Pause for ten minutes then my wife came back into my computer room and announced, we don’t have hot dogs.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to has been in a similar conversation. Granted most of the time it has to do with where to go when you go out to eat, but it’s something that we relate to.

It all starts with the lead in question, “Where do you want to go for dinner?” Then it goes on from there.

H. “I don’t know you decide.”
W. “I decided the last time, you decide this time”
H. No you didn’t, so you can decide now.
W. I’m no going to decide, you can.
H. “Okay, what do feel like eating?”
W. “Whatever you want.”
H. “Okay, how about seafood?”
W. “We just had seafood last Friday.”
H. “Okay, let’s go have some Chinese.”
W. “Not tonight!”
H. “Okay, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you decide what you want to eat and then we can pick the place.”
W. “That’s okay, you decide.”

And on and on it goes. In our house when it’s all done we generally go to one of three or four places and end up eating one of the same two or three meals each time.
It is in selecting what we are going to eat that I have the most fun. Please understand that I am a very basic eater. I grew up on hamburger and the 100 ways to cook it and have not strayed far. Most times when I eat out I have beef of some type. Occasionally I’ll eat chicken and on a very few occasions I will order shrimp. The other staple in my meals is potatoes. I can eat them almost anyway anytime.
For me figuring out what to eat is simple. Is it beef, preferably hamburger, and do they serve a potato with it.
Once we have decided on where to eat I can generally tell you what I will be ordering before we get there.
I only look at the menu to make it appear that I am making a new decision and to insure that they haven’t changed the name of the meal I will be ordering.
My wife is one of those people who looks the menu over and thinks about it each time. What I really enjoy about it is that I can generally tell you what she will order by the type of restaurant we are in. But the fun is in playing the menu game.
For us going out to dinner is not just a meal, it’s and adventure.
The adventure for my wife is trying to get me to try something she has ordered. She is on a life long mission to prove to me that what she likes I will like.
I can guarantee that when she tries something new she will do her best to have me try it. “Here, have a bite,” she says as she pushes a fork full of food at me.
“No, that’s okay,” I reply. “I don’t want to ruin the taste I already have in mouth,” I add.
After a few more no’s I generally breakdown and taste it. To date I can only remember one or two times that I didn’t regret it. Neither time was I swayed enough to order it the next time we ate out.
It is an adventure when we go out.
Now that I am trying to change the way I eat the fun I have is ordering the meal knowing that I will be taking most of it home for a second meal.
We generally have an appetizer, then a salad, then the meal. Lately by the time the main course arrives I have had enough to eat so I take it home. I like the look on the waitress or waiters face when they bring it to the table and I immediately ask them to put it all in a takeout container.
Then we have to decide how many containers they should bring us. The fun is in deciding how many containers to put it in and what goes in each container. When we get the containers we must first figure out which side of the container is the bottom and which is the top. Then we have to decide what to put with what.
You would think this would be an easy decision, but if you are taking parts of each meal home you have some major decisions to make. The choices are do you try to get as much in each container as possible so there are fewer containers to deal with, or do you put every item in its own container and then have more containers to struggle with.
The eating adventure never ends.
So the next time you hear the words where do you want to go for dinner just say, why don’t we just eat at the neighbors and do pot-luck. Then pray that the neighbors have not decided to go out for dinner.