Foreign Dishes

"Roly Poly, Daddy's little fatty. Bet he's gonna be a man some day"  Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys sang that song on the radio and my Dad sang it to me when I was a little boy.  That was more than sixty years ago and I remember it as if it happened yesterday.  The song described a baby boy who eats everything from corn to hay.  It pretty well describes my diet from the time I was tiny til I was in my late teens. I'd eat anything that could be put on a plate or in a bowl and still I was as skinny as a marathon winner. 

At least I thought I'd eat pretty much anything.  Sometime around my eighteenth birthday I was exposed to tacos, chow mein and pizza.  That's when I found out my tastes in food were a lot narrower than I had previously thought.  All I wanted was food that tasted like the stuff my Alabama born and raised mom feed me.  Meat and potatoes, sausage and biscuits, ham and eggs, chicken and dumplings - you know, Real American Food.   Anything else was yuckky and belonged in the hog trough.  When I went out for food I stayed away from anything that had a foreign sounding name.  Depending on the time of day I'd head for Little Black Sambos, Bob's Big Boy or HoJo's.  For a truly fancy outing, I'd head for the Red Coach.  None of the weird tasting and foul smelling food from another part of the world would pass from my mouth to my stomach.  Nosireebob - American or nothin'.  Then it happened.

We had an all nighter at work.  You've lived through them - They start at 8:00 AM one morning and go all day, through the night and if it's really bad, until noon the next day.  At the end of a really bad one, when I was in my mid twenties, somebody said "Let's go get a bite."  I thought it sounded good so I followed in line.  We parked in the lot of some place painted red and gold with a big winged dragon over the door.  I was too tired to object so I let the guys who were familiar with the joint order.  My life was changed in an instant.  Ya know, it was a great change from beef.  It gave me the courage to try Mexican, Italian, and other new flavors.  I enjoyed them all.  Well, not all - I still don't like Escargot, it seems to push back when I try to bite into it.  Also, chocolate covered grasshoppers are not to my liking.  But, Carolyn and I both are absolutely crazy about Chinese food and the first restaurant we try to locate in a new town will have a Dragon on its menu.

Redmond has three such places and we've tried them all.  We recommend Chan's.  It's on the main drag in a building that sixty years ago sheltered  a growing family and has been painted an ugly shade of pink.. Maybe it was red at some time, but that's faded now.  It's not San Francisco, but neither are the prices and it's clean and neat.  The food is good and as I write this there's about a pound and a half of it in my belly.  One other thing - I noticed some cats about half a block down the road and they were alive with all body parts intact.  I've been told that's a good sign so close to a Chinese kitchen.

I'm hoping that in another hour or so the food below the lower end of my gullet will disappear, as Chinese food has a tendency to do, and I can go for the seconds we brought home with us in two big, flat styrofoam boxes.  Carolyn will have to wait til next time for another bite.