Monday, February 08, 2010

:: Country-fried America ::

This past weekend, Christene and I went to Seattle, for no reason other than we wanted something to do, and thought Seattle would be fun. We had a grand ol' time – walked around the downtown core a ton; ate a bunch of seafood; went on a historic walking tour of underground Seattle; fought off the advances of some gross homeless bum; and went shopping.

But of all the things we did – and we did a lot in a little more than a day – one of the seemingly minor things that stood out were the two breakfasts we ate: Saturday morning at the IHOP in Bellingham, and Sunday morning at the Denny's just outside Everett.

They have these two establishments in Canada, too, of course, but in both cases, the American menus are quite a bit different. Better, mostly. And also fatter.

One fatter-in-America example: American IHOPs have found a way to combine cake and pancakes with something called the New York Cheesecake pancake.

Another case in point: On both breakfast menus, country-fried steak is featured prominently. This is something that just isn't Canadian. I mean, it's steak, caked in deep-fried batter, fried (of course), and then topped with white gravy, which is approximately 214% fattier than regular gravy (rough estimate). For breakfast!

I mean, we here in Canada are fat – we invented poutine, for fuck's sake – but we're not that fat. Of course, though I mock it, I obviously ordered it on Sunday from Denny's (What can I say? I enjoy local cuisine... it was a cultural experience).

And not only did I order it, but I actually ordered it as part of some artery-choking extravaganza called the Meat Lovers Trio. The trio consisted of the following: country-fried streak covered in country-fried gravy; two sausages, two strips of bacon, two eggs, and then hashbrowns. But not just any hashbrowns – these were "new" hashbrowns, which were covered in cheese and sausage crumbles.

I know it said "trio" and I assume that refers to the three types of meat, but considering there are clearly more than three items, and sausage is in it twice, the number three could easily refer to the number of minutes you have, post-eating, until you keel over and die, or perhaps the number of times – maximum – that you will ever have sex again should you continue to eat in this manner.

At one point, I had on my fork a piece of steak, sausage, bacon, egg, and cheese. All covered in gravy, of course.

What a country.

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