Tag: Food

Are we just a bunch of ….

Posted on by CV Whitfield

….pansies!

Seems like everything has a warning label nowadays! Geez!

So, I was going to watch a movie last night and the movie had a warning- no not that it had adult language or nudity – but there are flashing images. Say what!? Huh isn’t that the point of movies is images being flashed onto a screen? Ok, I’m not stupid. Maybe there’s a rave scene, explosions or a violent lightening storm and maybe that would cause someone to go into a seizure? How’d did people survive these movies for the last 75 years? Or were hundreds of people flipping out and flopping around on the theater floor that I’m not aware of?

I’m in a restaurant and now menus have these tiny little warnings: peanut, gluten dairy, pork, and vegetarian. Again how’d people survive 20 years ago when ordering a hamburger, house salad or a big plate of pancakes?

Or have we become so passive to make excuses for dumb people? If you have a food allergy or a weakness to flashing lights, shouldn’t that be on you? I mean, it’s bacon! It has pork in it. the pancakes have gluten so don’t order ‘em! And if you have a food allergy that will kill you why do you think a restaurant is your best option to have a meal? I can’t stand the karens that go to an Olive Garden and proceed to ask the waitress if they can make the meal to order—Cesar salad hold the Cesar, fettuccine, but can you hold the sauce since that’s got milk in it and just make it butter noodles, as long as the butter was churned on the seventh holy day of the third moon, and add the chicken, if the chicken was free range and humanly slaughtered—. Or the lady at the table telling the waitress to take back the garden salad because it had croutons because she can’t have gluten! OMG! Pick the damn things off! I don’t like tomatoes but I don’t send the salad back I eat around them. And a breadcrumb is not a deadly virus or radioactive waste. It don’t work that way!

Either way, I think people should man up and worry about yourself vs making everyone worry about you!

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Life Too Slow

Posted on by CV Whitfield

Our lives move so fast that it’s hard to slow down. There’s nothing wrong with going slow. I think it’s something we’ve lost in the evolution of our society.

We have been spoiled to get things now – right now! Today isn’t fast enough. I need it yesterday.

I realized how this impacted me so greatly while tried to each lunch at Steak n Shake yesterday. I had nothing to todo that day. I was calm and patiently waited to be seated. All was good. Our order was taken and I chatted with the wife and daughter. We were having a good time and hadn’t realized that our food hadn’t arrived and it had been 30 minutes. They were busy but we don’t get Steak n Shake often so we went back to talking. Then another 15 minutes passes. Still no food. This got me to thinking. How long is too long to wait for food? These are hamburgers and shakes not made to order steak and lobster ….

So at the 45 minute mark, we got up and walked out. They may not have noticed we left but oh well. Almost feel sorry for that food arriving to an empty table. We crossed the street and had our burritos within 10 minutes.

Is there a life too slow? I do like being able to wake up and just spend the day with no plan of attack. Wasting time doing the fun things — reading or sitting!

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Dr. Pepper.

Posted on by CV Whitfield

When I was 9 years old, I was very particular what I liked to eat and drink. One of those was Dr. Pepper. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I just loved its sweet flavor. I do know that I didn’t want to drink Pepsi as most everyone I knew was forced to drink it. So I picked something different.

[Backstory: Roswell was the site of a Pepsi Bottling Factory. Many of my friends had parents that in some way worked for the plant. Being employees of Pepsi, they were expected to drink Pepsi. And that trickled down to my friends. So, Pepsi was everywhere. The blue and red cans burned my retinas. My mother didn’t work for the bottling plant so I figured I could drink anything I wanted. So I drank Dr. Pepper. Funny thing, I found out many years later, once the plant closed and disappeared, the same Pepsi Bottling Plant was responsible for bottling Dr. Pepper in Southeast New Mexico.]

We lived in this apartment complex around that time. It was called Columbia Manor – like the name made it more luxurious than it really was. In the court yard, there were massive trees and lots of grass – lots of area to run and climb for a kid – and a swimming pool. Next to the pool was a small laundry room and right outside — a Dr. Pepper machine!

The machine was simple and smelling — dispensing Dr. Pepper in a can. It was those Dr. Pepper cans that I noticed they went from pull tabs to the tabs we see on cans today. Unfortunately, I was guilty of littering with those old pull tabs. I’m not proud but it was different times. And the price of a can of Dr. Pepper: only 25 cents! The next summer I remember it going up to 30 cents and I panicked that I would now need another nickel. Dr. Pepper may have been my very first addiction. I wanted it all the time. No, I needed it. I would drink it after school. Run to the machine on Saturday mornings in between Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks. If I had no money, I would peddling my BMX bike in the parking lot of the Tastee Freeze and Long John Silvers hoping to find nickels and dimes.

At my mother’s work, there was another Dr. Pepper machine. Yet, this one was an old fashioned side-loader that dispensed Dr. Pepper in bottles. It was so fun using the bottle opener on the machine to pop the top off my Dr. Pepper. Nothing was better than ice cold Dr. Pepper in a bottle. I can remember the fizz tickling my nose. I nearly threw a tantrum when I learned they took the machine away. Rumor was that it was losing money and there was a ability to pull two bottles at one time confusing the machine and getting two drinks for one. (who would do that? It’s immoral and — okay it was me, okay! I really regret that.)

Today, after 30 years, I rarely drink Dr. Pepper. Not sure when and where I stopped drinking it. I know in Junior High, Cherry Coke hit the scene. It may have been then. I sometimes drink one, as I did this morning. My daughter loves it. She only drinks it and refuses to settle for any of its knock-offs like Mr. Pibb. And it’s due to her and her generosity to share a Dr. Pepper with me — triggering this flood of memories….

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