My teenage daughter was explaining to my husband, who had just made her a hamburger, how she likes to toast the bun: “I put a little butter in a pan, and then I put the bun face down in the pan, and the butter gets soaked up and browns the edges, and that makes it crispy and it tastes better.”

The poor guy had made the great faux pas of using the panini press to toast her hamburger bun. (The nerve.)

This led to a discussion about the uses of a panini press, which ended with my husband explaining that he likes his new panini press because the plates are removable, so you can wash them in the sink instead of trying to clean the whole contraption without electrocuting yourself.

To which my younger daughter, aghast, said, “You’re supposed to clean those?”

Um. Yes.

But eating at home is only the beginning of our family’s food shenanigans. We recently started a project to try a variety of restaurants in town because it occurred to me that we rarely eat out. To kick off this project, we headed to the Olive Garden. It was my kids’ first time going to Olive Garden, and I hadn’t been there since they got those tablets at the table.

I really don’t like when restaurants put those there because they are confusing to me, a non-tech-savvy Gen Xer.

But kids or not, we couldn’t pay from the tablet. My card would not tap or swipe. I already knew this about my card; it only works if inserted. This tablet did not have an option to insert that I could see. And it might seem like my card is so old that it is worn out. But let’s be honest: Those things expire every couple of years, so how old could it be?

We left cash on the table.

I’ve been paying cash more often lately because I love it when my Starbucks barista comes to the drive-thru window, scanner in hand, and then I hand them a fiver. I can see the wheels in their brains turning as they start trying to figure out how to count the change. They don’t have to calculate the change, of course–the register does that–but they still have to figure out that two quarters, a dime, and a nickel come out to sixty-five cents. I like to see them squirm. Not really. But I do like to shock them. As I am so old I have actual money instead of an app on my phone connected to my bank. How do people even keep track of their money that way anyway? I would be checking my balance twice a day to make sure there was money in it just so I could go to Starbucks. Because what if my husband also took money out, and I didn’t know?

Which kind of actually happened once when he was at Home Depot and I was buying a crib online and the crib was rejected and before I could call the bank, Home Depot denied him and he called the credit card company who asked him if he had just tried to purchase a crib online and he said no so they cancelled the card because of fraud. But it was me.

So then we had no credit card for days and had to withdraw cash to buy a crib at an actual store. As if it was 1992 or something.

So yeah. Here we are, washing removable panini press plates, paying cash, and going to new restaurants–like the Olive Garden.