A Guilty Pleasure Vanquished
Nice knowing you, Burger King, but I'm out.
It didn’t take me long, as a foodie-hunter, to grasp the irony of my post-duck hunt routine: a trip to Burger King for a burger, fries, and soda on the drive home. Yes, I was capping off hunts for the best food on earth with meals of utter garbage.
What did take me a long time was growing the will to replace the routine with something better, which I’ve finally accomplished, thanks to the Covid pandemic and a hunting road trip with a friend who has celiac disease.
As with all bad habits, I found ways to justify mine: The need for salt and fat after a high-exertion hunt is real. Fast food chains deliver consistently no matter where you are, and get you back on the road quickly so you can devour your food while you drive. A V-shaped stain of grease on my car’s seat cover attests to this, thanks to Burger King’s famously messy burgers.
I did feel guilty about the meat I was eating, because it supports industrial animal farming, which treats animals horrifically. But so do most regular restaurants I visit, so that wasn’t the only problem.
The problem is this “food” is carefully engineered to make us eat more than we need, and still crave more. It is fattening and killing Americans at an alarming rate, an undeclared war on our bodies, marketed as convenience, affordability, and fun!
In short, it’s as as bad for humans as it is for the animals it’s made of. It just takes longer to kill us.
Last year, this food’s hold on my post-hunt routine was shattered by two events.
The first followed a duck hunt in the Grasslands where I’d gone jump-shooting, walking literally six miles, mostly in knee-deep water and muck, until sunset. It was exhausting. I wanted fast food, and I wanted to buy it in the “dining room” so I could use a clean toilet and wash my hands while I waited - two things you generally can’t do while duck hunting.
Wendy’s was my best option, but the chain had apparently enjoyed the cost savings of closing its dining room during the worst days of the pandemic, and still offered drive-through only. I tried in vain to find something else that was acceptable, and ended up getting fried chicken, which I ate while driving.
I do not recommend this.
As I scattered greasy deep-fried batter crumbs all over my car on the dark drive up Highway 99, I thought about all the taquerias and taco trucks I’d passed in my haste to find a suitable chain fast food outlet. I resolved at that moment to skip the chains next time and visit a taco truck after my next hunt. You can’t eat street tacos while driving, but perhaps a 15- or 20-minute delay in my arrival at home wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Not long after that, I went on a hunting road trip to Eastern Washington with my friend Vy, who prefers stopping for a real restaurant break over succumbing to fast food chains, which invariably make her sick because she has celiac disease.
My approach to any drive has always been to get there as fast as I can, but I quickly discovered that the enjoyment of a good meal was worth the delay. It was time to stretch, time to actually look at my friend while talking to her, and the pleasure of good service.
Those two events were the one-two punch to Burger King et al. When I was hungry after a hunt, I started asking Google Maps to find me a taco truck. (Yeah, I know, I talk a lot of shit about technology, but I’ve got to say this is one of tech’s gifts.)
On my recent road trip to Wyoming, I drove a good 2,000-plus miles without resorting to fast food, and found a really good carne asada torta in restaurant I was sure would prove to be a mistake.
After my Opening Day duck hunt this weekend with my friend Andre at the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area, Google Maps led me to an auto shop district of Fairfield (taco trucks are often a fixture in such areas). There I enjoyed very nicely done carnitas tacos with a Mexican Coke, which is still made with cane sugar - a rare dessert for me.
Granted, this way of eating on the road lacks the consistency of Burger King, though truth be told, the quality of BK’s fries is inconsistent, hot and crisp one time, lukewarm and limp the next. And while many taco trucks have picnic tables, some do not, so sometimes I still eat in my car, albeit not while driving.
The meat still isn’t free range, but it is real food: cooked, not engineered. And when I visit a taco truck, I’m generally supporting an entrepreneur, possibly even being served by the owner, as opposed to tithing a megacorporation that doesn’t mind killing people slowly to make a buck.
And the food is just better.
(More irony: There’s a perfectly good Mexican place called Roberta’s right next to the BK where Hank and I used to go after hunts in the Sacramento Valley - he always wanted to go there, but I always wanted my burger and fries. Next time!)
While it disappoints me that I was so easily seduced by convenience for so long, I’m rapidly letting go of that.
I’m less optimistic about the next hurdle - finding road food that doesn’t use industrially produced (read: cruel to animals) meat. But sometimes you have to take these things one step at a time.
Another good choice if you're hunting the Suisun Marsh is the Filipino place tucked in behind the strip of fast food restaurants at Grizzly Island Road, though the line can be pretty long sometimes.
I am guilty of post-hunt stops at the Golden Arches, but I prefer the small town pierogi restaurants found occasionally in rural Saskatchewan. Sadly no taco trucks, but an interesting conversation on the provenance of the borsht.