Tag Archives: vodka

Hard Alcohol and Fried Food

By Skinnygrlluvs2eat on | Leave a comment

If you regularly read my blog, you know that I am food passionate about ALL kinds of food.  Yes, I dream about and love those five course dinners where each course is paired with a different wine and you blissfully dine for three hours.  But I also crave a great slice of pizza,  really good french fries and an occasional late night fast food meal (see my blog on Taco Bell’s Smothered Burrito).  I also remember, mostly fondly, being, ahem, younger and coming home after a long night of drinking ravenous and eating what most of us know as “drunk food”.  Most, if not all of us, went through that phase where we did a lot of our eating after two a.m.  And let’s face it, what we wanted was fast, fried, greasy and cheesy.  In other words, I get it.    But, as of late, I have become concerned with the youth of our country.  Not because of the usual stuff, but because they really don’t seem to care about food!  How did I come to this conclusion?  I recently moved to Pacific Beach and what I have seen over the past few months makes me worry for our culinary future.

For those not familiar with Pacific Beach (PB) , it lies in San Diego between La Jolla and Mission Beach.  It has the nickname of “Party Beach”.  In fact, until 2007, one could drink alcohol ON the beach!   You can no longer drink on the beach, but quite frankly, there is no need for it.  Pacific Beach is packed with drinking establishments just steps from the sand.   With even more drinking/eating establishments lining the blocks leading to the beach.  As a person that LOVES to go out to eat and drink, moving here was exciting, especially because I had spent so many years in a rural part of Arizona with a dearth of restaurants.   So when I moved here, my husband and I excitedly started trying all the restaurants.  Our excitement quickly turned to disappointment.  Almost every restaurant had the exact same menu: fried food, chicken wings, burgers and a token salad.  Yes, I like ALL of those things, just not ALL the time. Furthermore, while they all had an extensive craft beer selection (with alcohol content posted by each beer!), they had a VERY limited and honestly, not very good, wine selection.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like craft beer, but I also REALLY enjoy a nice glass of wine and in PB that is about as hard to come by as a girl wearing shorts that actually cover her ass (yes, you read that right!).  We soon realized that almost every restaurant/bar in PB was catering to the 20 somethings with chilled Jagermeister on tap, slushy drinks composed of vodka and red bull and just enough fried food offered to soak it all up.  Before I’m pegged as a bitter, older woman, let me say, that I think that one should be wild when one is young and part of that “wildness” is sometimes stupidly drinking alcohol infused slushies chased with shots of Jager.   But, I also remember when I was younger and wilder… And even then, my friends and I tempered our “wild” nights with appetizers and wine at “nice” restaurants.  We were interested in fine food and wine and looked forward to splurging on a meal at a nicer restaurant.  We wanted to expand our culinary knowledge by eating different foods and trying new wines.  This is what I don’t see here.

Is it just in PB?  Or is this the way it is with the majority of younger people?  Do they really have no interest in good food and wine?  I hope not!  Appreciating good food and wine will always help them as they navigate through this world.  Just when I was about to give up hope, we found a wonderful little Italian restaurant with authentic (and delicious!) food plus a really nice wine list.  As my husband and I dined, we looked around at the other patrons.  All were our age or older.  Damn! But as we were leaving, a group of 20 somethings were coming into the restaurant and I overheard one of the girls saying to her friends, “They have the BEST house-made pasta here and a really affordable Chianti!”  And yes, all the girls were wearing shorts that actually covered their ass… There is hope after all!

Posted in: Fast Food, food & wine, Food & wine lovers, Food and Drink, Fried Food, Hard alcohol, restaurants, Uncategorized, wine | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Single Girl’s Dinner

By Skinnygrlluvs2eat on | Leave a comment

So, my husband is out of town and will be for a few days.  I do miss him, but am enjoying living the “single” life again.  No, I am not going out to clubs, getting drunk and picking up men.  I am taking long hot baths, playing lots of online Boggle, catching up on my gossip magazines and tweezing my eyebrows in the living room (better light).  Before he left, he said, “Make sure you eat!”  I laughed at him, but now, I understand why he said it, one eats strange things when they live alone…

These strange eating habits are not new to me.  I was single for a LONG time.  But somehow, I thought being married had “broken” me of these habits.  I was wrong.  Scary how quickly we can revert to old, comfortable ways.  When I had my first apartment (with no roommates) I NEVER cooked.  I lived on Lean Cuisines, alcohol, cigarettes and Del Taco (always at 3 in the morning).  Looking back it is a wonder I didn’t develop scurvy.  Wait! Must have been the grapefruit juice in all the Greyhounds I drank that saved me.  At this point in my life I would order Bloody Mary’s because I thought the vegetables that came with it were like a meal!  As I got older, I didn’t get much wiser.  I was always working in restaurants and would live on pilfered bread which I would dip into salad dressing, olive oil or spicy mayonnaise (REALLY good! Just mix hot sauce into mayo until it is pink).  Occasionally I would go to a salad bar… But I still used my stove as storage and had nothing but beer, vodka and every condiment known to man in my refrigerator.  I wasn’t alone in this behavior.  My girlfriends were the same way.  We loved to play the game, “What I ate for dinner”.  My friend Adelaide’s go to dinner was an entire sleeve of saltine crackers, each lovingly slathered with mayonnaise.  My friend Nicole would stand at her kitchen counter and eat 1/2 pound of cheddar cheese.  If I didn’t pick up a Lean Cuisine (can’t even LOOK at these now) I would dip Snyder’s pretzels in mustard & light sour cream.  Remember the Lean Cuisine spots where the woman talked about the horrible dinners they ate? Loved that spot, because it was so true.  True story, during the L.A. riots, when all the markets were closed, I was forced to live on VERY stale corn tortillas, cream cheese and Del Taco hot sauce for three days.  Still, it didn’t change my habits.

I FINALLY broke out of this a few years back and actually, gasp, starting grocery shopping.  I realized how nice it was to come home and have something besides  fast food ketchup packets, pretzels and canned green beans in the house.  You know, real food.  So I was rather shocked when I first started dating my husband and opened his refrigerator.  A half-eaten can of salmon with a fork in it and a jar of whitefish was all that was there.  I told him, “Go shopping!”  He did, but I was comforted that single eating habits applied to men as well…

So, here we are, present day and I am alone in a house full of food.  Lots of fresh vegetables, cheeses, salsa, fruit, bread, etc.  And, when my husband is home I cook! Every night.  But he is gone and what do I choose to eat?  The first night I had a handful of baked tortilla chips, four strawberries and some chocolate chips.  I did drink too many light beers and played Boggle to the wee hours of the morning.  Last night I ate some almonds, a whole wheat tortilla with mayonnaise on it (it was delicious!) and some shredded mozzarella cheese straight from the package, standing in front of the fridge.  Wow.

So now I face another “single” dinner tonight and would like to think that I can have a proper meal.  I am planning on making myself a big salad, but deep down I know I will probably opt for a grab and nibble approach to dinner.  Why do we do this? What compels us? I don’t have the answer… I DO know that my husband is eating VERY well on his trip.  He has gone out for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday and has eaten salads, fish and other disgustingly normal things.

I am going to be honest. I am not going to go home and make a salad or anything else.  I am planning on chips and salsa.  Beck’s Light (Try it! Really great & only 64 calories) and more Boggle.   I guess I don’t need to understand why I do this… I just do.  And secretly, I enjoy it.  Like I enjoy driving too fast, scary movies and the Jersey Shore.  I feel like I am being bad.  And sometimes, nothing feels better than being bad.  One more thing,  I will put lime in my beer, so I AM getting vitamin C.

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