I don’t really go out for meals. My mom has trained my stomach to react adversely to restaurant foods. I can count with my fingers the times when I didn’t have a tummy-ache right after eating out.

Like I said, I don’t really go out for meals.

The rare times I do go out for meals, most of the times, I’m not paying for my portion. Those are most likely either we are celebrating something as a department at work or it’s a holiday meal.

My most recent dine-out meal was a few weeks ago at Cracker Barrel with my aunt. She insisted I take her somewhere delicious and different since my mom was temporarily on the other side of the world. There’s not much specialty in my area. Most of the restaurants in the vicinity are catered to the taste of either airmen in a hurry or parents who don’t care what their kids put into their mouth. Not to mention, about 90% of the restaurants around here are franchises.

So nothing really special.

I like Cracker Barrel, though, but to tell you the truth, I love American diner foods and southern cuisine like country fried steaks drowned in gravy or fried catfish with mac n’ cheese. Mmm…

If I had the teeth and the stomach that night at Cracker Barrel, I would’ve gone with the Southern Fried Chicken but then again, I wasn’t paying…

The most money I’ve ever paid for a meal?

I’m getting to that.

I think it might had been my mom’s 2023 birthday. We went to my mom’s favorite restaurant – Red Lobster – and I paid over $50 for our meal. In my opinion, no, it was not worth it. I could’ve gotten so much more food for the bucks at a place like Black Bear Diner or Cracker Barrel. Then again, at Red Lobster, I’m paying for the seafood, for the crab, for the lobster tail which are much more expensive commodities than, say, beef, chicken, pork, or even fish.

My opinion doesn’t matter though because it was my mom’s birthday, but when my birthday comes around, will I get to choose what I want?

Ha, dream on.