Right from the Dollar Menu

Fast food hits different at 33. It wasn’t too long ago that a trip to Wendy’s for a “Fresh But Never Frozen” 99 cent cheeseburger (yes, those existed) with a side of medium fries and a surprisingly oversized soda was the text-book hangover cure. Now, closer to middled-aged than I was in college, I feel hungover after eating anything remotely close to that.

Oh, how I savored yet feverishly devoured those chemically-enhanced food items that pass for an all American “balanced meal.” It was the best decision made after a crazy day of work, picking up the kids from daycare, making them dinner and finishing the standard house chores, all while preparing to enter the gauntlet again just before sunrise.

No, they didn’t get fast food this particular night. And yes, they do eat it occasionally.

This particular night they were fed frozen nuggets from the fridge with a side of frozen peas. Delicious, no?! It was the best I could do given the circumstances – the clock struck 6:30 p.m. with bedtime quickly approaching, there wasn’t enough time for a four-course, Italian-inspired meal.

As a parent, you try your best to feed them all the right stuff – the healthy stuff. Before you even think about marriage or about having children — if that’s what you want in life — you fantasize about being a “good parent,” feeding your kids all of the right stuff. What does that even mean? All of the right stuff?

In my younger years, growing up in a single-parent household, living within walking distance of pretty much every fast-food joint imaginable and spending most of your weekends hanging around your bachelor for a grandfather, who would let you get away with anything, eating “the good stuff” was a challenge. We did what we could with what we had. Discounted steak from Met Foods with frozen peas and rice. Baked chicken with bagged salad. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and broccoli. A box of Kraft Mac N Cheese or cheap pasta with jarred sauce. And, of course, like all of my fellow Catholics, we participated in pizza Fridays during Lent, extending it to other Fridays throughout the year.

School lunches looked different then, too. No bento boxes. No sandwiches cut up into zoo animals or veggies formed into a colorful pinwheel. We brown bagged it when I was a kid. Tuna with mayo on white bread with a bag of chips. Bologna sandwiches on white bread with good ole fashioned processed American cheese that could pass for a slab of yellow plastic and mustard. Those were luxurious school lunches. If not for the brown-bagged white bread sandwich, it was whatever leftovers from dinner the night before made an acceptable public school cafeteria meal.

Needless to say, fast food for dinner when I was a kid came as frequent as a Solar Eclipse. Fast food trips on the weekends with my grandfather, however, and summer lunch runs were almost ritualistic. With my grandfather, it was a quick walk up to the corner McDonald’s to order a few single burgers and two orders of fries with fountain sodas.

He would always say, “Do my a favor? Don’t tell your mother, alright?”

She secretly knew. It was the constant “no fast food” reminder when she would drop me off that gave it away. “Kids gotta eat,” he would say.

It wasn’t always like that. My grandfather was big into making breakfast, steaks or burgers for lunch or dinner, and he especially loved it was it was warm enough to break out the charcoal grill. Pinwheel steaks, burgers and hotdogs were always on the menu then. When he didn’t feel like cooking, and if he wasn’t feeling McDonald’s single cheeseburgers and under-salted fries, we made an occasional trips to Nostrand Ave for Brennan & Carr’s famous roast beef sandwiches, a cup of beef broth on the side and and order of steak fries smothered in cheese sauce. The beef broth is traditionally used to dip the sandwich. Then, there was Roll’N’Roaster in Sheepshead Bay. They had decent roast beef sandwiches, too. Nothing compared to Brennan & Carr’s. At least, from what I remember.

The summer rides with friends to grab a bite were the best. When it was two of us, we would ride one bike to the same McDonalds on Flatbush Avenue between Fillmore and Avenue R. We would switch who got to ride the pegs and who got to pedal. You got the best value out of the dollar menu and we didn’t pay with Apple Pay or Venmo. Cash only. We would go there to beat the heat or kill some time before riding back.

Food unlocks those core memories you forgot you had, despite the need for a bottle of Tums.