Admittedly, the recipes I offer aren't always particularly groundbreaking, but I can't help noticing consumers happily pay a multiple of the cost of the ingredients to have similar meals in restaurants, whether brought to the table on a real glass plate in a sit down diner or served over the counter in cardboard at a fast food joint.
Many people now eat out once or twice a day, but when I was a little boy, going to a restaurant was a family treat on Sundays.
Our family usually went to either Arnold's Farmhouse or La Fonda.
Driving to Arnold's Farmhouse, located in the country a couple of miles north of Knott's Berry Farm, from Westminster brought us through acres upon acres of green fields on Valley View Road, with lots of strawberry stands in season. We enjoyed fresh-from-the-farm food cooked with homestyle recipes.
The meals were served buffet style. My usual order was southern fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn, with chocolate éclair selected from the rolling dessert tray after I cleaned my plate. The cooking wasn't quite as good as Mom's, but it was close, and to some extent, these Sunday meals were to give Mom a break from cooking and the big cleanups. It was a well-deserved treat for her, but Darlene, Dad and I also enjoyed the event.
We ate at Mrs. Knott's Chicken Restaurant once, but we found it disappointing by comparison. Nonetheless, after only 50 years of not eating there, when my friend Pete asked yesterday if I wanted to go for lunch at Knott's, I quickly responded affirmatively, and the Famous Chicken Dinner was hot, delicious and filling, served by waitresses who might have worked there on my last visit. I don't think they've remodeled in 50 years either, so that keeps in line with the site's authenticity.
At the risk of digressing too far, which as you know is something I avoid at all possible costs, always staying exactly on point, focused like a laser beam on furnishing you the finest recipes in a concise form with exact instructions for blending elements together perfectly....wait....what was I talking about? Oh yeah. I will add that after lunch, Pete and I ventured through a tunnel to visit Knott's full-sized model of Philadelphia's famed Independence Hall and enjoyed, as the only patrons, the presentation about the birth of our country, always presented free by the patriotic farmer, Walter Knott, the husband of his wife, Mrs. Knott, who got to put her own name on her restaurant.
The restaurant we frequented when we didn't go to Arnold's was La Fonda, which I believe was on Highway 39 before it became Beach Boulevard. La Fonda was the first Mexican restaurant I remember, although I didn't pay much attention to restaurants along the road when out and about. The bullfighting posters on the wall of La Fonda stick in my memory more than anything else about the place. At La Fonda, I always ordered side dishes of beans and rice along with fresh tortillas that were furnished free like tortilla chips. I didn't order an entrée, while my sister would choose the best combo on the menu and then leave half of it on her plate, spreading the leftovers around so no one would notice she hadn't finished, but I didn't want any of that fancy stuff she ate. Just beans and rice. An early vegetarian tendency, I guess. Maybe I had empathy for the bulls in the posters.
The concept of eating Mexican food was quite foreign to my relatives in Alabama at the time, but it was part of the Western culture of Orange County. I still remember vacationing at Granddaddy's farm in Alabama when cousin Reba, in response to Darlene asking if there was a Taco Bell around, asking with a strong southern twang, "Taco. What's a taco?" And by then, it must have been about 1969 or so. We've come a long way since then.
As foreshadowed, we did have one of the original Taco Bells on Westminster Boulevard, but we rarely ate there. I can only remember having Taco Bell food at annual "fairs" at Boos School. These fairs were really just a few poorly constructed booths decorated with crepe paper ribbons, but they were always quite an event for me when I was under the age of 9. I liked the fishing booth, where kids would dangle a string with a clothes pen at the end from a bamboo pole over a sheet, and some mom would clip a prize on the end. I think the prizes must have been worth a nickel and the game cost a dime, but it was great fun. At those fairs, Taco Bell sometimes participated with a booth, and I'd get refried beans that I'd eat with Fritos. Years later, when Julie and I took our kids to the pumpkin patch at Bell Gardens to find the centerpiece of our Halloween porch decorating, we learned that farmer Bell was the same guy who started Taco Bell, which obviously is where the chain name originated.
On the rare occasions when we did have fast food, it was A & W Root Beer, also on Westminster Boulevard, and we would bring home a cone-shaped, milk-carton-material carryout container full of Root Beer to drink later. After the root beer was gone, the fun began. We'd take the bottom off to convert the jug into a megaphone, which had no particular value after yelling through it once or twice and ended up crushed in the back of the closet within a week, only to be found the next time we cleaned the closet to great gaiety (that's right, I'm reclaiming that word for use by heterosexuals, not that there's anything wrong with that).
As a general rule, however, Mom was too wise for the lure of fast food that she could cook at home cheaper and better. When Der Wienerschnitzel arrived offering 6 chili dogs for a 99 cents, we were a bit more tempted, but really that was prompted by me after I had my driver's license years later.
That same reticence by Mom to spend more for less applied to quick-prepare foods generally, although keep in mind that this was before microwaves, when a TV dinner packed in foil that took 45 minutes to cook was considered quick. My mom saw through all the gimmicks, including Maypo. As a little cowboy, I loved the commercials, and I told Mom I wanted to go, just as my son Jay, tempted by Happy Meals toys, wanted us to go to McDonalds decades later. My mom said, "It's just oatmeal."
She was indifferent to the claim of "maple-flavored goodness," and in fact, she used to make homemade hot syrup that was much better than bottled maple syrup when we had pancakes. Still, I might play with my spoon when eating any cereal, like in the Maypo commercial, chanting the mantra "maple-flavored goodness" even if it had nothing to do with what I was eating. I probably said it while eating mashed potatoes at Arnold's or beans and rice at La Fonda.
Years later, however, as a grown man, I'm over such foolishness. I am not tempted to buy Maypo any more than my mother was. I have developed a taste for it, though, prompting this Quick-Clean Cuisine recipe!
Sprinkle in cinnamon to taste. I use quite a bit, because I hear it is supposed to be healthy for you, but it isn't essential.
Now for the money part. Instead of using Splenda to sweeten your oatmeal, pour in maple syrup. Actually, I use sugar free imitation maple syrup, but you get the point. I put a swirl around the top and then mix it in with my spoon at the same time I'm mixing the oatmeal to blend the hot water and oats.
When you've finished, take that spoon, dip it in to get a decent glop of oatmeal, making sure it is thick enough not to fall on the floor, and then pretend to fly your spoon full of oatmeal around making airplane sounds until you land it in the hangar...I mean, your mouth.
Clean-up should be obvious, unless you tricked yourself by closing your mouth when the airplane headed into the hanger.
For the price of one bowl of oatmeal at Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Denny's, McDonalds or the Ritz Carlton, you can buy enough oatmeal and syrup for a week or two.
When your friends ask if you'd like to go out for a Sunday Brunch, you can fold your arms and insist, "I want my Maypo."
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