Eating at home vs restaurant. Going out to restaurants is no longer the exciting adventure it once was, and the reason can be summed up with just two words: Smoking bans.

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There was a time when I would have written to the opposite side of this debate; and moreover, hands down. Going to restaurants used to be fun and exciting. There was nothing wrong with my mother's cooking. Likewise, I've never had a problem with the culinary skills of my wife of 23 years. Still, restaurant food always seemed to taste better.

Truthfully, I believe there are two reasons I once felt that way. First, restaurants either offer a wide variety of menu choices, or they specialize in one particular area; such as steaks, seafood, pizza, or any number of ethnic choices. Thus, by going out to eat, I wasn't restricted to eating whatever my mother (or wife in later years) decided to cook. As for having a craving for seafood or Mexican cuisine, places like Red Lobster or Chi-Chi's served these needs respectively.

Secondly, this may sound a bit wimpy, but if you really stop to think about it, you'll agree that most people secretly feel the same way. About what?  Regardless of what lies on that plate before you, restaurants enable the patrons to see the finished product as opposed to being grossed out by the process of preparing it. For example, most of us love French fries, but it can be unsettling to see that employee at McDonald's dumping frozen potatoes into a vat of grease to produce them! In true restaurant settings; those with kitchens located behind closed doors, we don't have to witness remnants of other food particles cooked hours ago stuck to a dirty grill, nor do we have to gag at the thought that something we ordered may contain an ingredient that we detest by itself. Since we are seated in a different room at a table, we are ignorant as to how something was prepared, so we don't think about it.

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Conversely, when eating at home, we see every gross detail of how our food is prepared. And of course, once the meal is finished, somebody has to clean up the mess.

However, in the case of this author, this entire philosophy has now taken a 180-degree turn. Going out to restaurants is no longer the exciting adventure it once was, and the reason can be summed up with just two words: Smoking bans.

This hugely-discriminatin g govenment and media-sponsored act of social engineering has been with us for nearly 20 years now, but I can still vividly recall the good old days ...

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