Lard Ass

Last week Mark brought home a couple of Big Macs, with fries, for lunch. Mickey D's must have been doing a two for one deal, or Mark wouldn't have sprung for lunch at such a prestigious restaurant. Of course, I love Big Macs. Back when I was in my twenties and skinnier than a model with a eating disorder, I was addicted to those things. I think they might have been putting heroin in the secret sauce because I couldn't go for more than one day without one. As good as I considered the Big Mac to be, it was the french fries that really made the meal. You see back then, in the nineteen seventies, McDonald's used beef tallow for frying up its spuds. Beef tallow imparted a delicious flavor that has never been reproduced since McDonalds switched to some kind of "healthier" oil. I just know that I never thought of McDonalds as health food. It was junk food, I knew it, and I wanted my junk fried in beef tallow.

Yesterday, Mark and I went to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. Everything seemed routine, including the waiter informing us not to touch our plates because they had just been put through a blast furnace, but when he put those plates down we knew something was different. The food didn't look very appetizing, not as we remembered it from the last time we ate there. The refried beans were a thin soupy puddle, that oozed out and around everything else on the plate. The fact that I could have made a better quesadilla at home, wasn't the real problem. It was those refried beans. Yuck! Once again, I go back to the nineteen seventies, when I used to eat in Mexican restaurants all over Chicago. Back then refried beans were made with lard. Lard gave the beans a flavor that no bean on earth can duplicate alone. Apparently the whole world has decided that I need to eat more healthy foods, and they are telling me "screw you" if I happen to want something that tastes better than Styrofoam. The good thing is that I always have Mark. Back at home, Mark delivers meals made the good old ways. Lots of fat, calories, and carbs. Maybe that's why he keeps bugging me to write my will.