I love eating out.  To me, going out for lunch is the highlight of the week.  I prefer lunch over dinner as that means I don’t have to wash my face and leave a nice, cosy fire on a cold winter night.  It also means that I can get away with a simple evening meal as we have had our main meal for lunch.

With one exception, the Chinese restaurant for the Sunday buffet.  It is our custom to meet two friends and go for a yummy Chinese meal every week.  For years we didn’t go as Dave is a dyed in the wool English man, which means that Sunday dinner consists of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, two veg. and gravy.  Year after year after boring year, until I put my foot down and said I was joining friends for Chinese and he could stay home and eat alone.

This lasted one Sunday only, when I said I would be going again next week, he grudgingly agreed to try it.  Surprise, surprise, he found lots of food in the buffet that he liked, he tried nothing that hinted of “foreign” stuff, but various meats and veggies that he loved.  He now just expects that we do this on a Sunday, he even looks forward to it.

Trouble is, I eat far too much.  If a plate of food was brought to me I would eat it and enjoy it but a buffet holds too many temptations and I overdo it.  Lots of options for my meatless diet, tasty veggies and egg foo yung, my downfall is the deep fried goodies.  Spring rolls, onion rings, prawns and wantons, all deep fried and oh so tasty.  My plate gets heaped up even though I take a very little of each item.  I then have a big fight with myself when it comes to deciding on a second helping, a fight I quite often lose.

In this country and our neighbour to the south, large portions are the norm, not the exception.  We get used to overeating and much of the food we eat is not healthy.  From childhood we see huge portions, especially at fast food outlets.  Most of us, being naturally greedy, will finish the large portions even though we are full, long before we finish.

Fast food clerks seem to be trained to ask if you want a bigger size or a side of fries to accompany your meal.  It is not just food that is offered in large portions, most take out soda outlets offer enormous containers of the sugary concoction for just a few cents more than a regular size.  Many people walk round with a half gallon of icy sugar water in their hand.

Go into any high end coffee shop and it is like a foreign country. No such thing as small, medium or large but fancy names for each size, I think in Italian, which means nothing to me.  The menu for a coffee may contain fifteen different kinds, none of which sound familiar to my untrained ears.  When I go to our local Timmy’s, I drive through and order my medium refill, to go, quite often the well trained sales-person asks if I want a donut or something else, but I am resolute and just take my coffee, pay my $1.65 and drive on.

Now take a trip in to Starbucks for the same thing.  No drive through here so you have to stand and drool over the biscotti, chocolate covered brownies and other calorie filled goodies.  It takes about fifteen minutes even though there are only a couple of people in front of me.  When I am down to just one person ahead of me, I listen, with wonder, to the conversation.  He seems to be ordering in some foreign language, his bill comes to over eleven dollars but I am shocked to see he only gets a coffee in a paper cup and a very small square of something decadent.  I thought he was ordering for a group of friends.

My turn and I order my usual, a medium white coffee.  The barrista, which I understand is a big title for a minimum wage job, then spews a huge list of words which mean nothing to me.  My dumfounded look must inform him of my ignorance of the Italian language as he then slowly repeats the words, this time pointing to several sizes of paper cups.  I point to a medium size and then he indicates the long list of coffee varieties.  None of them says regular, so once again I adopt the vague expression, he gets the message and suggests that I probably want an Americano.  I nod, eager to be away from this strange place, he then launches into a variety of the fifty kids of cream they offer.  There is a sniggering from the customer behind me when I babble something about half and half, and the clerk disgustedly points me in the direction of a couple of chrome jugs, off to one side of the counter.

I feel somewhat relieved as this humiliating experience is almost over but not so.  With a haughty wave of the hand, he indicates the glass enclosure of the display of wonderfully expensive treats.  I decline apologetically and with a sniff, to show his disdain, he then charges me four dollars and thirty cents, which I understand only too well, I just cannot believe it.

My first and last trip to the land of fancy coffee is complete and as I sip the rather bitter brew, I feel decidedly affectionate of my favourite Timmy’s.  Never mind what Seattle prefers, I am Canadian and proud of it.