With apologies to our health and nutrition blogger Laura Dion-Jones, the best food I ever ate as a young boy was a hot dog wrapped in bacon and deep-fried on a toasted bun with mustard.
OK, so we didn't know that much about nutrition, the evils of fat, trans fats, smoked meats, and whatever might have been in hot dogs 50 years ago.
I was perhaps 6 years old and my Dad and I stopped at the A&W root beer stand at on Dundee Avenue just south of Cooper. It's a restaurant parking lot now.
Let me tell you how a drive-in worked in those days since a drive-in today is considered retro and thus such a novelty that people drive from miles around to see its re-creation.
I'm talking the original, before it was chic. Covered parkway bisected by a concrete walkway; little speaker that worked about half the time attached to a metal frame; faceless people behind the glass taking orders and sending out food with cute young girls, sometimes on roller skates.
My Dad drove a gray, bullet shaped Nash that looked like one of those old spaceships in the Sunday morning
Flash Gordon episodes. (Which by themselves are worth a whole column. Flash, Dale Arden and that shifty rascal Ming the Merciless. Once in awhile you couldn't even see the wires holding up the spaceships. The clay people were the scariest.)
The car had a radio that picked up three stations and a clock in the dashboard that never worked. The seats were cloth and the interior smelled vaguely of the Christmas tree freshener that hung off the rearview mirror.
My Dad wielded the beast into a stall close enough to get to the little speaker. Push the button, tell the folks inside what you wanted and a few minutes later a cute girl would roll out with the best root beer this side of heaven. Roll up the window a little, fasten the tray there and sometimes it didn't fall onto the pavement.
On this particular day, I ordered a hot dog and when the little parcel of fat and cholesterol arrived, I knew it was something special. Decades have passed but no fast food has ever assaulted that citadel of culinary perfection.
I stroll down memory lane because the ubiquitous health food assault inflicted a twinge of guilt as I ate a deep-fried apple fritter.
So, just to see if I could possibly be rehabilitated into a Renaissance man, I tried gluten free bread for the first time. While I am not sure what gluten is, it must be that ingredient that adds flavor and purpose to the consumption of bread, because without it, bread is as fulfilling as rice cakes, another modern invention which generates no particular satisfaction.
"It's an acquired taste," the baker told me matter-of-factly, which is a way of saying that it tastes horrible, but if you eat enough of it, your taste buds will die, your memory will fail and you will think it's good.
What is it about living today that is so wonderful we are willing to eat tofu, soy cakes, artificially sweetened everything, drink non-alcoholic beer, decaf coffee, lactose-free milk, all in the hope we can squeeze out a few more weeks of misery?
Whatever happened to men having a grabber at 55 and dropping dead on the kitchen floor? Why try to tease out a few more years of living like a monk eating tasteless food and deriving zero satisfaction from what should be pleasurable activities?
Why not enjoy quality instead of quantity? Why not eat and drink what you enjoy and what brings you pleasure is some moderation without guilt? Have some butter on hearty bread and eat a scone with a cup of real coffee.
Like Laura preaches, stay away from large quantities of white starch and sugar to control your weight, be disciplined in exercise and resolve.
But eating gluten-free bread, rice cakes and drinking decaf coffee won't make you live longer; it'll just seem like it.
OK, so we didn't know that much about nutrition, the evils of fat, trans fats, smoked meats, and whatever might have been in hot dogs 50 years ago.
I was perhaps 6 years old and my Dad and I stopped at the A&W root beer stand at on Dundee Avenue just south of Cooper. It's a restaurant parking lot now.
Let me tell you how a drive-in worked in those days since a drive-in today is considered retro and thus such a novelty that people drive from miles around to see its re-creation.
I'm talking the original, before it was chic. Covered parkway bisected by a concrete walkway; little speaker that worked about half the time attached to a metal frame; faceless people behind the glass taking orders and sending out food with cute young girls, sometimes on roller skates.
My Dad drove a gray, bullet shaped Nash that looked like one of those old spaceships in the Sunday morning
Flash Gordon episodes. (Which by themselves are worth a whole column. Flash, Dale Arden and that shifty rascal Ming the Merciless. Once in awhile you couldn't even see the wires holding up the spaceships. The clay people were the scariest.)
The car had a radio that picked up three stations and a clock in the dashboard that never worked. The seats were cloth and the interior smelled vaguely of the Christmas tree freshener that hung off the rearview mirror.
My Dad wielded the beast into a stall close enough to get to the little speaker. Push the button, tell the folks inside what you wanted and a few minutes later a cute girl would roll out with the best root beer this side of heaven. Roll up the window a little, fasten the tray there and sometimes it didn't fall onto the pavement.
On this particular day, I ordered a hot dog and when the little parcel of fat and cholesterol arrived, I knew it was something special. Decades have passed but no fast food has ever assaulted that citadel of culinary perfection.
I stroll down memory lane because the ubiquitous health food assault inflicted a twinge of guilt as I ate a deep-fried apple fritter.
So, just to see if I could possibly be rehabilitated into a Renaissance man, I tried gluten free bread for the first time. While I am not sure what gluten is, it must be that ingredient that adds flavor and purpose to the consumption of bread, because without it, bread is as fulfilling as rice cakes, another modern invention which generates no particular satisfaction.
"It's an acquired taste," the baker told me matter-of-factly, which is a way of saying that it tastes horrible, but if you eat enough of it, your taste buds will die, your memory will fail and you will think it's good.
What is it about living today that is so wonderful we are willing to eat tofu, soy cakes, artificially sweetened everything, drink non-alcoholic beer, decaf coffee, lactose-free milk, all in the hope we can squeeze out a few more weeks of misery?
Whatever happened to men having a grabber at 55 and dropping dead on the kitchen floor? Why try to tease out a few more years of living like a monk eating tasteless food and deriving zero satisfaction from what should be pleasurable activities?
Why not enjoy quality instead of quantity? Why not eat and drink what you enjoy and what brings you pleasure is some moderation without guilt? Have some butter on hearty bread and eat a scone with a cup of real coffee.
Like Laura preaches, stay away from large quantities of white starch and sugar to control your weight, be disciplined in exercise and resolve.
But eating gluten-free bread, rice cakes and drinking decaf coffee won't make you live longer; it'll just seem like it.
