From my great-grandmother (called MaMa by her descendants), an inimitable Southern cook and hostess, I inherited a wooden spoon and a set of Chantilly silver that she purchased for herself from wages earned on the Singer Sewing Machine sales floor. Recently, I found out that another piece of MaMa's kitchen is still in the family: her West Bend Deep Fryer, which she purchased in the mid-1970s and passed along to my mother when my parents bought their first beach condo.
As an over-active child, I paid no attention to the equipment my parents used to fry the bream and bass that my brother and I caught in a lake near our condo. Fast forward two decades, during which my family indulged in fried foods less and less. The fryer had fallen into disuse until a few weeks ago, when I decided to try my hand at homemade French fries to accompany some rib-eyes that my cousin sent for Christmas. I was spending a week with my family at our current condo on the Florida panhandle, and my mother mentioned that I could use the old deep fryer.
Heirloom silver and an old wooden spoon are one thing, but antique appliances? Between the fryer's advanced age and my complete inexperience with fries, I was apprehensive to say the least. Find a picture of the results after the jump.
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