Chapter Six: Post Lunch Ergo Propter Lunch
Food is love. That’s what Mrs. ZZUB tells me all the time. And it’s probably true. I do love me some food. Not so much that people are calling me Mr. Speaker or confusing me with the (now former) head coach at Tennessee. I’m on the elliptical 4 times a week to make sure
that doesn’t happen.
But food is important. To me. When I’ve had a bad day, I wash it down with a shake, preferably pumpkin pie flavored. Tuesday night, as I drove home from a meeting listening to the election returns, I knew it was going to be a long night. So I stopped off for some donuts. To ease my pain.
Because, as you can see, donuts are hope I can believe in.
Which is kind of sad, really.
I don’t just self-medicate with food when I’m down. I celebrate with it when life is good. And when the sun is up. Or the sun is down. In other words, all the time.
I don’t sleep eat. Yet. But I am willing to try.
You might say I’m a little fixated on eating. Virtually any memory I have of any time in my life, is associated with some really good food. Indeed, if the memory is good, it’s probably in part because of the food.
At my Bar Mitzvah, we had a choice between Chicken Kiev or filet. I had both. Because it was my Bar Mitzvah. I’d never seen Chicken Kiev before. Or since. But it was good. The filet made me glad I was a man.
The night before I graduated from college, we ate dinner at this great place in Tuscaloosa that no longer exists. I can’t remember the name of the joint but they served these slap your mamma good rolls with a sweet butter on top.
The night I graduated law school, we ate at this seafood joint that had all you can eat steak and crab legs. Good night nurse! They were each better than the other. You’d eat some crab legs and think they were so sweet you didn’t need butter. Then you’d slice into your steak and you’d wonder how they got it so tender and so flavorful. Crab legs. Then steak. Crab. Steak. And back again. That was some powerfully good eatin’. Almost makes me miss law school.
When Mrs. Z was in labor with ZZUBY, the Birth Center had a hospitality room for the families. I ate a mean roast beef sandwich on some really good bread and washed it down with a sweet pudding cup. In her less sanguine moments, Mrs. ZZUB still chides me for telling her to breathe through a contraction as I chewed on my sandwich. Like I shouldn’t be eating. I needed to keep up my strength. Labor is very hard for a man. We have to stand for the whole thing. It was exhausting. Which is why I ate. To keep up my strength.
Several years ago we went to NYC for the week between Christmas and New Years Eve. I found a deli a few blocks from our hotel in mid town. They had the best knish I’ve ever tasted. And corn beef so moist and tasty you think you died and went to Jewish heaven. We were in NYC for a week and I was in that deli at least once a day, and several times twice for a little pick me up. Dude, don’t be hating on knish until you taste a really good one.
On our honeymoon, we ate lunch one day at this little seaside place. They had a crazy good shrimp basket. I normally don’t like fried shrimp but on the coast when it’s cool out, hot fried shrimp and fries are good stuff. Mrs. Z had this salad with a really good dressing. It was all so good, that we ate there again two more times.
On our first anniversary, we dutifully took our frozen cake top out of the freezer to choke back a taste of cake. Only our cake didn’t need to be choked back. It was good. Real good. It was so dadgum good that we saved the rest of it to keep eating it later. I don’t remember but I may have licked icing off the foil, too.
Here’s another thing about me. Not only do I love me some food, but I’m also a streaky as well. Not streaky like BodySuit Man. I mean when I hit on a food I really like, I eat it all the time. Right now, it’s these little red grapefruit cups I found at Costco. I keep a couple of cases of them in my refrigerator at work. Of course, it’s pumpkin pie time right now, so I’m sucking back pumpkin pie shakes from Dairy Queen at least two times a week. Because they taste like pumpkin pie in a cup. And I love me some pumpkin pie.
So it won’t come as a surprise to you that our trips to Disney World are about the food. I hear some people say that they don’t like making reservations for Disney restaurants six months in advance because they don’t know what they’ll be in the mood to eat six months from now.
I don’t understand those people.
My frustration is having to wait six months to eat Diseny food! I can hardly wait to get back there and chow on some Trails End Fried Chicken and cornbread or Chef Mickey's parmesan potatoes or Kona's Tonga Toast.
I was a little stressed by the lack of a real food court at the Contemporary. Because we like to eat lunch at our hotel some days. And we like to raid the grab and go grub food in the refrigerator deal sometimes when we come back from the park. One reason we loved our stays at the All Stars: the grab and go area in those days was REALLY good. Mrs. Z and I have strong memories of coming back to ASMovies after a long day in MGM or MK. Getting off the bus and heading to the food court. The grab and go food section back then had all kinds of sandwiches and salads, snacks and treats. We’d grab 2 or 3 things, fill up our mug and head back to our room to watch the Zippa De Doo Dah channel and chow down. One of our favorite treats were these tabouleh wraps which Mrs. ZZUB and I really liked.
I know what you’re thinking.
Tabouleh? ZZUB?! I know. It was odd. But it was pretty good.
So I thought the Tempo Grab n’ Go would be disappointing. And then I read the menu for the Grab n’ Go on Allearsnet. Turns out they had a tuna sandwich.
I’m crazy go nuts for tuna fish.
Which makes me sound about as low rent trash as they come.
Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.
We ended up eating dinner at the Tempo Grab n’ Go the night we arrived at the Contemporary. We were tired and it was there. And it was actually pretty good. For what it was. I had the tuna sandwich and although the bread was more whole grainy than I care for, the tuna was Jewish Deli good. Mrs. Z had an Oprah-sized Cobb Salad. As if Oprah ate salads. Which she clearly does not. Unless they’re made with cookie dough. And icing. But the Cobb was the size of Ms. Winfrey's porcine derriere. The li’l Zs had kid meals. Uncrustables. With pudding cups. Maybe some carrot sticks as well. We actually ate there another time or two during our trip. Once for lunch and one time I called an audible and we stayed longer in the pool. Because we’d hung back at the Contemporary, we decided to grab a quick dinner there and then return to the MK. And also because ZZUB was jonesing for some tuna. Again.
We didn’t eat breakfast there. On account of the Pop Tarts. But their coffee was the same brown water served warm that you’d find at any Disney Resort. Although the coffee walk was more fun. It was closer anyway.
Tuna is the reason we ate lunch at Columbia Harbor House in the MK. It was then that Mrs. Z said, “what is with you and the tuna?” I had no response to that. There really is no response to that.
She had a BLT salad. It had fried chicken bits, bacon, egg and other stuff. Probably lettuce. It looked good. ZZUBY didn’t want the kids’ meal so I asked the CM if I could order her an adult meal. And she said I could but it had to be rung up separately. Do with that what you will. Just don’t write a book and assert that you have a license to print your own money. Because that will get the
special people very upset.
Columbia Harbor House is situated well if you’re stuck in Fantasyland and you want to eat lunch on your way to Frontierland. We didn’t have any trouble finding a place to sit down and the food was a little bit different than every place else.
Plus, they have tuna.
Against my will, we also ate at Pecos Bills one day. They changed dessert so now I like it again. Also, instead of getting a burger, I got this wrap thing. I’m not much of a wrap guy, except apparently in Disney World. It was hot that day and I didn’t feel like eating a hot burger. The wrap was REALLY good. So Pecos Bills is back in the rotation.
Another really good food find was in Disney Studios, the ABC Commissary. We ate there a few years ago and thought it was pretty much a crapateria. But we were there with another couple and they were tedious to be around. Grating. So maybe it was them and not the Commissary which sucked. But we stopped eating there. I’m not 100% positive why we walked in there this year. Except it occurs to me that the first place we went to eat lunch had a stupid looking menu so we put an X on it and moved on. At the Commissary I had a Cuban (the sandwich, not the cigar) and it was very good. Plus they had these little dessert cups which were on the right side of delicious. Chocolate mousse and a no-sugar added parfait deal. You might think the chocolate was better. You’d be wrong. Which is upsetting. One of my general rules in life: when given a choice, chocolate is always better. Turns out, that’s no longer true.
The no-sugar added parfait was better. Which made me wonder if we hadn’t slipped into some sort of parallel universe. Mrs. Z had a big ol’ bowl of some kind of salad, and it didn’t look bad at all. It’s not that I’m anti-salad. It’s just that on vacation, I don’t see any reason to be eating green stuff. That’s what Monday – Friday are for. Vacation is for fried foods. Cake and hotdogs. Which, by the way, is why God invented Saturday.
In EPCOT we again returned to Electric Umbrella. They don’t have tuna there but they have something I like just as much: free refills. They also have a decent burger. I read a lot of smack about Disney’s new whole wheat buns before our trip and I was pretty well annoyed by that because I like white bread.
Says the guy who loves tuna fish.
But I didn’t mind the new Disney buns so much. Actually, they were pretty good. In a not full-on-crappy way.
We returned to Flame Tree at Animal Kingdom. Because it was there. Where we were, when we were hungry. You know why the tree has flames?
BECAUSE IT’S SO DADGUM HOT!
But the food was good. Ver’ good as a matter of fact. I had the ribs. It came with cornbread. Which is why I got the ribs to begin with. Because I wanted the cornbread. Which is pathetic. But given my thing with tuna fish, it’s a sliding scale. The woman had a chicken. Which ZZUBY fed to the ducks. Which led me to yell, “NO!” Because I thought it was wrong to feed chicken to a duck.
Unless, of course, it’s free range chicken.
So that pretty well covers our quick service meals.
We pounded the usual snacks, Funnel Cakes, Dole Whips, etc. I think we decided the Dole Whip isn’t all that. We liked it but it was Too Much. It was like Carrie Underwood. Enough already. The Citrus Swirl deal was better. In my opinion. And in ZZUBY’s opinion, too.
They’re still only taking cash at the Funnel Cake stand in EPCOT. Which is still stupid. I was caught in line behind a family who ordered a couple of Funnel Cakes and then found out that their Key to The World didn’t open that door. They were pretty shocked. As I was the first time I got mugged by that reality. As I listened to them asking again and again why they couldn’t use their Key to the World card, I reached into one of the pockets of my big boy shorts to pull out some money to buy their Funnel Cakes for them. Then the dad showed up and he said he had cash. Because dads always carry cash.
FYI: they’ve raised the price. It’s now $6 ducks for a Funnel Cake. And it’s still worth it.
The Tempo Grab n’ Go had this really good dessert. Chocolate chips, coconut, caramel and some other gooey stuff. They also had a mean slice of carrot cake. Which isn’t like eating dessert but more like eating your vegetables. In a cake. With frosting made of cream cheese. So it’s health food.
On a business trip a few months ago, they served these veggie flavored chips on the flight down. I thought they were really good. So when I got home, I went to the store and found a bag of them. Which made Mrs. ZZUB say, “ZZUB only eats vegetables he can find in the chip aisle.”
But the snack of all snacks this trip was the tuna fish on a stick we got in Disney Studios. If that sounds disgusting to you then maybe you should give it a try first.
Which is what I said to Mrs. ZZUB when I told her I wanted to pick up a hunk of Grapefruit Cake from Starring Rolls. I’d read about this Grapefruit Cake a few years ago. They serve it at the Brown Derby. But that’s never been a place I’ve been interested in eating at. Especially since you have to burn two dining credits to do so. As if. I’d sooner get my news from MSNBC.
Grapefruit Cake sounded really good to me. I like grapefruit. I like cake. Seemed like a good combination. But Mrs. ZZUB thought it sounded nasty. I told her she could make it call her Jackson then.
We were done in Disney Studios and heading out of the park but ZZUB was feeling a little snackish. For a change. I had read that you can get a hunk of the Grapefruit Cake at Starring Rolls (which is next door to the Brown Derby). We walked in and looked at their offerings but I didn’t see any Grapefruit Cake. So I asked the lady. She said she’d get me some. And then she disappeared.
For a really long time.
Long enough for her to have a cigarette I reckon. Or to dance and sing loudly in HSM2. Or to draw Mickey Mouse in the Animation Deal. Or to sing
Part of Your World in Little Mermaid. When she was gone for longer than a few minutes, I began conjuring up all of these images of where she might have gone. Eventually she came back and handed me a rather unimpressive looking hunk of cake. Which got even more unimpressive looking when I paid for it and they exacted $6 and change from my wallet.
$6 ducks for a slice of cake only seems ridiculous in the real world. At Disney World it seems completely reasonable. Like getting up early in your over-priced, under-cleaned hotel room to go downstairs to get a $13 dollar mug full of the worst coffee you’ve ever drank and yet enjoy drinking because it tastes like Disney World to you. Getting your family up and then racing to the MK, to have your bags “searched” by men so old they make John McCain look like a Jonas Brother. You proceed through a security screening which is every bit as rigorous as the vetting of Sarah Palin apparently was. You then move to stand in a crowd with other people who then wait to be told by people who barely grasp the English language, to squeeze your fingers into biometric scanners. Then more rushing and more lines for rides that, in some cases, are exceptionally lame and in other cases are not. But you still wait in lines. In the heat. In the humidity. In the stink of your fellow tourists. And you’re annoyed but amused all at once. Disney World is an odd juxtaposition of fun and frustration, amusement and bewilderment, feel-good nostalgia and pocket-picking prices. In that World, a $6 slice of cake seems like a bargain.
Have you ever broken down your ticket price by rides you’ve ridden? Figured out how much per ride you’ve paid? Don’t do it. It’ll make you feel dumber than a person who can’t name the three countries in NAFTA.
But we’re talking about cake.
And it was good. It was very good. It was moist and creamy with a citrusy flavor that wasn’t artificial tasting. I confess, I thought it might taste like this pre-packaged orange flavored mini-bundt cake I picked up one or five times at the Chevron Mini-Mart. That’s a good little cake right there. Tastes like a creamsicle. But it’s a fake taste. Which is fine when you’re looking for a little treat and you’re limited to the Chevron. And you’re just not in the mood for a Moonpie. But standing as I was, in Disney World, I was looking for something a little better. More top shelf if you will. The Grapefruit Cake didn’t have an artificial flavor to it.
It was real. Genuine.
It wasn’t
Butter Grilled Pound Cake, mind you.
Butter Grilled Pound Cake is like beating Tennessee. And seeing Fat Phil get his comeuppance. Grapefruit Cake was more like beating LSU. Good in its own right, but not quite as good.
So now you’re wondering what Disney Dessert I’d compare with beating Auburn. What dessert could actually be better than
Butter Grilled Pound Cake?
It’s a cake cliff hanger.
Now you know you’re in a ZZUB Trip Report.
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