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Archive : September 2007

September 21, 2007

The family's coming, pull out the stretchable pants!

Why is it that when we have people from out of town come to visit, we ourselves pretend that we are on vacation too? Here's the scenario: my family is from Tennessee, so we don't get to visit as often as I'd like. They recently came out for a weekend visit with goals to: discover the biggest, best steak they've ever consumed, compete amongst the family who could eat three giant meals a day, plus snacks, and still fit in the same pants at the end of the weekend that they started with at the beginning and most importantly, to go back to Tennessee so full of Texas eats and baked goods that I prepared for their visit that they could not eat a single cracker for 2 months.
Of course I was up for the eating competition, even though I've lived here long enough to know what my family's favorites would be....and that was the problem. Because Abilene is lucky enough to have so many great restaurants, this made it very difficult to decide where to eat everyday. So like every other American family does, we planned each day around our meals. We woke up, ate, did stuff, ate lunch, did more stuff, who wants ice cream, more stuff, need a cookie, did stuff again, had dinner, don't forget dessert, did a few more things, bed time, bed time snack, repeat tomorrow.
Who's the guy that said only 3 square meals a day? There should be 12 meals plus snacks! I wanted my family to get to taste all our great town had to offer in a very limited amount of time. Therefore, all we could do naturally was stuff ourselves silly like we'd never seen a t-bone, a taco or chicken fried steak in our lives. We had to consume it all so we could say we did and feel whalish and miserable when it was time for them to depart, yea! No, really, we did do some fabulous eating, and my dad discovered the best steak he's ever consumed, so I think some did achieve their goals. I, myself, had to starve 3 weeks leading up to their arrival so my stomach could be completly empty enough to handle the 27 t bones. Unfortunatley, I'm still working to get those pants that I wore before the visit back on, until then I'll be comfy in the stretchables!