Nothing Beats a Chicken-fried Steak

But Have The Number of Your Cardiologist Handy 

From My Journal

The Road Less Traveled

March 2005

The other day on the way home, Lorraine asked, “Where does that road go?” So, being a dutiful chauffer, I took the turn and we followed that street from Harrodsburg Rd. over to Nicholasville Rd. Then we started down Nicholasville Rd., continuing on our way home. We went about a block when I noticed that we were right next to the Lone Star – Steakhouse, or in other words a place that has, or had in this case, good chicken-fried steak. So what with it being lunchtime, and Lorraine not wanting to go home and cook, we stopped and went in for some lunch. (Now those of you who have a devious mind might be wondering if in fact Lorraine knew where we were going to end up all along, and to that I say: “Shame on us!”)

We sat down and looked through the menu, seeking the Southern style chicken-fried steak. The Southern style in this case is very important. Northern chefs do a chicken-fried steak, but really don’t understand the heights of culinary excellence they can reach.

     The waitress came and we asked about the chicken-fried steak. She said they didn’t have any. We described it to her, which really didn’t help, and she left us to pick something else from the menu. Soon she came back and said the chef had agreed to make us each a chicken-fried steak. We thanked her and wondered if this chef really knew what he/she was doing. Soon she came back and asked if we would like to have mashed potatoes with that.

Then we knew we had a qualified Southern style chicken-fried steak expert in the backroom, because that’s normally the way this delicacy comes. This restaurant didn’t even have mashed potatoes on the menu. After a time the General Manager (David Nitishin) brought our dishes, then came back after the first couple bites and wanted to know what we thought. We assured him that it was all a chicken-fried steak should be.

We explained that being from Texas we were used to and knew a good chicken-fried steak. He told us that he was from Dallas and that his brother owned The Chop House in Sundance Square, downtown Fort Worth.

We licked up our plates and as we were leaving met him again by the front door and talked awhile. We suggested he put this item on the menu, so he gave us his business card along with the owner’s phone number and suggested we give the guy a call and make the suggestion to him, which I did. We traded stories about where we had lived, and what we had done in and around the Metroplex. It was an extraordinary dining experience.

 

“Welcome To The Walmart” – Ah Um – “Oh Yeah” – “First National Bank”

February, 2005

The hottest bit of financial news coming down the pike these last few days is that Walmart is going to try to get into the banking business. Now if anyone deserves some stiff competition that can think outside the 1,500 year-old banking box, it’s the banking industry. Of course the banking industry swears that if Wal-Mart is allowed into the financial banking fraternity, civilization as we know it, will cease to exist.

I can just see it now: I enter the First National Bank of Walmart (FNBWM). The first thing I notice is that the building doesn’t look like a cathedral, but more like a metal prefab Quonset hut. At the door I’m met by an 85-year-old person using a walker, who smiles and welcomes me to the bank. The security force is made up of dropouts from the local high school’s remedial-education program. But like their parent company, all the employees, except the top executives, are making minimum wage and no one gets in quite enough time to qualify for the benefit program. But they are allowed to gather together twice per shift to sing the FNBWM song, then be told how lucky they are to be a part of the huge FNBWM family.   

Another Stuffed Goose!

April, 2005

Speaking of livers: The state of Oregon is once again in the vanguard of protecting everything, in this particular case, geese. As many of you are aware, Foie Gras, a French delicacy, is made of goose livers. Well, why not, these folks also eat snails and frogs. I mean, even in Louisiana they draw the line above snails. As an efficiency measure, these geese are forced to overeat to enlarge their livers, therefore getting more Foie Gras per goose.

Goose raising--at least for Foie Gras--is not just your everyday back yard project, but is rather specialized, and in the U.S., done on a couple of large goose ranches, none of which are in Oregon, or even close to Oregon. So why is the Oregon legislature spending so much time on this issue? Most of them aren’t quite sure. They haven’t passed a K-12 Education budget yet, nor their Health and Human Services budget, but they have time for debating the inhumane feeding of geese, which isn’t even done in the state to begin with.

Not unusual for Oregon politicians, or so I hear. But if someone even thinks about overfeeding their goose in Oregon, the full weight of the Oregon law enforcement and judicial system is there to protect the goose. Now, if you are say, an abused kid, you have to stand in line, right behind the goose. Well, not too close behind, I mean an overfed goose and all--I’m sure you get the picture.

One thing I wish they had explained more fully--how do you force a goose to overeat?