Saturday, October 25, 2008
A nice fall here in Oregon, cool nights, lots of sunny days. At our house, though, the mouse war has flared up. Will the carnage never end? We planned to photograph the corpses, but eventually decided this would be tasteless and might get us in trouble with somebody or other. In Ankara, as we keep remembering, there weren't that many living things at all in our apartment, not even a bug as a rule. Their absence was a little ominous. And then once, in the early summer, suddenly there was a bat in the living room!
We're trying all sorts of odd and ends of American type food here, just because they're available. I cooked up some Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits, the large size called Grands. Ugh. What do they put in those? We also tried some Pepperidge Farm dark chocolate chunk cookies. Blech! I think we used to like those. Have they changed or have we? On the other hand, Keebler pecan sandies are not bad in an oily sort of way, and Lu Little Schoolboy cookies are fine--same as we remember and the same as we got in Turkey. Last weekend I tried some bagged salad greens with some bottled bleu cheese dressing, the dressing that's supposed to be good because you buy in the produce section. Oh dear. I suppose it was food. Much better than nothing, but imagine you could have anything you wanted to eat...it sure wouldn't be bagged salad and bottled dressing. The avocados are good here, though, and there are some nice grapefruit, also great potato chips and cheap liquor compared to where we were last. We tried some organic peanut butter too; it's expensive, but the mice really go for it. The peanut butter in Turkey was very sweet, not our sort of thing.
Going beyond Corvallis food, one of the innocents just spent some time in and around Austin, Texas and got to sample a Texas Roadhouse restaurant. Great stuff. She was especially impressed by the Tater Skins, which really are, as they say, "topped with cheddar cheese, bacon and sour cream." Now that's America. (We used to consider the Coney Dog to be iconic American food, but that's so early 20th century!) The Roadhouse Corporation supports Habitat for Humanity and a road cycling team as well as sponsoring Willie Nelson tours, this last appearing to be an attempt to add some Tejano credibility to a chain that was started in Clarksville, Indiana by a Kentuckian who reportedly spent a few years working in Colorado.
Chief food suppliers to Texas Roadhouse include Tyson Foods and Smithfield Foods. Tyson is the largest meat producer in the world, producing large quantities of beef and pork as well as processing 42.5 million chickens a week in 54 processing plants. Although Smithfield is a smaller company by total revenue ($11 billion annually vs. Tyson's $26 billion) it is the king of pork producers. In 2006 Smithfield processed 5.9 billion pounds of pork.
For any teachers who might be thinking of fleeing the British invasion, Roadhouse is hiring. Claimed job benefits include:
• Flexible work schedules
• 1 week paid vacation after 1 year of service
• Fantastic outings & incentives
• The ability to dance & have fun at work!
• Superior training
• Opportunities for advancement
• And best of all…Growth!
