dinner at pf changs

Earlier tonight, I was thinking about the best fried rice I have ever had. It was this year, when we were camping. H had brought some old take out rice with us. He cooked it on a cast iron skillet with bacon instead of chinese sausage. He put in it some carrots and whatever other vegetables we had taken from home, in the hopes that we would use them while we were camping. My mom would call this a mingongo. Anyway, he fried this up in a cast iron skillet over a butane burner on top of the old chuckbox that we took camping when I was a little girl. Annabelle was riding her bike nearby and Tootles was sleeping in a her pack-N-play under an oak tree. We ate it out of styrofoam whataburger cups because the people who were bringing the paper plates weren't there yet. And it was delightful.

I was thinking this as we were at PF Chang's tonight. We have never been there as a couple. I have, of course, being somewhat white, I can go into those places without feeling like a total banana (yellow on the outside....). When we go out to eat, it is usually in real hole in the wall places or somewhere in Chinatown. But tonight we had a Christmas errand to run and we had to go do it near PF Changs. It is one of those loud, trendy type places where young people sit at the same table and text each other and old people eat lemon chicken.

It was near Tallulah's bed time, but there was no pack-play and no oak tree. Just chop sticks for her to throw on the floor and then scream in delight when Annabelle would run and pick them up for her. They did this about 50 times and it was keeping them relatively happy.

The food was alright. Solid. I have had worse--I've had worse in Chinatown.

It was Friday, date night. When I am 100 years old and an inmate in some facility somewhere, I will still want to go out to eat. And hopefully, Herman, my nursing home boyfriend, will walk me to the cafeteria to get some jello (H will have stroked out sometime before--bacon, get it???). Maybe I will remember two hyper girls gobbling down fried rice at a busy restaurant.

But I know I will always remember that frio river fried rice.