As someone with a dry, sarcastic, deadpan sense of humor…I love irony. I appreciate it. It makes me laugh in that wry sort of way. Except when it come to food. I can’t help it – I’m Italian…food is in my blood. For Hell’s sake, my personal food pyramid has individual bricks for Pierre Marcolini, Humboldt Fog, Barolo. Don’t misunderstand – I am not a Food Snob. I like my macaroni and cheese and pizza as much as the next person. I make a mean crockpot full of Redneck Meatballs. But it’s homemade mac and cheese with real cheese, not processed cheese foodstuff; it’s real New York City by-the-slice pizza, not Domino’s or Papa Johns. It’s homemade meatballs, not the 128 oz. Val-U Pak of meat-like spheres made with ingredients that each seem to be competing for the title of Longest Word In The English Language. No…being a Foodie is about quality, not class.
Unfortunately, tonight I won the Alanis Award in the Food Category. I have found my Personal Food Hell, and it is called Cactus Willie’s.
Cactus Willie’s was the chosen location for A’s end-of-year soccer dinner. You walk in the door into a winding queue where you pay your $9.49 for your All-U-Care-2-Eat adult dinner ($9.99 on weekends, thank you very much) and $0.60 x your age for the under 12 set. And then they set you loose on a full buffet of overcooked “food.” Forrest Gump would have felt quite at home…there was fried shrimp, baked shrimp, boiled shrimp, shrimp creole… There was a line full of people waiting for well-done steak. Fried seafood of every sort. Veal Parm, chicken parm, eggplant parm…flat, fried rectangles — identical in every way except for their name tags. Besides the salad bar there were exactly 2 non-starchy vegetables: overcooked, soggy broccoli drowning in butter-flavored sauce , and chopped collard greens drowning in bacon-flavored sauce. Day-glo colored pie slices.
Because nothing appealed to A (probably because she couldn’t recognize anything), her chosen dinner consisted of: mashed potatoes, corn, spaghetti w/ sauce. I insisted she add a veg or some salad. She chose the broccoli, and declared it “wet, mushy, and gross.”
Still, she had a ball. But what I wouldn’t have given to be home in my jammies with a bowl of leftover Roasted Artichoke and Pea Risotto. On the way home she had fun offering me two completely awful restaurant choices and making me pick which one I’d go to.
And then she said the words that made me see how truly blessed we were…
“At least we aren’t on Grady’s team, mom…they’re going to Chuck E. Cheese tomorrow.”
Pass the Maalox…
Amen Sister – but then again you know I would agree with you on the food issue!
I’m with you. I do not need shallots or pomegranite seeds to make a yummy meal, but I like to know that the food I am eating is, you know, FOOD.
Chuckee Cheese. Eww eww eww.
for the longest time, jools would call chuck e cheese “chunkin cheese.” BS and i would smile at each other. yep, the boy’s got it. the place makes us want to blow chunks.