Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 06, 2011

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I joined the army to avoid home cooking.

Is that a kerosene tank (or oil) under the window?

I eat out to avoid having to cook the meal.

kreole, I think that’s a propane tank. Our neighbors had one when I was a kid. My mom liked to cook on electric because she was afraid she’d blow us all up cooking on a gas stove. < eyeroll >

I like to eat out- not because I can’t cook, but so someone else will do the dishes! :-D

Sometimes home is good, mostly when I’m hungry…sometimes ‘out’ is good, but mostly it’s whether or not I like ‘Flo’…

slug_queen, kreole. That’s most likely a heating oil tank. Could be kerosine, but it’s not sturdy enough for pressurized gas and if there were a regulator it would most likely be on top. I’ve lived in a few homes with tanks like this.

Definitely an oil tank. It’s what we New Englanders use the most besides natural gas. Wait about 30 years and it will leak all over your floor. That’s right, we had these guys in the cellar.

In my experience, restaurant food is generally just about one step up from cafeteria food — which is to say, a step down from the kind of lame, not really properly homemade food you whip up with almost no effort when you’re in a screaming hurry, like in one of those stupid “quick cooking” magazines. I’ve never seen restaurant food that could be meaningfully compared to real home cooking. Heck, restaurants can’t even get spaghetti right, and spaghetti’s what we throw together when we don’t have the energy to cook.

I’ll take my home cooking over most resteraunt cooking. The only things I eat when I eat out are dishes that either are a pain to prepare or ones I can’t do well myself

I eat out when I’m mad at my one and only. I quickly come home with my tail between my legs.

The tank outside the window holds #2 Heating oil. VERY VERY common up here in Maine. And they all look very similar to that. They hold about 275 gallons I believe, so they’re quite large.

So, avoid your own lousy cooking by eating Flo’s lousy cooking. OK.

Just curious, does “Flo’s” qualify as A Diner, Drive In, or Dive?well, probably not a drive in!

The home cooking I grew up with did prepare me for traveling thru Mexico. I drank the water, ate pulled pork off an outdoor buffet in the jungle, and didn’t get sick once.

love those home style restaurants. One of our friend’s kids quit her job in a local one cause the cook SMOKING while fixing the meals bothered her. Truth.

You can assess the quality of the restuarant food by the look of the estabishment and it’s patrons.If the place is some new chain style restaurant that relies on pre fab buildings stocked with glitzy “retro” decor, you can bet the food is lousy.If the place is a ramshackle shed on the end of a creaky pier where patrons are both allowed to smoke and bring their pets, you can bet that is some good eating. The rule of thumb in finding a good restaurant is to only eat at places that have been in business longer than you’ve been alive. Exempting chains of course (none of them are worth eating at).

The tank? That’s the bulk white wine……

hahahaha! That’s awesome, and so true for me!!!

At least that place is so tiny, you can probably see the whole kitchen while seated at the bar, so you can keep an eye on what’s happening to your food! (I assume Flo doesn’t do the actual cooking, considering her long, flowing, unnetted hair!!)

Formerly: when I got my draft “assurance”, I JOINED the Army to avoid being made a cook (my folks owned restaurants and I grew up cooking). In ’Nam, ate off the economy, despite the alleged “Mexico-like symptoms”, and never get sick, though guys eating only Army food often did. As to the tank, cooking with gas beats electric every time, and it does appear a fuel oil tank. Hmm, learned to cook on wood stove from my grandmother, and it paid off later, actually an excellent means of cooking or baking, if you learn to turn the bread.

What happened to Offshore Flo’s?

Any diner beats any fast food joint… poison like McDonalds BK Taco Bell KFC et al. will hurt you more than any “greasy spoon”… An then there’s Flo’s ambience…

I have been to places by boat, that the entire appeal was being able to dock the boat right at the restaurant. And I would agree, that there are many that are overpriced, and not worth the hype. But every once in a while, you find that nugget, that place that shines. Where the food lives up to the view, and it all becomes an experience that is worth remembering.

Interesting. Andy Rooney died Friday, and Wiley runs this today. When Rooney did a series of shows on restaurants he said something to the effect that he passed all restaurants that said they served “Home Cooking” because if he had wanted home cooking, he would have stayed at home.R.I.P. you old crumugeon. (Too tired to spell check that word.)