The other day I was in a local fast food place enjoying a meal of empty calories and artery-clogging cholesterol when I noticed a family enjoying similar fare. There was a mother, father and two small children. As I watched them, I thought back to my own childhood and quickly realized I never went out to eat when I was a kid.
Never.
Back then, we ate at home, in the dining room. And the menu was always the same. I don't remember each menu, but I do remember Sunday was fried chicken, complete with mashed potatoes, gravy and a vegetable. On other nights, it was either pork chops, hamburgers or maybe something exotic like spaghetti.
Everything was fried in lard, and the left-over grease was not thrown away. It was saved in a container on the stove to be reused in another meal. It may not have been healthy by today's standards but it sure was good. My favorite was that crispy fried chicken and that delicious white gravy. It may have been my dad who taught me the best way to top off a meal like that was to take a piece of bread and cover it with gravy. There was nothing better.
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Deserts were few and far between at our house. I'm not sure if it was because my mother didn't like to bake or desert was an expensive extravagance we couldn't afford. I think the latter was true. Most of the time if I had desert it was a piece of bread with milk and sugar on it. But it was a different story when we went to visit my grandparents in Glasco, Kansas.
My grandmother was a great cook and she loved baking. Her favorite and mine too was apple pie. And the great thing about her pies was the leftover crust. After baking her pies she would always have some pie crust dough left over. She would take that and make small pieces of crust and then cover them with cinnamon and sugar then bake those and give them to me and my cousins. Simple but delicious.
Today my wife and I go out to eat a lot. When there's only two, it's just as cheap to go out and a whole lot simpler. But where to go is always a problem. Sioux City and the surrounding area have a lot of choices in dining -- from the very simple fast-food joints to more fancy dining-in places.
But choosing one can prove to be as daunting as it is for Congress to agree on anything. To this end, I've decided to open a couple of restaurants of my own and I think they'll be pretty popular. One will be called "I don't care" and the other will be "You Decide." I figure every husband will be taking their wives to one or the other after they ask the question, "Where do you want to go to eat?"
It can't miss.
Terry Turner is a Prime writer who can be reached at turnert185@outlook.com
