Eating in America…
I’ve been in Ohio for ten days now, give or take, and aside from the aforementioned so-called Asian doughnuts, I have been introduced to such culinary delights as:
- country fried steak for breakfast. This would be a pork steak covered in breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried - for breakfast. Even the Scottish with their deep-fried Mars bars wouldn’t cover it in breadcrumbs first. In the interests of research, I had to try this as part of a three-plate breakfast buffet.
Of course, if only I hadn’t then had to go on a Easter egg hunt looking for candy-filled Easter eggs for kids (with a side-trip to Arbys for a roast beef sandwich and a malted milkshake), and then onto a sumptuous evening dinner with anivair and ravenna_blue with some wonderful potato concoction that turned out to be twice-baked potato or something…
- In the UK, it’s called a Welsh rarebit and often the butt of national jokes about Welsh cuisine. But in Ohio, melted cheese sandwiches are revered at Melts, a rather cool bar’n'grill where the menu comes on the back of old vinyl covers. Shame that a melted cheese sandwich apparently takes an hour from ordering to arrival.
- After that came a dessert course of hot fudge ice cream at Malleys. The Americans, they like their ice cream. Even at 1pm on a wet Wednesday afternoon.
However, there are side-effects that come from eating out in America.
For a start, everything’s growing more. My hair, my nails, my moustache … they’ve all come on in leaps and bounds over the last ten days. It’s lucky I have a shaver otherwise UK immigration won’t be able to recognise me from my passport photo.
Another one is that everything comes … out … far more quickly than expected. And in big consistent chunks, in case you were wondering. However, while in London being caught short merely means running for the nearest pub/restaurant/Starbucks and hoping that their toilets are clean, being caught short in Ohio results in a bit more of an adventure.
To whit, a dash into a “gas” station to visit the toilet means a notice on the restroom door stating that you have to ask for the key. But this is an emergency, and besides, the door opens, so I hop in, lock the door and settle down to business. Two minutes later, someone who seems to have the key unlocks the door and starts to saunter in, whereupon I make my presence felt. Fortunately, the intruder beats a hasty exit.
They say the walk of shame is done when leaving a clandestine lover at 3am after a random club rendezvous. While I have never walked that walk of shame, I have walked the one that results from leaving a gas station with the cash registrar’s beady little eyes on me, and all the customers knowing that I walked into a restroom, polluted it, and left without - shock, horror! - buying anything. But on the other hand, having just vacated a full stomach, adding a stack of chewing gum to the contents of my stomach is not a good idea.
Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.