October 7, 2023

WEEKLY MENU 10.08.23

A road trip classic is honored during the Weekly Menu 10.08.23~

We’re having a vending machine inspired meal during the Weekly Menu 10.08.23! Erie is centrally located between Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, which means we are about a 100 miles in any direction to a big city. The New York Thruway has spent the past summer renovating the rest stops along Interstate 90 into mega priced shopping stops, but the rest areas to the west and south of us are chock full of classic vending machines.

Gloriously, the machines take debit and credit cards now, so there’s no fumbling with change or trying desperately to get the machine to take that crinkly dollar bill. And we usually don’t know anyone in the rest area, there’s no one around to see exactly what treat is hitting the dispensing area with a thud.

On a recent summer road trip, Bert and I headed to New England. We were taking the back roads through Vermont when we had an unfortunate tire blow out. What made it especially daunting was that the tire was a “run-flat”, one that we would have been able to drive on if it hadn’t been so completely blown on both sides of the rim. Run flat = no spare. Which is no bueno. Of course the mountains in beautiful Vermont made cell service pretty dicey. We were seven miles from a town one way, and ten the other. Did I mention that it was a Sunday?

Long story short, we were solidly stranded.

Bert took his cell phone to higher ground and got through to two different auto services, and we thought they were on the way. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Luckily, there was a job johnny nearby because of some road construction. Ahem.

When the sun started getting a little low in the sky, I, for one, panicked. I told Bert that I wasn’t sleeping in the car. It might have been pretty comfortable, but it was going to be DARK. Scary dark. With wild animals around dark. No thank you.

Our luck changed when a darling twenty-something girl stopped to see if we needed help. I told her what was going on, and that I was hoping to order up an Uber. She, unlike Bert, didn’t roll her eyes at me when she told us that there was no cell service nor any Ubers in the vicinity. She said there was one taxi, but that it only ran Monday through Friday.

After we grabbed some essentials, she drove us the seven or eight miles to the only hotel in the area. It was Sunday night now (and, as suspected, really, really dark), so the restaurant wasn’t open. She offered to take us even further into the closest town to grab something to eat (did I mention she was ridiculously helpful?) but we opted for the best road trip food ever:

Vending Machine Bingo!

I had remembered to grab my bottle of wine along with our luggage and I had a veritable feast. In the morning, I stuck with the much healthier peanut butter cheese crackers that DOLD used to call Nickel-Nabs. Bert was able to convince the tow-truck driver to bring us along with the car to the new tire store, so I did get to see a fair amount of beautiful Vermont from the back seat of a flat-bed tow truck. Bert really knows how to show a girl a good time.

Did you know you can buy a vending machine on Amazon? ‘Tis a little pricey, but it would make a fabulous addition to the rec-room. And Prime Days are coming.

Are gumball machines vending machines?

Weekly Menu 10.08.23

We’re paying homage to the vending machine on Saturday with homemade cheese crackers stuffed with peanut-butter (naturally), some Skittle Shots, and Peanut M&M bars. And a nice Turkey and Swiss sammie that they didn’t have in the Vermont vending machines, but are available at the bougie New York state rest areas.

We’re starting the Weekly Menu 10.08.23 with a little French influence – homemade Boursin Cheese, French Onion Meatballs, haricots verts (green beans) and an easy Apple Walnut Galette. The Galette is a free form dessert made with a tube of pizza dough, so it’s simple and not too sweet, which makes the perfect foil for some dreamy French Vanilla Ice Cream!