DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I discovered, again, that breakfast diners are notoriously difficult places to find a healthy meal, because if you eliminate animal products and dairy, all that’s left is pancakes (with no butter), dry toast, or fried potatoes. We were at Denny’s, home of four dozen variations on the “trucker’s special” theme, all of which are named “Slam,” and all of which provide approximately 1200 miles’ worth of fat-calories, as if semi trucks could be lubed through osmosis. The jokes for the morning: the “frequent eaters” card, after 10 meals, provides a free angioplasty… and the toy surprise accompanying items on the children’s menu is a Dick Cheney Commemorative heart stent.

But as far as road food goes, this was not the worst we would see… that honor belongs to the diner which served our lunch. Its decor fell somewhere between “rustic” and “dilapidated.” Its food fell, I believe, onto the kitchen floor just prior to being served.

At first glance I’d read the sign as “Best Food on Highway 9'' (which I found hilarious, as we were on Highway 97). They served the best Iceberg lettuce salad, that’s for sure. My companion’s fruit platter, described as “good sized” by the waitress, consisted of a half apple and a half orange.

Fortunately, the rest of the weekend would bring amazing meals. Breakfast at Café Sintra in Sunriver, for example, included an enormous bowl of homemade granola: nuts, seeds, and chunky organic bits that bore a startling resemblance to the output stream of an industrial log chipper. I felt like Euell Gibbons.

And that doesn’t even compare to the “official” meals of the weekend — the rehearsal dinner, the wedding reception, the morning-after brunch, even the evening-after pizza feast. Everything we ate was extraordinary — and hosted, which is remarkable, and for which I am filled with gratitude (not to mention sea bass, and grilled vegetables, and wedding cake, and pizza, and bruschetta, and ceasar salad, and wonderful Oregonian microbrews, all resting on a two-inch base of compacted, crushed granola).

The bride’s family even furnished 5 lbs of leftover pizza for our drive home.