Rouladen & Other Happy Meals

Rouladen is one of my happy meals. It’s a simple thing too. It’s a thin slice of round or sirloin steak, layered with two strips of bacon then wrapped around a generous dill pickle spear, a rib of celery cut somewhat wider than the slice of steak and a carrot stick of equal proportions.

This beef roll is secured with a couple of toothpicks, seasoned with salt pepper and paprika and baked uncovered with beef stock at 350^o for forty-five or fifty minutes until browned. Add additional stock as necessary for gravy, cover and bake at 275^o for about another hour, until the steak is fork tender.

Thicken the pan drippings with a white wash and season to taste with parsley, garlic and onion powder. Serve up with homemade spätzle and my Bavarian red cabbage and oh my, you have created a Milwaukee, German-American feast fit for royalty. Easy.

McDonald’s also serves up happy meals, but not so much to my liking. Children seem to love them because they include some sort of toy. Now when my own kid were toddlers and preschoolers, my wife took them to McDonald’s one night for supper. They were thrilled. Up until that point in their little lives they had never been to McDonald’s. We were a young, struggling couple with three kids. McDonald’s was simply a too pricey meal for our family of five at the time.

I was off fishing. Rita had been busy putting in a garden and didn’t much want to cook. We’ll go to McDonald’s she told the kids. They squealed in anticipation and joy – a special dinner out and ooh at McDonald’s. Aside from burgers, shakes and fries, McDonald’s servers up a ton of advertising, as in “oh I’m love’n it.”

Little kids buy into that, adults do too. On that day my kid’s expectations met up with reality. The much anticipated McDonald’s happy meal, even with the toy, wasn’t much too their liking. The burgers at home were better. At home they were made better beef, served on a better bun, seared to a juicy perfection and cost a great deal less. At home these burgers were not served with fries, but with a salad.

As for the rouladen, tell me what could delight a child more than a slice of tender beef wrapped around the colorful and tasty splendor of the pickle, carrot and celery stick. I recall taking my two young sons to the mall at Christmas time one night after supper. They were maybe four and five years old. It was mostly to get them out of the house for a while to burn off a bit of steam. We went to the local mall, played hide and seek in the Victoria’s Secret’s store and such. We returned home an hour and a half or two hours later.

When we got home, my youngest son Ed had some sort of wad in his cheek, like a jawbreaker or a slug of chewing tobacco. Neither jawbreakers nor chewing tobacco were part of our evening excursion. It turned out the mysterious wad was in fact a brussels spout that he had squirreled away in is cheek. He was quite literally savoring it all that while.  Brussels sprouts, like rouladen are part of my food culture.

But so is an occasional Big Mac. And I’ve found that their sausage McMuffin with eggs sandwich has medicinal properties for curing hang overs.

Now back to the McDonald’s Happy Meal. San Francisco tried to discourage happy meal sales by focusing on the happy meal toy.

The city enacted an ordinance that prohibited restaurants from including a toy with meals that do meet city generated nutritional standards. The measure was a thinly veiled shot at McDonald’s. In some circles McDonald’s is an evil corporate force largely responsible of “childhood obesity epidemic.” San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar evidently runs in one of those. (view video – it’s a hoot)      

And his ordinance reeks of hypocrisy. San Francisco school lunches don’t meet the city’s nutrition standards either. (Full Text) You would think a city with the audacity to draw up municipal nutrition guidelines would apply them to their school lunch programs first. But no and in the broader scheme of things, what’s up with city nutrition guidelines anyway?

McDonald’s of course took counter measures to get around the silly ordinance. Now in San Francisco you can only get a toy when you order a happy meal. It’s an option. They charge an extra ten cents for it. The extra ten cents goes to Ronald McDonald charities At McDonald’s stores elsewhere the toys can be purchased for separately $2.18, so a health consciences parent could have their child wash down a salad with a cup 2% milk and still thrill them with a toy.

But it’s no longer that way in San Francisco – to get the kid the toy, you have to buy the happy meal. It seems the McDonald’s corporate lawyers have beautifully ironic sense of humor.      

Eric Mar you’ve been outbid, out trumped and checkmated. I suspect you’re ‘not loving it.’