Charlie and I loaded up the car and left for Wellsboro, PA, early on Saturday morning. My dad was at The Green Home rehabilitating after his fall. It was important to visit him and my mom, for whom I was also concerned. She had been traveling to and from their home to Wellsboro for over a month. I hoped she wouldn’t entirely wear out. Now my dad is doing better, and they are back home.
But I am here to report on Charlie’s and my food escapades through southern New York State and northern Pennsylvania during the weekend. Travel often means road food, or at least strange-diner food.
Our first stop is always Starbucks off the interstate in Saratoga Springs. My sense memory conjures the aroma of nearly-burned dark roast and other comforting smells associated with Starbucks worldwide. Pushing through the doors is always a heady pleasure. I ordered hot chocolate with a shot of hazelnut and Charlie had a tall house. Our consumer appetites sated, we continued on our way.
Upon arriving in Wellsboro’s quaint downtown, we visited dad. When we got back to my parents’ home, the three of us agreed to reconvene at 5 p.m. at P&J’s Restaurant on Main Street after Charlie and I checked into our B&B and my mother went to 4 o’clock Mass.
I’ve eaten at P&J’s for breakfast before. I had the “stuffed muffin,” or in McDonald-speak, an Egg McMuffin. The sandwich was cheesy and appropriately greasy. P&J’s dinner menu was only a bit more elaborate, featuring usual small diner fare, which included hamburger steak. Let me interpret – the dish is hamburger, flattened out into the shape of a steak, then smothered in mashed potatoes and the most unnaturally dark brown gravy I have ever seen. My mother ordered this – it’s her favorite. I had scallops, my husband asked for fried chicken. He and I also requested a dinner salad. We got pale iceberg chunks with bits of tomato.
The smell of sizzling lard and very little noise emanated from P&J’s kitchen despite the fact there were about 20 customers. Our server, Jeff, is the “J” in “P&J’s.” The “P” stands for Peggy, Jeff’s wife and lone cook on the premises. Chefly chores don’t seem to interfere too much with Peggy’s side interests of TV watching and computer games at the back of the restaurant.
When we returned to our room, Charlie and I had a huddle. I whispered so that our hosts couldn’t possibly hear me, “My scallops had to have been shaken out of a big freezer bag and probably nuked.” One of Peggy’s main duties was most likely to count out the tiny scallops. One, two, three . . . the menu had promised 20 pieces. Charlie’s chicken was of the same industrial ilk as my scallops. But we were hungry, so we ate. And we chided ourselves for being food snobs.
The next morning, we stopped at One ‘Heck’ of a Place, a local truck stop on the way to Wellsboro. This restaurant is owned by The Heck Family. Mr. Heck looked like a mountain hillbilly, or a leftover hippie. Either way, he was very friendly and very hairy. The syrup on my French toast was corn syrup, not the pure maple I was accustomed to as a Vermonter. The bacon was super greasy and a bit rubbery, and by now, Charlie and I were dying to reconnect with our farm fresh, Vermont roots. If a head of romaine were to have fallen from one of the food trucks driving through town, I would have pulled over, picked it up from the road and eaten the entire thing on site. I wondered how the locals didn’t have scurvy, and I fretted over my parents’ eating habits even though it’s a little late to be worrying about that now since they are in their eighties and are the first ones who would consider me a food snob. They grew up in a different era when the convenience of canned and processed foods was touted as the new version of good food.
By Sunday night after a turkey club sandwich at Lee’s Kitchen and my subsequent severe stomach ache that caused me to fold into fetal position, Charlie and I decided to forgive ourselves. We aren’t food snobs at all.
Although I realize these small dining establishments are the owners’ livelihoods, I also realize that we are fortunate and enlightened when it comes to food. In Vermont, there is a consciousness about local, healthy food that was part of its everyday culture before the term, “local”, came into vogue and featured in The New Yorker magazine’s jokes and articles. We understand that the food we eat affects our well being so we do our best to look for food value, and by that I don’t mean how cheap we can get it, but how much health can be gained through its consumption.
Here in Addison County, Vermont, small farms deliver fresh vegetables, cheese, eggs, meat and fruit to small grocery stores daily and weekly. During the winter, there are hydroponic veggies available from local growers. Food is provided seasonally, and if we can’t grow it, our co-ops source it from reliable providers from as close by as possible. Packaged foods are screened for healthy production practices and much of it complies with high standards.
The pictures of the women and men who grow our food are hung above the bins of sweet potatoes, organic mesclun and rutabagas. These people work within and for our community, more like extended family members than vendors or nearly invisible farmers from far away. Cheeses are individually hand-wrapped and marked with labels that note the farms where they were made. Charlie and I, like many of our friends and neighbors, nurture our own gardens and cultivate tomatoes, squash and beans, which we freeze and enjoy well into winter months. Healthy food is the norm. And yes, I’ll admit it. Occasionally, I will indulge in a corporately-concocted Starbucks latte.
Frozen industrial bits out of big plastic bags disconcert, and will hopefully become unacceptable and passé for everyone in the near future. A lot of education and local and organic farm management needs to happen. Vermont, along with other communities who care about their food, will remain trailblazers, models of healthful food education. For now, sadly, I suspect, most of America eats at P& J’s Restaurant.
