Maried on my Callender

Lunch has never been my favorite meal of the day, but I do enjoy partaking with people I love. I have lunch because I have love. (So serious...)

Minutes after officially withdrawing from the Kundalini program, I called my brother, Daniel. I wanted to have lunch. I told him to think of a place to eat. After a minor discussion between Daniel and his girlfriend, Hannah, they decided they didn't want Tex-Mex. Daniel was about to to perform an online food search, when Hannah's eyes widened and a name escaped her lips, "Marie Callender's." Daniel snapped his head at her with a look of, "Are you serious?" I paused and reflected on my curiosity of the place every time I drive past it. "Ok let's do it. I want to go there out of pure curiosity," I affirmed Hannah's suggestion. Daniel looked a little confused as if he couldn't believe we just made that decision and were actually following through with it. Deep down, he secretly wanted to go too.

When I think of Marie Callender, I immediately think of frozen meals found in your grocer's freezer. Upon entering the Marie Callender establishment, I had second thoughts. Once Daniel held the green door open, there was no going back. We sat in a green booth. Kent called, he was with Gloria so I them to join us for our dining experience.

Looking over the menu I noticed a huge lack in vegetarian options, and the ones available seemed to be smothered in processed cheese, as if that's the most appealing way to get people to eat vegetables. I recalled a couple times I stood before a grocer's freezer and glanced over Marie Callender's selection of meals. Her pot pies are good, I can give her that. Then a disturbing thought entered my head. As read over the menu I realized that probably all these meals are made available, frozen style. I put the menu down, took a deep breath, and leaned forward, "I think all the meals they serve here are frozen. I get the feeling that they don't really cook with fresh food. I can understand from a cost effective stand point why they would do that because they can prepare and freeze food in bulk, which cuts costs and reduces waste. Because of this there is no need to purchase fresh produce on a regular basis, so they have a fixed cost for food materials. Restaurants that use fresh produce have to take into account the amount of food materials to purchase on a regular basis and whatever doesn't get used becomes a sunk cost, and expired materials become waste. Now I'm not sure if each meal they "prepare" here is individually wrapped, and if so that would incur great waste due to packaging and leads to more greater initial expenses. I think that most people who do eat Marie Callender's food, buy it frozen, and because of this they are use to how her frozen food tastes, so when they come to the restaurant, it would make sense to have the frozen food they eat at home to taste how it does in the restaurant. I'm just saying, I get the feeling that the food here is not fresh."

As Daniel and Kent listened and looked over the food options together, Kent popped his head over the menu and in his Chinese-Mexican-USA accent he read, "Marie serves up a wide variety of classic American foods updated with today's flavors. Marie's commitment to freshly prepared foods using only the highest-quality ingredients still endures. If we could use one word to describe our food...it's fresh!"

Somehow that statement was not resonating. "I think there is something weird going on here."

Our server came to take our order. I wasn't hungry so I asked Hannah if I could have a bite of her meatball sandwich. She gave me a weird look (I don't eat beef or pork) and said, "Sure." She added soup and salad bar to her meal. My thought was to share soup and salad with Hannah. That way I don't actually have to pay for a meal and less food will be wasted. This did not sit well with Daniel, "As a person who works in the service industry I don't think it's right that you get to eat for free. You really should pay for the soup and salad bar. At the end of the day we are all the same."

A little guilt came over me and as the server came back around we added the soup and salad bar to Daniel's meal for $3.99. It's only $3.99 if you order a meal. If all you order is the soup and salad bar it's $6.99. We found a compromise. I had a new respect for my brother and appreciated him being honest with his conscience.

Gloria noticed that all the other tables had cornbread. Why didn't we have cornbread? As our server placed a second plate of "fresh" cornbread at a table of six, grandma at the head of the table, in mid-bite with some cornbread, demanded, "We need more cornbread." The deal with the cornbread is...you have to ask for it. Within two hott minutes, "fresh" cornbread sat before us.

A man with a spider web tattoo on his face sat with his mother at the table next to us. He kept trying not to stare at Gloria and Kent. Gloria gave him a friendly smile, and Kent nodded. The man looked at them, looked at his mother, and then looked at his food. Gloria was a little hurt. Marie Callender's probably doesn't receive many guests that look like Gloria and Kent. Kent is Chinese and Mexican and also celebrates Jewish holidays. Gloria was left on the door step of a professional Magnet Collector, who remains androgynous, so we have no grasp of Gloria's heritage, but we love her all the same.

Hannah and I marched up to the soup and salad bar. This would suffice. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Marie provides beets at her salad bar. I love beets! This gives me a little hope. As I approached the salad dressings I took note of the salad dressing layout. Picture a diamond shape: Honey-Mustard dressing sitting at the top point. Ranch at the left point; Blue Cheese at the right point, and Thousand Island between those two; below rested Raspberry Vinaigrette nestled next to Cesar; holding down the fort at home base was Italian. I usually go with Italian, but by the looks of him, it seemed that Blue-Cheese, Raspberry Vinaigrette, and Honey-Mustard had rained on his parade, due to his positioning of being on the bottom of the diamond. I looked over all the other dressings and Honey-Mustard had invaded all of them. In order to put Honey-Mustard on your plate you have to reach over all the rest, scoop it up, and no matter how hard one tries, it drizzles into all the other dressings. Honey-Mustard was the only dressing that had not been violated. As I scooped Honey-Mustard onto my salad and I thought, "Really? I enjoy a good Honey-Mustard, but not on salad, and I can't believe I had to make this decision because all the other dressings were contaminated with HM. No matter which dressing I choose, HM would be there. At least this way I won't be eating it mixed in with Blue-Cheese and Thousand Island." I didn't put too much on because another thought entered my mind, "What if the Honey-Mustard was strategically placed there for a reason? Maybe it was about to go bad, so they put HM at the top of the diamond knowing that other people wouldn't want to eat the other dressings because there was no way someone could make a clean sweep with no dressing drizzle directly to their plate. Which left HM the only viable choice."

I noticed quite a few employees hovering around the kitchen doors. Then I moved on to the soup. I scooped some Cheesy Potato soup into a small bowl and headed back to the booth. The taste reminded me of something. After some inspection I discovered that the soup was actually scalloped potatoes, just in soup form (Aside from the physical food, I really was enjoying myself). Daniel came back from the restroom and with a contemplative look, "Did you guys look into the kitchen? And do you hear all those beeping noises? I've been hearing them the whole time but couldn't figure out what it was. I just walked by there and saw at least five huge microwaves. I believe there to be more."

Everyone stopped eating and looked down at their plates. "Well there is nothing wrong with a frozen meal every now and then, but shit, I could have gone to my grocer's freezer and paid about half of what I'm paying here. I guess it's more about the experience." stated Kent.

Marie Callendar's portrait glared at us from the wall...

"She knows that we know her secret," whispered Gloria, "We should leave." We paid our bill and all agreed to not eat at Marie Callender's again, but we will still buy her pot pies, which can be found in your grocer's freezer :)

WHAT I LEARNED:

1. Be honest about the goods and services you consume

2. Just because someone looks different, doesn't mean they are (well they are different, but everybody poops)

3. If you think it's frozen food and are not sure, it probably is

4. Marie Callender is the Frozen Food Queen