After being stuck in the house for a full year, I seem to write only about food or television. Well, to be honest, that is pretty much all that goes on around here. I eat food and watch television. So, until I leave the house, get used to it. It's gonna be one or the other.
By the way, this one is about food.
I remember going with my mother to a McDonald's near my house to pick up dinner. It was usually a summer night when my mom didn't feel like cooking. My father — a simple guy who turned his nose up at "fancy food" — was just as happy to have a Big Mac and fries for dinner... just as long as it wasn't every night. He expected my mom to cook on most nights. Getting food from McDonald's every once in a while was okay, as long as my mother didn't make it a habit. Not that my mother was in fear of my father. She wasn't. It's just that in those days of the late 60s to early 70s, husbands expected to find their wives "slaving over a hot stove" when they came home from work. Lucky for my father, my mom actually enjoyed cooking. And his imagined status a "King of the Castle" remained in tact. On the days my mom wasn't motivated to cook, my father yielded to McDonald's as a gesture of his benevolence. My mom picking it up was — in his mind — him still running things with an iron fist. In reality, my mom didn't mind going. And she liked to drive.
One of the best parts about going to McDonald's with my mom was the extra order of fries she would get for drive home. She'd order a Big Mac for my dad, one hamburger each for her, my brother and me, along with an order of French fries for each of us. Then, she'd tack on a fifth order of fries that we'd secretly share across the bench front seat of her big green Rambler. I'd steady the big bag of burgers and such on my lap and my mom would pull out a single order of fries and lay it on a paper napkin between us. We ate them all up by the time we pulled alongside the curb in front of our house. My dad and my brother were none the wiser that we had gotten a head start on dinner.
When Mrs. Pincus and I began dating, I was pleased to learn that I had found someone who shared my love of French fries. I worked at an ice cream parlor not too far from my future wife's apartment. On nights when I would work late (sometimes until one in the morning), I would stop at one of our favorite restaurants — Copa Banana on Philadelphia's storied South Street — and bring home a big order of their locally-famous Spanish fries for the two of us to share as a bedtime snack. (Sometimes, I'd even wake her up.) Copa's Spanish fries were standard thin-cut French fries smothered in grilled onions and jalapeño peppers... and boy! were they good! Since bringing home an order of Spanish fries became a regular practice, I started bring two orders because I was accused of (and rightly so) scarfing down more than my fair share of the fries from a single order. To this day, I still have a difficult understanding of the concept of "sharing."
On more recent cruises on the Carnival line, we were treated to TV celebrity chef Guy Fieri's take on French fries, as most Carnival ships are outfitted with a Guy's Burger Joint, adjacent to the top deck pool. While we did not partake of the hamburger offerings (to be honest, they are pretty disgusting-looking heaps of sizzling grease), the French fries were pretty good. They were the "skin-on" variety that may or may not be fresh-cut on board. There were massive sacks of potatoes surrounding the open-air counter-service eatery, but they might have just been for show. Nevertheless, a plateful of fries can be dressed to your liking at the nearby condiments bar, that offers grilled onions, mushrooms, peppers and a slew of squeeze-on sauces including Guy's patented "Donkey Sauce"... whatever the fuck that is. On many a cruise, I have assembled (and subsequently wolfed down) my own version of Copa's Spanish fries. Curiously, Mrs. P, who at one time fought me for an equal share of those Catalan spuds, opts for the regular fries from the buffet. I think she just doesn't like Guy Fieri. Can't say that I blame her.
Two years ago, Mrs. P and I decided to stop eating like ten-year-olds at a birthday party and start eating like thoughtful, responsible adults. We have each eaten a large salad topped with salmon and a baked potato as our dinners for going on two years now. We have supplemented our diet by walking daily. We have both lost weight and feel better as a result. But we have also cut a lot of our favorite foods out of our diet altogether — including our beloved French fries. But, a month or so ago, Mrs. Pincus purchased an air fryer. Immediately we began experimenting with different foods and temperature settings. First, Mrs. P made potato latkes (pancakes) and they were a drippy, runny mess (although they tasted good). After a little more trial-and-error, she made dried apples and bananas. She made "fried" eggplant and mushrooms and peppers. But, just this week, our old friends French fries made a return appearance at the Pincus household. Our usual nightly baked potato was instead sliced into wedges, sprayed with a light coating of calorie-less olive oil and popped in the marvelous air fryer for twenty or so minutes. Out came a bounty of crispy, crunchy pieces that satisfied our long unfulfilled craving for French fries. Heck, we even had to buy a bottle of ketchup for the first time in two years. They were so good, we had them again the next night and the next as well. Last night, we put a couple of sweet potatoes through the same process. They were delicious, too.
Who would have imaged that the humble French fry would play such a unifying part in my life? Where would I be without them?
Okay... now on to television.
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