I woke up (I always seem to hate waking up these days -- there can be nothing good afoot) craving Crap. Yes, Crap. Something like Chef Boy-R-Dee's Little Bites . . . dunno the name but they come in tiny pasty rectangles that seem to do well in the microwave if you only pay them a little attention.
Never mind that I had most parts of a dinner that Brigitte and I had at Cinq Epices (more on that place later -- our new Vietnamese Best Friend) sitting in the fridge.
Did I crave the grilled beef, chicken and crevettes with perfectly-cooked Vietnamese rice? No, I craved Meat Ravioli with Kraft Parmesan.
What is wrong with me?
These small, seemingly innocent successions of crimes have put me in my present frame of consciousness. To whit:
I constructed a box of Taste of Thai Red Curry Noodles according to directions and was just about shocked out of my apathy towards bad food.
Let's see . . . all the ingredients were there: Cooks in four minutes! Put weird powder packet into cup of water in the container and add all "rest of packets"! Three packets! And the glassy noodles! Microwave on high for three minutes!
Ooh, this is going to be good! But then the punchline, the one I always fall for when looking for quality repasts . . . . "DO NOT OVERCOOK."
Obviously Chef Kripongnatharakanchera had a particular eye out for fussy customers like me . . . (see words in cartoon thought-bubble above this page, echoing slightly with medium reverb, coming from mouth of white-hatted Asian chefron dude in pleasantly deep-voiced Asiatic accent):
"We may PUT Xanthan gum, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, onion and garlic powders, thickeners and FC&C Yellow dye #4 but the key is that the customer SHOULD NOT OVERCOOK! Otherwise the product will be mushy, mashy, musty and above all, taste-free!"
But haven't you ever gazed with big eyes on the loving photo of fresh-cooked ravioli floating on an orange label with a whiskered white-hatted chef at the top and not craved this crap?
To quote Brigitte, "Ay-yaï-yaï." (She has ways with words).
I have different words for it, but I promised to be mellow. See how mellow I can be when I put my mind to it?
I have to admit... YES. I actually got what I thought were some crap thai noodles because where I live (in the country) you can't get any thai food. So I thought "well, crap will be better than nothing at all". This is not always true.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, the crap I got was really good and three of us fought over one little TINY bowl of 4 minute thai noodles. And now, I can't remember the name of the brand and I'm mad because... I WANT MORE CRAP!
Hee hee . . . well, do me a favor and send me a flavor, meaning Chef-Boy-R-Dee's meat raviolis in tomater sauce, girl real quik!
ReplyDeleteI'll tell the milkman to watch out for the the postman :)
Never!!! I rather starve.
ReplyDeleteBut that's just me, the obsessive one.
Unfortunately, I do eat that stuff occasionally, on days when I don't have leftovers to take for lunch
ReplyDelete(restaurant options are severely limited near where I work). The noodle one range between "ghastly" and "tolerable if you pretend you're in the gulag."
What astonishes me is the amount of packaging and how intricate it is.
Lately I've been going for microwaveable Campbell's soups. At least they're merely "meh."
Hmm . . . I know if I HAD to I could easily live off these things, and no doubt the fact that you work in an office forces you to make compromises that otherwise argue with your inner voice, or something like that, yes, I'll adjust the meds, but that's why I'll never work in an office.
ReplyDeleteI remember my career in offices, and I'm not knockin' it -- tough times demand harsh measures -- but most of all I questioned the forced, regimental lifestyle that required one to put all qualms aside and just adapt.
Knowing you, Blork, like I do, I know you'd rather be huddled around your oven watching the dough rise on your Margherita.
But the occasional lapse . . . hmm, I could use some Spaghetti-Os with chopped hot dogs right about now . . .