There’s a pretty small chain of restaurants that I’ve noticed in a couple small town up in the panhandle of Texas called “K-Bobs”. I’ve only actually eaten at two of them, but when ever I noticed one I get really excited. Now, the food is alright, and the atmosphere and decor haven’t chanced since I was born… but they have this awesome creation they call a salad wagon at the one in Dumas. It’s a giant old school wagon that’s been taken apart and turned into their salad bar. It’s huge, and always stocked with the absolute best salad stuff. They also have a different soup of the day at the end that is great. We always call ahead, because my entire family loves the potato soup and, sometimes, whether or not that is the soup fo the day can effect whether we go that night or the next. It’s like two bucks to add on the salad wagon to any meal, and around six bucks to just get the salad wagon, so every time I go I get the kids meal which is like four bucks and then add the salad wagon, so I can have some French fries and shrimp to take home for lunch the next day. I can make three trips to that wagon and totally stock up and call that my meal, then have another meal for later. So, if you are ever cruising around the panhandle and make a trip through Dumas, I would suggest you stop and get something to eat, because the salad wagon there is one of a kind.

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Having a traditional Christmas dinner is something most American families do this time of year. However my family is choosing to be different in the fact that we have decided to take a taste of a different country for the next few years. We have decided to have Chinese this year and everyone must bring their favorite Chinese dish. I know it sounds pretty weird and things probably couldn’t be any weirder already at our house, but it was a great idea when we started. I laughed so hard when my mother suggested something like this and I continued to laugh until I actually realized that she was serious this was actually something she wanted us to do. I explained that I was ok with a new Christmas dinner but our traditions should remain the same I do not want to eat new food and try a new tradition at the same time it just doesn’t work that way unfortunately. She started to laugh and told me she thought it would be a nice change rather than the same thing constantly at her house. She explained she didn’t know anything about the tradition of the country and she didn’t want our children feeling uncomfortable because we were swaying to much from original tradition. In the long run however we all thought it was a pretty wonderful idea that my mother had come up with. The only problem with the idea is that I am not sure any of us know how to cook food from other countries.

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I have an extremely sensitive sense of smell. Since I was little I have always been able to smell things that no one else around noticed. Sometimes it can be good, but a lot of times it can be annoying. Like, at the gym. I don’t want to be able to smell everything around me when I’m at the gym with a bunch of random people I don’t know. I can also smell people distinctly. Everyone has their own smells, and sometimes they are attractive to me and sometimes they are not. It’s said that the way our pheromones work and are made are from evolution, to help us not mate with those who are related to us. I have to agree with this, because the way that my brother smells is very distinct to me and I don’t care for it. I can’t even share a pillow with him because the smell is so distinct. I also recall things from smells. If I smell a certain perfume on someone, any time I smell that perfume I can remember who else wears it. So, in my case, less is more. When someone comes around that has a ton on it drives me insane because that’s all I can smell. If you stink bad enough to where you need to cover yourself in some kind of spray, then maybe you should just shower and start from scratch. A little soap goes a long way for someone who can smell like me, and I’d rather someone wore nothing than covered themselves in sprays.

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I’m totally in the Thanksgiving mindset. When I think about what I want to eat for lunch, all I can crave is Turkey. I’m tempted to go somewhere and get some thanksgiving food to eat, but I really don’t want to be disappointed or ruin the special, rare meal. At Roly Poly Sandwiches, which is at about 4th and Frankford, they have the Thanksgiving special sandwich all year long, which has turkey, stuffing, and cranberry in it. I don’t know how I feel about them sticking some cranberry in there randomly, but I guess it just adds to the novelty of the sandwich. I’ve never tried it, but I was about 3 seconds away from going there yesterday and getting one to cure my turkey and stuffing cravings. It’s going to be hell when I get home and my mom is cooking and I still have to wait until dinner time to eat. A lot of families have their Thanksgiving meals for lunch, but ours has always done it at dinner. I guess we want to be extra hungry when the times rolls around so we can stuff ourselves silly. I think if we ate it at lunch, we would all fall asleep for the rest of the day and wake up right at dinner to eat more Thanksgiving food, and then sleep again. Most of the time we meet up and hang out for a bit while everyone is getting the final touches completed, then we all sit down and talk and then eat. Then, some of us take naps and some of us play games, depending on how much food we ate. I can’t wait to eat!

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This week, on the way to my home town for Thanksgiving, my brother and I are planning to meet in Canyon to go to Bonzi. “What’s that?” you say, to which I reply “THE BEST SUSHI PLACE EVER”. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. The best sushi that I’ve had in my entire life can be found in Texas, and even worse, can be found in Canyon, Texas. I don’t know how they learned their trade, or if they have some kind of magical powers that gives them the freshest crab, tuna, eel, salmon, ETC, but something amazing is going on in that place that I can’t even explain well enough to give it justice. And, on top of that, they are CHEAP. It’s just some little hole in the wall restaurant, but they know what they’re doing. I’ve had sushi in California, Dallas, all over the place that you would think would be good, but nothing can beat Bonzi. And, even better, their creativity. They have sushi rolls that have raw jalapeño in them. Someone sat down and tried a bunch of different combinations with raw jalapeño and found something that tastes like heaven. And I feel for them. But I also love them because they invented some amazingly hot sushi that tastes like nothing you can get anywhere else in the world. I hope that you out there can make a trip to Canyon some day, and if you do, find Bonzi and eat there. You will not be disappointed.

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Buffets have good qualities, and they have bad qualities. You can pay a relatively small price to go into a buffet and eat anything you want. Some of them have tons of different options, so you can pay just one price and eat every single thing in there. You can just get small portions and try everything, or you can get tons and tons of them and waste all the food you don’t eat. Some of them have one main item, like crab legs, and you can sit around and eat as many of the one item as you can. The pizza ones are amazing, they will usually make any type of pizza you ask them to make. I love all you can eat salad bars too, because then you don’t have to just eat unhealthy food or just stuff yourself with one thing. But… the bad side. It’s really really hard for me to just eat until I feel satisfied. I just want to eat everthing, I want to try everything they have to offer, and I will eat until I am uncomfortably full. I have the mentality that I paid the fee, so I might as well get my money’s worth and then as much else on top of it. If they have desserts, I want to try every one of them. If they are pizza, I want to try all the different kinds and then make a few of my own. I can’t eat at a buffet and feel “good”, I feel like I’ve gained 15 pounds.

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Being broke is no fun. Everybody knows that. It’s stressful and just makes you feel plain bad about yourself. Broke is one thing, an ugly torturous thing, but being badly bent is quite another. Being badly bent is when you have just enough cash to not loose to much weight and keep your car. I have had the best times being bent. It inspires me to use my imagination to make a good time. Traveling on a budget is fun because you end up staying at and eating at places with “character” and character always makes good photos and memories. One time my friend and I were able to buy 51 grocery items for 15 bucks. Everything was in a yellow box, bag, can or peel. It was fun to TRY to make generic yellow boxed food items taste good. Everyone gets badly bent at some point. All you can really do about it is try to make it into something positive. Being poor is strangely inspirational to me. It’s hard to get complacent when your uncomfortable and it’s hard to be comfortable when you have a crappy job and have to eat all yellow food stuffs. I’ve had my best ideas when I’ve been bent. My mind is constantly working to try to get me out of whatever stupid situation I’ve gotten myself into. Being bent inspired me to move out from under my ex-boyfriend which took me from Albuquerque, Ruidoso, around the world, and back to school. I really think everyone need to bent at some point. They key though, is to be ingenuitive enough to not get broke.

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I recently read a news story about a school in Moberly, Missouri and it’s effort to help hungry kids this holiday season. The school filled one hundred and six backpacks with food and lined them up in the hallways of the elementary school. The idea is that the children, who would otherwise go hungry, can nonchalantly snag a pack full food and schlep in out without having to be identified as hungry or poor. The school began to realize that while kids were getting breakfast and lunch during the week at school, a lot of them were going hungry over the weekends. The backpacks are filled with kid-friendly, healthy-ish food items that are easy and safe to prepare if an adult is not able to help out. Many kids have single working parents who do not have the time or money to make meals for their kids. This program has actually had a lot of success in the small rural community. Many families that previously needed the assistance from the backpack plan have begun to return the favor after they got back on their feet by bringing extra food items to the school whenever possible.
Just think about all of the cans of food you have shoved back in your cabinets that you will never use or have already expired. It may just be dusty, worthless can of beans to you, but there is sustenance and nutrition in that can that you are obviously lucky enough to not be in need of. Now obviously, you wouldn’t want to donate your expired food items to anybody, throw those away. But if you know you aren’t gonna use any of the non-expired junk in the back of your cabinets (and you know you won’t), why not just give it away?

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On 19th Street close to Memphis there is a little restaurant called Jazz. Before I was 21, a few of my friends and I went here to eat dinner. One of my friends was taking a class called The History of Jazz, and she was required to go there once a month and watch a jazz band play. We decided to make an evening out of it, and all go together and eat some dinner. I absolutely love the food there. They call themselves a “Louisiana kitchen”, and they serve food that is Cajun. The atmosphere is what makes this place one of my favorites. It just has an older feel to it, all made of wood and really small and close together. I love bars that have little original things they do, and here people sign their names on dollar bills and then hang them around the restaurant, so you can look around and see peoples’ names that have been there or the pictures they drew on the money. Every week they have a live band play really good jazz music, so you can go in there and eat dinner and get a live show at the same time. They are getting more popular and have opened up a few new stores, but Lubbock is where it started. When I turned 21, we would go in there and eat and they have a good selection of bottled beers and a few selections on draft. Their happy hour is Monday through Friday, 3 pm to 6 pm. I would say this is a good place for a group to go and hang out, and also a good place to take a date.

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United Market Street is AWESOME. You can get anything there. And, now that Lubbock can sell alcohol, they have the best selection in town. It’s one of my favorite places to go for lunch, because their giant food area has so much to pick from you can get anything. I usually get sushi when I’m there, you can actually go over to where they make it and watch them or ask them to make something special for you. They have tons of options, sometimes I like to get random things that don’t go together because it all look so good. The last time I went in there I got chicken strips and sushi, a strange combination but it just sounded good. I love their soup, too. They always have different ones. And they have a guy that will make your salad for you just how you want it, or you can go back and they have a big salad bar and you can make it yourself. They have some of the most random things, but that’s what makes it so cool. It’s really like a market instead of a grocery store. It has a pretty sweet selection of seafood, and you can buy different products that are already seasoned perfectly so all you have to do is go home and put them on the grill. I totally love going here just to eat or to do my grocery shopping. United Market Street cannot fail!

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