Sunday brunch.  Who doesn't love the very idea?  I can't imagine anyone not feeling happy about the prospect of a table full of bacon, eggs, muffins, sausage, fruit and all the best foods in the world, served in the middle of the day on which no one has to work.  It's a great concept for everyone.

Especially my family.

My folks have been members of a golf club since before I was born that has a lovely dining room in the clubhouse and the highlight of the menu every week is Sunday Brunch.

This is the Superbowl of Brunches.  It's the Superbowl/Final Four/World Series all rolled into one of brunches.

It's served buffet style and it's all you can eat.

You start with your choice of juice; cranberry, orange, tomato...if you want guava juice, just ask a waiter and I'm sure they'll go find you some.  Then you grab a plate for the fruit table.  There you will find fresh, ripe pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, peaches, pears and pomegranates all cut into perfect bite sized pieces.  There will be a yogurt topping or whipped cream if you like, as well.  Don't feel like fruit?  There may be a tossed salad.

Then on to the main attraction; the hot table.  Here will be huge silver chafing dishes filled with hashbrowns, homefries or baked potatoes, sour cream and cheeses in bowls on the side.  There's a dish filled with bacon, one with sausages,one with ham and one with hot english muffins.  Then there are the dishes filled with eggs.  We've got over easy, scrambled and holy cannoli! eggs Benedict. 

There's an entire table devoted to omelets; pick your own ingredients from the dishes of sliced peppers, mushrooms, cheeses, onions, bacon fragments, ham chunks and a lot of stuff I don't usually recognize.  Next to that is the Belgium waffle/pancake station.  A chef with a grill and press is ready to fry you up a fresh, hot Belgium waffle which you can cover in any of the half dozen fruits they have in bowls beside the grill, different flavor syrups, chocolate shavings and more whipped cream if that rocks your world.

When you're done with all of that, there's the dessert table.  Every kind of muffin you've ever had or thought of or heard of.  Donuts both cake and raised, frosted and glazed, long johns, eclairs, bear claws and if you're really lucky, cheesecake.  There may even be bowls of extra chocolate sauce because what the heck, we're being so decadent here that even looking at this spread adds years to your sentence in purgatory.

And it's worth it.

When I was little, we only went to Brunch at the Club on Easter Sunday, where in addition to all the above, there was also an egg hunt up in the women's lounge and baskets of candy for all the kids.  Easter would have been even better than Christmas for us if our folks had let us go to brunch in our pajamas.  Although sometimes the brand new, white (in one case, red) pair of patent leather shoes almost made getting all dressed up worth it.

Now, as a parent, I look back on Easters at the club and I can't help but wonder where's the logic in buying all nine kids new outfits and then letting them each eat fifteen lbs of chocolate?  He's Alive and We're Forgiven! Wreck the Clothes!

Last week my Mom called and said it was our turn to go to the club and use the monthly allotment for some friends of theirs who leave town all winter.  We could go any time we wanted, but it had to be by the end of January.  Lucky for us, there was one Sunday left before February.  Sunday brunch, here we come!  We called our daughter Katie, who has started school again and could use a break and told her what time.  Jay invited MJ and Kent along, as we never get to see Kent.  As a business owner/operator, he works twenty hour days all week long.  As a die-hard football fan, he does give himself Sundays off, occasionally.  We were all pretty darned excited.

We got to the Club.

There was no buffet.

We were seated and given menus.  All the great stuff was on the menu but it wasn't all you can eat.  Well, I guess it was all you can order and eat.  We asked what happened and were told it was a hygiene issue.

Forty seven years and they decide it's a hygiene issue?

Yes.  All the members were turning into obese pigs.

The food was great and the company better and I was uncomfortably full when we were through.  But it's sad to think of the era of the buffet Sunday Brunch being over.  Josie's disappointment was so bitter she could barely choke down her belgian waffle covered in raspberries, chocolate chips and whipped cream.  Somehow she soldiered on an managed to down the whole thing, and a muffin as well.  but still.  Is there anything sadder than a disappointed tween, stuffing her face with sweets? The new set up prevented us from eating three times as much as necessary...but that was the whole beauty of brunch.  Once or twice a year, we got to pretend it was ancient Rome and we were Nero.

I blame ethanol.

 

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