Friday, March 19, 2010

Orange Roofs and Green Nuts!

Almost sounds like a line from a favorite children's book!
If you are of a certain age, you might remember a chain of restaurants named after their founder, Howard Johnson. They always had orange roofs.   Many were crowned with a cupola and weather vane depicting  the company logo of Simple Simon and the Pieman!



I especially remember dining at the Ft. Worth location when visiting my paternal grandfather.
One of their specialities was fried clams - a rare treat for landlocked North Texas.
Their other claim to fame was the ice cream:  28 flavors!  This was long before Baskin-Robbins or Ben and Jerry.
Mother's favorite was pistachio, hands down.  I remember sharing many scoops of that light green confection.  I was mostly enchanted with the fact that each scoop came with its own little Howard Johnson logo-bearing cookie.  A cookie that you did not even have to request. 
How sweet!

The other night, as I went dashing through the grocery store, I spied a display of these:
Nothing at all like a dish of Howard Johnson's pistachio ice cream, but they still conjured up some sweet childhood memories.
I might add that I am now totally addicted to this rather unique salt and pepper flavor and can't stop eating them!  Wonder what Mother would think?

Speaking of green, please visit Laurie to participate in her St. Patrick's Day Give-away!

4 comments:

Julia said...

I remember!

Joan said...

That's how I remember HoJo's! Loved those friend clams!

BrenOaks said...

Jan, we are addicted to those same pistachios and buy them by the huge bag at Costco! :)

DawnB said...

I remember stopping at a HJ in Gary, Indiana in 1966 we were driving from CA to MD, we got off of the freeway to avoid the rush hour traffic, DD Laura was 2 and only liked chocolate or vanilla, they were out of both LOL

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