A California Online Magazine with Local Focus and Global Appeal
Wouldn’t you like to party like it’s Two Thousand Nineteen? Things were so much simpler, then. Now…oh, boy. Imagine what it would be like to run a restaurant during this pandemic. No, you can’t. Yes, you can. No, you can’t. Yes, you…maybe. Owners have to find some way to make things work and keep their employees employed.
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‘Tis November, and the Great Food Search’s heart (and stomach) turns to Pumpkin Smash Smoothies, but the local Jamba Juice branches are out of them, so I’m out of luck. Where to go? Well, there was one place in Sanger, and I went there…and I went there…and WOW!
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It’s October. I know this is The Great Food Search, but do you really want to hear me tell of delicate dining? Of course not! You want the ooey-gooey, sticky-licky sweets, the sugar-laden and calorie-unconscious! Let’s go satisfy your sweet tooth!
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In 1973, a Florida jury convicted Gerard John Schaefer of two counts of murder in the first degree. He insisted on his innocence, yet he named missing person cases and unsolved murders that should have been added to the list of twenty-eight deaths where he was suspected. On top of that, Schaefer was a law enforcement officer.
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Darrell Henshaw is a good football coach, has OCD that’s sort-of in check (he counts and touches things, but it’s not a debilitating, Monk-level), and just lost his job and his girlfriend in Maryland. He’s working a junior-high football camp in Cape May, New Jersey, hoping to get together again with Erin, and wishing that ghosts would leave him alone. That’s how things are in Randy Overbeck’s Crimson at Cape May.
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You have to eat, right?
Restaurants have to make money to survive, so they will bend over backwards to follow the rules, and hope people will drive up…and drive out with some food.
Let’s eat!
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The Great Central Valley. The San Joaquin Valley. The Heart of California. The Big Valley.
It’s an amazing place to explore, and it’s even better to explore it with people you like. Two of my favorite traveling companions are Pat Hunter and Janice Stevens, although I’ve never shared a car with them. I travel in their books. With Hunter’s delicate watercolors and Stevens’ concise prose, they’ve helped me explore Fresno’s architectural gems, the twenty-one missions of California’s El Camino Real, the stomping grounds of William Saroyan’s past, and Highway 1’s stretch up the California coastline from Mexico to Oakland.
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What do you do for food during the pandemic?
Do you sit in a restaurant with other people, hoping that nobody is infected?
Do you hide in your home and try to survive on your year’s supply of chewy granola bars?
Do you look for minimum-contact food places where you can order and pick up without fear? Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do with these play-it-safe editions of The Great Food Search.
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If you can’t take it with you, don’t get it. This set of take-outs are centered around my home and work.
El Pollo Loco—4865 E. Kings Canyon Rd., Fresno— Of course, I’m chicken! I always have been. I do get cravings for red meat, but I’m more of a chicken aficionado. I have clutched buckets of KFC and crunched my way through Popeye’s, but that flame-kissed yumminess from El Pollo Loco gets me every time.
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It happened. My daughter and I got sick of our own cooking. After three months of “It Came From My Kitchen,” we (and my wife) couldn’t take any more variations of Slow-Cooker Surprise and “Stuff Added to Packaged Mixes,” but our editor didn’t want us going to restaurants and dining like nothing was wrong with the world, even if they were open for business. For that reason, this Great Food Search features take-out food. (Lorie wanted places that deliver, too, but I have a perfectly rational fear of strangers coming to my door.)
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I was let out of quarantine, and then I took four weeks off (because I had the hours). I went back to work for a week-and-a-half, and then I was out again because I had a heart attack (of the mild variety). However, I can still write, and I can still cook, and so…we return to Casa de Mc Arthur!
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I am a fan of Anne Bishop’s The Others series and The World of The Others. I enjoyed paranormal danger that could be fatal without being graphic, love with shapechangers that wasn’t sexual, and wry commentary on everything from prejudice to government. From the “Also By” lists, I knew that Bishop had other books and other worlds in her writing, but I had never read any of them. Oh, boy.
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I’m sheltering in place…sort-of. I went back to work for three days at the beginning of April, but I decided to take four weeks of leave (I have plenty of hours). I thought I could be productive during my time off, but…I have cooked. Let me tell you about the latest dishes to come out of Casa de Mc Arthur….
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You may think it’s a jackrabbit, or someone you know, but….
If it bites you, the puncture wound begins to smoke.
It takes over your body and your life.
It uses you to kill to gain strength and power.
When there is no more use for you, it tosses your body aside and turns into smoke.
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