A tasty treat in an otherwise bland day: Earl’s homemade chili with rice and a “secret ingredient”.
Fabulous.
Food.
Happiness Is.
… coming home from a Friday night DJ gig (with a lackluster crowd attendance) and finding a take away box full of a cheeseburger and fries from Denny’s sitting on the kitchen counter awaiting your arrival.
After Hours.
Being back in the swing of weekly DJ gigs again, after a successful night last night Earl and I decided to head to our local Denny’s after the bar closed last night for a quick bite to eat. Most areas of the northeast have a wide selection of all-night diners, here we only have Denny’s as the locally owned diners are only open until 8 p.m. at the very latest. Even our IHOP closes at 11.
This area is a disappointment to diner fans worldwide.
Earl reminded me that I had been to the local Denny’s once before for after hours, as I had insisted on eating breakfast after hanging out with friends at the bar. Quite frankly I don’t remember much of the experience as I was under the influence of alcohol at the time. No worries, he was driving during that excursion. My mandatory breakfast consisted of a chicken sandwich and french fries. Because of my minimal memories of that experience, I was not aware of what our Denny’s is like after hours.
It’s a mess.
They have bouncers/fake security guards at the entrances and at the restroom doors. These thugabes (tough guy wannabes, I just made that up) are there to help keep the drunks under control and the food fights contained. They’re also there to assure that everyone pays for their meal before leaving.
They’re failing miserably on that last point. Two liquored up parties left the diner without paying during the 45 minutes that Earl and I were there. The resulted in shouting from the hostess who was also cooking and the waitress who apparently had to pay for their food even though the thugabes weren’t doing their job and the hostess, who also collects the money, was cooking. One of the ladies from the liquored up party fell into my lap on her way out. I set her upright and pushed her in the right direction.
Our service was pretty good. Earl and I sat for no more than five minutes before we had our drinks and our orders submitted to the harried server. Since we try to fit as many calories as possible into the wee-hours of dining, our appetizer of chicken strips was out within five minutes of our request. This prompted one of the lesbians from a nearby table (I know she was a lesbian because she was making out with her girlfriend earlier in the evening) to come over to our table and glare at us for eating. She stood at the table and looked like she was ready to pounce. I didn’t offer her any food. Apparently they had been waiting quite a while for their food. This prompted more shouting behind the counter. The customers were yelling at the servers who were yelling at the hostess that was cooking while the thugabes talked on their cell phones while another customer escaped with an unpaid check.
All in all, the harried server was doing her best, the food was mediocre and the experience was frightful.
Next time I’ll be sure to be drunk.
m.
I grew up in farm country. For the first nine years of my life, I played in a yard that was surrounded on three sides by an electric fence. When we drove home from town, we would pass a silo that proudly proclaimed “M & M Farms”. We quizzed Mom as to why that was written on the silo and she told us that’s where M & M candies were born. The farm was actually owned by a married couple named Marshall & Mary, but I didn’t learn that until I was 25 (just kidding). Every time I grabbed a handful of M & Ms from Grandma Country’s three tiered candy dish, I would look at one of those candy coated drops of chocolate goodness in my hand and see the little “m” imprinted on it and revel in the fact that it wasn’t melting before my eyes. The little “m” seemed reassuring to me. It’d always be there until I ate it, that cute little “m”.
Now I see that Mars, Inc. is offering consumers the chance to have custom-printed slogans printed on the little candies for special occasions. I realise that they’ve been doing this for a couple of years, but it’s only recently that I’ve been seeing the ads plastered all over television. I was hoping that the fad of custom printed M & Ms had passed because to me though whole concept seems unnatural, like jokes printed on a Pringles chip or “Just Shoot Me” being considered “classic television”.
So today I feel motivated to buy a three-tiered candy dish and load it up with classic M & Ms. I’ll use them as a treat, gaze at the little “m” and revel in the fact that they melt in my mouth, not in my hand.
Counterproductive Nutrition.
Back in 2001, when I was around 50 pounds heavier than I currently am and decided to do something about it, I took a sensible approach to eating healthy. I didn’t diet by making select foods off-limits, instead I counted calories with a reasonable daily limit, I took up cycling and I kept my fat grams per serving in the single digits. There was one other thing I did, and I know this going to sound kind of odd but I ate enough vegetables to make sure that my pooped floated in the toilet bowl after I did my business.
Earl hated that I checked, but I believe the way to healthy eating is to know your shit.
Through research and whatnot I found that cheese probably isn’t the best thing in the world to eat, especially if you’re losing weight. I’ve never been a huge cheese fan, though once in a while I like to eat a piece of sharp cheese with apple pie or in lieu of a fancy dessert when we’re dropping huge amounts of money on small amounts of food. However, I did deduce that eating cheese wasn’t very healthy and it did some funky things to one’s digestion.
Imagine my surprise today when I saw a new product from Kraft: cheese with Activia in it to help constipation. The yogurt companies have been throwing active bacteria cultures (branded Activia) into their product for years. Personally I can’t stomach the stuff since I feel like I’m eating something akin to a tapeworm but nevertheless the yogurt with ‘active cultures’ must be popular because it’s still easily found on the shelf at the grocery store. I can’t help but think that cheese with this stuff can’t be good for you. First of all, it must confuse the hell out of your body’s digestive system. I mean, think about it. You eat cheese. It stops you up like glue. And then all of the sudden the cheese starts eating it’s way from the inside out from your insides.
Now that’s more gross than checking out whether you’ve got sinkers or floaters in the toilet bowl.
Has the American diet become so whacked that we start throwing all sorts of additives into food to help our body recover from the crap we eat on a daily basis? Does anyone else find this approach to nutrition to be a little crazy? We have shaker fiber that can be mixed into anything to help things move along. We have innocent potato chips that cause explosive bowls because of the olestra used to make the stuff. And now we have cheese that has active cultures in it. What happened to just plain old moldy blue cheese?
I guess I long for the days when we knew what we were eating and it wasn’t modified to do something funky to our bodies to counteract what it was intended to do to our bodies.
Native Food.
Every area has their own native food. In Cincinnati there’s Cincinnati Chili. Down South there’s grits and sweet tea (I don’t think they’re consumed together though). Nearby Syracuse has “salt potatoes”. Here in the Mohawk Valley we have our own native foods as well. Aside from Chicken and Vodka Riggies (we’ll save that for another entry), at most holiday parties in the area you’ll find Tomato Pie.
I had never heard or had tomato pie before moving to the area back in 1992. I’m not a huge pizza fan (it’s o.k. in moderation) and while tomato pie does resemble pizza, I really love me some tomato pie.
Tomato pie is put together like this: a traditional pizza crust, larger than a regular pizza, is covered with thick tomato or pizza sauce and then topped with grated romano cheese. It’s baked like traditional pizza however, most folks new to the tomato pie experience are surprised to find that it’s allowed to cool and served at room temperature. I find the sauce on tomato pie to be a little sweeter than traditional pizza sauce.
Having lived in this area for over 15 years, I’ve come to expect tomato pie at parties. I might even try making it for our next get together, even though there’s not a lick of Italian in me. (Though I have licked a few Italians in my day.)
Food Trip.
Jeff at Esoteric Diversions talks about something that sounds quite heavenly in his blog post today.
The Thanksgiving Sub at D’Angelos. Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy in a sub roll! Ooh la la. I’d even venture to eat the whole sub as intended instead of taking it apart to eat it. (It’s a long story).
Me thinks it’s time for a road trip to Massachusetts.
Dab of CNY: Tom Cavallo’s.
Earl and I decided to skip Saranac Thursday at the local brewery and instead enjoy each other’s company for supper out tonight. Since the hot, humid weather has left us for the time being, we enjoyed the gorgeous evening out on the deck at a favorite of our local haunts, Tom Cavallo’s in the Village of New Hartford.
Cavallo’s is a favorite amongst the locals. They’re especially known for their Italian dishes and their pizza and wings night. We each had a pasta dish chased down with a few beers.
If you’re in the area, we highly recommend it.
