Buffet

Happy Saturday everyone! It’s sure been a great day. I hope yours has been as well. It’s rained all day here today. I won’t complain because the temperature was warm for January. It just kept me from an outdoor run. I had to hit the “dreadmill” but, I got my 3 miles in. I knew I had to get my exercise in today because we had evening plans for dinner with my sister and her husband and I wanted to eat without guilt. We went to a, what I call “fancy” dinner which isn’t like me but, it was really good. Following that with a candlelight concert which was absolutely wonderful. Side note: if you ever have the chance to attend a candlelight concert just go. It consisted of 4 orchestra musicians who play music of different artists. This particular one was the music of Fleetwood Mac and it was very very good. All surrounded by candles. Intimate and romantic. We don’t get all dressed up and go out very often. On occasion it’s nice. Now The Chop House isn’t really fancy and that’s where we had dinner. It is to me. We are more of a dive bar type of couple. Tonight while we were sitting there eating our $120 meal ( yea it was that much, which is also unusual for us) all I could think of were the restaurants that we went to when we were young. I don’t remember big fancy expensive restaurants growing up. Maybe it was just my family. I don’t know. Which leads me to tonight’s little tale.

I cook almost every single day. Two meals Monday through Thursday because my husband skips breakfast during the week. Three meals on the weekends. We do go out to eat one night a week for certain. We love pizza and that’s usually our cheat meal, we live a low carb lifestyle. Folks I don’t want to toot my own horn but, I am a good cook. I had a mamaw and a momma that cooked like chefs so a lot of that was passed down and for that I am truly thankful. I can make pretty much anything from scratch. I love baking cakes (that’s a little side hustle) and I thing there’s something pretty special about baking your own bread. We don’t go out to eat a lot because to be real honest, what I fix at home tastes better most of the time. The dinner’s out are more for me to get a break from the kitchen. As I’ve said before, we spent most every weekend with my grandparents. The took us out to eat once on the weekend. Nothing fancy. We had Pizza Hut and Long John Silvers a lot. They loved (and I don’t say that lightly) a buffet. We went to Kings Table which if you didn’t grow up in our area, you have no clue what that is. It was a buffet restaurant that had plenty of southern comfort food an it was pretty good. My grandparents loved it because they had plenty of fried chicken and catfish with any side that you could think off. Rolls and cornbread were always available. The desert selection was pretty good too. I remember piling my plate high with mashed potatoes (they were instant but for some reason tasted so good) and macaroni and cheese. We loved eating there. Some weekends papaw would decide to drive to Bristol which was the next city over, so that he could eat at Duffs Smorgasbord. What a name lol. I was okay but the one thing I remember is that didnt have macaroni and cheese. They served macaroni and tomatoes which my papaw loved. That’s completely disgusting in my mind. Thinking about it makes me throw up a little. Why a southern food buffet wouldn’t have mac n cheese is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good big homegrown tomatoes but, macaroni floating in tomato juice is just gross. Give me the gooey fattening cheese on my macaroni. We never complained because we knew the following day we were going to get delicious home cooked meals from my mamaw. She used butter and lard and a cast iron skillet to make everything. It was always delicious. I miss her cooking and I miss them.

When it came to our house, mom cooked almost every night as well. But, we did go to dinner one night a week. And I’ll let you guess…….. a lot of the time it was Ryans (a buffet). I think they liked going there because they knew there were enough varieties of food to please everyone. It was good, not great, but good. Oh and they had mac and CHEESE. We’d pile our plates high and pig out. I must have had a great metabolism back then because honestly I should have weighed a lot and I did not. I was a skinny little thing with the appetite of a bear. Eating like that catches up to you pretty quick as you get older. I can look at a dessert now and gain 5 pounds. Mom and dad switched back and forth from going to the buffet and going to a local Italian restaurant in our area. Oh my gosh it was the best. Authentic and owned by a family straight from Italy. The Amato’s were our friends and boy could they cook. No other italian restaurant that I’ve had even comes close to the food they put out there. They were wonderful people and Joe (the owner) hired both myself and my sister when we were old enough to work. It was both our first jobs. I worked there all through high school, during college, and even as a second job once I graduated college. That food though! I can remember sitting in the back seat as a little girl hoping we were headed there rather than the buffet lol.

Now, as an adult, a buffet doesn’t interest me in the least. Truthfully in this area there are none. Except for a Golden Corral (yuck) and some Chinese buffets. I will eat the Chinese buffet because well, yumm. I don’t know about y’all but for me it seems so funny how different going out to eat compares now to when I was a child. Don’t get me started on the drive thru’s. I know families that eat drive thru food almost every day and sometimes more than once a day. It’s just convenient and I know people are busy. I just think there’s nothing like a home cooked meal. I enjoy cooking and I know exactly what’s in my food. My son was so spoiled with home cooked meals between myself and my mom that he wouldn’t eat any drive thru food for years. It’s more convenient for him now but he still drops in and eats sometimes when I cook.

Eating that “fancy” dinner tonight just made me think about all that buffet eating we did when we were young and brought back a lot of memories. All good so I was thankful for the moments of nostalgia. What were your go to restaurants when you were young and little? Did y’all frequent the buffets? I hope you can take a few moments this evening and think about meals with your family when you were growing up. I hope those memories are great and make you smile. I hope that just for a few moments your thoughts wander to a great time in your life which centered around food. Even if it was the buffet.

Have the very best night. Happy dreams

Always…….Brooke