My dinner last night at the Miner’s Café in Dinosaur, Colorado (Elevation: 5,000 feet ?)
Salad: Reconstituted iceberg lettuce with tomato shavings
Entrée: Deep fried meat product
Starch side dish: Instant mashed potatoes dredged with mucus gravy
Vegetable side dish: Canned green beans
Bread: Yellow colored, margarine saturated “Texas” toast
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had the opportunity to sample a wide selection of rural western American cuisine. It is in a sorry state. Before Sysco Foods and before 18-wheelers I would like to think that weary travelers crossing the western states were sustained by restaurant food made by grandmas in the back kitchen with flour on their aprons and dough under their fingernails. Perhaps that was never the case but I wonder how did it come to this? The food is dried, canned, frozen, fried, infused with preservatives and color, absolutely drained of any nutrients it originally contained before it hits my plate. Our Aussie friends- Emily and Mick- who met us out at Dinosaur National Monument are equally appalled at the food drought. Yesterday, Emily and I went on the hunt for something edible. We passed by the sketchy cafe in Jensen serving deli sandwiches and ended up at a sketchier restaurant in Naples called “Country Grub”. “Country Grub” is run by women in grease splotched white T-shirts who don’t know the size of a small or large serving of fries- “The large one is just bigger”, the cashier told me. Although their sign boasted of “Homemade Fries” they were the same old frozen sticks of any other restaurant. The menu posted on a white board above the counter can be summarized as follows: grease on a stick, grease between two slices of bread and grease in a bowl. I opted for some grease between two slices of bread and was greeted with rotten lettuce on a bun with tartar sauce and a fish part conglomerate patty. Emily said that even in the smallest towns in Australia there are bakeries selling vegetarian pasties. I know I’ve obsessed a lot in this entry about food but when you’re biking ~100 miles a day you tend to fantasize a lot about food and the food out here is such a disappointment!! However, although the food is terrible it can still taste good when you’ve gone enough miles. My meal at the Miner’s Café last night, mediocre as it was still tasted “good” after riding several miles.
Original Comments: Making Bad Food Taste Good
Mags, I am still having nightmares over the whooshing sound of the
deep fryer! am also now craving a vegie pastie! food here is awful too,
am yet to eat a decent meal in this country - only a few more days till
i'll be tucking into my aunties cooking in England, cannot wait.
yeah, thanks for taking a photo of us guys! we only flew across the world and drove for how long to see you? tsk! i have a cool one of us sitting in style in front of Maverick (mick finally named the people mover), I'll snail mail it to you.
ivy randomly says 'chad? mags?', so know that you are missed by all 3 of us.
keep on having fun
love Em
Posted by Em at August 31, 2004 01:44 PM
yeah, thanks for taking a photo of us guys! we only flew across the world and drove for how long to see you? tsk! i have a cool one of us sitting in style in front of Maverick (mick finally named the people mover), I'll snail mail it to you.
ivy randomly says 'chad? mags?', so know that you are missed by all 3 of us.
keep on having fun
love Em
Posted by Em at August 31, 2004 01:44 PM
