Amy Currioman

Over the years I’ve learned some interesting things about tricks restaurants use on their customers. A long time ago I read some literature about how different colors effect different moods. For example, red, yellow and orange are “high energy” colors and are often used in fast food restaurants because the restaurants know that those colors will encourage the customers to eat quickly and leave (making room for more customers) and the “high end” restaurants will often use “calming” colors such as blues and greens to encourage their customers to linger longer (perhaps order more alcohol which is their big money maker) and order dessert, relaxing and enjoying their meal and the company they are keeping.

I was just reading an article on the Time.com website about “what makes you eat more food” and was surprised to read that one of the things that makes you eat more food in restaurants is that most restaurants turn their thermometers to cooler temperatures. When the body is cold, a natural reaction to warm up is to eat more food. So the restaurants are trying to get you to eat more food by making their customers cold!

Do you ever feel hungry but don’t want to eat anything? That happens to me all the time! My stomach is growling and my hands start to tremble, and I even get a hunger headache! But I don’t want to eat anything – nothing appeals to me! This is a dangerous time because now is the time that I would probably grab some empty-calorie type of snack just to head off the hunger pains! I’d love to be able to grab an apple – we were given a ton of them recently, but for some crazy reason ten minutes after I’ve eaten an apple I feel hungrier than I did before I ate it! Sounds crazy, right?

Well today I decided to buy some cornmeal to try and make english muffin bread in the bread machine. I went to the new Harris Teeter store and bought way more groceries than I intended to buy! It’s hard to resist all of the BOGO specials and the double coupon offers!

Anyway, now I’m home and am cooking the bread in the machine. I’m anxious to give it a try! I remember about 30 years ago a friend gave me some english muffin bread that she had made from scratch. It was really good!

The first time I tried a green tea it was shortly after my arrival on Monhegan Island after a very bumpy boat ride.  My stomach was rather queasy but my friends told me that if I got some food on my stomach that I’d start feeling better pretty quickly.  So we went to a restaurant to have breakfast and the only tea they had available to drink was green tea.  I’d never tried green tea before and I don’t like coffee so I went ahead and decided to try the green tea.  I asked the server what most people put in their tea and she smiled and said that most people will drink it plain.  I tried a sip of it; it was really nasty so I tried putting sugar and cream in it and it still tasted really nasty.

Yesterday afternoon I had to run into town unexpectedly and invited my hubby to join me. We don’t get very much time to spend together, so when I have errands to run I invite him so that we can spend time together in the car and maybe end up grabbing a bite to eat someplace inexpensive. I know it’s sad, but you have to learn to squeeze in time when you can!

Anyway, I told him that we could stop in at DQ and buy some of his favorite Dilly Bars on the way home. Well, that didn’t take much prodding – he LOVES those Dilly Bars!

I’ve never been a big fan of DQ – I think it is because I suffered from sticker shock that year when I bought an ice cream cake for my hubby when we first got together.

But when we went inside to buy his Dilly Bars, I was hungry and realized it was lunch time, so I looked at the menu and saw that they sold BBQ sandwiches. I asked my hubby if he wanted to share one with me, and he said sure. So I ordered a combo meal BBQ sandwich with two drinks and we cut it in half and shared the meal. It was actually a very good sandwich! We’ll have to do that again!