Flo-rida

This Eat More Nutmeg dispatch comes to you from the Sunshine State, where I am visiting my cousin.

Food-wise, this trip to Florida is a little disappointing: I fear it's too warm to eat oysters without worrying about my gastrointestinal health, and Dish appears to be gone.

But while I was able to restrain myself from doing the Northerner-in-the-South thing and demand a trip to Sonic for the sweet treats that damn fool couple in all the commercials rave about, instead we went to Chick-Fil-A. I had heard about Chick-Fil-A but never ate there before, despite repeated trips to the South and a love of all things chickeney and fried.

Chick-Fil-A, where have you been all my life? And when are you going to expand to the area between New Jersey and Boston? (And I don't mean the Weinstein Food Court at NYU. That one doesn't count.) I promise, I'll never go to McDonald's again. Promise.

I'm Lovin It

When a girl who's 1/16 Irish is deciding what to eat for dinner on St. Patrick's Day, what does she choose?

Why, a Shamrock Shake from McDonald's, of course!

I have loved these things since I was a little kid. One year, when I was probably 10, I poured Shamrock Shake into Dixie cups and froze them to savor out of season. It worked. So awesome.



Back in June, I had a minty-chocolate shake at McDonald's. An entry in Wikipedia tells me this was called the "Minty Mudbath" shake and was a promotion in conjunction with the movie "Shrek the Third." (uh, because it's green, I guess. No word on whether Shrek actually tastes minty or chocolatey.) It was merely OK.

A couple of years ago, though, while licking Vanilla Mint ChapStick off of my lips, I figured out that Shamrock Shakes were really just vanilla milkshakes with green dye and mint flavor added. It was kind of disappointing, but also really liberating. It almost makes me not want to freeze some.

The Wikipedia entry also says that Shamrock Shakes are available year-round in Ireland, but I am not sure if this is bad reporting based on a 1997 report: "Sinn Fein Leaders Demand Year-Round Shamrock Shake Availability."