Sunday is generally housework and errands day here. That includes maintaining the technology. Where other people might clean the car, we work on the electronics. So today we have been to the Toy Shop (otherwise known as Frys) and spent lots of money on gleaming technological goodies, including a 1 Tb drive with a RAID mirror for serious backup of my work-related data. More on not-so-superfluous technology later, but this post is actually about food.

On long shopping trips (which we still haven’t finished, we just came back to dump some stuff and collect something we had forgotten) we tend to end up eating out. Inspired by this chart, and by the enthusiastic recommendations of Damien G. Walter, we headed for In-n-Out Burger. As burger bars go they actually are quite good. To start with they are, as far as I know, the only burger chain in the USA that does not try to force you to eat Evil Dill Pickle. Everything is cooked to order, including the fries which are actually chopped up from real potatoes in the restaurant rather than being extruded and frozen in a factory. The fries have been cooked in 100% vegetable oil (trans-fat and cholesterol free) since 1948, and you get a packet of salt rather than having them come pre-salted. So all-in-all I would say that Damien is right to be enthusiastic about them, even if they are burgers.

If this seems horribly un-American, well this is California. Also their cheeseburgers are infinitely extensible. The menu includes a single and a double, but the cash registers are programmed to allow you to add as many extra patties and cheese slices as you like. Naturally this has tempted some college students to try to set records that would daunt even Mike Gatting.