Marcie's Cafe

Whoever Marcie is, she does a wonderful job luring you into her home. She'll whip you up a nice chicken fried steak, or maybe a stack of pancakes with some sort of hybrid homemade-store bought syrup. She's generous with her sodas: a glass is one of those dinosaur-sized gulps that they've probably banned in thinner parts of Yankee territory. Marcie doesn't care. And nor should you.

There's a salad bar with fixins that gramma would love: sliced up olives, some ice burg lettuce, shredded cheese and maybe some fruit if you wanna get fancy. There's ranch dressing and golden, square croutons.

Bread before the meal would be too much hassle, so Marcie dishes out a nice cracker basket. If you're healthy you can go for those wheat crackers; if you're a Midwesterner, you'll break out those white Club crackers, and smear them with the variety of jams and jellies Marcie has selected for the caddy on your table. As a nice surprise, apple butter makes the cut among the traditional Welch's choices.

But if you really want something spectacular, Marcie knows her potatoes. The chips are homemade: crisp, some dark brown, some golden, but all are delicious. The sweet potato fries are scrumptious - perfectly cut but with a tinge of imperfection so as to let you know that they're home-fried delicacies. Dip these in some sort of ranch or honey mustard, and you've got yourself a meal for fewer than five hundred pennies.

Oh, and those candy quarter-vending machines in the front? Give those a whirl a few times, and you've got yourself dessert in the form of M & M's, fresh Skittles and gumballs.