"I don't know? Where do you want to eat?"

We are a family that eats out often, very often. In Small Town, Texas we usually go through the list of usual restaurants and decide upon something that sounds good to everyone.

It sounds simple enough. However, it is usually much more complicated. You see, the city website says we have almost sixty full service restaurants in our town. I, on the other hand, do not include local school cafeterias in that classification. By the time you eliminate the schools, veterans organizations, and motels, there are only about 40. But that is still a stretch. You cannot include the pizza or corny dog places in the mall or anything Asian or Italian. There are some listed that I could not even recognize. Chimos Taqueria? Cool Business Inc? Not places we frequent, much less have heard of. The fast food list is equally misleading. You can't just drop by a consession stand, a donut shop, or a video store and make a meal of it. We also don't usually consider the gas stations that try to disguise themeselves as fast food resturants. You see the list of possible options begins to narrow very quickly.

When we consider the shortend list of food establishments, we have to agree on something. TaMolly's is good if you can go home and change clothes. The smell does linger. Cracker Barrel takes too long. Applebee's doesn't agree with EK and JMM has had too many bad experience at Chili's. Body parts do not belong in the condiments. Edie does not do sea food, so Red Lobster is out. You can't eat at Peddlers or Chicago Style Pizza, Little Ceasars, or Papa Murphy's. Speaking of Papa Murphy's, who wants to cook their food at home? If we were going to cook at home, wouldn't be eating out! Papa Murphy's concept has been lost on the Mil10s.

Saturday we played the elimination game and finally settling on Cracker Barrel of all places. We had time to spare. I think EK was happy because of the shopping as much as his pancake.