no peas for me!

My husband got my attention this evening with a simple question, “where do they have an all you can eat chicken buffet?” 

My interest was piqued. 

“How about all you can eat ribs?” He went on, mostly to himself, but I was suddenly paying rapt attention. 

“I like chicken.” I said.  “What about all you can eat rotisserie chicken?” 

Our entire conversation was now pivoting around the premise of all you can eat “something” for dinner.  He was hungry.  I was hungry.  So why not all you can eat?

It wasn’t long before my stomach was rumbling in protest, and I was craving a bottle of Tums and a shower.  The idea of all you can eat "anything" was making me sick.  And the funny thing is he wasn’t suggesting we go into a place with the notion of strapping on a feed bag and overindulging.  We just wanted something good for dinner.  Something we could pick out ourselves without having to cook.  

There was just one flaw in our plan. 

There isn’t a single place anything like what we were looking for.  Oh sure, we have a few all you can eat buffets with their veritable smorgasbord of selections, but very few of those options are overly appetizing.  There are far too many choices and most of them are fried, soaked in artificial butter or loaded with evil carbohydrates and fats.  These all you can eat buffets practically dare you to eat way too much, which was why my stomach was putting up a fight at the mere suggestion. 

I didn’t want all you can eat.  I wanted something good to eat.

I wanted Curly’s chicken. 

Curly’s Chicken House.  It was a place my parents used to take me when I was small.  They were fairly well-known when I was a kid, and may still be in business in the tiny town of Elmira, New York.  But in the big city of Atlanta, Georgia in the year 2011, there is no such place as Curly’s chicken. 

But that was what I was hungry for.  And seriously, my stomach must have a very good memory, because I can still smell the barbeque chicken and the fresh yeast rolls hot from the oven.  And I can remember the sensation as the wax paper peeled away from the cold square of butter, just waiting for me to spread it across the hot roll.  If I close my eyes I can still taste it as if I had just taken a bite.  So we piled into the car and drove to the closest place to Curly’s we could find. 

The local chicken and rib shack.

The chicken was dry.  The fries were cold.  And they didn’t even have little pats of butter…or hot yeast rolls! 

Most of my dinner came home in a doggy bag for later.  Or never…it will probably find its way to the trash by the end of the weekend.  Instead I pulled out the left over pasta alfredo with peas from last night’s dinner. 

And then I remembered I wasn’t going to eat peas anymore.  It would appear peas are the downfall of women everywhere. 

But that’s another story for another day.

Until the next time…I’ll be eating a bowl of cereal!

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Posted on July 21, 2011 .