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Colonial Cafe marks 115 years in Tri-Cities

If my math is correct, Colonial Café & Ice Cream has been delivering the goods around the Tri-Cities area for 115 years. And, by the goods, I mean great ice cream treats.

The company has created a hit parade of wonderful ice cream schemes that are made to please every craving and, one would think, expand the waistband a bit.

The company's impressive longevity leaves me with this question: How has Colonial President Tom Anderson been able to stay so slim all of these years? If I had that job, I'd qualify for the role of Santa Claus year-round.

It's hard to imagine others haven't put on a few calories with the Kitchen Sink concoction, brought to us in 1976. This is a banana split with an attitude — two whole bananas, six scoops of ice cream and all of the trimmings and toppings. (Yes, I've had a Kitchen Sink and lived to tell about it.)

My favorite, however, has always been the Turtle Sundae, which Colonial brought to us in 1966.

But the Anderson family members, who have operated this ice cream wonderland for three generations, didn't sit on their gastric laurels. They came up with the PBF Chipper in 1989, the Brownie Blast Sundae and Caramel Pretzel Chipper, both in 2011. And that's really only a sampling of the ice cream choices on the restaurant's menu.

'Are you fat?'

Talking about ice cream and weight reminds me that a reader who has never seen me in person and “knows” me only from my column photo (which is quite old by the way) had to ask: With all of the high-calorie food you write about, you must be overweight, right?

Uhhh, no. Soft? Yes. Fat? Not really.

I tipped the scales at my heaviest weight ever at 154 last summer, so I bought a new exercise bike and quit eating 10 cookies a day. Six months later, I hover around 142 pounds.

By any measure, I'm a short fellow at 5-6, so I suspect the 140- to 150-pound range is acceptable.

I probably weighed myself once a decade in the past because my clothes fit fine. Not so true anymore. I did notice my blue jeans getting a little tighter prior to the exercise regimen and cookie exorcism.

Also, when you are married to a fitness instructor who drags you along on her long treks with the dog, you are not going to gain a lot of weight no matter how much food you eat.

But that's another secret.

In most cases, I take home half of my restaurant meal on those days we do eat out. It's a pretty safe bet that more often than not, it is way more food than anyone should try to eat in one sitting.

They can stay

A couple of my columns in the final weeks of 2015 brought up the potentially half-baked idea that Charlestowne Mall should be converted into a “man's mall” with the types of stores and bars that would appeal to the male species.

Many readers, some of them female, chimed to say they think it is not a bad idea.

But here's my latest take. We actually did go to the mall during the holidays, and the lonely anchors seemed to be doing OK. It is always especially enjoyable to go to Von Maur during the holidays because of the decorations and piano music. But Carson's and Kohl's have plenty of appeal to shoppers as well.

So, maybe those anchors could stay on as part of the man's mall concept. But it doesn't change my conviction that a man's mall is a good way to go.

That shopping spree

If you see some elected officials running around the Batavia Jewel-Osco the morning of Feb. 26 stuffing their grocery carts as fast as they can, don't be alarmed.

They aren't doing it in an “every man for himself” mode because they have inside information that our state is doomed because of stubborn fools who can't agree on a budget, though we can't rule that out in the future.

This shopping “panic” is all for the good. Kane County Farm Bureau is hosting its 14th annual Food Check-Out Challenge on that date to restock the shelves for local food pantries.

The bureau purchases all of the groceries collected during a five-minute shopping spree for the donation. The county's state officials, local mayors and other elected officials have participated in the past.

Through this event and other hunger relief projects, the bureau says it has donated the equivalent of nearly 1.5 million meals to area food pantries.

dheun@sbcglobal.net

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