Amazing Shrinking Food – Where’s the Burger?
Has anyone else noticed that the food is shrinking? It adds a whole new meaning to reducing or getting away from the table.” Let’s just say the economy is not only reducing what Americans eat on a daily basis, restaurants have also banded together to reduce the size of America. The food, the dishes, the cups and glasses are shrinking you don’t even get a glass of water from the waitress unless you ask what’s up with that?
Nowadays, almost every menu has “minis”, those little hamburgers that are served with fries or onion strips. And it doesn’t stop there; We have mini turkey burgers, mini fish sandwiches, is there anything that doesn’t come mini? Menus are expanding and offer a two-for-one entrée loaded with small bites of diced food. What will you come up with next, dessert shooters? Oh, it’s true; the neighborhood restaurant already has them. Is it me or are Starbucks glasses shrinking again? A recent survey by the National Restaurant Association reported that miniature desserts will be a new product in the future. The idea of big, flashy desserts is going to be a thing of the past. What will the Americans do?
The solution is to get out your little black book and start jotting down the names and numbers of those famous home bakers. You know those ladies, at church or school, who are known for their key lime pound cake, double Dutch chocolate brownies, and buttermilk pie. We are going back in time to the good old days when life was simple and good food had nothing to do with a TV commercial. I think a lot of this good old-fashioned nostalgia got buried in living a fast-paced lifestyle. It’s going to be hard for many to understand and acknowledge, but those days are over. They take us back to the good old days, when you paid for everything in cash, your neighbor would leave a bag of tomatoes from his garden on your back porch, and you would pour fresh-squeezed juice into popsicle molds to make treats for the kids.
Is that really such a bad thing? The idea of having a technology-driven world that gives you information at the drop of a hat, but makes you wait for the cow to be milked, seems a bit strange, but we may be headed there. There was a time when you could only drink a 6.5-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. A homemade pound cake served 12-16 people and a heaping scoop of homemade ice cream was considered the icing on the cake. Wow, times have changed.
The idea of food shrinking isn’t so bad; the horror comes from the prices attached to these bite-sized morsels of sustenance. I personally think it all started with Tapas, a brilliant way to charge disgustingly sinful amounts of money for bits of food, but that’s for another time. Well, it’s too late now and given the choice between “reducing food” and doing it myself, I now choose “DIY”. I’ll make homemade pizza dough and leave the soda alone substituting good old “fresh squeeze” lemonade. Enough is enough. When we stand up and say what Howard Beale (Peter Finch) sang so eloquently on “Network”; “Am I mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore?” Unfortunately, not today!