Incredible Shrinking Food - Where's the Burger?

Has anyone else noticed that food is shrinking? It adds a whole new meaning to cutting back or moving away from the table." Let's just say the economy is not just reducing what Americans eat on a daily basis, restaurants have joined in downsizing America too. The food, plates, cups and glasses are shrinking. You don't even get a glass of water from the waitress unless you ask for it. What's up with that?

Today just about every menu has "minis" those tiny burgers served with fries or onion strings. And it doesn't stop there; we have mini turkey burgers, mini fish sandwiches, is there anything that doesn't come as a mini? Menus are expanding offering a two for one entree loaded with tiny bites of food cut into cubes. What will they come up with next, dessert shooters? Oh, that's right; the neighborhood restaurant joint already has them. Is it just me or are the cups at Starbucks shrinking again? A recent survey by the National Restaurant Association reported that miniature desserts will be a new product in the future. The idea of large gaudy desserts is going to be a thing of the pass. What will Americans do?

The solution is to pull out your little black book and start jotting down the names and numbers of those famous home-based bakers. You know those ladies, at the church or at school, who are known for their Key Lime Pound cake, double Dutch fudge brownies and buttermilk pie. We are stepping back in time to the good old days when life was simple and good food had nothing to do with a television commercial. I think a lot of this good old fashioned nostalgia got buried in living a hurry-up lifestyle. It's going to be hard for many to understand and acknowledge but those days are over. We are being forced back to the good old days, when you paid cash for everything, your neighbor left a bag of tomatoes from his garden on the back porch and you poured fresh squeezed juice in Popsicle molds to make treats for the children.

Is that really such a bad thing? The idea of having a technology driven world that gives you information at the blink of an eye, but makes you wait for the cow to be milked appears a bit bizarre, but we may be heading that way. There was a time when you could only drink a 6.5 ounce contour bottle of Coke. A homemade pound cake served 12-16 folks and a heaping tablespoon of home-made ice cream was considered icing on the cake. Wow, have times changed.

The whole idea of food shrinking is not such a bad thing; the horror comes from the prices being attached to these bite sized morsels of sustenance. Personally I think it all started with Tapas, a brilliant way to charge disgustingly sinful amounts of money for bits of food, but that's for another time. Well, it's to late now and given the choice between "shrinking food" and doing it myself, I now choose "DIY." I will make homemade pizza dough and leave the soda alone substituting good ole time "fresh squeezed" lemonade. Enough is enough. When do we stand up and say, what was so eloquently chanted by Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in "Network;" "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more?" Unfortunately, not today!



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