1394 Frittering

Not long ago, on December 2nd, it was “National Fritter Day.” My first thought was; Great, just what we need, another day to waste time. Because of course, that’s one meaning of the word. The verb “to fritter”—as in, I frittered, she fritters, and he is frittering—is a word that means to waste stuff aimlessly.
He frittered away is time. She spent the whole afternoon frittering away her inheritance at the shopping mall. He was twittering to his friend about how many cell minutes he was frittering away.
Turns out I was wrong. I apparently frittered away too many brain cells at one time and in the process lost some of my sense of the obvious. Because actually, the day was about the food.
Yep, a holiday promoting a full faceful of fat-encrusted fritters.
The food known as a fritter is usually some sort of deep-fried dough, within which is embedded something healthy. The embedding process does not include injecting. So a jelly doughnut, even though a case could be made for the relative healthiness of grape jelly vs. maple syrup or Twinkie Cream, does not qualify as a fritter.
Think apple fritter. You take something with obvious health benefits, an apple, and mix it through sugary dough and then deep-fry it in fat. One might say you are frittering away the health benefits of said apple. Likewise peach fritters, apricot fritters and the exotic pineapple fritter.
There is no intrinsic prohibition to using vegetables in the frittering process but it is rarely done. I suppose that’s why other cultures invented pakora and tempura. You’ll need to get your deep-fried veggies at the teriyaki place.
You probably won’t encounter either a broccoli or an asparagus fritter at the doughnut shop.
America, ya gotta love it.