Milk-a-Wha!?  (Makes me laugh every time!)

Fry Fest, the Spring version, has been going on at our house for roughly four years now.  DH acquired a turkey fryer, and decided that we needed a party to celebrate all things deep-fried because we weren’t going to just deep-fry a turkey once a year.  The rules were simple:

• Invite people over.
• Tell invitees to bring beverages, adult or otherwise.
• Drink beverages, adult or otherwise.
• Tell invitees to bring food items they’d like to see coated in batter and tossed in hot oil.
• Eat food items coated in batter and fried in hot oil.
• Be creative.
• Know that you will have way more food than you will possibly eat.

We’ve fried all manner of vegetables, fruit, meat and dessert items.  Some have worked out well (duck with orange sauce, shrimp is always popular, pickles), others, not so much (snickers bars).  Along the way with our experimentation, we’ve learned a few things:

• Cheese curds MUST be frozen before hitting hot oil (or they better be really, really, REALLY cold)
• Sweet treats all have to be frozen.
• Twinkies and Oreos MUST be shared.
• Always have non-fried foods available for people to eat.
• Be open to trying new things – deep-fried cucumbers aren’t bad at all (high water content though – watch your tongue)
• Anything with chocolate has to be done at the END of the frying run.
• Happy Chickens like to eat deep-fried breading.  (Happy Chickens also LOVE Fry Fest… so many people who want to feed them “treats”.)

Now, back to that other name in the title:   Valborgsmässoafton.

Sound it out with me… Vahl-borg-smah-soh-ahf-ten.  It’s a Swedish holiday; I think I’ve mentioned a few times that DH and I have a lot of Swedish friends (that’s right, we hang out with Socialists!).  So where does the name come from?  Well, Valborgsmässoafton is also known as Walpurgis Night, “a traditional spring festival celebrated on April 30th or May 1st in large parts of Central and Northern Europe”.  Since we’re in the good ol’ USA, and our country has a LOT less holidays than the rest of the world, we have to adjust dates as we don’t get a “holiday” for these Holidays.  This year, it happened on April 28th.

DH and I are pretty liberal with our Holidays and because we have so many friends from Sweden, we like to celebrate their traditional holidays with them (they’ve embraced our Halloween!).  Granted, we don’t cover them all, but after our first Fry Fest, Swedish friend, T, said it was so much fun we had to do it twice a year; and so began the twice-a-year-Fry Fest.  We found out about Valborgsmässoafton and we rolled with it for the spring.

The menu on DH’s and my end of things this go around was deep-fried tacos, deep-fried jalapeno poppers stuffed with barbecued  brisket and ice cream sandwiches.  I also made Green Onion Grill Bread, guacamole to serve with tortillas chips (or the tacos), a variety of hot beverages (was chilly and rainy outside), a variety of cold beverages, some salad and the piece de resistance… a three-layer, Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Cake.  When you have a party, a party requires cake…. I like to bake impressive cakes – now if only I knew how to decorate them impressively.

The guac was very popular as were the tacos.  Ice cream sandwiches didn’t even get tried (a danger of too much food… more than one item doesn’t get cooked).  The Jalapeno Poppers with Brisket had a sample run of four fried up… two for my brother-in-law and his friend and two were run to Job #2 (since I used brisket from there) along with a large piece of cake.

I donated blood in the morning so my consumption of “adult beverages” was limited (good idea), and I kept up my inner-dialogue mantra of “Do not drink your calories”.  My brother-in-law (aka BIL, who is really just like my brother) and his friend came, and while they arrived late, we had a great time with them.  They stayed the night and the laughs continued over breakfast in the morning.  The best part of my whole weekend was the very unexpected compliment my BIL gave to my writing.  I’m also hoping his friend was okay with seeing me walk around in my Stewie Griffin pajamas in the morning.

I love Fry Fest!  Here’s looking at October!