My first McD's experience was in high school too - class trip to... somewhere, can't recall where we were going, but it was far enough away from home that they didn't even tell us to bring a bag lunch, and felt the need to stop at McD's (the first McD's I'd ever even seen, aside from TV ads) on the way back to the school, so we could get something to eat. I'm sure I was the only one in the class who had never eaten fast food before, and I think I ordered a big mac. I don't recall if I ordered fries, or what I had to drink, although I was always partial to Sprite (although we never had sodas at home, unless we were sick, and then it was always ginger ale, so my exposure to sodas was also rare). To me (at the time) it was wonderful - growing up on farms, we very rarely (exceedingly rarely) went out to eat. Because my dad raised cattle and hogs for the first 12 years of my life, we almost always had beef for dinner, and had sausage at breakfast. But mom didn't do much in the way of seasoning anything she cooked, usually limited to a little salt (no pepper), and she very rarely made any kind of combined foods (such as casseroles, soups, and stews) which usually call for at least a little onion, because Dad didn't like them. So despite the poor quality of the ground beef used for the McD burgers, the combination of flavors in the big mac (“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun.”) might as well have been some kind of gourmet cooking as far as my taste buds were concerned - I absolutely loved it.


It was several years later before I ever went to a fast food restaurant again - the first one then was KFC, with their 11 secret herbs and spices (such as they are), which again thrilled my taste buds, because on the few occasions we had chicken when I was growing up, it was only seasoned with a little salt, and maybe a tiny bit of sage or poultry seasoning.



It wasn't until I was married many years, and started using recipes that actually called for a wide variety of seasonings and combinations that I realized how truly bland and tasteless fast food was compared to what I could make at home, instead of cooking just plain meat, and plain veggies. If I'd grown up on that kind of food, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been so enamored with fast food flavors.