Some Ideas Just Don't Work

Maybe I'm going overboard writing about okra this year.  Maybe it is because the last two years our okra crop has been a failure because of the drought and I didn't have any to write about.  At any rate, this is my third posting about okra this summer.  

Okra is best eaten when the pods are small and tender.  However, they grow very fast and sometimes hide from you.  So, in every harvest, you'll usually have several pods that are too big and tough to use.  

This week, I decided to take several of these big, tough okra pods and see if I could get the chickens interested in eating them.  I thought if I cut them open so they could see the seeds, then they might use their beaks to tear into the other pods and dig the seeds out themselves.  Here's what I mean.

Then it occurred to me that the seeds might be good stir-fried!  Has anyone ever tried this before?  Was I, perhaps, the first person to think of it?  I felt I was on the verge of a new discovery!

 I slit several pods open and carefully extracted enough seeds to make a serving.

Next, I heated some olive oil in my wok and threw the seeds in the hot oil.

After a couple of minutes they began to jump out of the pan!  I turned the fire down and cooked a while longer until I thought they were ready.   I added some salt and pepper and scooped them out onto a plate.

I have to admit that these were really BAD.  While they didn't taste too terribly bad, the skins that covered the seeds were really tough.  You couldn't chew them and they were hard to swallow.  I ended up throwing the results of my new recipe in the compost.

However, as the old saying goes "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" and all I lost was a few minutes of time and a little bit of olive oil.