My boys and I (husband and 2 sons) have just completed a one month tour of the US of A and if my Facebook updates were anything to go by you’d think we’d eaten our way around the country. We did eat out A LOT (as is the pleasure and pain of travelling) and our food experience encompassed The Good, The Bad and The Truly Frightening.

The Good – The Electric Cheetah
We stayed with friends for part of the trip and one of the benefits of this is getting to partake in dining experiences like this. Off the beaten track, eating like the local foodies. The Cheetah makes everything from scratch and prides its self on using local producers and suppliers . I had the Pineapple Pulled Pork sandwich thusly described on the menu; House-smoked, pulled S&S Farm pork shoulder with pineapple jalapeno-sage salsa and apple cider BBQ sauce on ciabatta. Delicious. This also came with hand cut sweet potato chips cooked with sea salt and rosemary. I washed all this down with a Goose Island vanilla root beer. The Electric Cheetah also had an amazing desert menu with a staggering pie selection all homemade by local lady Phyllis.

The Bad – Sugar. American food is awash with sugar. And not the usual stuff extracted from sugar cane but High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Read the food label on anything at the grocery store (supermarket) and HFCS will be in the top 5 ingredients. All the processed food has a scary sweetness to it. Tellingly the breakfast cereal was in the same isle as the candy (lollies). America has also developed many weird and wonderful facilitators of sugar. One I found particularly disturbing was caramel apples. Like toffee apples (sorta) but covered in layers of chocolate, caramel, nuts, candy, fudge and whatever other sugary substance is lying around. The poor apple doesn’t stand a chance and neither does your waistline or teeth.

The Truly Frightening –

Nuff said I think