Sometimes quality is subjective and other times most of us agree. Primarily, what's the deal with restaurants serving margarine instead of real butter? A tub of Country Crock is $6, and a pound of delicious butter is $4. What gives?! In addition, it should be pointed out that margarine is nothing more than food coloring and a bit of dehydrogenated vegetable oil that need not be refrigerated. Butter might just be the best tasting thing hanging off the nutritional tree that is considered bad for us. And I will be glad to be the one to remind you that "food" that requires no refrigeration cannot be real food. Bacteria will grow on food when it is kept in the danger zone from about 40 to 140 degrees. When even bacteria refuse to grow on any food (or in this case) chemicals posing as food we should avoid it like the plague. I will remind you that even Mc Donalds serves real butter with their hot cakes, and they are the bastardized stepchild of the food service industry. They are considered Satan in an industry surrounded by demons. I always have to laugh to myself when I see products like "Butter Buds" and "I can't believe it's not butter." How mentally deluded must one be to be so afraid of just occasionally putting a little pat of butter on a piece of toast? Note in the last sentence I used the word occasionally and pat. Even I won't advocate for someone to just snack on a stick of butter. Natural fats are our friends, and they should be treated as such. Consuming margarine is like taxation without representation, the more we indulge in the silly practice the more it becomes commonplace. Don't let yourself become a nutritional poser.
When 2020 rolled around I noted that most local restaurants started seriously cutting back on their quality. I even hit a local Mexican dive that is well known for serving up some pretty good grub and they served me (God help us all) FAKE sour cream. Before this crime against humanity and what I refer to as "culinary blasphemy" happened I didn't even know such a product existed. When people ask me "how can you be sure it was fake" my answer is "I'm 55 years old, I don't know what real sour cream tastes like? For being nothing more than an aging country boy I have a fairly sophisticated palate. Food is my friend and I have spent a lot of time figuring out what makes it good but have especially scrutinized what makes it bad. Cutting corners on quality products is a crime. However, I looked the other way while most of their customer base went missing in action for some time. Even a man who never studied economics like me can understand that less customers equals less revenue, so something had to give. But here is the rub, once the customers started coming back the quality never returned, and on top of that the prices are now higher than a cats back. That means that we are shelling out more cash than ever for food that is (at best) sub-par and at worst just one step above canned dog food.
So, this means that steaks full of tendons and gristle, orange juice that contains no oranges, cheese sauce that contains no cheese, and milkshakes made without milk have become acceptable. WHERE WILL IT END? I have also noted that nearly anything inedible will be doused in Ranch Dressing to make it somewhat palatable. Ranch has become the go to concoction that Americans lean on to choke down all sorts of horrible foods. There is a chef in town who makes the best lobster bisque I have ever had. When it is made correctly it's fairly labor intensive which explains why most people shy away from it. Although, one day my son asked if we could eat lunch at Red Lobster when my favorite place was closed. I agreed but only reluctantly. The first clue I had that my meal would be horrible was the fact that my salad wasn't worth the dirt to bury it. Are you aware of how hard you must try to make leaf lettuce inedible. It cannot be merely neglected; it must be abused like a metric socket set. Wilted greens must be stored in a walk-in refrigerator that is barely working for multiple days before they can become brown, wilted, and unappetizing. I'll skip all the gory details about why their version of bisque didn't pass the test. I also tried some of my son's shrimp which was like chewing a piece of innertube rubber minus the flavor and the joy. Cooking is an exact science when it is done correctly. It's too bad RL has decided that only pimply-faced teenagers with only enough skills to run a microwave are employable there.
What all of these realizations have brought me to is something grandma tried to tell me for years, that if you want food done right you have to cook it yourself at home. Steak needs to be seared correctly to extract the delicate flavors from its proteins. Potatoes and onions have to be given the proper amount of cooking time in a cast iron skillet to develop that nice brown skin, it's called caramelization. The reason why the food at grandma's table was so good is that she prepared it with love and a dutiful focus. Her daddy taught her to cook cowboy style in a real Dutch oven with hot coals on top and bottom as it should be. This is the same reason why you could go to her cupboard, swear it was nearly empty, and then an hour later she could put a spread on the table that would riotously feed ten hungry people. She was equally a good steward of the stove and the pantry. It was a bit like when Jesus multiplied the bread and fish in the book of Matthew only on a smaller scale. The number of people the old gal fed wasn't nearly as high, but it was a miracle, nonetheless. While it may still be possible to get a decent meal at a fair price, most places are going to try to take your first-born child as payment. Watch your back!
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