A new take on eating out.

On Friday night Paul and I decided to go to a local restaurant for dinner. We were tired of chain restaurants, we find the food is always too salty and we wanted some variety. So we headed out with Italian in mind. After some suggestions from my sister we found a nice Italian place that was family owned in Point Pleasant. It was an amazing experience. Our waitress I believe was one of the owners of the place. Everything including the salad dressing was homemade. That was very refreshing and some of the best salad dressing I have had in a long time. Salad for me was followed by some of the best stuffed shrimp I have ever had, there was nothing frozen about them and there was actually real crab meat in them nothing imitation. Paul went with chicken Parmesan which he thoroughly enjoyed. We ended with a homemade Cannoli. The waitress warned us there was no processed cream in it and we may not like the texture because it was made from real ricotta cheese. It was delightfully refreshing and not as heavy as your typical cream filled dessert. The waitress was so kind she even told us how to make them at home.

To be honest it reminded me of eating at my Grandma’s house. Everything was fresh and homemade and the waitress made us feel like we were family. She even pointed out the weekly specials for what we ordered so we could come back again and save money. Paul and I decided not only would we go back again but that from now on our dinners out will not be at chain food services. We had much better food and service. I am the daughter of a long time small business owner so it made me feel good to patronize someone local. I even remarked to Paul that we should use small local businesses more often. So I guess you can say this is day that I wrote off the big chain restaurants for dinner and replaced them with smaller places and better food and service.

~Becca

Eisenhower got it!

Whether or not you support the war in Iraq, you should be aware of its costs--especially the effect on the most vulnerable in our society.

This is an excerpt from a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953. My guess is that 55 years later, the numbers would need updating but the truth is still there.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money along. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.

"We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."