One of my favorite stops so far: a roadside snack shop in Rich Mountain, Arkansas where we stopped for a quick ice cream, and ended up staying for well over an hour just because it was fun and the lady sitting in the dining room (who oh, did she mention? used to TRAIN WILD BEARS as a hobby) couldn’t stop giving Goldie kisses and the cook put on a full-on magic show with something called a hokum (?) stick.
I cannot tell you how wonderful it’s been, just meeting people. We’ve been staying in chain hotels and eating in chain restaurants only when we absolutely have to because it feels like such an opportunity, the chance to just be a part of the life of wherever it is that we’re spending a few hours, and each and every time the decision to get away from the Hampton Inns and Waffle Houses (delicious though those grits might be) has turned out to be a good one. Not because we’ve necessarily been finding the “best” food or the “nicest” places to stay, but because doing this lets us see a small slice of what’s going on, whatever that is.
But let’s talk about grilled cheese for a second.
A long, long time ago, about a month after I started writing Ramshackle Glam, I had this idea that I’d start doing sort of hi/lo experiments with food – like, make fancy macaroni and cheese and Kraft macaroni and cheese and do a blind taste test to find out which was better (this is a bad example, because obviously Kraft Mac wins every time, but you get the point). And the first (and, as it turned out, only) experiment I did was with grilled cheese.
I was twenty years old before I ate a grilled cheese. I know this sounds inexplicably weird, but my mom just never made them for me when I was a kid (presumably because she herself doesn’t like cheese), and so I grew up thinking that the whole concept of a cheese sandwich sounded kind of weird and gross. Obviously I was extremely wrong on this point, but I didn’t discover the glory that is a hot grilled cheese sandwich until college, when I mentioned to a friend that I had never had one and was immediately shepherded into the dining room and handed the square of cheesy cement that passes for a grilled cheese in a dorm-room cafeteria. And ever since then, I have become something of a connoisseur, because there are few things in this life that are more delicious than fried bread and cheese.
Which is all to say: I think I may have found the best grilled cheese in the world, and it is made by the cook/magician at the Rich Mountain General Store. It consists of white bread and two slices of American cheese, folded into a square of wax paper so the cheese doesn’t fall out while its still hot.
As it turns out, the key is butter and butter and butter. (I know, you’re shocked.)
(And American cheese. For the love of god, please make thine grilled cheeses with American cheese; none of this schmancy cheddar-gouda-whatever. American or bust.)
