- Buying a Times (the Thursday edition is the best edition);
- Logging on to the wireless;
- Etc.
...and then realizing that it was elevenses, and therefore time for a snack.
"I don't want to eat a lot, but I need a snack," I declared. "Because I'm a little bit hungry."
"Well, it sounds like you'd better find something," said the historian.
I perused my options, which, as per usual, were thin. Dubious looking cookie at the coffee shop? Bagel? Bag of potato chips (a perennially trusted option)? Yogurt cups? With granola on top?
Well, I wandered past the airport Wendy's, the very same Wendy's that was once the site of a previous bad airport elevenses episode. Be that as may be: I saw a fancy picture of fries (where admittedly I have a weakness) with cheese on them, and also chopped peppers. Yes, America: I fell prey to a marketing strategy, in the form of fries. Ghost pepper fries.
I'm sure you can imagine that I thought I would be getting actual cheese, in its grated form, on my fries. But I watched as the behind-the-counter guy ladled the cheese sauce over the fries he'd harvested from the fry warmer, I thought, oh, right. Cheese SAUCE.
A SMALL DIGRESSION ON CHEESE SAUCE: There are people in my life who love what we call 'nacho cheese,' e.g. the Kraft product that is sold in jars to be heated and consumed with tortilla chips. See also: queso. I find this product repugnant. To me, this product bears the same relation to cheese that Pringles bear to actual potato chips, or that butter-flavored spray bears to actual butter, or any gross simulacrum to its legitimate forebear. However: there hath not been queso/nacho cheese/cheese product in my house for a long time. Maybe this is why, though I should have known better, I did not, and was led astray by the attractive picture of the grated cheese, aka the ghost pepper fries.
Did I eat the fries? Yes I did. Some of them. Some of them were not bad, or not fatally bad, anyway. In my defense, I was hungry. Okay, I know: that's not a real defense.
Did the historian eat some? Yes, yes he did--in fact, he finished them up, when there was too much of the cheese sauce drowning the remaining few potatoes. Would I order them again? Jeez, I hope not. But the airport elevenses might be a felicity condition for bad snack choices, and that's the (possible) truth.
I think the queso of Texas and the neon cheese of 7-11 are different, but I can see how this might just be a fiction that allows me to eat the one.
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