Me vs. the meatloaf & The Feed Bag

My family likes to tease that I'm a picky eater, pointing to a history of vomit threats at the prospect of having to eat my mother's Seafood Bake. Seafood Bake is a vat of goo consisting of canned tuna and baby shrimp, water chestnuts, celery, cream of mushroom soup and instant rice - all mixed together and heated until steaming and nauseatingly odoriferous. It is not food, it is torture. I love my mother and I love a lot of the things that she's been kind enough to feed me all these years, but Seafood Bake is at the top of my Do Not Ingest list, followed by coins, dirt, rat poison and Cinnabuns.

Minnesotans love to make Hot Dish. A clever way to cheaply deal with the crippling cold of winter, you take a bunch of canned ingredients, mix together and bake, then serve with a ladle and you have Hot Dish, one of the local culinary treasures of this great state. Now, don't get me wrong, this cooking technique can result in some very yummy dinners, and my mother is doing her part to make sure that Hot Dish is not completely lost to the trends of say, grilling, roasting, poaching or Chinese take-out. Unfortunately, she is also trying to single-handedly save the good old country home cookin' staple grotesquely named...meatloaf.

Blagh.

One of mom's more popular ones, Hamburger Corn Hot Dish

Ground hamburger mixed with crap and then packed into a bread pan? No No No. Why is this appetizing? A loaf of meat?...you've got to be kidding me. And the idea of a meatloaf sandwich...2 pieces of bread holding a dry and pathetic misstep of a hamburger that was intentionally shaped as...a piece of bread! It boggles my small, feeble mind.

Still, mom and Popi are meatloaf lovers, which I tend to think categorizes them as non-picky eaters. So it wasn't too surprising when I asked mom where they had dinner with new friends during their stay in Mesa, AZ and she replied without hesitation, "The Feed Bag."

"What? What did you just say? Did I hear right? Did you dine at a restaurant named The Feed Bag? THE. FEED. BAG???"

"Yes! Good old home cooking!"

"Except not home cooked, because you were at a restaurant called The Feed Bag with some 83-year-old duffer named Lloyd."

"Well, the other night we went to a better restaurant with your aunt and uncle. The Weather Vane."

"What the hell, mom?! How big is Mesa, AZ? What's with all the ridiculous restaurants?"

"Mesa has over 400,000 people, Sara! It's big! There's lots of restaurants..."

"So, it's just a matter of you and Popi hanging out with the only 6 people in town who constitute mass produced meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes as a night out on the town?"

"Yep."

"Mom, if you go back to The Feed Bag I may never stop laughing."

"Well, ok then."

She's sticking to her guns. They have weeks left of this vacation and I do not doubt that I will be hearing of The Feed Bag again. In fact, I'm curious if they can top it with an eating establishment even more horrendously named. I put nothing past my parents, and now, after The Feed Bag and The Weather Vane, I put nothing past Mesa's dining community.

The start of March will bring with it my parents for a stay in L.A. after their 2 months in Arizona. Apparently Teen and I will have to gently reintroduce them to food with texture and taste. Seeing as it is California, there will likely be meals featuring yummies from the sea, but this meatloaf rehabilitation program will have nothing - and I mean nothing - to do with Seafood Bake. That's just me sticking to my guns.

The rock, the sea and this year's me

2007 was a dang good year, providing more happy moments than I could have wished for. The last couple of weeks kept in tune with the rest of the year and were like the big shiny bow on top of the Lexus in those cheesy Christmas commercials I always wish I was starring in.

Christmas at home in Minnesota was full of surprises…quiet, lovely, smiley surprises. Setting the pace for the week was a girls lunch years in the making where a couple of hours of laughter and stories and getting acquainted with the current versions of each other all served as a reminder of why I’ve loved these friends so much for the past decade, regardless of the fact that I’m not the best at keeping in touch.

And the snow, oh, the snow! While a white Minnesota Christmas is nothing new, it was the first time in a long time that I actually got out into the stuff… Teaching Paige that when the snow is too deep for her shorty toddler legs, I'll walk in front so she can walk behind in my footprints. Making snowmen for the first time in years. Standing outside chatting with Popi, buried under layers, feeling the tickle of the falling flakes and loving how silent a slow snowfall makes the world...allowing only for the crunching of boots and the distant scraping of shovels. White peace.

I spent the whole week thinking, “I love that this is my family.” (Now, that wasn’t a surprise, but is just too wonderful a sentiment to go without mention.) We did some coffees at The Bean, a couple of dinners with a couple of drinks, a movie, Chicken Salsa Chili at our favorite St. Paul haunt and Paige’s birthday party, but that was it for activities. For the most part, we were hanging out at home, playing in the snow, making each other laugh and doing nothing in particular. It was fantastic.

When we got to the airport both Teen and I had the blues. It had been too good and gone too fast. We weren't ready to go just yet, so we consoled ourselves with the knowledge of how remarkably refreshing it is to see the palm trees of L.A. after a week of cold; it would be good to be back, we were sure. However, standing at baggage claim in the wee morning hours of Dec. 29, we were both starting to feel rundown, both whining about a sore throat threatening to damper our post-Christmas glee.

And so it was that on New Year’s Eve we were not feeling up to any kind of grandiose plans. Seeing as I am not New Year’s biggest fan to begin with, a quiet night with Teen sounded perfect. And it turned out to be exactly that.

We began our fond farewell to 2007 on the Santa Monica Pier at sunset, each with a rock in hand. After watching the last bit of sun drip down into the ocean, we poured into our rocks everything from the past year we were ready to let go of – everything we wanted to change. I silently visualized it all going in until the rock felt just a little heavier…and then the toss…in that split second while my rock was airborne, I exhaled and my hopes for the new year were swept out into the wind, now swirling around the city with those supposed angels. The things from the past year that brought us down were now just tiny ripples in the Pacific. With them lost at sea, we were free.

So, with freshly lightened hearts we doubly indulged: we tried a new restaurant and it was The Lobster. The last peachy tints of daylight were spent with drinks and tuna carpaccio, sitting under twinkle lights and watching the ferris wheel spin and the waves roll. Then, as supper time rolled around, we headed off for our reservation at our favorite restaurant, where we again treated ourselves – this time to three scoops of gelato for dessert.

A couple of hours before midnight, feeling as though we’d already had a complete evening, we were back at Teen’s, happily popping open champagne, having a PJ dance party and gabbing the rest of the year away. As New York’s 3-hour-old confetti began to fall on the TV screen, we heard loud, distant booms outside. “Fireworks! Get your shoes on. I’ll grab our wine glasses, you grab the keys! Hurry! Get to the rooftop before they’re done!” So, the first few minutes of 2008 were spent on a rooftop in West L.A. wearing my pajamas with polka-dot ballet flats (i.e. looking ridiculous), clinking glasses of Sauvignon Blanc with Teen while fireworks went off all around us. And I thought to myself, if this is an indicator of things to come, it is going to be a spectacular year. But oh, how the mighty do fall.

The next day I woke to what turned out to be the beginning of strep throat hell. By Friday afternoon I was too loopy with fever to drive myself to the doctor (I was too weak to even walk or stand for more than a few minutes at a time). As the doctor said of my “severe strep throat” and 102º fever, “Wow. You’re really sick!” And while good old 102º had me clammy with sweat and my head resting on the wall behind my chair, my days-of-fever cooked brain was screaming, “Stop pointing out the obvious and give me drugs! NOW! Or so help me I’ll get my sister from the waiting room to come in here and slap you around a bit!”

That’s been the best thing about 2008 so far. Teen. My savior in a little red Honda picked me up and drove me to the doctor in the mess of rainy L.A. traffic, sat in the waiting room with no good magazines for company, took me home, made me soup and burrowed into a nest we made on the couch for hours of Sex and the City, handing me tissues at the beginning of episodes where she knows I always cry. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be back down on the pier right now with another rock, hastily jamming the past 4 days in, demanding that the universe allow me to start the year over and imagining myself as a major league pitcher while flinging that thing as far away from me as I could get it. But my worst bout of illness in years opened my eyes a little more to how lucky I am to have Teen…and that’s just too good to toss out to sea. That, I’ll keep with me for quite awhile.

So, this year may have gotten off to a rocky start, but I believe that it’s salvageable. I remain hopeful. And dear little newborn 2008, I’ll give you some advice patented by Popi, “Shape up, meatball!”

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

- T.S. Elliot, "Little Gidding"