{"id":265,"date":"2011-02-27T08:35:56","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T13:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/?p=265"},"modified":"2011-02-28T05:55:15","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T10:55:15","slug":"frankly-i-prefer-the-buffet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/?p=265","title":{"rendered":"Frankly, I Prefer The Buffet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had an ex once who didn&#8217;t eat fish. She said it was too cannibalistic, since she was a Pisces. She would only eat meat.<\/p>\n<p>Self-limiting I thought, especially when it really makes it pointless to order a Surf &amp; Turf for a special occasion. She could only have Turf. There could only be, forever, Turf.<\/p>\n<p>To me, that&#8217;s a lot like saying, I only eat vanilla. Sure, I might go a little out of my comfort zone and eat French vanilla on occasion. But forget chocolate, and certainly I&#8217;ll never try spumoni.<\/p>\n<p>Long, long ago, I was like my ex. I only liked American food. But then a friend of mine, Cassie, insisted that we go wild one night. She took me out for Chinese. I had never been to a Chinese restaurant before, but as you know, when you&#8217;re dating a girl, you&#8217;ll try anything in order to get some, well, you know, dessert, at the end of the night.<\/p>\n<p>I let her order off the menu. When the dish arrived, I must have looked visibly shaken. &#8220;It&#8217;s hot bean curd,&#8221; she replied. I resisted, I whined, I balked. &#8220;Try it, you&#8217;ll like it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I finally gave in and tried it. I didn&#8217;t like it at first, but then found out that it was pretty damned yummy. And so began my adventures in eating. Within no time I was dining on Indian and Thai, Russian, Japanese, Dim Sum, sushi &#8212; even the sushi with the eggs on it.<\/p>\n<p>Within a few short months, my culinary world had become a rainbow of nationalities. And then I discovered the buffet. Not the questionable Golden Corral kind of buffet with the $3 all-you-can-eat mystery meat. No, we&#8217;re talking about a Chinese buffet with 200 different choices, from fresh sushi and Mongolian Grill to General Tsao&#8217;s Chicken and even some rare Mandarin delicacies. And just for good measure, for those not entirely fond of Chinese, roast beef, ham and an assortment of other American dishes.<\/p>\n<p>Who would eat anywhere else, I thought? I could be conservative, eating only at steak houses, or I can be a died in the wool liberal and only eat at a seafood grill.<\/p>\n<p>With the buffet, I no longer had to torture over a limited menu and choose the same ol, same ol. No sir, I could explore, mix it up a bit and perhaps if I was lucky enough, create the meal that memories are made of.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but I think everything in life should be buffet. Some things actually are, I guess. If you go to DisneyWorld, you can choose four different parks, and within each you can explore entirely different worlds. Why, in the Magic Kingdom alone, I can go to Fantasyland, Frontierland, Main Street U.S.A., Tomorrowland, Adventureland and Liberty Square, all in a single day.<\/p>\n<p>Now, granted, I could stay all day in Adventureland. In fact, I could spend all day just riding the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. My friend could decide that he only likes Fantasyland and get pukey sick on the tea cups.<\/p>\n<p>This is fine with me, of course. But it&#8217;s a lot more fun when we mix it up and visit every part of the theme park. Or even more than one theme park in the same day with a Park Hopper. Sure, we always vote to go on our favorites. But then we come to agreement on others we should try. We mix it up. Like a buffet.<\/p>\n<p>For me, the political world is a buffet, too. I vote all over the place. I&#8217;ve voted for unpopular and entirely unelectable Democrats, I&#8217;ve thrown the switch for highly popular charismatic Republicans, I;&#8217;ve voted for a Liberatarian or two, and perhaps even a far right leaning born again. I know I voted for an Independent or two, even one for president.<\/p>\n<p>I like being in the buffet line. And I&#8217;m unapologetically pro buffet. In stark contrast to my non-seafood eating ex, I won&#8217;t just limit my choices. I can&#8217;t just do vanilla. And I can&#8217;t just do Democrat or Republican.<\/p>\n<p>I know the buffet can have a high price. For example, when I moved to Florida, the Driver&#8217;s License person asked my which way I swung. I looked aghast. We didn&#8217;t have to pick in Washington. I asked her if I can choose none of the above.<\/p>\n<p>She politely explained that if I did that, I couldn&#8217;t choose what the featured dishes were. I could only choose from the dishes others had already selected, be they delicious or disastrous.<\/p>\n<p>I told her that was O.K. I was good with just having the buffet. And while I realized that I would no longer be able to choose what kind of meat or fish was featured, I could still choose between whether I wanted the meat or fish. I didn&#8217;t have to only dine on meat for the rest of my life when what I really wanted was fish. And if I didn&#8217;t like the meat or the fish, I could have salad. Or soup. Or&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As I said, I love the buffet. I only have one small complaint these days. I wish the chefs could prepare better dishes. I think we&#8217;ve had some real crappers on the menu lately. They&#8217;re giving me indigestion.<\/p>\n<p>Trying to decide what I should have for breakfast out here on the Treasure Coast,<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Robb<\/p>\n<p>I now present the original opening in it&#8217;s unedited version for your edification:<\/p>\n<p><em>I had an ex once who didn&#8217;t eat fish. She said it was too cannibalistic, since she was a Pisces. She would only eat meat. That would be akin to me saying I was a Gemini so I won&#8217;t eat twins. And we know that&#8217;s certainly not the case.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had an ex once who didn&#8217;t eat fish. She said it was too cannibalistic, since she was a Pisces. She would only eat meat. Self-limiting I thought, especially when it really makes it pointless to order a Surf &amp; Turf for a special occasion. She could only have Turf. There could only be, forever, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/robzerrvations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}