Thank goodness for teeth!

The family that eats free together…

I recognize that there is entirely too much emphasis on eating in this blog. It’s not like that now we’re retired all we do is sit around and think about food. We sit around, watch TV and think about food. But seriously, folks…

I do think, however, that the latest trend in our dining experiences is worth mentioning – and that’s eating for free! It started two weeks ago when we went to Black Eyed Pea for Sunday lunch. We enjoyed our meal, and as we were finishing up, the manager came by and said “This one’s on me – just take care of the waiter.” I began to protest that everything had gone smoothly and there was no need to do this (unlike another time when things did not go smoothly), but Barbara was kicking me under the table, so I shut up. It seems that she had taught the manager’s child a couple of years ago and he recognized her. Cool!

Then today at Red Lobster, we were seated promptly, but no wait staff came by; not even a “be with you in a minute.” This has happened before, so after about 15 minutes we caught the manager’s eye and indicated we had been waiting a while and he really stepped up. He took our drink order and said he would he would treat us to some appetizers. We said no thanks; we would just order our meal. So then he wanted to know what we were having and when we told him the popcorn shrimp he said it was on him and he would go put our order in and someone would be right with us. I’m thinking at this point I really should have said, “Lobster!” but it was too late. But I’m really liking this trend that’s developing for Sunday lunch.

Now it’s Sunday evening and there’s no Care Group this week since it would only be Mom and I and maybe one other person, so we’re planning a quiet evening at home. There’s a new Pizza Hut take-out place on Braker now, and we thought we would go online and order some wings for supper. Unfortunately, the new place can’t take on-line orders yet, and the web page said they didn’t deliver to our subdivision which is six tenths of a mile from that location, so we gave up and got in the car and went and ordered some wings for take-out. The ordering part went okay, but the taking-out part didn’t work out that well. Not for us or the half-dozen or so folks who were waiting, or coming back in to bring back an incorrect pizza order. It was quite a mess. Finally, the manager came over and handed out coupons for free large pizzas to all of us waiting. Now we did pay for the wings, but scoring a free large pizza is never a bad thing!

So now I’m wondering where we can go next Sunday and expect bad service – or just get lucky.

The family that eats out together...

Evidently there is some concern about Mom and I spending our retirement in the kitchen. Rest assured, we still eat out a lot. And we like, for the most part, to go to familiar places – tried and true, where we seldom have to look at the menu (or the menu is a sign on the wall). However, in our old age we sometimes get a little wild and crazy and go off in search of some place new to eat. There is no end to the choices for lunch or dinner – just drive out I-35 and survey the crop of national chain restaurants that hug the access roads; Bennigans, Golden Wok, Pei Wei, Saltgrass Steakhouse, Cheddar’s, Johnny Carrino’s, Carraba’s Italian Grill, Joe’s Crab Shack, etc. etc.

And, this being a real foodie town, I could name 50 locally-owned restaurants that get multiple stars in the travel guides, never mind the 150 really funky places that make Austin what it is – places like Dirty’s Hamburgers and Hut’s and Frisco Shops, and of course, Chuy’s.

But we were just looking for some place besides McDonalds or IHOP to have breakfast and discovered a really good new place. Well, new to us – Fran’s has been around since 1978, and I had actually eaten there before. If you attended Reagan High you probably did too – it’s just across 290 on Cameron Road. It was brought to mind by an episode of “Friday Night Lights” which is filmed here in Austin; often setting scenes in real Austin places, like Appleby’s and the Broken Spoke – and Fran’s. The one they used was in South Austin, but one Saturday morning I looked up and saw the Fran’s in North Austin and we decided to try it.

The first thing you notice about Fran’s is that they don’t take credit cards or checks. It is a cash-only establishment. You seat yourself (and you go stand at the counter when you get ready to pay). Looking over the clientele, you notice a lot of older people, and it’s obvious from the banter between tables and with the wait staff (all three of them) that these people come here every Saturday. Maybe every day. There’s a smattering of good-old-boys; last week two next to us were talking about buying and selling at the local gun show. The dry-wall installers and the carpet layers eat here too as well as an elderly fellow in a suit and tie who just has to be the Pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist church down the road. Well, a Deacon at least. The crowd is pretty evenly divided among the big three racial groups – meaning Mom and I are in the minority.

The breakfast is what you would expect; eggs any way you want them and in any number. Pancakes, breakfast tacos, grits, biscuits, hash browns. You can of course get those with ham, bacon or sausage. And on weekends you can get my favorite, steak and eggs with 2 sides for $7.95. As the hand-lettered white-board sign said last week, “Try are week-end special!” Even after someone pointed out the grammatical error, the waitress still wasn’t sure what was wrong with the sign. Except for the ethnic mix, it might still be 1978 inside Fran’s.

And recently we tried Ken’s, the breakfast taco place on Cameron Road just before you get to Rundberg (you know, on the way to Wal-Mart). For years we have encountered the traffic jam of cars stalled out on Cameron trying to get into Ken’s tiny, tiny parking lot. The other morning, coming back from Wal-Mart, I saw that the sign said “Breakfast Taco’s All Day.” So I stopped and got two to go. I ate one for a late breakfast and had to save the other for lunch. They are so big you almost have to eat them off a plate; too hard to handle, otherwise. Only problem with Ken’s is the parking. We tried the other day, thinking that on a Friday morning at 9:30 surely we could get a parking place. Ended up at McDonalds. Sometimes that’s what happens when you are wild and adventurous.

How I really spend my time

Okay, I admitted that the spiel about my watching Oprah and Ellen and Dr. Phil wasn't really true. So what do I spend all my time doing? Here's the answer.

Thanks to Bonna for the link.

Free to a good family – of owls

We now have an owl house. It’s high up on the trunk of the “Bramblett” pecan tree in the back yard, waiting for an occupant. Or better yet, occupants. We first leaned about owl houses, or owl shacks from a newspaper article several months ago. A local ornithologist named Cliff Shackelford made a number of owl houses as gifts a couple of Christmases ago and the idea resonated with so many people that he now has a busy sideline making and selling owl houses. You can read all about it here. It’s an interesting web site even if you aren’t interested in putting up an owl house.

We were intrigued by the idea, thinking that it might add pleasure to those rare opportunities when we can comfortably sit on the back patio and drink coffee. Or just sit. We already feed most of the birds in North America out there, based on the seed hulls that cover the patio, and we’re going to add some hummingbird feeders at the back by Barbara’s office window. Plus, since owls like to eat snakes, maybe that is the solution for our Coral snake. Yes, “red and yellow kill a fellow.” Hmmm. I may have just effectively ended all visits by our grandchildren. Let me assure you, he is a very bashful snake. I read where some herpetologists never see a Coral snake in the wild in their entire careers. But that’s another blog topic.

Even though Mr. Shackelford lives in Austin, he lives way south in Austin – beyond Bubba land – and the shipping charges by mail were rather much, so we didn’t acquire an owl house until I noticed that you could buy them in the City of Austin store at City Hall. And that definitely is another blog topic. So house at hand, we trimmed some low branches to improve the fly-way for any home-seeking owl and nailed it up in the tree like this.

Mr. Shackelford claims that “Owls want to live in your back yard.” We shall see.