End of the Endless Shrimp

I’m not in the restaurant business. Although, I take a practical approach to what I order based upon where I order it. For example, I wouldn’t go to a diner off the side of a highway far from any salt water and order the surf and turf. Get the pancakes with the eggs and bacon. Rarely will any such establishment screw this up.

What the hell is wrong with you? You think the guy in the back went to a dock at 5:30 AM this morning to pick the best of the day’s catch? No, there’s a bag of frozen shrimp he opens to grab out a handful every few weeks. Disgusting.

I know people who constantly make these sorts of blunders, and the results serve them right. A grim sense of practicality will never disappoint you, while the notion you can just order whatever you want will let you down nearly every time. I’ve never once considered eating at a Red Lobster.

I saw that McDonald’s is bringing back its 5-dollar meal. I get that everyone is barely surviving, but why do you think you can buy a meal of food from McDonald’s for 5 dollars? Whatever they’re serving is probably outright poisonous. For less than 5 dollars you could eat 6 hard boiled eggs and whatever fruit is cheapest at that time of the year. At this price, you can still eat food, you’ll just have to bring it to work and you’re probably not going to look forward to eating it.

Sure, a burger and fries are way better, but don’t think that’s what you can have for 5 dollars. McDonald’s isn’t running a charity, it’s there to stuff you with the cheapest slop that fools you into thinking it’s food until you keel over and die. Get real, lower your expectations. Do you think the sailors who made it to America reveled in eating hard tack?

Soylent green could win back desperate street dwellers, authorities say.

As Americans, we’ve been used to a good standard of living in which anything we want is available to anyone at any time of the year. That’s not the case anymore, but Americans have still been spending this way, probably because credit cards have made up the difference. The average debt per credit card (not consumer) is around twice what the average consumer is taking home every month. Once those minimum payments get too high, a crisis ensues, which probably explains what’s happening to restaurants like Red Lobster.

Eating out is one of the easiest things to economize on. When you’re home, you can eat food that you cooked there for a much lower price and if you’re at work you can always bring a sandwich. It’s not so easy on the road, but it’s the best we can expect.

7 comments

  1. Excellent advice, Tom. If one has a turnip patch and his own layin’ hens, one has an easy, nutritious meal at his disposal. Am I saying turnips are good with eggs? Not at all. But keep some cornmeal and self-rising flour handy for a skillet of cornbread….eat that with some turnips one meal….bacon, eggs and grits for another. Kill at least five deer between mid-September and mid-February and you should hardly lack for meat. Forget McDonald’s!

    1. My grandmothers both canned jars of tomatos,corn and okra which could then be used throughout the year for vegetable soup.Even I get Okra to grow,its easy.Tomatos I never can get started from seeds and I hate buying the plants(I insist on doing it myself).Corn is a bit more labor intensive and has a low yield but is still not hard to grow.Everyone should have chickens for eggs and fried chicken or stew.Also my granddaddy kept bees.Honey supposedly lasts forever.

  2. I wonder how long until we start seeing sawdust being used as an ingrediant by major restaurants across America to stave off inflation prices

    1. Sawdust (listed as cellulose) has been an additive in most grated cheese for a long time. I try to eat organic when I can and read the labels on stuff I buy. Interestingly, at least one company selling breadstuffs is trying to feed us stuff that they can’t export because the standards are higher overseas. Even China won’t allow bromated flour and they’re not too particular otherwise, given what they spray on their garlic to kill pathogens.

  3. True Tom.We were just discussing that very thing a few hours ago and I said that for 5 dollars all you’d get from McDonalds is slop.I don’t eat there anyway,their stores here are Black-owned with largely beaner workers.I haven’t spent a dime there in 30 years.Its better to eat at home like everybody used to.God bless you and thanks for your always great work.

  4. I did a Dutch oven every Sunday for a spell, I’d use a 14 inch(wide) deep one.
    A little grease on the bottom, layered with whole carrots, 3 pound roast on that, surrounded by medium sized potatoes, topped with half a dozen or so chicken thighs with a pack of toothpicked bacon balls on top of that, sprinkle some cranberries all in there. I put 50 briqquets on top and 20 on the bottom and get them started with a weed torch.
    45 minutes for the roast and carrots and out they go, 20 or 30 minutes for the rest, turn the bacon balls. I have a dollar store pizza pan that fits on top of the food because of the high heat on top.

    I can eat on that for 3 to 4 days by adding a few things like eggs, bread, gritz, rice etc.
    I cook all of my meals for the most part-Thank you God.

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