If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
We know how to eat
Warning: Long post ahead. And it might make you hungry. Also, it’s the first of several posts about our summer vacation.
If you’ve known us for more than a few days, you’ll know that food–good food–is important to us as a family. That doesn’t change when we’re on vacation, and we had some unique food experiences in New York that I think warrant their own blog post. So, if you’re a fellow foodie, then feast your eyes on the following. And if not, then feel free to skip this post in favor of another vacation related post (which I haven’t written yet).
We have this rule on vacation. I’m not sure whose family it originated with, but in general it is this: When eating out, choose a place that is unique to the place you’re visiting (or is something you can’t eat anytime you want at home). I have some memory of my dad abiding by this rule on some vacations, and honestly this is the sort of thing that would give me some anxiety as a child. Mostly because I didn’t know what to order in an unfamiliar place and I didn’t enjoy the process of trying to choose something new. I’m a little bit better about that now.
While traveling, we try to work a balance between eating out and cooking in/packing sandwiches. While food is important to us, we cannot spend all of our vacation budget on eating out, so we make some sacrifices on the food side of things so we can have more experiences.
On this family vacation, I was really pleased with our balance.
The bulk of our vacation was spent at a rustic cabin in the Finger Lakes. “Rustic” in that it had electricity but no running water and no heat. We had a stove and a fridge and beds, as well as a flush toilet adjacent to the cabin. I know this might sound like a nightmare to some of you but it was heaven to me. Slowing down and taking more time to do the everyday ordinary tasks resets something in my soul.
Take breakfast, as an example. Each morning at the cabin, I set water to boil for coffee and added some instant granules to a tin mug. I spooned the water into the mug then waited a minute or so for the mug itself to cool down so I could drink it.
In some ways this is faster than my usual process of coffee intake, but it was a different method. We cooked eggs in some form most mornings because that’s what I need to start my day. One day, we cooked bacon in the cabin and set the smoke alarm off. It was just like cooking at home! Next time, I’d ask my husband to build a fire and do it outside. Another morning we cooked spam and ate it with our eggs. It actually tastes better than it smells. Because my husband works in produce, we packed a lot of fruit to bring with us. We had apples and nectarines and bananas to eat with breakfast or lunch. Sometimes it’s hard to eat vegetables and fruit on vacation. We wanted to do what we could to include those important food groups.
We wanted our dinners at the cabin to be over the fire as much as possible. We planned two campfire meals on our first grocery run and added a third on the last day because cooking over a fire is fun when you’re camping. The first dinner was our take on campfire packets. We divided ground beef and frozen hash browns with dry onion soup mix (because I forgot to pack an onion from our stash at home) onto squares of foil and wrapped them up. When that was done we topped them with cheese. They turned out okay.
Our son, who wasn’t excited about them in the first place, said, “It’s not the BEST thing I ever ate.” (But he ate almost all of his.) We made up for it by toasting giant marshmallows in the fire and making s’mores with peanut butter cups, caramel-filled chocolates and dark chocolates.
The next night, we roasted hot dogs over the fire and had stopped at a local grocery on our way back from an adventure to pick up a creamy salad of some kind. It was maple bacon potato salad, which sounded more interesting than it tasted. Too much maple, I think. We also ate all the hot dogs, which was too much. Two of us nearly made ourselves sick!
The meal for the third campfire night was my husband’s decision. He and our son went to the store while my daughter and I tended the laundry at the laundromat. He was going to make me guess what the meal would be by putting the groceries away, but the kids took care of that and then our son blurted out: “we’re making quesadillas!” I was skeptical but let me tell you, it worked out beautifully. I made a Napolean Dynamite joke about “quesadillas” (pronounced with a DILL in the middle) and then changed it to “quesa-GRILL-as.” You’re welcome, and I’m coining that.
Next time, we’d do a little more pre-planning for meals to make over a fire. This was our first camping foray in more than five years and the first ever with the kids, so we weren’t as confident about our cooking abilities. Knowing we can do it and do it well makes us more sure for the next time.
If you read through all of that and aren’t bored yet, let me now tell you about the restaurants we found on our vacation.
We started our trip in Cooperstown, N.Y. and since our hotel didn’t include breakfast, we just ate a couple of breakfast bars and planned to eat at a diner that served all-day breakfast for an early lunch. Just down the street from the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum (our reason for being in Cooperstown) is a place called the Cooperstown Diner. I forgot to take a picture of the building, so click here to get an idea of how tiny this place is. We waited outside for seats to free up, and it was kind of a first-come, first-served sort of deal and the honors system among the people waiting. Apparently, there was a baseball tournament going on in town, so lots of places were extra busy. We didn’t wait long, though. I had the diner muffin, which is basically a breakfast sandwich (egg and bacon on a English muffin) with a side of home fries. The kids had cinnamon roll french toast and Texas french toast. Phil had corned beef hash. It was all tasty and filled our bellies for our afternoon at the Hall of Fame Museum.
Between Cooperstown and our cabin in the Finger Lakes, we stopped for dinner in Syracuse. My husband had heard of this place calle Dinosaur BBQ. He can’t quite remember how he stumbled on it, but we were all up for it. To be honest, the place has a dive-bar vibe, but not in a scary way, really. We waited maybe 20 minutes for a table. Phil had checked out the menu ahead of time and pretty much knew what we were going to order to share. I had a honeycrisp cider to accompany my meal, and it was DEE-LISH. Our meal included ribs, beef brisket, and pulled pork with sides of greens, baked beans, cole slaw and mac and cheese, and we started with a sampler plate that had fried green tomatoes, deviled eggs, spicy shrimp, and chicken wings.
If that sounds like a lot of food, it was, and yes, we had leftovers. We took them to the cabin and ate them with breakfast two days later. The ribs were as tasty as any I’ve eaten, and the brisket was second favorite. I’m not a big beans or fried green tomatoes fan, but I enjoyed those as well.
I should mention that our lunches while at the cabin consisted of sandwiches, chips, fruit and cookies. Usually we were out on an adventure or between adventures, so we packed sandwiches to eat picnic-style or had them at the cabin.
On Wednesday we had ice cream in Interlaken, N.Y. at the Cayuga lake Creamery. (If you know us at all, you know that we also take ice cream very seriously.) This place was on the way to our adventures that day and had won some awards for its ice cream. Among the four of us we had the following flavors: red, white and blueberry; lavender; crunchy grasshopper; and mocha chocolate chunk. None of us were sorry.
Our next eating out place that same day was Ithaca Beer Co. Phil and I enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage, mostly when we’re out at a restaurant, but even if we didn’t, I would recommend local breweries as eating places while on vacation. Ithaca Beer has been around for a while. The venue itself is magical, with a large outdoor beer garden and seating area, and the food is fresh and local. The menu rotates with seasonal availability. We had a fry flight, which comes with three sauces and let me tell you, plain ketchup was not one of them. I had to fight my kids for a turn with the fries and the sauce. Pickled vegetables with a buttermilk-pistachio dip and crackers was a second starter. I had a chorizo soup and our daughter had hoisin meatballs. The guys–father and son–both had pulled pork sandwiches after our son found out they didn’t have bacon for the cheddar burger. (Kid loves his bacon.)
On Friday, we left for Niagara Falls and did our usual quick-bite breakfast before packing up and made sandwiches for the car. After walking around Niagara Falls State Park for hours, we stumbled onto Anchor Bar, which originated in Buffalo and is the home to the original buffalo wings. Anchor Bar was one place we thought we were going to miss by not going to Buffalo, but there was one right there in Niagara. Phil was pleased to learn they also had beef on weck, another local speciality we were told to try. He was able to get that and wings on the same plate.
I had buffalo chicken on a salad.
The kids both had pasta dishes that were larger than their heads. Buffalo chicken is not something I’m going to choose first, but here, it was unlike any similar chicken I’d had before. Personally, I thought the beef on weck was too salty, but I guess that’s part of its charm.
We knew going into the weekend that we were going to eat out a lot. We were back in a hotel that didn’t have a fridge and we were staying in Canada, which gave us opportunity to try some truly unique fare because we didn’t want to eat at all the overpriced places on the strip. (And yes, there’s a strip in Niagara Falls that rivals Las Vegas and Nashville, if you ask me.) I asked the locals working the desk where we could go that wouldn’t break the bank but would also give us a sense of what the locals do. The recommendations were spot on.
Saturday breakfast was at the hotel. There’s a little made-to-order restaurant on premises and we got the usual diner breakfast fare with all the Canadian kindness we could handle. For lunch, we walked across the parking lot to the second restaurant on premises, Zappi’s Pizza and Pasta Italian Eatery. We were told they were fair-priced and a mom-and-pop kind of place. (To compare, our other options were things like TGIFriday’s, Margaritaville, My Cousin Vinny’s, and the like.) The Greek salad came recommended, and it wasn’t a wrong choice. I also had the stuffed mushrooms, which tasted like pizza inside of a mushroom–yum! Sweet potato fries were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Phil ordered a pizza with sausage and rapini (broccoli rabe), our son had ravioli, and our daughter had Caesar salad (that’s kind of her thing). Here, our son also had C-plus orange soda. We’d never heard of it but we all took a sip and it was tasty.
Dinner was the piece de resistance to our culinary adventures. Doc Magilligan’s is an Irish pub in the middle of Niagara Falls, Canada, and its chef recently was awarded Best Irish Chef in North America. While it’s not what I would expect to eat in Canada, we were assured it was the kind of place the locals go. I’m so glad we did! Not only was the atmosphere unique and inviting, but the food was worth the extra (small) effort it took to find the place.
I’d read online that ordering a boxty was the way to go. It’s like an Irish potato pancake, sort of, only thin and stuffed with meats and veggies. I had a haddock taco trio boxty. Phil had a chicken curry boxty, which was probably my favorite of the ones I tasted. Our daughter had a reuben boxty. And our son had a slider trio that included a lamb burger. I drank a local blood orange cider. It’s this sort of thing that I love about travel–experiencing food and drink you can’t find anywhere else.
On departure day, Sunday morning, we hit up the Tim Horton’s just up the block because it’s the thing you’re supposed to do in Canada. The coffee was good and I had a breakfast egg sandwich. The Timbits (donut holes) were a big hit with the rest of the fam, too.
Although our vacation was technically over, we let the culinary curiosity take over on the way home, too. We met my parents in Toledo, Ohio, something we’ve done on the regular for years, but we had never eaten at Tony Packo’s. There’s now one near where we stop. It’s like Hungarian fast food. I had chicken paprikash over Hungarian dumplings. Our daughter had stuffed cabbage. There were hot dogs galore at the table and a variety of pickles.
After sending our children off with their grandparents, we ate pizza with our friends in their home just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, and walked to the local diner for breakfast. There, I had a spinach and tomato eggs benedict, which was different and good.
Our of necessity for time, Phil and I grabbed a sandwich from Roy Rogers on the turnpike back to Lancaster.
Years ago, when I went on my second mission trip, the trip leader was given the advice to “feed them well” because we were working on disaster relief. I feel like vacation deserves a similar principle. We “eat in” just enough to not feel bad about spending money on good quality food on other days.
And the food experiences add to the overall travel experience.
I’m curious: What’s your vacation eating style? What unique places have you discovered while traveling?
Traveling solo
It is a weekday, and I’m sitting on the porch, just after noon. A gentle breeze accompanies this warm summer day, and I am basking in it.
Inside, my house is empty, husband off to work, kids 800 miles away in Illinois with their grandparents. I am supposed to bask in this time alone, aren’t I? I am an introvert, after all. But I am surprised to find that I do not love it, all this quiet, all this “me time.”
An open week stretches ahead of me, and I am a little bit frightened by it all. No appointments. No people who need something from me. No one expecting anything from me.
What is this madness?
—
I drove 470 miles total this weekend, all but a few of the miles by myself. I went to a writing retreat in Virginia, the best of its kind in my opinion, and probably one of only a few things that could compel to make such a drive by myself.
The morning I was to leave, I sat in the parking lot of my bank, hands shaking, heart rate increasing, as I thought about the roads that lay ahead of me. Most of my travels in the last 12 years have been with at least my husband by my side, usually our kids along, too. This brings with it a different kind of anxiety, but me being responsible for myself and the car and the trip overall was almost too much to bear.
Halfway through the trip, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Gusty winds swept across Pennsylvania and Maryland forcing me to grip tight the steering wheel and mouth words of prayer that my car, back from the body shop for less than a week, would keep its hold on the road. I am a nervous passenger when anyone else is driving but more nervous when I am the driver, apparently. The driving directions were simple, so I tried not to use the GPS but did not take the bypass around Leesburg and ended up in the middle of town when all I wanted to do was stop at Chipotle for lunch. A small delay but a timely reminder that companions make good navigators. (I am usually the navigator, and I’m not always good at it. I lose focus staring out the window, and I rely too heavily on the computerized GPS to tell me what to do and when.)
I made it to my destination without incident and met one of my two roommates before I unloaded my things and we got back in the car to head to the farm where the retreat was being held. I consulted the GPS and saw a back road that looked interesting. I’d been on the highways long enough for one day, so I suggested we take it. My roommate was agreeable, and I let the GPS guide us, but I missed a turn and we found ourselves on a gravel road that led straight into someone’s private driveway. I had a moment of panic about rural Virginia, but I was less afraid because there was someone else with me in the car. We righted our course and found the correct back road, which led us across a one-lane wooden bridge that people were sitting on, legs dangling above a creek where others were swimming. The Pennsylvania license plates must have been a sight.
We had taken a more interesting route to the farm, certainly not the most direct or logical, and I joked all evening about our small adventure. We would take the highway the next time.
—
When it comes to writing, I have been journeying solo for more than a year. I have been traveling by myself, minimally relying on technology and sporadic texts to real-life people, to get me to my destination. But I have stayed pretty close to home with my writing. There are writing roads I can navigate almost with thought, like driving around my hometown or my current city. I don’t need GPS here (most of the time). But when I have ventured out, I have taken some wrong turns because I don’t know the way. Even with a technologically advanced guide, I am in unfamiliar territory, wondering if this going to end well.
Weeks ago, a friend planted the seed of an idea for a next step in my writing journey. It has been tucked away in a back corner of my mind, and I walked into the retreat weekend knowing that this would be my time to think about it more. To speak the idea out loud amongst other writers and ask for help.
Those three little words–ask for help–are terrifying for me, and I can’t explain why.
I did not want to put pressure on the weekend to produce some definitive result, but I also know that the space to open up heart, mind and soul cannot help but yield some result. I kept the idea close at first and then blurted it out to a writer friend I trust within the first hour of the retreat. The next day, after an informative and encouraging talk by Jane Friedman, I asked that same friend for recommendations about the idea.
On day three of the retreat, with tears in my eyes after another encouraging and slightly overwhelming group conversation, I mentioned the same idea to another writing friend I trust. By the time our closing conversation of the retreat happened and we were asked to set a goal and a deadline, it was pretty clear to me what my goal was going to be.
So, here it is: I’m going to partner with a writing coach by the end of the summer. I have about four people to choose from, but first I need to decide what I need from a coach. Let me tell you why this is a big deal for me.
I can’t really remember a time in my life when I wasn’t writing. I have a degree in writing. I have decades of professional experience writing and more publishing credits to my name than I can count (thanks to being a reporter for a daily newspaper). Blog posts, articles, essays, that’s like driving on familiar roads to me.
Book-length projects–especially fiction projects–that’s a cross-country drive without GPS. I am lost, but not without hope to find my way back to the main road again. But there’s a little voice inside of me telling me that I shouldn’t need help with this. That I should be better at it. (That voice is a liar, by the way. Not one writer I said this to agreed with the voice.) That’s like telling someone who grew up driving on the flat roads of the Midwest that driving on mountain roads in Colorado in winter will be no problem.
—
I don’t know why asking for help is so hard, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I am learning to ask for help in a lot of areas of my life. I have a team of healthcare providers to help my body function at its best. I “ask” my massage therapist to help me relax and work the tension out of my muscles. I “ask” my chiropractor to keep my spine in alignment so I can move through my day without pain. I “ask” my primary care provider to assess the aches and pains and bodily functions I’m experiencing for concerns and optimal health.
This is just one multi-layered example of how asking for help is necessary.
It is harder to ask for help in an area in which I feel more competent than say, physical health, but it’s still normal and good. I will say it again for myself to hear:
Asking for help is normal and good.
I don’t know about you but I’m not proficient at everything. I don’t know everything there is to know about everything. I don’t have experience in every field of study or arena of life. I need a coach, a guide, someone who can travel with me and help me get back on the right course.
I expect this has application in many areas of life, the least of which is that I know this about myself and can admit it. I was raised in an era when women were gaining independence in their lives, from their homes, for their futures, and taken to an extreme, I could try to rely on myself for everything. But it is too much pressure to know it all and do it all and be it all.
Asking for help. Acknowledging my weaknesses as well as my strengths. These practices will serve me well, I believe.
So I will use the GPS without shame when traveling alone. I will ask others to use their strengths to serve my well-being. And I will offer my strengths to those whose well-being can be served by me.
This is the kind of mutuality the world needs. The kind of interconnectedness that will lift us all up. Maybe it won’t save the world, but it might save us from going through life on our own.