We went out to eat at a BBQ rib restaurant on Saturday. The mutton was particularly inexpensive, so I got myself a pound of it. I figured that as with more rib-based foods one pound wouldn’t go as far as one might think.

I was wrong.

One pound of mutton goes a very, very, very long way.

Perhaps because it stays in the system a very, very, very long time.

When I was younger, I was a Sprite nut. I drank it all the time. I’m not sure how or when that changed, but it did somewhere along the way. Maybe it was the point when I realized that it wasn’t supplying me with my daily dose of caffeine. Since then, I’ve stopped drinking Sprite everywhere except at restaurants. I think that Sprite from a fountain tastes better than Sprite from a can. Or maybe Sprite just tastes better with food. Or maybe it’s an aversion to drinking caffeine late in the day and I carried the habit over from dinner to lunch. Dunno.

One of the things I miss most about Deseret was the proliferation of Pepsi products at restaurants. Pepsi isn’t very big in the South, where we call all soft drinks by their competitor’s name, leaving them Cannon to Coke’s Xerox. Being a good southern boy, I don’t care much for Pepsi, either, but since the restaurants carried Pepsi products that meant that they more often than not carried Mountain Dew. It wasn’t just a Coke/Pepsi thing, either, because those places that didn’t carry Pepsi products still carried caffeine-punched, citrusy Mello Yello, a brand that all but died in Delosa a long time ago. For a state whose primary religion discourages caffeine consumption, Deseretians like their caffeine.

Since moving to Estacado, I’ve all but stopped asking restaurants if they carry Mountain Dew. I’ve gone back to drinking Sprite. So when a group of us went out to eat lunch yesterday and the waiter asked what I wanted, I said Sprite and didn’t think any more about it. When Pat asked for a Coke and he said that they carried Pepsi, it didn’t raise the flag that it ought to have raised. After the waiter left, the thought did occur to me that I could have seen if they carried Mountain Dew, but the bigger looming issue didn’t confront me until I tasted my “Sprite” and discovered that it wasn’t Sprite at all. It was Sierra Mist.

It seems that whenever Coke or Pepsi comes up with something successful, the other will try to come up with an equivalent. When Dr Pepper was all the rage, Coke came up with Mr Pibb. Coke created Mello Yello as an alternative to Mountain Dew. Then, when that didn’t work, they released something called Surge when I was attending Southern Tech. Surge wasn’t very good (except with a certain kind of cookie), but since Sotech had signed over their soul to the Coca-Cola company and didn’t offer any competitors’ product, I had to make due. I learned to like it the same way that I learned to like beer… relentless conditioning. When they pulled Surge off the shelf, I shed not a tear. More recently, Coca-Cola has offered Vault, which is like Surge but with a more energy-drink feel (like MDX is to Mountain Dew).

One thing that Pepsi has always been missing is a lemon-lime drink to match Coca-Cola’s Sprite. Pepsi can and does sometimes align itself with Dr Pepper, but rather than taking advantage of their strong relationship with 7-up, Pepsi released Sierra Mist. And it is terrible. And for some reason, the waiter who was so conscientious about asking Pat whether Pepsi was okay with her when she ordered a coke, the guy didn’t ask me.

Sierra Mist has apparently been a pretty successful replicate compared to most and for the loss of me I cannot understand why. Seriously, Walmart brand tastes just as good. I remember commenting when Surge came out that it wasn’t as good as store brand Big K Citrus Drop, which at least managed to stake out its own taste. Similarly, Mello Yello has its own distinct taste. Surge was just a rip-off. Sierra Mist isn’t even a rip-off. It’s a cheap knock-off. Yet it has not only survived, but it has eclipsed 7-Up as the chief alternative to Sprite. As Surge and other failed attempts have indicated, a soft drink company can’t force such a thing onto the public (and since Pepsi has a special relationship with 7-Up it was hardly necessary that they try), which means that somebody somewhere actually likes this stuff.

I drank three sips of it and then flagged down the waiter and asked for a Mountain Dew, Pepsi, or anything else they might have instead. The earnest waiter actually bought me both and took the Sierra Mist out of my sight.

9:00: Wake up

9:30: Contemplate breakfast, decide to make a quick trip to Wendy’s rather than go downtown for Las Migas and the best breakfast burritos around. Wendy’s stops serving breakfast at 10:30, though, so I decide to get a move on.

9:40: Leave house.

9:50: Arrive at Wendy’s. Wendy’s is closed until noon for some parking lot renovation. Head for Migas

10:10: F Street is closed, have to take detour

10:20: Detour lands me all the way back at the freeway. No Las Migas for me. Head south of town to McDonald’s.

10:31: Arrive at McDonald’s. McDonald’s no longer serving breakfast. Head to International House of Pancakes

10:40: IHOP paking lot is full and the line figuratively goes around the building. It’s the post-church crowd and it looks like there’s probably a 45 minute wait. Decide to go to Happy Burger for some of their outstanding breakfast burritos.

10:55: Get in line at the Happy Burger.

11:01: I get to the counter, the breakfast menu is closed. Would I like a hamburger? I would not. Say “screw it” and go back to IHOP

11:10: Put my name on the list.

11:35: Get table

11:55: Get omlettes for breakfast lunch

12:10: Finish lunch

An article in the Wall Street Journal about a cookie that I’ve never heard of called the Hydrox:

“This is a dark time in cookie history,” wrote Gary Nadeau of O’Fallon, Mo., last year on a Web site devoted to Hydrox. “And for those of you who say, ‘Get over it, it’s only a cookie,’ you have not lived until you have tasted a Hydrox.”

Still reeling from their loss, Mr. Nadeau and other “Hydrox people” have yet to accept their fate. Some have started an online petition demanding that Kellogg bring the cookie back. They have collected 866 signatures. Others in recent months have reported Elvis-like sightings — and tastings — of the defunct product. {…}

Eating Hydrox was “a badge of honor,” says 54-year-old Charles Clark, who processes records for U.S. Army reservists in St. Louis. He remembers receiving a package of Hydrox cookies on his sixth birthday and sleeping with it under his pillow. “Oreo had all the advertising, but those in the know ate Hydrox.”

Hydrox eaters tend to be independent-thinkers, favor underdogs and be skeptical of corporate marketing, he says.

I’m not sure I’ve been witness to people identifying themselves by what foods they eat. The closest that I’ve ever come is when my friend Clint and I would make a big deal extolling the virtues of obviously unhealthy manufactured foods. We’d talk about how the breakfast burritos “transcended the genre” of breakfast foods because its eggs weren’t quite eggs, it’s sausage not quite sausage, and where one ingredient ended and the other began is a delightful mystery. We also had something going about Easy Cheese being a scientific marvel (“It’s not solid, it’s not liquid, and yet somehow it’s cheeze or something comparable to it!”) and how we were supporting the scientific community by indulging.

Those are mostly jokes rather than any sort of posturing. It seems to me that when it comes to food, most people posture not by what they eat, but by what they don’t eat. They don’t eat meat or they don’t eat inhumanely grown meat or they don’t eat at fast food restaurants or chains or anything with corn syrup or 100,000 other things. That’s how people set themselves apart.

The Hydrox people are sort of doing that by not eating Oreos, of course, and I suppose with Hydrox gone they too will join the ranks of at-least-I-don’t-eat-_______.

On a sidenote, is it me or does Hydrox sound more like a toilet cleaner than a cookie?

-{Warning: The conversation in this post veers into less than entirely pleasant, bathroom-related terrain}-

quinkyle: Hey, it’s been a while since we had lunch. Would you like to eat lunch this week?

trumwill: I try to have lunch on a daily basis, so I assume that I will eat lunch at least 5 days this week.

quinkyle: How about you and I eat lunch together. Like at the same time and the same restaurant. We can talk while we’re not eating. Is there anything I missed, Mr. Literal?

trumwill: Would we be eating at the same table?

quinkyle: It would make talking a lot easier if we were. And less rude to those around us.

trumwill: Sounds like a deal. Where do you want to eat?

quinkyle: A new Chipotle’s opened up near the town square. How about that?

trumwill: Oh yeah, I saw it. I ate the new Grande Quesodilla instead. That was a mistake.

quinkyle: Uh oh, did you outlay a brown waterfall, Cici’s style? -{ed note: CiCi’s pizza destroys my digestive system}-

trumwill: No, no. This produced very solid waste matter. It was more unpleasant going in than it was coming out.

quinkyle: I really could have gone all day without knowing that. At least the part of the day where I have food in my system that is digesting.

trumwill: You reckon I’m giving said food ideas?

quinkyle: Doubtful. Food can’t read. If it could it would probably be less complaint when directed into the building with the sign that says “Slaughterhouse” over it.

trumwill: True, and I suppose it doesn’t acquire the ability to read in between the slaughterhouse and your digestive tract.

quinkyle: That would be wicked-scary if it did.

trumwill: Indeed.

It’s a common observation that atypical meats taste like chicken. It seems that we liken just about any meat we can to chicken, especially when we’ve never had it and have no idea what it tastes like.

So my question is… if every kind of meat tastes like chicken… how come the roast chicken breast at Subway doesn’t taste like chicken?

I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Almeida today. Almeida, the town of 40,000 or so where I work about half an hour away from Santomas where I live, has an amazing number of Mexican restaurants. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say half the restaurants in town serve some variation of Mexican or Tex-Mex. It’s a paradise.

I ate at a restaurant that I usually don’t eat it because my car was getting repaired and it was within walking distance. Their food was great and reasonably priced, but I won’t be eating there again.

The problem is that all of their enchilada plates only came with two enchiladas. I’m a three enchilada guy at least, four if I forgo the rice and beans or if I’m really hungry. Two just whets my appetite. I asked the waiter if I could pay extra to get a third enchilada and he told me that they didn’t sell enchiladas a la carte. If I wanted that third enchilada, I had to order a second plate and spend a whopping $13 for four enchiladas for lunch.

Just to review, I want to give them money for a product that they sell. I am happy to give them considerably more than it cost them because they are, after all a business. I want to give them money for something it wouldn’t be terribly hard to do. I know that they don’t mind extras because they offer sour cream or guacamole for an additional $.69 so I know they know that they aren’t so rigid as to only offer standard plates.

But for some reason, they will not let me give them more money for more product. I do not understand this. I am not trying to avoid their high-profit-margin items like beans and rice because I am getting a platter anyway.

This kind of thing drives me nuts. Mexican restaurants are pretty competitive in Almeida. Restaurants are competitive everywhere. Whether I go to a place or not depends on whether or not I can get what I want. So nevermind the extra buck they would have made by charging me two for an enchilada, they’ve lost my business.

This is hardly a problem unique to Mexican food restaurants, though for a variety of reasons (primarily that they sell quantities of small foods like tacos or enchiladas) they seem to be the worst about it.

It reminds me a bit of my frustration dealing with the Ford dealership a little while back. I wanted to pay them for a service, but they wouldn’t perform it even though they had nothing else to be doing. They would have made money off of me and would I would have gone there today for repeat business, but my car broke down and I didn’t want to have to make an appointment to an empty garage.

I know that there are customers out there that expect to be waited on hand-and-foot. I’m not even asking for that. I know that I get what I pay for. But darn it I want to pay more and I want them to give me more. I don’t understand what is so difficult about this.

Ramen.

I swear that almost nothing makes me prouder to be an American than the proliferation of ramen on store shelves. I absolutely love the fact that I can get an entire meal for $.10. An entire meal. Ten cents.

Yes, it’s fatty and carb-rich and salty. No, it’s not exactly delicious. Yes, most any college student can tell you how tired of it you get when it’s all you eat. But despite all this, you can get an entire meal, 400 or so calories with 40% of your daily allotment of fats… for ten cents.

Unfortunately, these things often don’t last.

It seems that they are replacing the ten cent packets with these ready-to-heat cups. Instead of getting 12 for $1.20, it’s 6 for about $1.05. That’s still an entire meal for under $.20 and it does have the added convenience. But come up, the food is complete and utter crap. Why the heck would I pay twenty cents for it? Unfortunately, slowly but surely the stocks are shifting from the absurdly cheap kind to the very cheap kind.

It makes me fear for the future of this fine country of ours.

The strangest thing happened tonight when I stopped by McDonald’s for a Filet’o’fish Sandwich (gotta eat healthy, you know). To wash it down I asked for a small coke.

So I got my sandwich and… a small Coke. Like, a Coke that was actually in a small cup. No kidding.

I’m used to “small” bring this relative concept wherein a large is actually huge, a medium is large, and a small is still actually about as big as a bottle. Instead, I asked for a small and I got a small.

My brother and I were talking about bad waitering the other day and he came up with a bizarre one. He was wearing a University of Delosa shirt and the waiter, a Southern Tech alum, started badmouthing the school. “You went to DU? I’m sorry.” and started uptalking our football program. Bantering between alums of rival schools is not uncommon, but it’s not particularly wise when you’re waiting on their table. Futhermore, it’s not a good idea to talk football trash when your team can’t seem to beat theirs to save your life.