Food for Thought
It wasn’t momma’s home cooking Easter meal this past Sunday but it was Patton’s Restaurant at 1552 EAST GRAND AVE, SUITE D DES MOINES, IA 50316. Students always want to go home for the holidays and Easter is a holiday that students love to spend with their family. There are some things that I love about spending Easter with my family. My family goes to church early in the morning and after church there’s an Easter egg hunt for all the kids in the church. I have some younger siblings so I usually get trapped into helping them out and eating their candy when I get the opportunity. The one thing I always counted on when I went home for Easter was the after church Easter lunch, dinner and who could forget the leftovers.
Family holidays aren’t the same when you are at college because the most important thing is missing. Even though friends are with us we always imagined only spending the holidays with our families and sticking to the several traditions. No matter how far I was as a college student I always pre planned to fly home to Texas and continue tradition during the Easter holiday. This past Easter was much different because of my athlete schedule so at the last minute I had to create Easter plans. Who knew planning your Easter could be so stressful.
I called my mom jokingly requesting that she send me some of the food in the mail because there was nothing like a home cooked southern soul food meal on Easter. In all the three years I had been attending school in Des Moines I never had ventured to search for a substitute for my mom’s home cooking. On Easter that all would change because I already was disliking not having my family around and I couldn’t settle for not having my southern soul food around.
Saturday night, the day before Easter my search began on the great Google. I simply typed in “Soul food in Des Moines.” What came up next was a jaw dropping and mouthwatering picture of a plate of southern food that appeared to be the closest similarity to my mom’s Easter meal that I had witnessed here in Iowa. I am talking about fried chicken, catfish, red beans and rice, macaroni and for dessert peach cobbler. It was a done deal to make arrangements to go to this newly heard of place Patton’s which was close to the school. My next step was to go look at the menu and that’s where I was permanently sold. I saw the Sunday lunch special titled an all you can eat buffet for $16. It even included in the buffet some of my mom’s own favorites to cook on Easter; cornbread dressing, whipped sweet potatoes, southern fried chicken and collard greens. My Easter was great despite my family being absent this time around but I was happy that I could still feel like I was home just by the food and company of great friends.
