JUN 19, 2025
Dear Reader,
Mr. Melinda and I went on a road trip this past weekend to celebrate Father’s Day with the fam. It was a short road trip on a path well traveled, but we still went out of our way to try a few new-to-us places.
Food is our favorite way of touristing. I’d really love to go on a foodie tour of Paris some day. And Thailand. And Korea. And Sydney. Basically I’d like to travel all over the world just to sample how they eat. Is that wrong?
At any rate, we happened to be driving through Waco, Texas at dinner time and thanks to our ability to take the internet with us wherever we go these days we were able to locate a place called Cafe Homestead. It’s a cluster of buildings that includes a quilt shop and workshop, and you can tour the farm and gardens where they grow a lot of the food you’ll eat. They call it Texas home cooking, and they’re right. We left happily stuffed on a quesadilla burger and chicken fried steak. If you’re ever driving through Waco, definitely take time to have a meal there.
Mystic was NOT thrilled to see the suitcase come out of the closet. This is her “you don’t think you’re leaving without me do you?” glare.
While we were in Fort Worth, we discovered we were within a couple of miles of Silver Fox, one of our all-time favorite places to eat. The filet there is melt-in-your-mouth, take-my-money fantastic. Get it with the truffle butter.
Steak doesn’t take long to cook, apparently, because I swear it took longer to make the cocktail than it did the food. The plates landed on the table before I’d managed two sips. The round trip, from hey-are-you-hungry to rolling back in the door of the hotel took less than an hour.
Mr. Melinda: I don’t want to know how much that meal cost per minute.
Me: Feels like very tasty whiplash.
It does seem like if you’re going to splurge on really good steak that it should take longer to have the meal than it does to, say, fill your car up with gas. Right?
Next time, I won’t order the food until after we’re done with the cocktail/appetizer.
Until next time,
**Book News**
GaG — Current Word Count: 41,166. Chapter Seven: The Pit of No Clues. (disclaimer: all of these titles may change, though this one does make me giggle so it’ll probably stay.)
Favorite Line of the Week:
“It was Daughter vs Mother. Youth against maturity.
Tale as old as time and twice as volatile.”
They call Houston Bayou City on billboards all over the place and I’ve wondered why, until this past week. It’s because it’s literally a swamp. As in, it was built on top of the Buffalo and White Oak bayous, and the marshes that surrounded them. It’s so wet here! (How wet is it? I hear the chorus say). The air this week is so wet and hot that I swear I can feel my lungs boiling every time I take a breath outside, and it’s only June! It’s strange how much cooler Florida was, even though it was on the same Gulf and the city I lived in was also built on and around a swamp. Somehow Florida gets a breeze that cools while Houston gets furnace air.