There is a serious food fight going on right now.  A fast food fight.  The chains of greasy goodness are going at it for your burger bucks.  You already know breakfast is my all time favorite fast food meal and really I appreciate the new egg white options.  If all the folks would now take Jack in the Box’s lead and serve those delicious sandwiches all day long I’d be in heaven.  Egg white and cheesy goodness heaven.  There are some new updates since my last post.  Taco Bell now has, what I consider genius, a waffle breakfast taco.  I can’t seem to convince myself to try it.  I REALLY want to but I think that the dream of it’s wonderful deliciousness can never live up to the real thing and I don’t want to be let down.  *** Breaking breakfast news …. Del Taco has a breakfast taco!  What???!!!!  Breakfast tacos are the best.  It’s tiny and compact and just enough so that your stomach doesn’t want to eat itself in the morning but not too much that you feel like you have consumed your daily calorie intake before 8AM.  Total breakfast breakthrough.

The next big fight after breakfast is the late night crowd or, as I’m sure the marketers of these establishments call them, the “drunk stoner folks with disposable income.”  Now I’m rarely out and about after 10 PM and if I am I’m not really looking for a 4th meal (thank you Taco Bell for that) but if I was I have quite a lot of options.  Jack in the Box seems to really have that crowd researched and buttoned down.   Awhile back when I was walking the neighborhood looking for lost Miles dog everything was closed up and dead EXCEPT the local Jack in the Box.  That place was HOPPING!  Recently I saw a commercial for McDonald’s newest late night option.  They offer a bogo (buy one get one) on the Big Mac.

The Big Mac!  When is the last time you have had one of those????  I live in Los Angeles.  I’m surprised they still sell them here.  Seriously I don’t know the last time I saw someone chowing down on two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles onions, on a sesame seed bun.  The only person I know who LOVED Big Macs was my Grandma Clemmons.

My Grandma was a little woman who knew how to enjoy life!  She was the best and one thing that I remember is going to McDonalds with her and being in awe of her eating an entire Big Mac.  She loved those things!  She would also go to Marie Calendar’s and get a piece of pie  …. just cause!  It blew my mind!  You could go to Marie Calendar’s, sit down, and order a slice à la mode for no reason at all?  You sure could and if I was with my grandma it could even happen to me!!!

I remember going camping with my Grandma and having a blast.  She was the one who taught me the date shakes at Santa’s Village on the way to Santa Barbara are the best!  I camped with her at Carpinteria State Beach once.  Just her and me (other family members were there for a bit).  I remember looking at flowers with her and buying a t-shirt that said, “Should I be found anywhere else in the universe please return me to Carpinteria, CA for I’m highly respected and dearly loved in that city and they will gladly pay first class postage for me.”  It cracked me up.

I remember one holiday when I started choking on a hard candy and Grandma flung me upside down and smacked me on the back until I threw up the obstruction.  I was pretty shocked by that.  I wasn’t really sure what was happening.  I remember when my dad had a heart attack in Las Vegas and my sister and I stayed with my Grandma while my mom stayed with my dad in the hospital.  My aunt and cousins came down from Santa Barbara to hang with us.  We had a blast!  I still kinda feel bad about that … but I was with Grandma … I had a blast.

One of my favorite stories happened while driving home from my cousin’s house in Santa Cruz.  We stopped at Morro Bay for some salt water taffy.  My cousin and I were horrified as my grandma drove the wrong way on a big street.  She had gotten turned around and wasn’t too worried about it.  It seemed we had a lot of room and she had the whole thing handled.  My cousin and I ducked under the windows in horror of being seen with the crazy lady who just waved at everyone as they passed her honking.  When I got old enough I was the designated driver after that!

My Grandma’s house always had a container of M&Ms.  I’d take a handful and then eat them like you are supposed to.  Separating them all out by color and then eating them in a rainbow pattern (orange, yellow, green, light brown, dark brown — there was no red during these years and blue hadn’t arrived yet) until each color ran out.  She collected bells and they lived in a big glass case off the kitchen.  Each of us grandkids had our favorite.  Mine was the turtle.  They were numbered and cataloged but we were still allowed to take out the ones we liked and play with them.  When my Grandma passed away we were given a bell.  I have the turtle (along with a few others) in my china cabinet.

Thinking of Grandma I wanted one of those Big Macs really bad.  It just so happened that the next day I was out late.  I had gone to a friends artsy fartsy social gathering and it had gone long.  When I got in the car and looked at the clock I was ecstatic.  It was Big Mac bogo time!!!!!  I cruised through the drive thru and ordered up.  I took about 3 bites and wrapped up the rest of my haul and put it in the refrigerator.  Those Big  Macs were my breakfast for the next 3 mornings.  Cold … everything like that is better eaten cold.  Unlike my grandma I wasn’t going to finish one in a sitting.  I made that deal last!  In case you were wondering it was pretty good.  Grandma always knew best!