Food oh glorious food

Don't you just love food. Don't you just love the fact that you can eat anything you want and all you want and never gain a pound? What? Oh, you too?

Is anyone else addicted to the Food Channel? I was watching one of the shows, maybe Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and they were frying everything. I mean everything. Hotdogs, sandwiches, everything. One of their specialties was french fried Twinkies.

Just before Amanda was married I had taken her to the Bridal shop for a fitting and we stopped at the Texaz Grill at 16th street and Bethany Home Road for lunch (great place!). After having the usually superb lunch the waitress asked if we wanted desert. Being a born and bred smart A I said not unless you have french fried Twinkies. She laughed and said "Sorry, I don't have that." It wasn't two minutes later she came back with a french fried Twinkie and set it in front of me. "There you go," she said. Amanda and I and everyone within earshot cracked up. It appears the Manager overheard me and yes indeed, happened to have a Twinkie that he threw in the fryer. Laughing, Amanda said, "Okay smart aleck, now you have to eat it!"

It was delicious.

My Mother was a good cook, not as good as Carol but good in the simple fare that we had available in the early fifties in the northern hills of Missouri. She made the best fried chicken, mashed potato's and gravy you every put in your mouth (Texaz Grill's chicken fried chicken comes close). She also baked our bread, we rarely had store bought.

One of my earliest memories was when she had baked some bread and had a baseball sized amount of dough left over. After pulling the bread out she stuck that leftover dough in and promptly forgot about it. I don't know how long it sat in the oven but when she finally remembered it had baked to the consistency of a bowling ball. She gave it to me to gnaw on. Sometime later an irate neighbor came to the door dragging a squalling, blubbering, snot nosed boy my age. The neighbor really gave Mom the dickens because his son claimed I had hit him in the head with a big rock. Mom called me to the door and asked me if I'd hit that boy with a rock. She was really upset. Innocent as the driven snow I replied, "No Ma'am, I did not! I hit him with your biscuit!"

You get a reputation in a small town it sticks for a while. Mom's reputation as a baker suffered until we had to move.