Tag Archives: food

Our 2023 Road Trip #14: 82 Queen and Back to King Street

November 13, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Cup of she-crab soup topped with a few herbs, served in white cup on white saucer with white doily on hardwood table.

She-crab soup! That Charleston specialty was the best bite I had all week. Yes, even better than donuts.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

By noon our long walk through downtown Charleston had taken us over a mile south of our car and into their version of the French Quarter — a mite smaller than New Orleans’ own that we’d visited a decade earlier, and nearly as sweltering, but 100% fewer drunkards bumping into us. We tried to focus on the sights all around despite having emptied our water bottles.

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55 Is Just a Number, Not a Limit

October 18, 2025 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Anne sitting in front of a sign with a car on it reading "Ford $295 Order it today!" Wall is wood-paneled and has car-related mementos hanging on it.

DISCLAIMER: No surgeries or hair dyes were used in the making of this amazing lovely woman.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we’re getting old! And it happened again!

Last weekend Anne turned the big 5-5. At least it’s our understanding that 55 is “big”. She’ll now be eligible for discounts at select businesses even though she looks half my age under most lighting conditions. I’m a mere babe at 53 but sometimes have to tell cashiers that, no, I am not retired yet. Most days we don’t feel this old and have to remind each other that we are indeed this old and the actuarial math works out against us.

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If We Were Having High Tea…

October 12, 2025 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
White teapot and teacup on a white restaurant tablecloth.

Welcome to the Finer Things Club! If it helps, there won’t be a pop quiz about Angela’s Ashes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes my wife Anne and I find excuses to leave the house for fun besides comic-cons, road trips, movies or extra groceries! It isn’t often, but we’re open to the concept. It beats doomscrolling in our comfy chairs. We’d venture out more often if we were invited, but we aren’t into sports or alcohol, which tend to be the only incentives that 98% of Americans offer or respond to in laboratory tests. Sure, we could invite other folks out on our own terms, which Anne has been known to do on selective occasions, but as a lifelong introvert, I’m not one for taking the initiative, not even if you pass me some on a serving tray and insist, “Here, please enjoy some initiative, on the house.” It doesn’t help that our offline friends here in Indianapolis tend to lead busier lives than we do, and our internet friends don’t cross state lines too often and don’t consider Indiana a tempting vacation destination, despite all our sports and alcohol.

Once upon a time four months ago, two of our friends were preparing to move far away from here to another country — one with its own storied forms of sports and alcohol, often combined with disastrous results — and our li’l circle wanted to get together one last time before we never see them again in person and come to appreciate their future social media posts all the more. After extensive text negotiations our circle’s female half informed the male half our occasion would be something called “high tea”. I thought this was just one of their frequent Anglophile in-jokes, like when they used to bring up Harry Potter a lot. But no, “high tea” is a thing that Americans can do, even when it isn’t “tea time” on the grandfather clocks in any of the British Empire’s few remaining time zones.

So we agreed to try a new thing, even though Anne has hated tea ever since she was traumatized by a childhood prank. But we understand compromise is a thing friends do, even though compromises are against the 2025 Terminally Online Code of Conduct.

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Indiana State Fair 2025 Photos, Part 3: The Year in Food, “Look But Don’t Taste” Division

August 14, 2025 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sculpture of Disney's Stitch made mostly of cans of StarKist Tuna.

Canned Stitch from Disney’s Lilo and Stitch!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Our favorite part is the new food, but some of their most ingenious uses of food are available neither for purchase nor consumption. Exhibit A: the annual Canstruction contest! The charitable organization holds eponymous events nationwide in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other to build the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “Soup on Clearance in Aisle 6”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families. Thus these temporary installations live on only if everyone takes pictures of them.

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Indiana State Fair 2025 Photos, Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour

August 9, 2025 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Small paper boat filled with exactly what the caption describes, but also traces of white icing mixed in.

Welcome to the Indiana State Fair! Have some Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookie Butter Pretzel Bites!

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

Most years, we’re all about the food. Each time our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same tenderloin again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The TotF lineup is announced weeks in advance so everyone can plan their meals and experiments accordingly. This year’s Taste of the Fair dishes and drinks number 33 on their official map and 39 on the official site. As of this writing I’m unsure what the six unmapped vendors did to upset State Fair officials.

In all we tried eight Taste of the Fair items during our 7½-hour stay and walked off several of those cumulative calories around the fairgrounds and inside the exhibit halls, whose contents we’ll cover in subsequent chapters. I wish we could’ve tried more, but: (a) food in general was pricier than ever, apropos of the economy today; (b) Taste of the Fair items in particular seemed much more expensive, possibly under the assumption that all fair-food fans are wealthy influencers or are just plain irresponsible with their credit cards; (c) the older we get, the less we should be eating, and the less we can eat; and (d) some vendors now approach Taste of the Fair as a chance to create their own Man V. Food super-sized eating challenges suitable only for the mightiest wrestling champions, compiling sandwiches so large that, were I to try one, I wouldn’t be able to eat again for days. And this chapter would look pretty silly with only a single sandwich pic.

So we did what we could in a single day with the bodies allotted. In the past I’ve ranked our results as a gratuitous listicle, but I’m not in the mood to pit vendors against each other. Also included here are a few items Anne threw in that weren’t on that list. She’s willing to play along to an extent, but she has her own tastes and doesn’t share all my compulsions.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #11: Charleston Monday Mealtimes

July 29, 2025 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Entire flounder fried to a crisp and spiced. with the fins still attached. Square white plate also has red rice and a tiny bowl of pasta salad.

Just the seafood we were looking for: lunch at Fleet Landing — crispy whole fried Southern flounder with pasta salad and Charleston red rice.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Historical sites and summertime scenery notwithstanding, one of my favorite parts of the Charleston experience was the food. We’d made sure to budget accordingly in case of impeccable restaurants. Our first full day in town was a feast of delights.

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Mr. & Mrs. Golden, 21 Years and Counting

July 20, 2025 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Selfie! Anne wears a blue T-shirt with a Superman S-shield. I'm wearing an orange Superman Celebration 2017 shirt with art by Jon Bogdanove.

Strange visitors from another planet.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

When I posted about our 20th anniversary last year — a milestone, mind you! — almost no one cared. Despite the apathy of You, The Viewers at Home, it’s an MCC tradition, so here we go again anyway! Briefly, even! By my standards, I mean!

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Our 2023 Road Trip #6: Far from Hoth

April 26, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
AT-AT sculpture 16 feet tall made of white wires, standing outside in an overgrown yard.

A lone AT-AT patrols the South Carolina wilds, unaware the war is long over.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Somehow the two-day drive to Charleston felt less like a slog and more like a leisurely jaunt. I suppose it helped that we didn’t brake for as many roadside digressions as usual. After our stopover in Columbia, we enjoyed one quick sight — a modest tribute to a galaxy far, far away — before proceeding to our ultimate destination slightly farther away but not that far away.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #3: Tennessee Geeks ‘n’ Grub

April 5, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two stuffed dolls of Grogu and Pancake Popple the same size sitting on a display case. Hanging above them on the wall are five Snorks toys.

Grogu and Pancake Popple welcome you to their burger joint!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

After the overlong Kentucky leg, only Tennessee stood between us and the Carolinas. Our first hotel of the evening would be in a rather charming city where we previously stayed for a convention and had hoped to revisit someday. Same as the first half of the day, the drive took far longer than we would’ve liked, though this time road construction wasn’t to blame.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #1: Kentucky Greets ‘n’ Greeks

March 30, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Purple horse statue with large blue logo on one side for the town of Simpsonville, "Horse Capital of the World".

Kentucky racehorses! Now available in grape flavor.

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. We grew up in families that couldn’t afford annual out-of-state vacations. We were geeks more accustomed to vicarious life through the windows of pop culture than through in-person adventures. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own, from the horizons of nature to the limits of imagination, from history’s greatest hits to humanity’s deepest regrets and the sometimes quotidian, sometimes quirky stopovers in between.

We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

After 2022’s sojourn northeast to the peaceful scenery of Vermont, for 2023 we switched directions and headed south for some American history tourism (one of Anne’s favorite things), some Southern culinary comfort, and some light searching for any Civil War statues they hadn’t already toppled. It was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection.

First we actually had to get there. Our journey began, as they nearly always do, with episodic pit stops in the other states between us and our eventual destination. For most of our southbound vacations, Kentucky is first in line.

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