My Culinary Odyssey: Martin

    The next stop in this series is Martin, as it is the next location with multiple spots. (I will be coming back to some places I skipped over later in the series.) While not that big, I do have some notable memories associated with some of these spots. Check back with the introduction here to see how the entries will be organized. Let's start things up.

• Second story pizza parlor, DI:  Many, many years ago when I was a kid, I remember stopping at the Martin Y and walking up an outdoor staircase to a pizza parlor. It had booths and a pinball machine. We had to wait quite a bit for the food to get done. My mother took me outside at one point onto the stairs.  I remember it being night out, but not too cold, so I'm guessing it was early evening in early fall. I don't remember what I ate that night. It was the only time I remember going there, although I think I remember driving around another night to find some other pizza place between Martin and Allen, but it could be this one, or another. The intersection at Martin has been remade a few times since then, so I can't be sure where the pizza place once was.  The only two-story building still standing does not seem to have an outdoor metal staircase.  However, there is a Giovanni's right in the middle of the roads.  Whether or not it is the same pizza place from when I was a kid, I don't know.  I have not eaten from the current place, to the best of my knowledge.
• [Super America, currently Speedway, TO:  Back in the 80s, we would occasionally stop here for me to pick up a fountain drink and/or some pre-packaged food when we weren't going anywhere special. Never for fuel. After some corporate mergers and buy-outs, the name got changed to Speedway. We would still stop there time to time, but almost never for a drink. Haven't stopped there in well over five years.]
• Long John Silver's, TO:  When the LJS was built at Martin, it opened some new opportunities for me. It was in the perfect location to pick up dinner on the way back from long shopping trips to Huntington or Lexington so we wouldn't have to cook dinner. Since it was closer to home, the food wouldn't have to be reheated as much as a dinner from Prestonsburg. We would go in to place the order, and I would wait for the order to be packed while my mom went to the restroom.  It was here where I first tried their "lobster bites" (Actually, it was some other shellfish.).  I felt it was too buttery for me, but I didn't have any allergic reactions. By the 2010s, our eating and shopping habits had changed. We were getting in earlier now, so we had the time to actually cook dinner again some trips. My mom would demand to eat at another place in Prestonsburg on other occasions. (I'll bring that one up in a future post.) As such, we basically stopped going there.  The last time I stopped there was around 2020, after the worst of the pandemic conditions were lifted.  There had been a wreck on the mountain on the way home, so we had to detour a very long way around that night.  Because we were going to be so late, and we had some coupons, we decided to try the Martin LJS. By the time we got to Allen, mom suggested we take the old road to Martin instead of Route 80.  Now, I had driven on Route 80 many times, day and night.  I had rarely driven down the old road, and never at night. I was going super slow to make sure I didn't wreck. By the time we got to Martin, the LJS way shuttering the lobby for the night. We didn't go to the door to make sure, and I don't do drive-throughs, so we were forced to go somewhere else.  I would soon find out that they were closing the LJS, and I had missed my last chance to eat there. The spot is now a Mexican restaurant.  As to where I would wind up eating that night, it wasn't the next entry.
• [McDonald's, TO, ⭐️:  Now, I haven't eaten at many McDonald's.  However, I have driven my mom to this one to stop for coffee and for her to use the restroom some mornings. In fact, we have stopped there just a few months ago. I had only been in here once, on the night mentioned above. When it looked like the LJS had shut down the lobby for the night, we tried here instead.  When my mom looked over the ordering kiosk, she was confused about how to do it.  She also balked at the price of what I would be getting. She refused to order from there, even after I said I would get something cheaper and pay for it myself. Even though it would be way too late to cook something and I didn't have anything at home to fix, we left.  We would stop at a supermarket where I picked up something nowhere near enough for dinner, cheap. While she said she was sad about me not having anywhere near enough to eat that night, (she settled for leftovers, which I can't eat due to my sensitive tongue) she has never apologized for what she did. I won't say any more.]
• Burger Queen, later Dairy Queen, DI/TO:  Burger Queen was probably the first chain restaurant at the Martin Y. Or at least a forerunner of it was.  There were a lot of name changing and rebranding back then.  Anyway, the only and last time I remember eating there was my sophomore year of high school. I was in band, and we stopped here on the way back from performing at a tournament ball game. My mom was a chaperone, so I ate with her.  Just some fires, as I was just coming out of the worst of my picky eater stage.  Soon after that time, Burger Queen got bought out by Dairy Queen and got remodeled by the 90s. We would stop there a few times that decade, mostly on the way back from taking my grandmother from the doctor. I would get a Blizzard, while my mom would get one for my grandmother. Back then, there was still a focus on making your own, which was good for me since I didn't like many of the mix-ins.  Nowadays, it is more on the pre-selected flavor combinations. This would lead me to create my own recipe clone. First, I would take some vanilla ice cream on put it in a metal bowl to thaw a little in the refrigerator for around thirty minutes. (All time are estimated.  Your times may vary.) I would then get it out and add the mix ins. Mine were mashed banana and strawberry jam.  I would then use a hand mixer, with maybe just one beater in, the combine everything.  I would drizzle in some 'Magic Shell" chocolate sauce while mixing, so it would combine without most of it solidifying.  I would then put the bowl back in the freezer for another 30 to 45 minutes.  I would then take it out and mix again for a few minutes. While it wasn't an actual concrete, the generic industry term for said frozen treat, it was quite close.  An emersion blender would have worked better, but I didn't have one back then and they weren't yet that popular. I don't remember where I got this idea. It could have been Food Network, but I don't think our cable provider had it yet. Anyway, it was such a complicated treat, that I ultimately stopped making it, especially after our mixer died and most stores stopped carrying my favorite brand of ice cream.  I haven't had a Blizzard at any Dairy Queen in decades.  We continued to stop at this DQ a few more times for coffee for my mom, but not in many years.

        This ends my trip through Martin.  Next week, I will make my first stop of about three for Prestonsburg. Hope to see you there.

My Culinary Odyssey: Wheelwright

     Today, my culinary odyssey series takes off with my first destination, Wheelwright. I am taking as fairly loose definition of both "Wheelwright" and "eating out."  You'll soon see what I mean. Click the link here to see the introduction of this series and see how I will be organizing it. Time to begin.

• Wheelwright Clubhouse pizzeria, TO:  I remember when I was a young kid about going up to the Wheelwright clubhouse on a Saturday night to get a cheese pizza, then eating it a home with a root beer while watching Matinee at the Bijou on KET.  This was a series recreating an actual movie-going experience from the early twentieth century. It had the cartoon, serial, and feature film just how they would've been shown in the theatre, sometimes including the newsreel and promotional films, too. Once, I stayed in the car so I wouldn't be seen by someone whose birthday party I wasn't allowed to attend wouldn't see me, but they did anyway. We stopped going after a time, and I thought the place had closed down.  Apparently, they had actually moved to a building next to the Wheelwright High School, and I only found out about it recently. I even went off campus a few times to go in there to pick something up for others, but I never actually ate there myself. The clubhouse would lie abandoned for a few years before being torn down, leaving a vacant lot.  A few years ago, a kiddie park and walking tract finally replace it. The second building burned down, but was rebuilt. The pizza place did eventually close, and the place is currently a Mexican restaurant which I don't plan on eating at.
• Bypro Dairy Bar, TO: Some summers, after I had went swimming, we would bet ice cream for a treat.  Sometimes it was a custard from here.  I got tired of them after a while.  The last time I ate one, probably when I was about ten or eleven, I got a little sick soon afterwards.  Never had one there again. However, the place was still open 2003.  After the flood that took out my old home, we got some food there that first night while staying elsewhere. Although it is under new management, the place is still open all these decades later.  It is probably the oldest place still open that will be included in this series.
• [Hall's Community Market, TO]:  For a brief time in the early 80s, this grocery store used to have a Slushpuppy machine. I loved slushies when I was a kid (kinda still do), and I would get one almost every week.  Usually cherry or strawberry I think.  I occasionally tried other flavors, usually when my favorites were out.  I hated the blue raspberry abomination for the first time there.  How anyone would want raspberries to be blue when there is a perfectly good blue berry out there, namely blueberry, is beyond me. Unfortunately, the machine would frequently break down or be out of flavorings. The machine was ultimately taken out, I think. I stopped getting them about the same time I stopped going into local stores for fear of embarrassment in meeting any of my classmates. The market is still open, with new owners. I don't think they have any slushie machines anymore.
• Osborne Elementary School, DI:  This is a stretch, but I ate there, sort of.  When I started kindergarten, I would lunch at the school. By first grade though, my mom found out that I wasn't eating most of the meals most of the time.  I was a very picky eater when I was a kid. I would end up taking my own lunch.  At least some of my friends did too, so I didn't feel too picked on, although a few kids did because of my limited lunch choices. I continued bringing my lunch throughout grade school, although my friends stopped before eighth grade, making me the odd one out. I would occasionally buy concessions at recess, mostly shushes, but they stopped that practice.  Ultimately, they brought in vending machines, which I never used. The school was closed a few years ago due to consolidation. The buildings remain empty to this day. {Note:  I never ate lunch at Wheelwright High, as they looked even less appetizing than those at Osborne. I never had anything from the vending machines or the concessions stands either. I did get some free promotional snacks, as well as buying the occasional sells item. I did have a leftover piece of cake the last week of school from an event I didn't attend, but that was it. The school was closed for consolidation a few years after I graduated and two of the buildings were torn down. That second high school was alter consolidated a number of years ago.}
• Unknown pizza place, TO or DEL (I can't remember which): While staying at another place after the 2003 flood, we got a pizza from somewhere.  I don't know where.  The best candidate was Jan and Ben's, now Fat Daddy's. Nothing else to say about it.
• Second unknown pizza place at Price, TO:  I mentioned this one in last year's comic book series. A restaurant opened up across the road from a friend's house in Price, and they also sold comic books. I bought two comics there, but I can't remember if we actually got food there.  I think they were just using a store-bought kit instead of fresh.  Anyway, we only stopped there the one time. The place didn't last long. The building has been vacant for years, if not decades. My friend would go on to go to two other high schools, (the first one, a private school, shut down after his first two years there) and he would move out of the area.  Haven't seen, and barely heard of him, in a very long time.

    That ends today's post.  Next week, we head to Martin, where we start to see more established fining spots.

My Culinary Odyssey: An Introduction

    As I have frequently mentioned in this blogcast, I can be a very picky eater.  Part of this is due to the fact that my mom is a horrible cook.  She has been known to mess up even the most simple of dishes. I didn't even start to appreciate chocolate cake until I was in college because of her. I am also sort of a super-taster. I can detect sublet flavors in various foods.  Not always, but often enough to be put off from eating certain things.  This also means I sometimes combine some odd pairings of foods, to my enjoyment but not always for others.  This is also why I took up cooking.  When I couldn't find anything I liked to eat, I would create something on my own. Okay, I admit I mostly jazz up pre-packaged items, but I do make a few things from scratch. I also have been known to force myself to try new foods and recipes whenever I can. Back in the 90s, I would try as many new things as I could. Sometimes, it was just one new food per week.  At least once, I had a new food or recipe everyday. This includes eating out. When I was very young, I had a difficult time when eating out. I could only eat a few things at a few places, and I couldn't be forced to try anything else. As a grew older, I would venture beyond those few meals and places and try newer things. Admittedly, I still don't go too far outside the lines, but then I don't have that many opportunities either. One of the things I am most proud of though is my ability to recreate and adapt meals I've had eaten out and duplicate them at home. I know, but it isn't as scary as it looks.

    I had been thinking a lot about all the places where I have eaten out from, and I have decided to write about them in my latest blogcast series. This is going to be a very detailed bunch of posts. I will be grouping these place geographically, like I did for my series on comic books last year. I will dedicate a post to each location that has at least two place where I have eaten out at. Each post will have between six and ten places on it.  For those locations with well more than ten spots, I will have multiple posts until I cover them all, with bonus posts on Saturdays so that I can cover an area faster.  Locations where there was only one place will be grouped together at the end in a final post, or two.  I haven't counted them all out yet. Places that are still open will be in blue, at least as of the start of the year. This status may have temporarily or even permanently changed due to recent flooding, but they were open in January and that is what counts. Places that are closed will stay black. This includes places that I am unsure of their status, either because I was too young to remember much about them or too lazy to look up a place I was at only once and didn't care to check up on it. Places in brackets, [like this,] are 'honorable mentions.' This can mean a couple of things. First, it can mean I only got a fountain drink or something like that there, and not any actual food. It could also mean that other people I was with did order something there, but I didn't. Finally, it can mean that I was planning on eating there, but changed my mind before ordering. The actual entry will explain. Places with a star after them, ⭐, means that I have eaten at that place at least once in the last three years. I chose that timeframe as it felt recent enough to show my current tastes, but far back enough to show how much those tastes have change. Abbreviations after the place show just how and where I ate. DI means I actually ate in the lobby of the place. TO means take-out, and I ate either at home or, the more likely lately, at my store. Finally, DEL stands for delivery, and the food was brought to me. The entry will explain the details. I will try to describe some of the things I ate at each place.   I will also include some further tidbits about why I like each place. However, I won't be going too negative about any location that I think I will be returning to. Places that I know I won't be going back to will be graded harshly if I feel it is necessary.  Future installments will not contain this legend, but I will probably include a link to this post so I won't have to keep explaining things. I hope you are hungry, for there is going to be a lot to digest. 

Confessions of a Lapsed Weekend-Warrior

    As I have mentioned many times before here, the mid 90s were a rough time for me. I wasn't able to finish the education I wanted. I couldn't get a job. I had absolutely no social life. I was miserable. So, I decided to change up my life in any way I could. One of those ways was to take up weightlifting. I wasn't much of a jock or athlete in school, but I always thought I had the potential, if I had just found the right discipline. I was also getting a little hefty. I was over 180 pounds and pushing upwards. I started to look for exercise and health magazines.  I made some mistakes in picking a good one, but I found my way through. I had my mom get me a weight set for my birthday one year, since I was way too intimidated to join a gym.  There weren't too many around at the time, at least for those I knew about. When I had my first workout, I chose weights that were only about half the amount the routine recommended. I did this because I felt that I was too much a beginner to start with twenty pound weights. Also, my mom got me the wrong set.  It didn't have the full complement of weights I wanted.  To this day, I am still not sure she made an honest mistake or if she deliberately bought the cheaper set. Anyway, that night after my first workout, I could barely sleep I was so sore. Yes, I was that out of shape that six-and-ten pound dumbbells were almost too hard for me. I managed to get up to twenty pounds in a few weeks. A year or so later, give or take, I was benching 100 pounds.  Okay, it was two fifty pound dumbbells, but that is still equivalent. Fortunately, I was able to get more weights as my maximums increased.  Since I had nothing else to do, I was able to workout whenever I wanted. I was getting stronger, but I wasn't getting big. I either wasn't eating enough or pushing myself hard enough. (It doesn't really look like it, but I do have a fairly high metabolism.) Then, my mom forced me to open my store. This meant that I had to make changes in my routine. I was getting in too late to exercise after work, and still eat and sleep properly. I was forced to limit my workouts to the weekends, with the occasional light morning routine before work. Unfortunately, I would have to give up those workouts, as it really isn't conducive to exercise in the morning at my current place. (Strangely, my last morning workout was the day before the 2003 flood that forced me to move and destroyed my old weight sets. I stopped lifting for over three months before I could get a new set.  I've since added a few more plates to those.) Then, I was forced to go to work six days a week. This would further limit my workouts to one day a week, not counting holidays and the occasional early quitting time. Still, I managed to work my way up to a 120 pound unilateral dumbbell press, which is almost equivalent to a 250 pound bench press. I was supplementing a little to help out, but I had to stop most of it when my favorite brand stopped making the products and the cost of others were a little too much.  Still, I continued the best I could. A few years ago, things started to change. Maybe I was just getting older. Maybe it was the aftereffects of the pandemic. Whatever, I just couldn't lift as much any more. I was cutting back on the weight because I was so tired some days. I didn't feel safe lifting heavy weights over my head in that condition. I don't think I've lifted 100 pounds in over a year, perhaps. I've even skipped a few sessions already this year due to the weather. (Because of my sensitive skin, I definitely have to wash any day I work out. If it is too cold or for any other reason that the water might go off, I usually don't work out. This is the same reason I didn't have to change clothes for high school PE, and not just because I was uncomfortable undressing in front of the other boys who were way more developed than me at the time, even though I was technically older than most of them. Really, that is the reason.) I have gone back to the lighter ten-and-twenty pound weights I was using when I first started out so far this year. I am aiming for endurance and maintaining what I currently have while keeping my weight around 170, but that isn't helping much. I've noticed some of my pants getting a little tighter and my stomach pooching out beyond my chest more frequently. One of the reasons why I did my "100" rep bodyweight challenges last year was to prove that I still had to ability to do so, even when my regular routines were suffering. I was going to implement so of those routines at work to assist my weekend workouts, but I never seem to be able to find the time.  Ab crunches being the exception. I can still easily pull out 120 of those at a time. I bet I would have great abs if I could ever get my total body fat under 10%. An impossibility, but knowing that it might be possible is enough to keep me going. If I ever had more help, such as a gym, a trainer, workout partners, and enough food to build up muscle, I have a feeling I could actually be a beefy jock.  While that probably will never happen, I just hope to get back into a better routine.  And soon.