Space Food

Remember how, back when space travel was new, there was some fascination with what people would eat in space, and how they'd eat it? Some discussion centered around the idea of food with the rough consistency of toothpaste.

Fast forward to this morning. Despite declaring to my friend Chuck that I would never eat at the Purity Diner, I ended up eating my breakfast there. It is, I believe, the most horrible restaurant I've ever been in more than once. Have you ever ordered a pint of beer in a bar? If so, you know how big one of those glasses is. So I ask the waitress for a small orange juice to go with my glass of milk, plus, of course, my two eggs over medium, sausage and hash-browns.

She says to me, "We only have one size," and points to my pint glass of water. A pint of orange juice? What kind of diner doesn't have some of those little glasses for juice?

And the hash-browns? They were horrible. The consistency of toothpaste. How, one wonders, can you possibly screw up hash-browns? As I understand it, they are a combination of diced potatoes, onions, maybe green pepper, some paprika and some hash oil. After a bit of initial cooking, you just leave them on the back of the grill and serve them up with the eggs.

The only reason I went to Purity was because Dizzy's was about as busy as Grand Central Station on a Friday afternoon.