and on the seventh day she rested

today was my seventh day away from home. thunder cracked and rain poured, all day until the sun began to set. it was a perfect day for lying in bed and reading a good book. for dinner we hit MCL. this cafeteria-style restaurant is the reason why i was a stranger to the coney before saturday. my nana loved MCL, and consequently we ate dinner here often when i was younger. (and always before 5pm to ensure we nabbed that senior discount!) in my memory, MCL is the epitome of the ohio food scene: true midwestern meat-and-potatoes fare. you enter and immediately get in queue. after grabbing a tray you slide it down the line, pointing the pre-prepared plates of your choice out to servers on the other side of the counter. there were about three variations of salad, at least six entrees to choose from, several different vegetable sides, and about five kinds of dessert--from puddin' to pie. to me, the food is either overcooked or over-buttered, and almost all of it (save for the two green options of salad and broccoli) is of the same beige color family--having lost all its flavor and nutrients in the process of preparing it. sorry, MCL, but your food is certainly nothing worth blogging about. (and yet, paradoxically, i am doing just that...) however, the meal flooded me with memories of my nana--how she would fill up her tray and tuck in heartily, though chewing daintily with lips tightly closed, and always choosing a light-hearted topic of conversation for the dinner table (she preferred to laugh over food rather than brood)--so that much at least i enjoyed.