French Fries

Dear Anne and Nan: For some reason, I can't cook French fried potatoes without their coming out soggy. I fry in a deep skillet with Crisco oil and have the oil plenty hot. They fry to a golden brown and I drain them on paper towels, but they are still soggy. What am I doing wrong? - L. Townley, Baton Rouge, La. Dear L.: First and foremost, your French fries should be served immediately, if not sooner. The longer they sit around, the soggier they will become. Here are some ideas: After you have peeled and sliced the potatoes, place them in a bowl of water with ice cubes in it. Let them soak about 10 minutes, then remove as you intend to cook them.

Way back in 1990, the Big Three of the fast-food world decided to drop the beef-tallow-and-vegetable-oil blend used for cooking fried foods and switched to 100 percent vegetable oil. Health enthusiasts applauded the decision by McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King because it lowered the saturated fat and cholesterol that would be contained in our tasty national treat. Even so, a large order of McDonald's french fries contains 400 calories and almost 22 grams of fat. Depending on your sex and age, that can be about a third or more of the recommended fat intake for an entire day. Of course, to really get away from the grease, you must change more than the cooking oil; you have to change the technique.

These days, you might shun french fries for political reasons - remember freedom fries? - but Jeanne M. Manson, for one, believes they're perfectly safe to eat. That might not be noteworthy except for this: A 2002 Swedish study found that frying or baking starchy carbohydrates such as potatoes at high temperatures produced acrylamide, a white, odorless chemical known to cause cancer and reproductive problems in laboratory rats fed high doses....

There is a bill (House Bill 1068) that deserves universal backing, and this happens about once every 1,000 years. It is called the United States Coinage Reform Act of l989. And what it would do for us is to give us a beautiful metal dollar. WARNING! We must not, once again, endure the catastrophic experience of dear old Susan B. Anthony. When finally Congress and the Treasury Department issued a dollar coin in l979, everyone sat back, expecting the revolution to happen. The vending machine merchants invested millions of dollars to fit out their equipment to accept the new dollar.

Just because he is director of the University of Pennsylvania's Weight and Eating Disorder Clinic doesn't mean Bob Berkowitz is a culinary spoilsport. To prove it, he sat down to lunch at McDonald's - to talk about good nutrition, the clinic's child-obesity study, our food-obsessed culture, and his favorite dessert. He ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with no mayonnaise, a garden salad and a diet Coke. We also get a double cheeseburger with bacon, large fries, Coke and apple pie - for comparison's sake.

There were goodies all over Doe Mountain last weekend. French fries. Peanut butter. Jelly. Even an occasional bunny in the snow. Three-quarters of the way up Cub Run, a couple of minutes off the handle tow and many more spent adjusting hat, goggles, mittens, and a boot with a ski-resistant toe, instructor Jessica Schmoyer posed a crucial test: "Show me a nice big pizza. " Alexandra Heard, 5, touched the tips of her skis together to form an imaginary slice that would slow a downhill slide.

In 1995, Tasty Fries Inc. shareholders were told their investment would soon pay off: The company's french fry vending machines were about to hit the market. Investors held out hope throughout 1996. By 1997, the company promised the wait finally would be over. It wasn't. It's now September 1998. The Blue Bell company still has not begun mass producing the machines - nor has it had any revenues since its founding 13 years ago. But Edward Kelly, the company president and chief executive officer, says 25 machines are about to be built by a manufacturer in Bucks County, and contracts with distributors are being negotiated to get those machines into discount department stores.

Do Americans really need more french fries? Candace Vanice thinks we do. Well, maybe not more, but better ones, surely. In this case, hers. Building better fries - specifically, an all-natural, fat-free alternative to traditional high-fat fries - first caught the Kansas City woman's imagination in a college dorm during her freshman year. OK, she admits it. She was weight-conscious but didn't want to give up a favorite food. There must be a way, she reasoned, to make a palatable potato stick without frying, without oil. And based on projected sales of $1 million this year, quite a few consumers seem to think she has found it - and packaged it in freezer bags as 8th Wonder Fat-Free Fries, available here later this year.

LAST MONTH, 272-pound Caesar Barber sued McDonald's, along with three other fast food chains, because he claims they should have told him that french fries were fattening. Maybe the guy should sue the French government, too, since it occurs to us that anything that is labeled French is no good for you (French toast, French fries, French's mustard). And yet does France come with a warning label? Non! The lawsuit shocked us, almost as much as the news that McDonald's was going to reduce the fat in their fries.

Please, not the fries. Anything but the fries. Scientists at Stockholm University have concluded that fried potato and cereal products may contain high levels of acrylamide, a probable carcinogen. If verified, this finding could be the most significant shake-up to American cuisine since McDonald's 1968 introduction of the Big Mac. Imagine hamburgers everywhere stripped of their very raison d'?tre: serving as the alleged feature on a plate heaped with the most satisfying, comforting, downright soul-transforming victual ever - french fries.

TWO WEEKS AGO, Oprah Winfrey went to Instagram and Twitter - @oprah, natch - to post praises of one of her favorite things. The O electronically professed her endless love of a $249 countertop kitchen appliance, a fryer that transforms baking taters into french fries using a scant amount of oil. "This machine . . . T-Fal actifry has changed my life," wrote Winfrey. "And they're not paying me to say it. " (One would hope not, since America's pre-eminent media mogul seems to do quite well for herself with the jobs she's already got.)

THE BOULDIN HOME in Mount Airy was always open. Friends, relatives and even total strangers were welcomed and treated as honored guests. Barbara James Williams Bouldin was the hostess with the mostest. "She welcomed everybody into her home," said her daughter, Leslie Bouldin. "We didn't even have to be there when our friends showed up. Mom would sit down and talk with them. A couple of my girlfriends even lived with us for a time. " Generosity and love were the hallmarks of Barbara's approach to the world.

Turns out you're never too old to call your mother about a recipe. And regret it. We begin when I decide to cook a nice meal for Daughter Francesca, because we're about to start book tour. We eat french fries for dinner every book tour, and it's worth writing an entire book for an excuse to eat french fries. But if I eat french fries without being on a book tour, I start signing things. Occupational hazard. To stay on point, I decide to make eggplant parm, which I haven't made in years.

THE Brothers Grigg had just started a frozen-food company to make, among other things, french fries. But what to do with the scraps of spud left behind? These potato pieces were too small for proper fries, but there were too many of them to be discarded. One day in 1953, F. Nephi Grigg came up with a delicious solution: He chopped up the potato scraps, shaped them into bite-size cylinders, then fried them golden and crunchy. Thus were born Ore-Ida Tater Tots. As the last almost 60 years have proved, Grigg's little brainstorm - a plug of shredded potato 1 1/2 inches long, 7/8-inch in diameter - has been an enormous success.

We hear frequently from readers who arrive at Federal Donuts, on Second Street in Pennsport, just as the shop runs out of its celebrated fried chicken. Could that be intentional? According to the international consulting firm, CultureWaves, "intentional scarcity," offering limited supplies of items in order to drive up their popularity, is among the food trends predicted to crest in 2012. But Michael Solomonov, the James Beard award-winning chef who co-owns Federal Donuts as well as the acclaimed restaurant Zahav, says offering "limited supplies" was not in the original plan.

Congress was wrong to block new rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation's school lunch program. In a fight that had more do with adults and big business than the best interest of children, lawmakers sided with the frozen-food industry and potato growers. An agriculture spending bill approved last week with bipartisan support rejected tougher guidelines for school lunch and breakfast programs. The proposed changes would have been the first in 15 years to the $11 billion lunch program and fell in line with President Obama's effort to end childhood hunger by 2015.

Wallace McCain, 81, a billionaire frozen-food mogul and philanthropist who helped turn a small Canadian french fry plant into the global McCain Foods empire and later went on to control meat processor Maple Leaf Foods Inc., died Friday in Toronto after a 14-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Mr. McCain was a cofounder of McCain Foods and chairman of Maple Leaf Foods. This year, Forbes magazine listed him as No. 512 on its annual list of the world's billionaires, estimating his personal net worth at $2.3 billion.

Carole S. Appel is a retired book editor who lives in New Hampshire I was a slender child, but my mother would not have used such a neutral word to describe me. To her, I was "skinny," "underweight," an embarrassment. Mealtimes were an endless three-part fugue: The Mother: Eat more, eat more, eat your meat, eat your string beans. The Kid, wailing: I can't. I'm full. I don't have any ro-o-o-om! The Father: I can't understand all this fuss - when I grew up there were eight kids around the table and if you didn't grab fast, you didn't eat. Mom: Eat your meat, eat your string beans.

The Reading Phils are offering an all-you-can-eat package for Monday's game. For $10, you can stuff your face with hot dogs, french fries, funnel cake, ice cream and soda. Sounds like fun to me, but some people - including our sister publication - think it's a bad idea at a time when two-thirds of Americans are overweight. I'll eat their share. When do we leave for Reading? Ashley, you drive. Gluttony is as American as apple pie à la mode. How many tickets has Cohen bought?

A piece in Bon Appétit magazine this month purports to list "The Top 10 Best Places for Fried Chicken," which wouldn't be of much note except that Resurrection Ale House, a local kid, made the cut. Resurrection is a tidy corner pub across from the condos at the old Naval Home on Grays Ferry Avenue, deeply into the craft beer scene, a proclivity that had won it a different notoriety a few months ago; state police raided it for selling a few...