It is irresistible.  And yet horribly wrong.  Three layers.  Chicken, sweet corn, mashed potatoes.  Covered with cheese and gravy.  The KFC Bowl.  As the delectable mouthfuls travel down your throat and throughout your body, no living organ escapes the flood of homey goodness, trans-fat and cholesterol.  A fate sandwich.

My grandmother lived to be 100 and ate anything she craved.  A handful of roast beef carved at the deli counter she ran.  Eggplant smothered in parmesan cheese and tomato sauce.  The second mound of a Mounds bar one of us left behind.  Healthy as a grandmotherly horse.  I remember calling her one year down in her Century Village condo with the greeting, "Happy birthday, Grandma!  How does it feel to be 95?"  She thought for a beat and then replied cheerfully, "Pretty good, but you know, it's not like when I was in my 80's."

My other grandmother, who we called Bubba (Yiddish for grandmother, not a redneck reference), also lived into her late nineties with no dietary curfews.  Family legend has it that in her younger days she liked to bend the elbow a bit and even played the numbers.  I'm told she used to send my father to the corner to place her bets and buy her a beer.  This was back before they started proofing 8-year-olds.

If either of these fine women were alive today I'm certain the words "cheesy gordita" would be in their vocabularies.  

My kids eat healthy.  Perhaps in response to my almost insanely pedestrian culinary preferences.  Son broils salmon in dill sauce.  Daughter makes her own chicken soup with organic vegetables.  Kids.  Always rebelling.  One minute they're devouring the Toys 'R' Us Big Book, turn your back and it's the Williams Sonoma catalog.  They fret about my Wheat Thins.  Daughter brings me tofu purees in tupperware.  "You can put this on anything," she assures me.  I'm sure I could.

And until I do, if there is a fried clam anywhere, I will find it, I will catch it, and I will eat it.

Now who would you rather dine with?