Hushpuppies

A fish fry would not be complete without hushpuppies, yet another dish Southerners prepare with corn. Meme always added grated onion to the meal leftover from frying the fish, and then added an egg and enough buttermilk until the consistency looked about right. My late father-in-law used to host fish fries, cooking up what they’d caught over the weekend at Lake Lanier. Now, I never actually had one of his hushpuppies, but I’ve spent fifteen years trying to replicate one, based on what his family describes. He used beer instead of buttermilk and, it seems, lots of onion. It doesn’t matter how much onion I add, there’s never enough onion. I have a sneaking suspicion that a special food memory created on a sunny summer afternoon has bypassed reality and it’s actually not about the onion. No worries, I’ll keep trying. There are impossible quests that produce far worse results.