Fried.

Wow.

I’ve always stayed away from fried food in my cooking. It just isn’t the healthiest method to prepare food. I do though, on occasion, make my lightly fried chicken tenders and drag the vintage 1960’s deep fryer out for crispy falafel balls or shrimp tempura. But today, the only “fried” item I’m thinking about is my hard drive. And now I see clearly just how bad frying is.

My regularly scheduled blog, which I wrote from my heart sometime over the weekend about Cooking with Friends as a great way to volunteer, was lost with all the other personal data on my laptop — photos from my kids’ birthday parties, future blogs and other assorted bits and pieces of my life. It’s a real honest-to-God bummer.

The red alert appeared by way of the eerily blue screen on my computer this morning, after a vicious wind and rain storm pounded us throughout the night. Was this the dread “blue screen of death?” Yes, my laptop was plugged in at the time. And no, I hadn’t backed up all my data. The tech support guy used the term “fried” to describe my situation and it was at that descriptive moment that I realized that frying has no place in my life.

Indeed, my hard drive is fried, like a mozzarella stick or a piece of calamari.

We sometimes turn to similes to shed light on life. Frying is not a positive word, nor is it healthy. It clogs arteries, circuits and chips.