So May 5 has already arrived, but why enjoy these delicious Mexico-inspired delicacies only once per year? Gather some friends, some beverages, and pull out the deep fryer. Try our Southern twists on Mexican delights, and you'll soon thank goodness it's fry-day. 

     Are the recipes authentic? Nah. Are they delicious? You bet. Plus, prep is easy. All but the frying can be done in advance. Just put out the taco fixings and fry up the rest at party time. 

Menu

BLTacos (Hard shells, lettuce, bacon, tomato, avocado, mayo, hot sauce)

Pulled Pork Tacos (Barbecue, slaw, hard shells, sauce)

Queso Pimento Chiles Rellenos

Churros

"Fried" ice cream (Crumble well-done churros over ice cream. Trust us... we tried frying ice cream. This works far better.)

      These churros are surprisingly easy and absolutely delightful. With a kick of spice, a creamy, cakey interior, and a brown sugar coating, you will be coming back for more. As a bonus, you can make the dough early in the day, and just pull it out and start frying when you're ready, making this a fuss-free recipe for a gathering. 

Pumpkin Churros

Adapted from Bakergirl 

Ingredients

Dough
2 c. flour
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few turns of the peppermill
2 c. water
3/4 c. pumpkin or sweet potato puree
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp. molasses
1 stick plus two tbsp. butter
4 eggs
canola oil for frying

Sugardust

4 parts dark brown sugar to one part granulated sugar
cinnamon to taste

Equipment

stand mixer (not necessary, but makes it easier)
scissors
pastry tube, cookie press, or other decorator fitted with star tip
elecric deep fryer with basket or other deep frying apparatus
shallow pan fitted with rack for draining off oil

Procedure

1. Combine water, pumpkin, butter, and molasses in a large pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it comes to a boil.

2. Meanwhile, combine dry dough ingredients.

3. When wet mixture begins to boil, dump dry ingredients into it and stir until a dough forms. Remove from heat.

4. If you are going to use a stand mixer, put dough in mixer bowl and beat with paddle attachment until dough cools slightly. Otherwise, beat by hand with wooden spoon to cool.

5. Add vanilla, and then beat in each egg until incorporated. You should have a smooth dough.

6. Put dough into dispenser of choice and chill until fry-time.

7. When you are ready to fry, begin heating your oil to 375 F. Combine your sugardust ingredients in a plate or shallow pan.

8. When the oil is hot, slowly pipe a 3-6 inch strip of batter in from a safe distance and trim with your scissors.

9. Fry each batch until browned (3+ minutes took care of our skinny strips -- experiment here!). Do not overcrowd the fryer, and if your dough begins to warm, pause to chill it for a bit to prevent the churros from absorbing too much oil.

10. Remove fried churros to rack to drain, then drop into sugardust while still hot. Serve immediately.

***Editor's note: Always use extreme caution when deep frying and keep children away from the fryer!
 

 Queso Pimento Chiles Rellenos

 Chiles rellenos are delicious, so we figured a Southern spin might be tasty. We were right! The chiles can be prepped and stuffed in advance, keeping these low fuss for the party.

Ingredients

pasilla or poblano peppers
homemade spicy pimento cheese
one egg per pepper
cornstarch
canola oil for frying

Equipment

deep fryer or other frying apparatus
mixer
pan fitted with rack for draining oil

Procedure

1. Wash peppers and cut a T shape on one flat side. Remove seeds and ribs (gloves are a good idea here!). Leave stem intact.

2. Roast peppers under broiler until skins blacken. Immediately transfer to a bowl with a tight lid, or cover bowl in plastic wrap. Leave peppers in bowl to cool; the skins will loosen.

3. Carefully peel cooled peppers (might want those gloves again!).

4. Stuff peppers with pimento cheese. Chill until frytime.

5. When you are ready to fry, heat oil to 375 F. Dredge peppers lightly in cornstarch. Separate eggs. Beat whites into foam. Beat yolks in a separate bowl. Combine whites and yolks.

6. Cover peppers in egg batter and drop carefully into oil. Fry until browned on both sides. Remove, drain briefly, and serve with your favorite enchilada sauce or salsa.

***Editor's Note: Use extreme caution when deep frying, and keep children away from the fryer!

     Drawl Magazine is proud to announce their media sponsorship of Raleigh, North Carolina's Artsplosure festival for a second year.  Join us in beautiful downtown Raleigh on May 17th-19th to celebrate creativity and view (or purchase!) art from around the globe.  For more information, visit www.artsplosure.org.

About Artsplosure: 

     Artsplosure's mission is to produce high quality annual festivals that celebrate excellence in the performing and visual arts; to promote and bring recognition to national, regional, and local artists; and to bring artists and the larger community together to improve the quality of life and cultural environment.

     Artsplosure was conceived in 1978 by subcommittees of the newly formed City of Raleigh Arts Commission who were planning a citywide arts festival that would combine an "explosion" of art activity with people's "exposure" to all types of art. The following year, Artsplosure was incorporated to produce high quality and accessible arts festivals and to identify, nurture, and showcase artists seeking to reach wider audiences. Since its first festival in April 1980, Artsplosure has presented thousands of established and emerging artists whose works span across many disciplines and art forms in both traditional and non-traditional indoor venues and outdoor settings.

     It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a solo record can say more about the musician’s band than the musician him or herself. If that solo record is an unexpected collection of musical ideas you never heard him or her toy with when he or she was jamming with his/her buddies, then it says that band’s a straight-ahead unit, with a particular kind of combined sound that edges out the weirder influences that its separate components might bring to the studio. If the solo record’s bad or tired but the band’s good, that band is a greater-than-its’-parts-sum unit. And if the solo record is so goddamned brilliant that you can’t conceive of it, well, you may want to revisit the band’s back catalog and see if you missed something.

     Regions of Light and Sound of God is Jim James’ first solo record but kind of not really. James, best known as the angel-voiced frontman for Lousville’s My Morning Jacket, has put out a solo EP and a few collaborations under “Yim Yames,” and ROLASOG is unmistakeable James (hard J), though it’s also not far from an airier and spacier variation on MMJ’s recent material. While on a MMJ album you can consistently expect great and weird turns into country, rock, and straight-up psychedelia, ROLASOG strips away most of the rock sizzle in favor of layered keys and a polished atmosphere of slightly-less-reverb-is-more; opener “State Of The Art (A.E.I.O.U)” rides a piano riff swiped from Traffic and strings, and its lyrics maybe describe an uneasiness with technology but really, it’s not clear. And to be fair, on the first listen, ROLASOG comes across furtive and fragile, like Thom Yorke’s The Eraser with a fraction of the existential terror and not being made on a laptop. On a few repeats, though, it starts to cohere. Closest in sound to MMJ’s latest, the controlled but intense Circuital, ROLASOG is James’ further maturing expression of the sounds and ideas of roots music and rock’n’roll that spilled out of his earlier records in a torrent of reverb and guitar blaze. Now he’s almost 35 and those ideas bloom cleaner and clearer, and his voice is equally restrained but still in lovely form, plaintive and even approaching ghostly levels on the harmonies of “God's Love To Deliver,” which closes this album’s less-than-40 minutes with the lyric that “Our love has no equal/In your eyes and mine.”

     A sweet sentiment from a sweet album, one which may seem either insubstantial or loose compared to the barnstorming genre twists of James’ other band, but which reveals one musical layer of that band stretched out and on display in a manner otherwise not yet seen. James hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down in the last decade, and even if this remains his single solo-record-but-not-really through his tenure with MMJ, it puts down another quite pleasing facet in the discography of one of the more exciting American bands of the last fifty years, of which James remains the primary songwriter; let’s eagerly see what comes next and enjoy the hell out of what already has.

     Most moms seem to have little to no gross-out index.  They take a chewed-up egg sandwich in their hand.  They will wipe a kid’s nose with their hand.  They will catch a poop that has escaped in the pool WITH THEIR HAND.  They kiss scraped knees, clean up puke, and are drooled on, spit up on, sneezed on, coughed on, etc.

     I used to watch this happen with a mixture of horror and wonder.  I assumed when I finished gestating Lulu the Wunderkind, I would somehow become immune to being grossed out.

     I was right.  I was also wrong.

     Lulu hands me a half-chewed raisin.  I take it.  Lulu gestures for me to come closer.  I do.  She sneezes and laughs with delight at my “surprise” (read:  ew).  I have been drooled on and spit up on.  And puke?  Oh, honey.  I’ve had a former oncology nurse (they know vomit) tell me that Lulu’s is extraordinarily stinky and gag-inducing.    And I’ve had that vomit in my hair three times in one night.  I have watched an emergency room doctor take the medical equivalent of a heavy-duty stapler and use it to inject medicine into Lulu’s bones.  I’ve watched while nurses have punctured every available place for an IV.  I’ve cleaned up her bandages and kissed her boo-boos.  She’s made enough laundry, between the vomit and the diarrhea, to have completely used up all of the sheets and towels in the house.  When we later had to take her to the hospital and I called a family member to go and check on our cats, I had to tell him to avoid the mountain of laundry at the bottom of our stairs.  And also to only breathe through his mouth inside our house, because that mountain stank.

     But my own blood?  Can’t do it.  I am a squeamish wreck when I am bleeding.  You see, I am a drama queen of epic proportions when it comes to my own blood.  When I wrote my birth plan, the first sentence was “don’t let me see any blood.”  And they didn’t.  I would have passed out if they had, and that would have been an awful way to greet the baby.  Most of the credit goes to Travis, who found ways to get me to look away at strategic moments, and in fact interrupted the midwife when she really, really, really wanted me to look down.  Because that would have been a bad idea.

     I know that’s a lot of fluids.  Let’s focus here.  Since we’re all probably celebrating or mourning the death of Twilight, let’s focus a little on blood.  Mine.  Because it’s really all about me.

     I’ll set the scene:  It’s 4:30 pm.  Lulu is cutting a molar.  She is alternating between HAPPY and SAD.  When she is HAPPY life is really good and rainbows sing songs and there are rivers of milk and birds and sunshine and the toys are good and when she is SAD everything can go to hell.  We’ve been alternating between HAPPY and SAD since 6am (2 breaks for naps) about every 3-5 minutes.  I am exhausted.  At 4:35pm, we are SAD but then Daddy comes home and we are SO SO SO HAPPY!!!!!!!  And he has to run an errand, so I send Drama Baby Lulu with him.

     At 5:00, he returns.  There is a pot of water boiling on the stove, a sliced onion on the cutting board, tater tots just about ready to come out of the oven, and me, sitting on the couch, with my thumb wrapped in a paper towel.  He doesn’t ask questions.  He just gets Lulu situated with toys, takes me in the bathroom, gets rid of the carnage that is there from me attempting to bandage it by myself, cleans and bandages my thumb, and then removes the bloody garbage so I don’t have to see it.

     We have a history here.  When we were first married, I cut my thumb.  Probably with the same knife.  It bled like I was trying to single-handedly (ha-ha) recreate the prom scene from Carrie.  When Travis came home from work, he found me sitting on the couch, waiting, with a paper towel wrapped around my hand.  Sound familiar?

     Yeah, I’m surprised I still have two thumbs too.

     So then we have this conversation:

     Travis:  How bad is the cut?  Do you need stitches?  Should we go to the emergency room?

     Me:  I don’t know.

     Travis:  What do you mean, you don’t know?

     Me:  I haven’t looked at it.

     Travis:  What do you mean?

    Me: Every time I look at it, I get a little whiffy.

     And then Travis looked at me like I was nuts and unwrapped the towel and we both looked at it and I actually fainted.  But we decided I didn’t need stitches and he cleaned it up and ever since then he’s been in charge of it whenever I decide to hack a bit of myself off.

     And that’s love.  Real love.  You can keep your roses and chocolate and fancy dinners.  I will keep the man who will gnaw his way through a tough pot roast and tell me that’s the way he likes it, and will call me on his way into a hospital room where I’ve been all night with Lulu to ask if I want my coffee from McDonald’s or Starbuck’s and will make absolutely certain that I don’t see the cut on my thumb until it’s a scar.

     My valentine this year was signed in blood.

     Suck it, Bella.