I love a buffet...

So I'm back from two weeks of "vacation," all ready to gear up for the next six month marathon. You would think that with two weeks off, there would have been lots of time for good blogging, but alas, no such luck. Fortunately, however, I did manage to make time in my busy schedule to do some good eating. So the next few entries will be some highlights...

The first one came early on in our trip back East. Daniel and I were totally zonked from our Red Eye to Charlotte by way of New York. Zonked and ravenous. My always intrepid mother thought that Rock Hill would be a good place to stop to recharge our batteries on our way down to Columbia, but she didn't have any thoughts on where exactly we should eat in this bustling metropolis. Serendipity was on our side, and we spotted Jackson's Cafeteria.



Now my dad and I spent a good bit of time when I was growing up frequenting a similar establishment called S&S Cafeteria. While all I remember of those visits is my love for green jello cut into cubes and served in glass goblets (sans whipped cream, if you please), these memories are fond, and I had a great feeling about Jackson's. They did not let me down...

Daniel scanning the options, searching for the rare non-traif item

Our table; as always a buffet breeds gluttony...

In a well-intended, but fool-hardy attempt to be health conscious, I went for the baked chicken, with sides of a green salad, pinto beans, and mustard greens. Oh, and of course the chicken came with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a yeast roll. Even with the skin removed, the chicken was incredibly flavorful and moist, and combined with the cranberry sauce, it was really very, very good. The pinto beans and mustard greens (that rhymes) were the kind of veggies only available in the south. Impossibly good thanks to the addition of who knows how much pig fat. But in a region of the world that considers macaroni and cheese a vegetable, I think I was being virtuous...

My plate

Daniel ended up with a salmon croquette, hush puppies, spicy corn bread, a green salad, and creamed corn (the only veg without the aforementioned pig fat). Although he claimed to like the salmon croquette, he left a large portion of it on his plate, explaining that when it came to round fried things, he was saving himself for his plate of hush puppies. He seemed equally pleased with the corn and corn bread. To make sure that the meal was well-balanced, he also availed himself of my yeast roll; after all you need a little wheat to supplement all those corn products.

How many ways to prepare corn do you see here?


The thinking person's meatloaf...

My mother, ever the minimalist, stuck to this beautiful stuffed pepper, green beans, and a plate of pickled beets. This pepper was the winner of the afternoon, however. Ground beef, with sweet ketchupy tomato sauce and some kind of breading smashed into a big old green pepper. Yummy. All the joys of meatloaf but with aesthetic appeal to boot. I'm going to try my hand at one of these soon. Delish.

We left satiated and with the feeling that Jackson's had proved an auspicious start for our trip to the homeland...