Food for Thought … Or Not

For decades, farmers have been paid not to plant all of their fields because they produce more food than we can consume. Still, 70% of Americans are either obese (45.6% of adults) or overweight (kids in training for obesity). It seems we either need to shoot for a higher obesity rate or send more of our food to countries with a high rate of malnutrition.

Sweet and sour chicken is more sweet and sour than it is chicken.

Fast food kids meals are adult size meals in Europe.

Do all-you-can-eat buffets close? If so, what if a customer is not finished eating? It seems they should receive a refund.

In drive thru lines, when someone pays for the meal for the car behind him, it’s referred to as paying it forward. Shouldn’t it be paying it backward?

Why is it called a salad bar when there isn’t a bartender to serve you? Do they cut off customers who have had too many croutons? Can a happy customer yell out, “Salads on me?” Finally, why do customers eat their salads sitting in chairs instead of stools?

I am banned from Burger King. I asked for a Double Whopper with cheese served up on top of a smoking hot naked woman. I guess having it your way has restrictions.

When I turned 21 way back in 1979, my friends and I went to Steak and Ale in Oakland. Their deal was for less than ten bucks, customers got a juicy steak with all the beer they could drink. When we finished, we drove down the street to catch an Oakland A’s game where I managed to get us all kicked out. I wonder if Steak and Ale is still in business or if it moved to Sacramento with the A’s.

I have heard the term dry roasted many times in my life but never wet roasted. Instead, we call it marinated. After I roast in the summer sun, I don’t marinate in a pool. Parents never scream at kids who have been swimming, “Don’t come into the house marinated.”

The term rump roast is just a kinder and more gentler way of saying butt beef.

Is there a new standard time kids have to wait after eating before going back in the pool or are they so fat we just assume they will float, cramped up or not?

Can something slow cooked be served at a fast food joint?

Potato chips are really potato slices. Chocolate chips are actually chocolate drops. Hotdogs, franks or weenies? As long as it isn’t Frank’s Hot Weenie, they’re all the same.

Did Vincent Van Gogh ever eat more than one ear of corn?

You can eat an entire leg of lamb or a chicken leg but should only play a dog leg one slice at a time.

I’m not sure what a dry rub is, but I have learned never to order one at a massage parlor.

Always remember that steaks that are grass fed or free range beef come from cows who were slaughtered the same as others fed garbage.

Happy cows are just left alone in their natural environment and not raised for profit. Happy eaters are left alone to dine without waiters asking them if everything is okay every two minutes.

No wonder Americans lag behind the rest of the world academically. Our kids are taught chickens have fingers before they learn how to read.

Recently, Five Guys Hamburgers was selected as the most overpriced fast food chain in the nation. If it takes five guys to make a burger, their costs must be terrible. What happened to “too many chefs spoiling the burger?”

In California, fast food workers earn $20.00 an hour. Assuming it takes five minutes to make and serve a burger made by five guys, that’s 12 burgers in an hour, times five guys making each one, and that comes to $100.00 labor. That’s a little over eight bucks a burger just to break even. Five Guys would be smart to consider four fewer guys cooking burgers.

Can you order spinach at Popeye’s?

The Kentucky Fried Movie was far more enjoyable than anything Kentucky Fried Chicken has to offer.

Do customers get warnings about splinters at Wood Fired Pizza?

Why do we say, “I find that hard to swallow,” when we hear it? Is it because we were chewing the fat or cutting the mustard? It all seems fishy if you ask me.

Why would we ever relish the moment? Relish should rarely be added to food, let alone a memory.

For that matter, I would not want to mayo, mustard, or ketchup a moment. However, a good salsa is food for thought.

Dining out for breakfast by yourself is not as pathetic as dinner alone. Brunch by yourself is just downright selfish. However, no one cares if you eat lunch by yourself unless you fail to clock out at work.

As a teacher, I ate lunch in the staff room for my first eight years. Then it occurred to me, listening to teachers bitch about students is no more enjoyable than hearing kids complain about school. After that, I usually ate in my classroom while working on the things teachers complained about having to do after school.

Am I the only teacher who noticed that when cell phones became popular, I no longer had to tell students to stop chewing gum or eating food during class?

I once ate a sample platter of moose, elk, and ostrich. Of the three, I’d have to say the squirrels I ate that my friend and I hunted tasted better.

Never eat squirrel in a college cafeteria while dining with your girlfriend. However, if you do, only bring enough for yourself. It’s one of the more valuable lessons I learned in college. She didn’t break up with me after I ate squirrel, but man did I need a lot of Listerine before she’d kiss me again.

When I was a kid, one night after dinner my mom made a bunch of popcorn while we watched TV. Afterward, I threw up and have never liked the smell of popcorn. In seventh grade, I ate too many roast beef sandwiches at an A’s game and got sicker than a dog. However, I still enjoy a good roast beef sandwich. What I do not know is whether I would still enjoy beer had I ever drank so much that I got sick. Apparently, I hold my liquor better than I do some foods.

In high school, we started this thing called Larsen’s Law where if you were with a group of people, you had to cumulatively consume one more item of whatever you ordered. It began with pizza and later became centered around beer (Six people would consume seven total pitchers).

One very warm summer evening in Chico during my college days, I got together with two pals for pizza and beer. We did Larsen’s Law for both. Four pizzas (Three large and one medium) and four pitchers of beer were consumed by the three of us. I did not get sick that night but did manage to sweat through my bed sheets. The next day, I was on a major carbohydrate high and managed to not need to eat a bite while I worked an eight-hour job outdoors and followed it with a run through Bidwell Park.

Growing up, my parents were constantly on diets. My dad was always more miserable than his usual self when dieting. I told myself I would never go on a diet. It’s the one thing I have managed to accomplish in my life. Achievement is overrated.

Don’t eat catfish caught from a shallow lake unless you enjoy the taste of mud. They’re much better when caught in a river.

Salmon might be good for you, but for the money, you’re better off buying fish tacos. The best fish tacos I ever had were from the Taco Shop in Hemet. It might be the only thing that city has to offer mankind.

Cucumbers should be outlawed. If they were not used for pickles, they’d have no food value. All they do is ruin a good salad. The same goes for cucumber dressing. If there is such a thing as cucumber dip, don’t bother offering me any.

In college, I once made a dip for a party out of creamy peanut butter, mustard, and liverwurst. No one believed me until they saw me make a second batch. The first batch did not last nearly as long as the second one but it was still better than the Old Milwaukee Beer my roommate brought.

Walter, my roommate, had this philosophy about Old Milwaukee Beer. He’d claim after a second beer, all beer tastes the same. Buying a more expensive beer, in his mind, was a waste of money.

He used to come home from a day of classes and having not eaten anything since breakfast and cook an entire chicken for dinner. Then he would eat it all and lay on the couch in agony while asking us, “Why did I eat so much?” He also made pancakes for breakfast each morning and left the pan for us to clean. When we questioned him about not cleaning the pan, Walter would tell us, “I didn’t clean it because I thought someone else would want to use it.”

I once asked a girlfriend if she had any place in mind she would like to go to dinner for her birthday and she suggested a new Japanese place in our hometown. The menu was expensive, but we each ordered our dinner. When it arrived, we were given a small piece of meat no larger than four bites in the middle of our plates with a small garnish. That was it. She knew how much I ate and was laughing over my meal size. When we finished, we walked across the street and got a proper meal at Jack In The Box.

Fine dining is not worth the price. It’s probably why no one in expensive restaurants is laughing. They’re all dressed up and lean in close to whisper to one another. No one dares to fart in a nice restaurant for fear of everyone hearing it. It’s just assumed you can fart in louder joints that serve all the same dishes as their fellow big chain competitors.

Does anyone eat frozen dinners that claim to be the exact same dish from a chain restaurant? Why is it they sell in stores for five bucks but are four or five times the price if you dine out? It must be because of the expensive chips and salsa they provide for free while you wait for your meal to arrive.

Chocolate cake and chocolate cream pie are two examples of deserts that have chocolate as an ingredient. They are the sort of thing people stop eating when they go on a diet. However, chocolate alone, like a piece of See’s Candies, is nothing more than a small bite of food.

My idea of a wonderful meal is a main course of cheese and crackers followed by dark chocolate. Of course, selecting the right beer to go with them is vital. My recommendation is cold beer.

If you tire of cheese and crackers, just substitute tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole.

We’re raised to slow down and not eat fast and then shoot ourselves in the foot by creating fast food for people in too big of a hurry to cook. As a child, I marveled at the meals my mom slowly cooked only to scarf them down like a piranha. It was the only way to make sure I got seconds in a household with seven siblings trying to out eat me.

My mom did not usually turn to my dad to back her up on the little issues that arose between her wants and mine. However, once she turned to him for support when I kept rejecting her breakfast suggestions over my delicacy. Pancakes? No. Waffles? No. Eggs? No. Cereal? No. She couldn’t stomach my love of peanut butter and bologna on toast each morning. In case you were wondering, Dad gave me the okay. However, I had to have a daily vitamin washed down with that weird concoction of a juice all moms made in our day.

It’s not unusual to scarf down on leftover cold pizza in the morning. It’s almost expected. However, no one ever scarfs down on leftover cold eggs for dinner.

One of my kid’s favorite treats was heading to Denny’s for a grand slam breakfast for dinner. Those two-for-one coupons made for a cheap and enjoyable meal 30 years ago. Do people even use coupons anymore?

I deal with light and sound sensitivity thanks to an old head injury, so grocery shopping at WinCo in the middle of the day is torture. Even when I go at six in the morning, the lighting gets to me so I often wear sunglasses inside. Doing so is a sure fire way of being followed by store employees which is actually nice because it is also the only way to find someone who can help me find what I am looking for.

When I take my dog Bug with me to The Grocery Outlet, the women who work there actually ask me to use their checkout line. They ooh and ah over how cute he is and ask if they can give him a treat. However, if I do not bring him, they have no problem telling me their station is closed when I pull up with my cart. I feel so used.

Before there was Joey Chestnut or Kobayashi, I was the hot dog eating champ, at least among my family and friends. I’d load mine up with the works and scarf them down along with pork and beans, potato salad, and corn on the cob. One of my life goals was to consume 10 hotdogs, fully loaded.

At a party in Chico dogs were being grilled. There was plenty of other food to go along with them and of course beer. I finished my ninth dog and turned my attention to the tenth and literally final dog on the grill. It was fully loaded with the works and I was just preparing my initial bite when my then girlfriend came up to me and asked if she could have half of the dog. I was stunned. On one hand was accomplishing a life goal and the other was a beautiful woman who I was dating. It was at that moment I made a life-altering decision. I forked over half of the dog and the next three and a half decades of my life. I wonder what would have happened if I chose the hotdog? Life and food is all about choices.