T hadn’t been home to see his mother in 6 years. Ridiculous, I know. My mom freaks out when she doesn’t see me for two weeks (it’s good I like her). Not having been to Texas for that long, he not only hasn’t had the opportunity to see his kin, but it has been 6 years since the holy grail of food items (according to him of course) has graced his lips. Really, for him, he was going to Texas to eat tamales. Oh, and see his mother.

In preparation, she ordered 4 dozen. On the way home from the airport, we stopped in at the famed Donnelly’s to pick them up and get some immediate gratification for T. These tamales are equivalent to mother’s milk for T. He’s been eating them since he was 6 months old when someone decided to break off some masa and feed him a little piece. Since I’ve met him, he hasn’t been able to shut up about them. Every year my family makes tamales from scratch. We stand around all day assembling them, and have a feast at the end of the night. We like to make them pretty big and meaty. His were always skinny and round, and I totally made fun of him for it. But that’s the way they make them at Donnelly’s, and for him, it’s the only way.

I have to say I thought that was basically going to be the exciting food high point of the trip. Little did I know that this was to be the start of a complete tour of T’s hometown’s finest dining experiences, and the start of a week full of bloated bellies, siesta sleepiness, doggy bags, and some very stretchy pants.

I kind of wish we had one of these. First of all, there’s a store in the front full of old time candy and toys and hand lotion and clothes and mini-carousels that play christmas music and Jerry Lewis DVDs and Dolly Parton CDs and jars of things they serve in the restaurant like fried apples, which are like apple pie filling without the crust part. The front porch is full of “military rockers” that you can sit on and buy, and there’s a sign in the foyer that proclaim’s Cracker Barrell’s (or as T likes to call it, Honky Bucket) dedication to providing equal opportunity good food and good service regardless of race, creed, age, affiliation, gender, etc.

This good food and good service is no small gift. I mean that literally. For around $7.50 I got a huge chicken fried steak with my choice of three sides (out of like, 12 options. I got fried okra, mashed potatoes, and fried apples), biscuits, iced tea, corn bread, and two kinds of gravy. It all barely fit on the table or in my stomach, and I definitely had the extreme urge to take a nap afterwards.

At the Olive Garden we eat salad and breadsticks before the main meal comes, and tip the waiter well for extra salad and breadsticks to take home. After that it all kind of becomes a food coma induced blur. Margarita brain freezes, velveeta/chili dip, popcorn shrimp with fries, iced mochas from McDonalds. T’s mom’s house alone is stocked with Cracker Barrel pies (pecan chocolate chip and apple strudel), toaster strudel, frozen pizzas, chips, 6 different kinds of dips, 17 different kinds of soda pop, pour-over-butter microwave popcorn, and dishes full of snickers, peanut butter cups, and kisses, not to mention all the leftovers we couldn’t find room for when out to eat. We watch blue ray movies on the 55 inch LED flatscreen that makes it look like you can reach out and touch Sandra Bullock.

Today we got up early to play a couple games of Skip-Bo with three generations of T’s family and work up an appetite for a Texas staple: barbeque. We eat dinner salads while they cook us arguably the most delicious steaks I have ever had. Juicy, tender, salty ribeye steaks you can cut with a butter knife. They come with a baked potato that’s practically the size of my head, stuffed with five different toppings. I have never had a baked potato like this. I was always happy with a little butter, salt and pepper, but here the toppings transform the potato into something else completely. Like crack, only worse for you. Cheese, sour cream, green onions, butter, bacon bits. T’s aunt ordered more “stuffin’s” to make sure we have enough for the bottom half of the potato. Seriously, these people have taught me a whole new revolutionary kind of eating. This is serious.

T, who has been skinny since a nasty bout with amoebic dysentery a few years ago, has been happy to report his steady weight gain over our stay. He doesn’t know what he started at, but he’s gained two pounds in the last day. I try to avoid finding a numeric value to assign to my heavenly indulgences of the past week, but I will say that I started trying on jeans at Old Navy the other day and decided halfway through my stack that it would be better to stick with a couple pairs of stretchy pants. I can already eat more than I could when I got here. I think my stomach is actually expanding to accommodate the visit, which is rather nice of it, I think.

When I get home, I do feel like I’ll have a keen interest in eating wedges of iceburg lettuce and taking up some kind of regular aerobic activity. The good news is that I figured out that the best way to work out is to get T to walk around me in a circle while I kick his ass repeatedly. He’s tall, so it’s almost like kickboxing!