Hush Puppy Recipes

Dog Days of Summer will be hosted by downtown merchants

August 13, the Downtown Newburgh Merchants will roll out the grill and treat their customers to free hotdogs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be sidewalk sales and lots of great special promotions.

Starting at 9 a.m. at the Farmers Market, local musicians are invited to stop in, pull out their guitar and share their music. It will be open mic Saturday. The only difference with our open mic is that you need to bring your own mic!

It will be a nice family day in downtown Newburgh. Rivertown Antiques will have a duck pond with prizes. Historic Newburgh, Inc. will have sidewalk chalk so the kids can get creative. Impulse is giving out snow cones.

With the Saturday morning Farmers Market starting at 8 a.m., a visit to downtown Newburgh can be a day long getaway.

Mae Mason tells me that in the late 60's and early 70's, Kurt Kluger from the Country Store had started a "Newburgh Merchant's Association." This group really originated the first Fiddler Fest.

In Mae's words, "They were frying fiddlers in big, old, iron cauldrons and making hush puppies out on a huge lawn beside the old library. People brought chairs and listened to blue grass music. It was soooo cool." In fact, it was cool. I remember!

By the early 1980's, shopping had shifted to the malls, and downtowns across America were challenged to redefine themselves.

Ken Weyerbacher, owner of Pictures, a wonderful framing business in the property located across from the Library (now the new Town Hall), was a driving force in establishing a new image for the Town of Newburgh.

Mae described Ken as "a ball of fire and very organized." With an energized group of local merchants and a vision for a new image, the Merchants Association once again took hold.

Historic Newburgh, Inc., (HNI) and the Merchants worked together to keep the Fiddler Fest alive, and HNI added the Street Fair on Water Street.

Mae remembers that this combination event brought literally thousands to Water Street.

"We had apple butter pots cooking on the grass, booths lined up one side and down another, and fish frying in the grassy area beside the now town hall," Mae said. "It was very successful for a number of years through the 80's."

The merchants gradually grew in number. Today the organization is known as the Newburgh Area Business Association or NABA.

The Newburgh Area Business Association NABA is at the core of many of the Newburgh activities. Some of the activities that NABA has been involved in over the years include the Fiddler Fest, Newburgh Celebrates Christmas, Halloween Parade, the Easter Parade and Hanging of the Wreaths.

Improv Cooking | Macheesmo

One of the holy grails of becoming a really good cook is the idea that you can walk into any kitchen and whip up a meal with whatever ingredients and equipment is on hand.

NEWS FLASH:  This is hard.

When Betsy and I were at the beach last week with her family, we were planning a meal one night and Betsy said, “I really want to get some hush puppies tonight!”

Normally, I guess they just buy the hush puppies pre-cooked from a very reputable restaurant down the road.

I, being the budding chef in the group, blurted out, “How about I just make some!”

This idea was very well-received and Betsy’s family was duly impressed.  How hard could it be after all?  Make some batter.  Heat up some oil.  Fry some stuff.  Done deal.

Turns out it was a bit harder than that and I had to do some quick thinking…

When I said I would make some hush puppies, I was imagining cooking these things in my kitchen at home.  In my kitchen, I have plenty of equipment and I know how everything works.

I quickly discovered that there was going to be a few issues once I started cooking.  Issues like:

- Not having a really big pot to heat oil in. - An electric stove which I rarely use.

A smart cook would have surveyed the kitchen location and equipment prior to agreeing to make something.

Not me.  FULL STEAM AHEAD.

Once I realized that I was in new territory, I didn’t panic.  Getting oil wasn’t a problem.  A quick trip to the store solved that.  Ideally, the store would have also had a thermometer, but no such luck.

After digging around the Internet for awhile I found a few hush puppy recipes that I kind of molded together to make what I figured would be a good fried item.  I smashed together an Allrecipes version with a Paula Dean version .

My largest issue by far was temperature.  Normally, at my house, even if I don’t have a thermometer, I know my pots and stovetop so well that I can make a very educated guess on when my oil temperature is right.

Not so in this case.  I ended up having to use a smaller, thin pot which would heat and cool much faster than my dutch oven.  I also was using an electric stove instead of gas.  I honestly have no idea how fast electric stoves heat up.

So I came up with two ways to get a basic idea of where my oil temperature was at.

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