the observations I had coming out of that conference was just how honest it was. A group of accomplished women sharing very candidly their stories of success and challenge in a way that I don't think is possible in a co-ed group.
And that conference represented being part of a larger community, one of belonging, which really enables us to be our authentic selves. Who we know ourselves to be can change over time. Not all that different from the shifting narrative of that Fried Green Tomato.
We are ever becoming. And when you know yourself, you can choose yourself, and you can stand proudly knowing the value you bring to the table. So if there's one thing you take out of today's episode, let it be that. And I hope it's as delicious as the recipe that we shared today. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.