David Michael Burrow

Mr. Burrow loves food, which is probably evident from his somewhat overweight physique. Except when he travels, almost everything he eats is cooked at home. While he does eat a lot of prepared foods, having worked as a cook in a good restaurant, he enjoys preparing high-quality dishes. His specialties include French onion soup, baked ham, beef stroganoff, various pasta dishes, bread pudding, and apple crisp. Unfortunately, since being diagnosed with diabetes, he is able to eat less of many of these than he used to.

While he is not a vegetarian, the majority of the food he eats at home is meatless. He could, however, not exist without cheese. He loves almost every variety of cheese, and one kind or another is the principal ingredient in almost everything he cooks.

Mr. Burrow buys a large part of his food at Aldi, the German-based no-frills grocer. Almost never does he see a difference in quality between store brands (such as those sold at Aldi) and their higher-priced national competition. The rest he gets at the local Hy-Vee store, where he gets Fuel Saver reward points on his purchases.

While he does not eat out often, Mr. Burrow particularly enjoys the experience of dining in a good (but not pretentious) restaurant. He especially enjoys good Mexican restaurants, but he also likes Asian (Thai/Laotian), Italian, Greek, and of course traditional American food.

Mr. Burrow loves breakfast food. When he's travels, he enjoys having an omelette at a family restaurant. When he travels south of Interstate 70, he enjoys stopping at the Waffle House for some "chunked and covered" hash browns. He also enjoys unpretentious doughnuts and rolls, such as those found at Dunkin' Donuts or Tim Hortons (something else that needs to be strictly limited with diabetes).

Something he loves that he can still eat with diabetes are salads. He often orders dinner salads in restaurants and enjoys making them for himself at home.

He grew up with fast food, and he particularly enjoys it when he is travelling. He loves simple breakfast sandwiches like the McDonalds Egg McMuffin or a ham, egg, and cheese biscuit from Hardees. He enjoys checking out regional fast food chains whenever he travels. Two summers in Mississippi also made him a big fan of the Southern regional burger chain, Krystal, and when he's traveling in California he always has to stop in at Fatburger. He has also enjoyed chains like Shake Shack, Five Guys, Burgerville, Bojangle's, Portillo's, El Pollo Loco, Zaxby's, and Dickey's BBQ.

While Mr. Burrow can honestly tell his students he did not drink when he was in high school, as an adult he does enjoy having a few drinks. His likes almost anything made with rum--especially dark rums, like the famous Newfoundland Screech. Rum mixed with grapefruit juice and the infamous New Orleans hurricane are probably his favorite drinks. He also likes vodka drinks, after first tasting Stolichnaya when he visited the old Soviet Union, and sweet Spanish or Russian champagne. When he drinks beer, his favorite brew is Busch.

Most of what Mr. Burrow drinks is non-alcoholic. He drinks a lot of juice--most of it unsweetened grapefruit juice. Since his diabetic diagnosis, most of this has been changed to low-carb juice drinks. He's rarely seen without a cup of coffee, although he probably throws out more coffee than he drinks. He especially likes the coffee and chicory mixture popular that he learned to drink in the South. He fails to see any attraction whatsoever to bottled water, but he does drink lots of tap water and homemade unsweetened iced tea. You're unlikely to see him with a milk moustache. He did not like milk as a child, and he doesn't care much more for it as an adult. To him, milk is an ingredient (which he typically buys canned)--and something that is best made into cheese.

LEFT: The McDonalds Egg McMuffin is one of Mr. Burrow's favorite breakfast foods.
RIGHT: Mr. Burrow at a family reunion potluck in Fredericksburg, Iowa, in 1993

Newfoundland Screech
Screech--the dregs of the barrel make the best rum

LEFT: Those who haven't been to Dixie may know White Castle, a chain that is virtually identical to Krystal.
RIGHT: M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m ... donuts! (Click above for full-size pictures.)

Links to other sites on the Web

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Aldi
Hy-Vee
Krystal
McDonalds
Tim Hortons
Waffle House
Newfoundland Screech
Reyka Icelandic Vodka
Busch Beer
Community Coffee (traditional Louisiana coffee & chicory)
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