Road Trip, Post 2: The movie star, the Mexican restaurant and a moral

Winslow, AZ

So we pull into this town, famous because of its mention in the Eagles song “Take it Easy”, after 16 hours on the road and ready to rip each others’ heads off while hunting for a motel in the middle of town instead of along the interstate.  We finally found one and headed to find some food, and based upon the state of the motel room, I wasn’t expecting much food-wise from Winslow.

I once lived in Arizona for 10 years and knew next to nothing about Winslow or anything in it.  But I lived here long enough to know that if you find a Mexican restaurant with a lot of cars outside, it’s probably worth venturing in.  So we went into the Casa Blanca Cafe and after picking out my usual (Green Chile Chicken, the dish I use to test the worthiness of a restaurant) I looked around and spotted someone who looked VERY familiar sitting at another table.

“Oh my God! That’s the dad from Family Ties,” I told my husband.  Then I thought, “It couldn’t be.  We’re in Winslow-freaking Arizona.”  But then I heard him talk and, sure enough, it was Michael Gross.  Then I started debating whether or not to say something to him.  I had my camera.  Do I ask to get my photo with him? Do I get his autograph? My husband told me to leave him alone, but I was unconvinced.  This is where the evening took a much more interesting turn, if you’re food obsessed like I am.

A man walks in, his arms full of jars of honey, and walks over to Dad Keaton’s table and starts handing out honey to him and his seven dining companions.  I love honey and I was super jealous. I no longer cared about getting a photo with a hollywood star, I wanted to talk to the beekeeper about his honey.  I summoned him over and he told me about the different varieties he had including desert wildflower and a camelthorn honey (we also discovered that his brother lives about 10 miles away from my hometown in Missouri which is also where I currently hang my hat).    The camelthorn was most intriguing.  It turns out this plant is considered one of the “dirty dozen” invasive species of the southwest, but this beekeeper was using it to make honey.  Sadly, he had none left, but it is on my list of honeys to try.

So Michael Gross leaves, and I’m having a few regrets about not asking him for a photo until a woman pops up out of the booth behind us while the waiter, waitress and I were talking about our celebrity sighting.  She starts talking to my husband and me and it turns out she’s the owner of the restaurant. 

Helen Ribera looks like she could be anybody’s Nana.  She’s dressed in a purple print top and is wearing a large, striking necklace that hits just above her waist.   She proceeds to tell me that she’s owned the restaurant 40 years and that she makes sure everything in her restaurant is made from scratch.  The beans soak overnight and are cooked slowly starting in the morning.  She makes sure the rice is made in 4 quart pots so everyone gets it fresh– no bain maries keeping food warm here.  The honey served with the sopapillas? She gets that from the honey man who was in the restaurant earlier.  It was so great to find a small-town restaurant that’s committed to fresh, homemade, local-when-possible food.  The food doesn’t have to be fancy; at Casa Blanca  it’s just good and simple home cooking.

The green chile chicken enchiladas, which were excellent along with the homemade beans and rice

Sopapillas with honey made locally in Winslow, AZ

 Mrs. Ribera was an absolute gem and I’m so glad she told us about her restaurant and her food.  After meeting her, I no longer minded that I didn’t talk to Michael Gross.  In fact, I decided I’d rather have her picture than his.  Unfortunately, she had already left when I went to ask if I could take her photo.  But I managed to talk our waiter, Stephen, and the waitress who is also Mrs. Ribera’s granddaughter, Brianna, into letting me take their photo.

Stephen and Brianna, servers at Casa Blanca Cafe

So the moral of the story: Flash and fame may be impressive, but it’s usually the quiet people who have the best stories to tell.

* For those who are wondering what Michael Gross was doing in Winslow, it seems he was on some sort of train tour.  Winslow is a big railroad town and it turns out Michael Gross is a train and railroad enthusiast.

Road Trip, Post 1: Czech this out

Prague, Oklahoma

As my husband and I set off from Missouri bound for California with a mission of finding a job, I really didn’t think we’d make too many food discoveries along the way.  Boy, was I wrong. 

I was totally sick of paying tolls on I-44/I-40 in Oklahoma, so being a massive cheapskate about things like that, we took an exit that gave us a partial refund on our toll and took the back way into Oklahoma City.  About halfway into our detour, we hit Prague, and I see this sign:

Did someone say kolache?  I grabbed my notebook to mark the date, just in case I could make it back here for the festival. 

And then I saw this:

 

I had my husband swing the car around like he was Luke Duke driving the General Lee.  The Prague Bakery, which was full of locals  enjoying coffees, pastries and each other’s company at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, had lots of different sweet rolls and donuts, but there was only one object of my desire.  I wanted a kolach, but I couldn’t buy one individually.  I had to buy them by the dozen.  Darn.

Kolache (plural for kolach) are small pastries filled with fruit or cheeses that hail from Central Europe and they are an ideal companion to a cup of coffee.  We opted for a mixed pack of cherry, apple and apricot.

These were delicious (especially the apple and apricot) and managed to last us for three breakfasts on our road trip.  They were also the perfect reminder that getting off the interstates is a great way to find good food.

Even better than the real thing

Okay.  I know I totally railed on sugar consumption in my last post, but I didn’t say we shouldn’t consume ANY sugar.

That said, who is with me that Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs are so much better than regular Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? I’m quite certain it’s the higher peanut butter-to-chocolate ratio that makes them so over-the-top to-die-for.  I think they tasted better to me this year than any other because I haven’t had them for a few years.  Although I found Reese’s cups in Australia in specialty candy shops that cost an arm and a leg, I never found Reese’s eggs, so now that I’m back in the good ol’ U.S. of A I’m on cloud nine. I know I should say Easter is all about Jesus and the resurrection, but seriously, Easter is all about the Reese’s Eggs .

Sugar-coating the truth

We Americans are a bunch of sugar-addled addicts, a fact that has become  painfully clear to me while  carrying out some simple research on eating habits. 

A recent article in the  in the New York Times on the comeback of sugar completely missed the real issue at stake: we eat WAY too much sugar and sweetener of any kind.  The article did sort of pussy-foot around that issue by saying that nutritionists would like to see us eat less of all caloric sweeteners, but it really just wound up being a trend story about a backlash against high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in favor of sugar.

Perhaps the reporter didn’t want to upset the people in the HFCS industry, but the truth is, Americans started consuming more and more sweeteners just after HFCS hit the market in the mid-1970’s, according to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).  As a basis for comparison, I’ve also dug up the sweetener consumption statistics for the UK and Australia, two countries that have fairly similar diets to ours, minus the HFCS.  Interestingly, sweetener consumption in those countries actually decreased while ours was skyrocketing upward:

Consumption of Sweeteners 1961-2001

              U.S              U.K.            Australia

1961    52 kg         52kg             56 kg
1981    56 kg         44 kg            54 kg
2001   71 kg         41 kg             45 kg

Source: FAOSTAT

 For those who don’t do the metric system, 71 kg is 156 pounds of sweetener every year– which is the weight of an average woman, give or take a few pounds.  We eat, far and away, more sweetener per person than any other country in the world.

I’m not going to argue whether HFCS is worse than sugar.  That’s not really the point.  The point is, that ever since HFCS came onto the scene, our collective sweet tooth has gotten even sweeter and our consumption of caloric sweeteners climbed 40 percent in 40 years.  Now, you tell me why America has an obesity problem.