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Get Stuffed...
This entry was posted on 4/15/2008 11:11 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
Last weekend, the love-of-my-life and I had a rare evening out without children. How decadent! Bright lights, big city, fancy clothes, high-dollar restaurant, dancing till dawn. Yeah, right…we had dinner at a 30-year-old diner in a small town in Arkansas. You know the kind of place:
• The tables are laminated with the ads for local businesses. It's kind of fun to sit there and play guess the celebrity weatherman's name from the pictures while you watch cars drive by on the interstate.
• There's a table in the back room filled with old men (all wearing gimme hats and plaid shirts). They started out the night eating, but now they're playing cards or dominoes. (One of them probably owns the place.)
• If you want pie, you order your pie at the beginning of the meal—before they run out. I recommend the lemon meringue or peanut butter. He likes plain ole boring apple.
• You can get almost freshly-made (not frozen) stuffed bell peppers, fried catfish, chicken fried steak, purple-hull peas, real mashed potatoes, turnip greens with turnips, macaroni and cheese casserole, and corn bread or a roll. (They serve truly fresh vegetables in the summer—thanks to the farmer's market next door. I'm partial to okra and squash.)
• And you have to go through the kitchen to get to the restroom.
Speaking of restrooms, one of our other favorite places to eat is a family-owned bar-b-que place. It's a well-known, stand-around-and-wait-for-an-empty-table place, and to avail yourself of the restroom, you actually have to leave the restaurant 'cause you can only get to the ladies room from a door on the outside of the building. The décor is strictly Razorback memorabilia and photos of politicians. But the food is worth it. Sitting here at my desk, two plus hours away from the restaurant, my imagination can produce the smell of that bar-b-que. Whenever we go there, I have to have a sliced beef sandwich, an order of slaw (it's good slaw, plus I always want more on my sandwich than they want me to have), a huge pork tamale smothered in bar-b-qued beans, and a Coke—a real Coke. (When I was a kid, they only served Coke in bottles straight from the cooler. And any devotee of Coke knows that's the best taste ever. I miss that flavor.) And I steal fries off the kids' plates. Their chocolate milkshakes (made in the metal cans) are pretty good, too. Talk about stuffed…I pretty much cover the whole menu, except for the ribs. The husband eats the ribs.
Supper tonight will also be of the stuffed variety—stuffed cabbage that is. After eating stuffed peppers the other night, the dearly-beloved guy began to talk fondly of the stuffed cabbage that I used to make. Huh? I vaguely remember making stuffed cabbage at some point in my life, but recently? No. Kids hate stuffed cabbage. Well, time to dig out the cookbooks…
Actually, I lied. Tomorrow night he gets the stuffed cabbage. Tonight is my once-a-month ATC meeting. We'll still be trying to trade those green-themed artist trading cards from last month. Anybody in the Little Rock area want to join? It's at 6:30 at Scrapbook Corner in the Market Place shopping center. We need some new members!
Opps...lied again. Tonight's ATC just got canceled. Back to the stuffed cabbage plan.
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