Super-sized Love Affair
I love fast food. Show me a Sonic, I'm there. I'm a big fan of their diet limeade. I dig KFC, especially when they share space with A&W. I have loved DQ ever since I was in college and treated myself to a Buster Bar after Anthro 101 twice a week at the DQ across Central from the campus in Albuquerque. I've been to Steak 'n Shake and would kill for one of their chocolate shakes and a Steakburger right now. But of the Big Burger places, I've always preferred Wendy's, then Mickey D, BK, and finally Carl's/Hardee's.
Currently, I'm on a Mickey D roll for their Monopoly game, but after my volunteer shift at the Family History Center, I like to go by the BK on Arden, just west of Watt (where the Krispy Kreme used to be) so I can use their new Coke machine.
High Tech Soda
They have one of those Freestyle machines. Haven't heard about them yet? Here's an article from our NBC affiliate about the introduction of these machines. http://www.kcra.com/news/28353006/detail.html I first saw the Freestyle machine about three years ago in a travelogue of a visit to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, and instantly fell in love with it.
They have a large variety of caffeine-free diet offerings, including some very interesting Fanta flavors. Raspberry Fanta Zero? Yummers! Peach? Awesome! Grape and Orange? Dependable flavors. My new fave? Lime Fanta Zero.
I'm kinda tired of going to BK; their burgers still don't send me, and I hate that creepy King. But as long as I can get my Lime Fanta Zero, I'm there--until one of my other faves gets the Freestyle machine (soon, soon, soon, oh pleeeeeeeeeeeze, Universe.)
Fruity Fun
As a kid in Alameda, I used to hang at the local mom & pop store. The owners, Ralph & Alice Lew (sp??) watched me grow up and go through all kinds of food phases. One of the most consistent was my addiction to Bierley's Orange Soda, a Cali brand that vanished sometime around my high school days. It was made with real fruit juice, and it also came in grape and strawberry. It was what we drank instead of Nehi. (I don't even remember seeing Nehi in stores out here when I was a kid, not until the mid-60's. Which is not to say it wasn't here, but Ralph never carried it.)
BTW, we used to get nothing but Cali or Left Coast brands from Ralph. He was apparently a believer in the local foods movement when it was the only game in town. Yami Yogurt (which came from the Portland area), Berkeley Farms milk, cream, and cottage cheese (usually from a home delivery milkman up until the early 60's, when it started to become available in stores), Golden Grain macaroni & spaghetti (and Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat!), Ghirardelli chocolates (in vivid red, blue, or green foil-wrapped cardboard tubes), Granny Goose potato chips, Skippy Peanut Butter, Mother's Cookies.... oh, and Clorox bleach! (We lived in government housing projects for several years when I was a toddler, and the smell from the downwind Clorox plant implanted deeply in my memory.) Ah, the nostalgia!
But I digress.......
