Fast food passes me by, as quickly as possible

In those days you received $2.4 for the pound, so $10 dollars was just over £4. The book included one piece of advice for those American readers visiting England. They were told to save their dollars for tastier times on the continent, as meat and two veg in Great Britain was dull and uninteresting no matter the class of restaurant.

How the wheel has turned. The ‘English’ cuisine is far more varied and, whereas traditional British fare was dull, it has been augmented by and has embraced so many foreign elements, that a visit to the UK provides a variety of gastronomic choices.

In fact, if one was writing a reprise, How to live in the USA on $100 a day, I would be tempted to tell my readers that one fast-food outlet is much the same as another and, despite their pretensions to the contrary, Americans in general, do not have much perception of a gourmet meal.

Yes, you can obtain juicy steaks and great fish meals, as did Ellie and I during our recent visit to the US. But we found you have to be insistent to the point of belligerence, to avoid them being drenched in flavour-killing sauces, melts and additives.

This seemed more noticeable in this trip to the States as we travelled a zig-zag route from Kansas City to Savannah. One afternoon, with the traffic a little hefty, we decided to stop the night in a place called Pigeon Forge. It is close to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, the biggest wilderness in the United States, and, as entry is free, the most popular. It is also the home of Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Alton Towers.

As we traversed the main drag seeking a budget motel, I suggested that Ellie make a list of the gourmet alternatives on offer. They included Taco Bell, Denny’s Diner, McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, KFC, Arby’s, Subway, Waffle House, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, Cracker Barrel, Jack in a Box, Shoneys, Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken (whose fame somehow had escaped us) Papa John’s, TGI Fridays, Applebee, Bubba Gump, Mr Bojangles, Hardee’s, Sticky Fingers, Dairy Queen, Popeye’s and the semantically challenging Fudruckers.

After driving past these dispensers of the tediously unimaginative, guess what? The list started to repeat itself, which may seem like a dream to those who love such outlets, but not for us.

Every couple of days we would psyche ourselves up and enter one of these emporiums and attempt to obtain a plate of eggs, bacon and hash browns – the latter we particularly enjoy. In such a situation you have to stay focused and patient because the waitress does not want you to have simply eggs, bacon and hash browns. After you have explained your requirements for eggs and bacon, she then asks if you want a cheese melt, beans in hickory sauce or some other concoction.

Having explained that eggs over -easy, bacon and hash browns are all you want and that you are not tempted by the vision of a side-order of rye or raisin toast and apple butter, attention switches to the nature of hash browns you desire.

Do you want them smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered, country or topped, which after being rescued by an interpreter we were led to believe meant, respectively: with onion or cheese or grilled hickory smoked ham or grilled tomatoes or jalepeno or sausage gravy or the less-than-clearly-explained, Bert’s chilli.

“No just bacon eggs and plain hash browns,” you reply, knowing full well that a slice of unsolicited cheese will make it on to your plate, no matter how rigidly you stress your requirements.

Of course for those who love fast food, these melanges of contradictory alternatives may delight but, in the main, I find them as nauseous as they are unsubtle. There is talk of the introduction of a calorie-tax in the USA – forcing up the price of such items which are in part responsible for perhaps five per cent of American citizens being unable to walk properly because their thighs, in keeping with everything else, are far too fat.

Another 20 to 30 per cent are seriously over-weight; and another 30 per cent are plain overweight. The unfortunate fact is, we ape the US with fast-food outlets.

For us, as so much of American restaurant food tastes the same, you have to learn to play gastronomic hopscotch through the menus.

We popped into an English themed bar in Savannah and enjoyed some very good American beer from the local micro brewery, which is so much better than the tired and insipid Buds and such. I noticed they had baskets of chips on offer. I longed for something that simple, but of course I was wrong. The chips come with a blue-cheese melt, diced tomatoes, bacon and scallions and finished off with ranch dressing.

I passed.