Ann Ipock
            Humorist, author, speaker

Georgetown Times Column

When eating out, ‘gerbil food’ leaves me feeling hungry

By Ann Ipock February 25, 2004

Well, dang. It happened again. I went out to dinner, then came home hungry. This was after dining in a posh restaurant on the South End — a term we Lowcountry folks know well. Do you wonder why no one ever refers to the North End — is there one?
Tonight I had dinner with my good buddy, Ronda Rich, author of “What Southern Women Know (That Every Woman Should),” who is herself a classy Southern diva. Ronda has even coined the phrase, “Dixie Divas!” Don’t you love it? Now that’s a group I want to be a member of because we think so much alike.
In her column titled “Dixie Divas,” she recently wrote this: “We must uphold and preserve all things dear to southern womanhood we love so … A Dixie Diva personifies all that southern women hold dear — grace, charm, compassion, humor, tenacity, home and family…”
But back to dinner. I ordered a lobster appetizer and a side salad. It wasn’t that I was trying to cut corners. In fact, I actually ended up spending equal to or more than the average entrée. Ronda ordered a lobster entrée and hers came with a salad.
After dinner we chatted for a long time, discussing our experiences in writing, public speaking, the vast differences between men and women, growing up in the South, and what’s involved on the long road to happiness and success.
I was so engrossed in the conversation that I didn’t notice I was still hungry after the server took my plate away. (But I can promise you that I ate everything on it!) Once I got home, my stomach started growling — not a muffled rumble, but a really loud “grrrr…. feed me something NOW, Mama!”
Why is it that the fancier the restaurant and the higher the menu prices, the less the food volume? I’ve noticed that more and more in those upscale eateries chock full of trendy furnishings, tuxedoed wait staff, breath-taking views and savvy patrons, that a garden salad consists of perhaps three lettuce leaves, chopped into ribbons (which falls off the fork), two cucumber slices cut nicely on the diagonal (so?), four cherry tomatoes, and a sliver of purple onion.
Come on y’all, that’s not dinner — that’s gerbil food. The salad isn’t the only thing that’s eye-catching (and small). The entrée is a kaleidoscope of color — what, with those fancy swirls of orange, red and green sauce.
Do they really think all that beautification will satisfy you even though there is no real food quantity on the plate? When the waiter said, “Would you ladies like some dessert?” I should have said, “Sure, at some point, but actually, Antonio, I think I need another meal to FILL ME UP, first.”
Well, I came home and did what any normal, healthy, starving woman would’ve done. I fixed me a snack. A big snack. This consisted of a half-bag of popcorn, a half-dozen Hershey kisses and a dozen cashews — my own version of Poppycock.
I let that “settle,” but felt hungry an hour later. I ate a fruit snack-pack. Still hungry, I drank a big glass of milk. That’s because I was tired of preparing real food, although a PB&J is sounding good about now.
Considering I have been dubbed a “fast food snob” by my family and friends — who by the way, aren’t lying, I am thinking seriously of converting. I mean at least with my ‘Big Fat Meat ‘n Unknown Filler Greaseburger,’ you do get full. Right? And let’s just double up that ‘Mega-Quantum, So-Salty, You’ll be Thirsty All Day, French Fry’ with a ‘Super Thick Chocolate Shake.’
No one promised this mammoth meal would be low calorie, but at least I’d be spared the trouble of fixing me another meal within an hour. And to think, all week — OK I’m lying, all month — I’ve been thinking about starting a new food plan, but not a diet. I can’t even stand the word ‘diet,’ which by the way stands for, “Did I Eat That?” because you are never sure.
You’re so busy buying the food, coming home and unloading, washing, sorting, measuring and re-reading the daggumed diet book, that you can’t remember if you ate or not.
Hey, if I keep eating at those fancy restaurants, I’ll lose weight because they’ll put me on a diet, with no complicated food planning on my part. I’ll just show up every night at one of those places with the two and three-digit menu prices.
My husband, Russell, says he is not surprised by this “I’m starving” dilemma because he distinctly remembers on our first date that I ate more than he did. I’ll never forget it — we were sitting in Morton Manor, the fanciest restaurant for miles around in Jacksonville, N.C.
Our little town had never seen anything quite like it before. A rustic log cabin on the outskirts of town that used tablecloths, linen napkins, candles on the table — and they didn’t have the word ‘diner,’ ‘café,’ or ‘truck stop’ on the carved-wood sign out front. It quickly became the hot spot.
At the end of our romantic evening, Russell opened the door for us to leave. A-ha, a gentleman, I thought. This next part I’ll never forget: He said, “Ann, I want to you tell you something. I can’t — “Yes?” I accidentally interrupted, thinking he was going to give me a huge compliment, like, “I can’t believe how shiny your hair is,” or “I can’t believe how much fun you are.”
Yeah, right. Instead, he said, “I can’t believe how much you can eat!” True story. You see, where he comes from (Jones County), with all those big old farm girls, he thought he was giving me a compliment.
Oh well, some things never change. Here we are 24 years later, and I’m still hungry. I’d better sneak in that PB&J lest he give me that same lecture again tonight.

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