In October my grandma moved into a retirement community, Renaissance West. The move has been a bit of an adjustment and it seems like the food has been the biggest one. Now, my grandma and I don’t always see eye to eye when it come to food. She says my food is fancy. To explain how bad it is, we were talking about asparagus one day. She said she never liked it, but my grandfather loved it. I asked, how did you cook it? Grandma, I opened the can. I can’t even type what my response was, it was too vulgar. I am also starting to realize why I hated vegetables as a kid!
I had dinner with my grandma recently. I don’t normally eat until 7, but I rushed out to make it by 5:30. When I arrived I was told that the table had already ordered me the stuffed pork loin, I just needed to order my soup and salad. After the waitress rattled off a list of soups and salads, I settled on butternut squash soup. The spinach salad with hot bacon dressing sounded delicious, but probably not a smart choice when you are watching what you eat.
not the best picture!
When I ordered the butternut squash soup I asked what else was in it. I was answered with a dumbfounded look. When it arrived I was presently surprised that it had curry in it. Over all this was a pretty typical butternut squash soup, nothing to write home to mom about. My major issue was that I like my soup smooth, where this one had chunks. They were soft, melt in your mouth chunks, but they were still chunks.
The pork loin had so much potential! It was stuffed with asparagus and mushroom dressing. The mushrooms were earthy and the asparagus was a little sweet. Unfortunately the dryness of the meat was an epic fail! I honestly don’t think I have eaten anything that dry in a long time. When the chef came out to greet the diners I couldn’t keep my mouth shut on this one. He told me that anytime you stuff meat the meat dries out. If you knew the meat was going to be so dry that it bordered on dehydrated, why did you stuff it in the first place? This one really had me scratching my head.
After talking to Grandma and her friends about the food they like, I understand why they might not like everything they are served. If grandma drove, I could send her to the store and she wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for curry powder. This is a women that likes her steak well done and and mashed potatoes whipped. All she wants is good simple food and there is nothing wrong with that.
As an FYI, talking about the food at Renaissance West is all in good fun. I hope that when the time comes, many years from now, Jess and I check into a place that has as creative food as this place… For those of you who still have grandparent living, this is your friendly reminder to call them or have dinner with them. I can’t tell you how nice it was to have dinner with my grandma and her friends. They might complain about the food, but their stories are always good.
This post doesn’t paint you in the best light. I appreciate the idea of being a food critic, but it seems like you’re being a bit snotty about your grandmother’s cooking. It comes out rude.
Thank you for your comment. I would just like to say that I was not talking about my grandma’s cooking, but the food that is served in the dining room of her retirement community. It has been a long time since my grandma has cooked me dinner, but I was a lucky granddaughter when she did. She always served pickled beets even though I was the only one that liked them.
I understood your post, just FYI. I think this was more of a reading comprehension issue than anything. In fact, if I’m reading correctly, even your grandma and her friends complain about the community’s food, so if anything you were *joining* her in her opinion.
I can’t understand why the chef would stuff the meat if it was going to dry out…perhaps it was bad cut of meat anyway? Just seems odd–I agree with you!
It was the opening paragraph about the asparagus that I was talking about. I did understand that the rest of the post was about the Retirement Community food – which I agree with – if you know it’s going to dry out, why stuff it?