[Sca-cooks] The Omnivore's Hundred
Lilinah
lilinah at earthlink.net
Wed Sep 10 12:46:33 PDT 2008
Celia wrote:
>It seems absolutely foreign to me that they could
>possibly not have tried a Big Mac meal if they're in the US (well, ok, if
>they were raised strict vegan or Amish or in some other faith/belief that
>eschewed fast food... but it's counter-cultural to not have ever had a Big
>Mac, even if you're smart enough to not eat them.)
Uh, well, i'm a native to the US, and TTBOMK i've never had a Big Mac meal.
I'm old enough that the first MacDonald's didn't open where i grew up
until i was around 13. I remember going with my mom and my little
brother, i remember getting a chocolate milkshake, but i don't
remember having a burger. I don't even know if they were called "Big
Macs" back then - and even if they had "Big Macs" i might not have
had one (maybe i had a "Little Mac" :-) I only recall us going once.
Homemade hamburgers were so much better! (plus i could slather it in
Dijon mustard, rather than tasteless French's mustard)
By 1968 i was a vegetarian, and even when i stopped being a
vegetarian, i was selective about what meat i ate, and often made
vegetarian choices. I was not a vegetarian when i made a 2-1/2 day
cross-country drive from Berkeley CA to Ann Arbor MI in 1977 or so,
to go to grad school. I stopped at MacDonald's a few times, since
there were such limited services on the highway - and my attempts to
find "home cooked" food in towns close to the highway met with
failure. Each time i only ordered iced tea with no sugar and extra
lemon, and fries. That's it. I did eat in one or two decent truck
stops, but my drive to and from Pennsic last year shows that decent
ones are pretty much a thing of the past.
When my daughter was in grade school, a teacher gave her a
certificate for a free kid's meal for her good work. We went, i got
her her meal (i don't remember, but i probably got fries for
myself)... and we never went to a MacDonald's again. She eliminated
beef from her diet shortly thereafter, she was 9 or 10, and she
became a vegetarian by the time she was 12. At 27 she is still
basically a vegetarian, but has very recently begun eating seafood on
rare occasions.
But i have never, to the best of my knowledge, eaten a Big Mac meal,
and it's definitely NOT on my list of must eat meals.
I have never eaten in a Wendy's, a Burger King, or a Jack in the Box.
I once had a job where the only nearby place to get food was a Carl's
Jr. At that time Carl's served stuffed baked potatoes and i got the
ones with broccoli. Since leaving that job (that was around 1982) i
have never again set foot in a Carl's Jr.
When my daughter was around 2, her dad and i had a picnic on the
beach in Santa Monica and we got some Kentucky Fried Chicken. This
was around 1982 - the parts were so stunted and tiny, and the meat
was so greasy that i have never had any again. I was sort of
compelled to eat in a KFC once when i was car pooling to a Ren Fair
with some other members of our acting group and that's where the
driver wanted to eat - i had mashed potatoes and coleslaw. And the
only time i ever bought food in a Taco Bell was when i was car
pooling to another Ren Fair, and that's where the driver wanted to
stop. The food was so horrible i would never willingly eat in one
again - i was aghast when i discovered that all the hot sauces were
sweet!
Based on what i read in "Fast Food Nation", i am on rare occasions
willing to get a sandwich at a "Subway" when the only other options
on the freeway are fast-food burger joints, KFC, or Taco Hell. And i
confess i willingly get a burger at In-and-Out Burger a few times a
year, usually when driving home from an SCA event where the
temperature has been over 100 F., or driving back up I-5 from
visiting my mom for Thanksgiving.
I really cannot imagine why i should ever eat a Big Mac...
--
the person sometimes called Urtatim
My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah
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