You're right! I grew up thinking that vegetables were supposed to be boiled until they were mushy. It was a great surprise when I discovered steaming veggies and eating them still crispy. Epiphany!
To the Swedes here with the ". . . son" surname, in which the Swedish tradition is for boys to add "son" to their father's first name (and that becomes the son's surname) and for girls to add "dotter", which becomes their surname: My paternal GF (1870-1963) came to this country from Sweden in 1887 with his 15 year-old sister; they had blood in Warren PA, so that's where they initially settled. His name was John Johanson, but he changed it to the American spelling, "Johnson." My dad and two of my aunts told me this story when I was young, and having had my family tree done in recent years by a friend -- who has been doing them since long before Algore invented the internet -- she told me that the vast majority of stories like this handed down within a family are true. So: settling in Warren PA, which was full of Swedes, and my grandpa's name being John Johnson, they kept getting his mail mixed up with the probably zillions of other Johnsons there. So he decided to change it, which was pretty simple back then. He was born and raised in the Lindberg parish in Sweden, so he just took that name. So my dad, two uncles, myself, and all the male descendants from them are "Lindbergs." Since we did my family tree (started in 2014, and still continues) we verified that he did indeed come from that parish, and we even know the ship's name that him and his sister came over on. This area is on the south-western coast:
I have Andersdotters in my family tree, although quite a ways back. In keeping with the concept of remaining on the topic which, in this case, is rural cafes, do you prefer eating at rural cafes while traveling or do you go for the tried and true chains? As someone mentioned earlier, you don't know what you're going to get in an independently-operated cafe, such as a mom-and-pop operation. Sometimes it's not so great but some of the best restaurant food I've had has come from these places.
We had those stores also, we still eat sardines and saltines weekly here, we order cases of sardines and Kippers on Amazon. Most of our dinners or cafe's sold soul and country dish's. Lots of greens turnip, collard mustard's, cream corn, mashed Potatoe's, fat back or streak o lean, corn muffins or corn bread or biscuits.
A friend took me to a rural cafe for my birthday yesterday. Her juicy bison burger with jalapeno, cheese, and bacon sure looked and smelled good, but my whole grain pancakes with two eggs on top knocked down the hungries and were filling enough that I didn't ask for a slice of their cheesecake. OK OK, I confess. I did have room for the cake but it was raining hard and their parking area was flooding and we didn't want to wade in several inches of water to get in the car. It was such a downpour that I didn't even want to go to a close by bakery for cake. It was great just to get out. Sunny today and I think I will walk over and get some cake and ice cream.