Sometimes it can be difficult to decide where you want to eat. This can occur anywhere, including the great city of New York. This can become compounded when more than one person is dining and it becomes more complex with the greater the number of people. Even for those individuals, and many of us are among them who have an absolute favorite restaurant and an absolute favorite meal, there can be times when even that just doesn’t sound interesting and you’re left feeling extremely hungry with nowhere to go. Tom recently had this problem, which is rare for him. He has been a life long resident of New York and he knows the city’s dining establishments inside and out.

However, last Friday night he had just finished a hard week of work and also just got paid. It is common for him to want to hang out and enjoy a great meal with some friends on payday. This day was no different than the others, however he just could not think of one place that sounded good. He was beginning to get on the nerves of his friends when finally Tony announced that they would be going to Cola’s on 8th Avenue and that was all there was to it. If Tom couldn’t agree to go and find something to eat there, that was just too bad. He was too hungry to sit around talking about food any longer. Tom new he had tired the patience of his friends and agreed to go with them to get some pasta at Cola’s.

This actually turned out to be on of the greatest meals he had eaten all year. After much deliberation he finally decided to have the Lasagna Classica and when it arrived the aroma alone lit up his taste buds. Tom loved his lasagna, which he had never before ordered there and declared Cola’s to be one of the best restaurants Manhattan. He now knew exactly were to come the next time he was famished yet wasn’t interested in anything. His friends, who were enjoying the Chicken Breast Romana, the Jumbo Prawns Positano and the Eggplant Parmigiana Rolatini didn’t raise their gazes from their plates when they announced somewhat sarcastically that they were happy for their friend.

It’s hard to imagine life without a grill, because the joy of preparing fresh food in this way has some spectacular side effects.  There is a very pleasant feeling when you’re spreading a barbecue marinade you’ve been experimenting with over a nice piece of fresh chicken breast, and you start to see your guests start to get distracted by the smell.  First, there’s a little bit of movement, that’s almost unnoticeable, where they might start pausing in their conversations a bit, or the frisbee game takes a sloppy turn suddenly.  This is usually followed by a flurry of graceful gestures and motions, as if to cover up the moment before, but then the smell starts to waft again, and they are suddenly reminded that they are enormously hungry.

Food and smell has a peculiar reaction on people and animals.  It wakes up some of the earliest memories that we have, and every time we smell barbecue chicken, the synapses in the brain take us back to the very first time.  Because the relationship between smell and cooking is so much more powerful when it’s outdoors, the memories that it awakens are much stronger, and this is one of the reasons why the summer meal cooked on built in bbq grills has such a powerful attraction for all of us.  People often remark on the way cooking outdoors can remind you of your happiest summer memories because of the smell, and there is actual physiological responses in the body that make this true.

There may be plenty of other reasons why the effect is so powerful, and it’s very likely that cooking and culture are intimately connected in ways we don’t yet understand.  But as long as we’re able to continue grilling fantastic chicken, we’ll be learning about why we like the things we do.  It seems likely, even, that in our lifetime, we’ll have a better understanding between smell, culture, and memory, but even when we do, we won’t be able to stop our mouths from watering, and there’s very little reason to even want to.

We all know Texas is a big state and Texas has some pretty big cities. Lubbock is one of them and they do things in a big way here. Take Texas Tech, they are one of Lubbock’s largest employers and a recent study revealed that with the staff and students, Texas Tech University alone generated over $1.5 billion dollars in revenue for Lubbock. Now that’s pretty impressive. Another little tidbit about Texas Tech, they are the only Texas University offering a medical school, a law school and an undergraduate institution all at the same location. Texas Tech has had students attending from all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries.

Tourism is another huge industry for Lubbock and the surrounding area. Lubbock is a happening city, fun to visit, lots to see and do. Rock and Roll legend, Buddy Holly was born here, as were several country musicians such as Mac Davis and Delbert McClinton. There is an annual National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration held in Lubbock. Here’s your chance to get in on a chuck wagon cook off and horse parade, there’s handmade art exhibits, cowboy poetry and lots of music. The Depot District is a fun place for tourists; music and nightlife is plentiful here, lots of action. You will find numerous theatres, upbeat and fancy restaurants with matching menus, quaint shops and boutiques, pubs and there is a brewery and even a winery. You won’t want to miss this part of Lubbock.

And of course your stay wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t pamper yourself by staying at one of the fine Lubbock hotels Take advantage of the many amenities offered for your comfort and pleasure. You will find the staff to be friendly and polite, ready to assist in anyway. Start and end your day here and let your imagination fill in the middle.