Sequestration Meal #199

 

I started my sequestration meals with Frito Chili pie. That feels like a million years ago but I guess it really was only 9 or 10 months ago (who can count? Also, only?). This bowl is less artfully arranged but similar. I used Dipsy Doodles rather than Fritos, because they're what I had. I used leftover homemade chili (go me!) instead of canned. The sour cream is another new-to-me brand (Wayfare) which turned out to be not great (Tofutti, how I miss you when you're gone...). I did put red onions on this one, but not olives; for whatever reason olives didn't occur to me. The cheese is Violife. Avocado is still holding down the fort.

It was familiar in that way I seem to be craving lately, so I'm glad to have had it. 

Have I ever told you about the first time I ever had Frito chili pie? I must have been five or six years old; I remember my grandmother was with my mother and brother and me and it was at a truck stop somewhere in rural Oklahoma. I can't imagine why my mother proposed that as what I should eat, but I adored it. For some reason, every time we stopped at that particular truck stop--which we did on more than one trip, wherever it was we were going--I always had Frito chili pie. Theirs was just Fritos, chili without beans, and a big pile of cheese. I am guessing I inclined toward it because of the cheese; I was really, really into dairy products of all kind before giving up animal products altogether.

Here, truck stops aren't a thing; people go to diners, and the only places to park semis (I call them semis, still; here I think they're usually just "trucks," because nobody has pickups, it seems) are the parking lots of travel plazas, which usually have chain restaurants. But out there in middle America, where two-lane highways intersect in seas of farmland, those independent truck stops with their unassuming food will always hold a special place in my heart even though I am sure I would find eating there virtually impossible as a vegan. If you know of a proper truck stop out there somewhere that would feed me something animal-free, please let me know. When and if I ever get out of here, I'm confident I'll want to be on some sort of road trip.