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The best meal I ever ate…..
It was September 1969. The future Mrs. Pessimist and her roommate had moved into the apartment just above the one that my two roommates and I occupied. My two friends had asked them out for pizza and I met my future bride that night when they came back to our apartment. Strangely enough, I was actually studying for a college assignment and had not joined them. That was the last time she saw me studying for quite some time. I heard my roommates talking later that night about how hot Mrs. Pessimist was and I decided I should preempt any attempt on their part to claim her affections. I went up to her apartment the next day and invited her to a Jose Feliciano concert that was scheduled for later that week. My enthusiasm and Jose’s romantic charm made for a delightful first date.
So she invited me up to her apartment the next day. Her roommate was working the evening shift at the hospital. She cooked the best meal I have ever eaten although I suspect it might have been the first meal she had ever cooked. She served store-bought breaded veal patties sautéed in a pan with mozzarella cheese on top with a side of canned Franco-American spaghetti. I didn’t know that spaghetti came in a can but it was absolutely delicious. They don’t make that anymore. The closest thing is Spaghettios which is not nearly the same.
Are there any memories that are stronger than the memory of love? The memories of love and food become inseparable over time. What say you?
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Well said, and a delightful story! I recommend it strongly for promotion to the Main Feed.
I gave this to Mrs. Camper to read. She was laughing and making girl-type comments (“oh, that’s so sweet”, etc.) I’ve never heard her respond so favorably to something on Ricochet that I forced her to read.
So, terrific post!
I think this could be the moment to strike. Should I try to parley this into a subscription for Kate? Should I see if she will join the Monday Night @ctlaw calls?
Or would I be overplaying my hand?
You all would love the Brown-Eyed Beauty if she joined us. More importantly, over time she would get you to understand me, the Camper himself. Then, about three years later, many of you would start to like me or not mind me nearly as much.
Tonight is our 44th anniversary, we are currently on the road down to Williamsburg ( relax I’m not driving). This was the location of our honeymoon. We were both still in college but Mrs D was tired of waiting for one of us to graduate (she did two months later, I had change my major to engineering and would take another year). So we were as poor as the proverbial church mice, but we did one splurge at one of the Colonial restaurants that recreate the menu and ambience of the colonial period.
I hope we can recreate that evening, however this time it will be with one of our married children.
I think you are most definitely overplaying your hand. I am also sure everyone here would love the Brown-Eyed Beauty although I don’t know how many of us want to understand the Camper.
That said, I think we already like you.
I happened to mention my reaction to “…I and my two roommates occupied.” I liked it the moment I noticed the Pessimist’s atypical word order.
I read it to the Boatwife. I started to say why it made so much more sense than the schoolmarms’ rule.
She interrupted and finished the thought for me. “Because it isn’t about the three of them. It is about him.
My point is that you will like Kate if I can talk her into joining. (She likes Trump more than I do. For what it’s worth.)
Kate may be too wise for this forum. I don’t know how to write about anything that is not about me.
Thanks! Understanding the Camper is vastly overrated.
You know me well enough to know that I would never make a disparaging comment to a fellow Ricochetto.
But you are really a dummy.
Kate loved hearing about you, Stupid. For some reason.
She cooked with intent! That makes everything taste better.
Great story.
They’re both part of Campbell’s now. You may not find the regular spaghetti – rather than Spaghetti-Os – in some places, but it is still made.
https://www.amazon.com/Campbells-Canned-Pasta-Spaghetti-15-8-oz/dp/B07C4R1V37
Sounds a bit like my story. One year at work I coached a women’s softball team and after the first game, the second baseman asked me if I’d like a home-cooked spaghetti dinner.
I accepted, and 47+ years later, here we are.
Chef Boyardee has spaghetti in a can, but there are meatballs in there too. But if you want to recreate the original menu, the dream is still alive!
You should definitely encourage her to join! I have only ever successfully brought in one new member. What did it was showing her all the fun we had at Ricochet meetups, and she joined so she could go to the big Montana Meetup. And she’s still here, even though she doesn’t write much.
This isn’t a romantic story and it wasn’t the best meal I have ever eaten, but it was much better than I would have expected. Although I ate a lot of bologna sandwiches as a kid, by the time I grew up, I never cared to eat bologna again. Some spring in the 1990s, we were coming out of a winter that had an extraordinary amount of snow. Officials in Moorhead, MN and Fargo, ND knew that the Red River was going to flood, so they asked for volunteers to help fill and place sandbags to build a dike. I probably worked four or five hours and went back to the building where they were organizing the volunteers and where they were feeding them. Maybe there were some bags of chips or something else, but the only offerings I remember were white bread, butter, and bologna sandwiches. After hours of non-stop manual labor, that was the most delicious bologna sandwich I had ever eaten.
Thanks for the link. I had been looking in the grocery stores for a long time and I assumed it no longer existed. Should have googled it. I ordered a few cans for an emergency nostalgia moment. I hope they didn’t change the recipe.
Only one change. There was a natural ingredient (an herbal extract that added a subtle flavor and enhanced the body’s natural cancer-killing ability). An industrial chemist discovered the error in 1968 and deleted it from the Bill of Material, shaving .008 cents off the cost per can.
All this talk about love and Spaghetti-Os. I thought this post and conversation would be about Best Meals Ever.
The Best Meal I Ever Ate was a Supreme breakfast burrito at Los Taquitos in Ahwatukee, outside of Phoenix AZ, in February 2005. I was visiting my folks after my first wife’s death, taking my daughters to the zoo, and we stopped for a bite. I ate it in the driver’s seat of my rental car. It was just perfect. I told this to the girls and they said go have another, Dad, but no, the moment was too perfect to spoil.
https://lostaquitosaz.com/ahwatukee
Best meal I ever ate is a tough one. The company and the location and circumstances are such a huge part of what sticks in my mind. Mrs Tex is a terrific cook and 42 years after we tied the knot she keeps getting better. When we were courting (two ROTC cadet engineering students at Syracuse) we would splurge one night a week and get a pan pizza at Pizza Hut. Those were pretty special in our economically challenged condition. I think her favorite meal was the pizza they ordered in after three days of avoiding capture at SERE school. I bet she doesn’t remember what it tasted like but the circumstances made it special.
I’ve racked my brain, and I can’t think of a best meal ever. I guess I need to keep collecting data.
Same here. I can tell you the best meal I had in the last week, though. Tuesday was our 19th wedding anniversary, so we went to Nashville and had dinner with @rushbabe49 and @raykujawa, who were in town for a few days. Last Friday was also their wedding anniversary, so it was a double anniversary date. We went to Chauhan Ale & Masala House, since it was close to the Kujawa’s hotel. I ordered the Tandoori Chicken Poutine appetizer and Lamb Moilee. Great food and great company.
Not strictly “best meal,” but memorable. On our honeymoon driving up the California Pacific coast (we were married in Orange County) we splurged on our first two nights to stay on the Queen Mary ship hotel in Long Beach.
But from then onwards, it was Motel 6, including the first Motel 6, which was, and still is, in Santa Barbara. At that time (1981), that particular Motel 6 was still cheap and typical Motel 6 in style and amenities (it is now fairly expensive because it is just a block from the beach). The Motel 6 was immediately behind a sprawling luxury resort that we could in no way afford. But the lavish breakfast buffet at the resort restaurant was relatively inexpensive (especially as compared to the prices for lunch and dinner), so while staying in the cheap Motel 6 we walked across the parking lot to the resort for a luxurious breakfast. Given the sprawling nature of the resort, we speculated that our Motel 6 room might have been closer to the resort dining room than some of the rooms in the resort itself. Boy those breakfasts were delicious. Good restaurants get really good bacon and baked goods.
Really, in all of these cases, it’s important to remember something from The Simpsons Movie.
“Best/Worst [whatever] of your life SO FAR!”
Tandoori Chicken Poutine appetizer has got to be the most perfect example of cultural appropriation ever. I grew up in Nashville and visit every year or two. I have bookmarked your link for future reference.
“The Best Meal I Ever Ate was a Supreme breakfast burrito at Los Taquitos in Ahwatukee, outside of Phoenix AZ, in February 2005. I was visiting my folks after my first wife’s death, taking my daughters to the zoo, and we stopped for a bite. I ate it in the driver’s seat of my rental car. It was just perfect. I told this to the girls and they said go have another, Dad, but no, the moment was too perfect to spoil.”
A moment too perfect to spoil is what we live for and recognizing that moment is the key to happiness. Well said, DR. I admire your daughters for telling you to go have another and I admire your wise restraint.
Two years before I met Mrs. Pessimist, I was a freshman at Duke University. Across from my dormitory on the men’s campus, there was a room of vending machines which we called the Robot Room. There was one sandwich machine that one of my friends found that could be sabotaged if you reached into the machine and jiggled the mechanism just right and it would rotate to the next compartment bringing forth a sandwich which you hadn’t paid for. It only seemed to work for the layer of selections that were ham and cheese sandwiches. There was a toaster oven available for heating up your sandwich. For about six weeks there were probably thirty of us who ate hot ham and cheese sandwiches on a daily basis. Alas, some dummy jiggled the machine while the supplier was there and that was the end of that.
Best ham and cheese sandwich ever.