Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The Hunger Games: A post about random food (wherein no children are killed)

Wheat Thins are my new favorite cookies. Salty, crunchy cookies that sit under my desk humming a soothing lullaby while I reformat that GPA spreadsheet again. Generally I like to suck on them one by one to get at that salt first and saving the mildly graham-cracker-esque crunchiness for last. Sometimes, when work is being particularly persnickety I eat two at once in angry defiance of the world and it's horrible denizens of annoyance and that-is-not-how-it-works-and-you-know-it-so-stop-pretending-you-were-ever-even-close-to-correct-ness. I also enjoy hyphens.

Do you remember those animal crackers with the frosting? Of course you do, because your parents love you. So you are aware that those things are amazing, in a slightly waxy way. A couple of weeks ago I found a bag of them in the CVS when I was looking for snacks to smuggle into the movie theater that night (not that I am the kind of person who smuggles stuff, of course. That would be wrong). And then I munched little sprinkle covered pink and white elephants and sheep all through The Hunger Games. It was bliss (What? Maybe Mr. Awesome smuggled them. You weren't there. You don't know!). Then, for Easter, I figured we'd fill in for the nasty-hollow-chocolate-bunny with some of those dream filled animal cookies. Except, they appear to have disappeared entirely (which is a lovely turn of phrase, is it not? Appear to have disappeared! I'm now going to use that all the time, particularly when it is totally out of context and unnecessary. It will be my new "literally"). I've checked Giant, Safeway, CVS, and RiteAid now. None of those fine establishments even has an empty shelf where the cookies ought to be. It is as though they have vanished into the mist of childhood nostalgia. It makes me sad. It makes me want to appear to disappear.

Lately I've been eating salad in a jar for lunch, and that has been quite refreshing actually. Packing a lunch to work is such a great idea, but if you cannot handle a sandwich for lunch everyday (Rotating cold-cut meats and pbj gets old after a while...and by a while, I mean two days.) it can be almost as difficult as appearing to disappear. Thank the gods of creativity and plagiarism for that bounteous harvest called Pinterest. (Oh do not even pretend you don't spend hours there planning dinner parties you will likely never throw or redecorating the den you do not even have. You know of what I speak.) Except, you know, where does one find a these mason jars everyone is using nowadays? They appear to be quite the hot new thang, but Harris Teeter most certainly does not stock them.

As I was going through the pantry, rotating the food storage (read: two bags of ramen and a can of beans which we will never eat) I came upon an unopened jar of cherry butter. If you do not realize that saying that is akin to saying "I randomly found a masseuses in my sock drawer, waiting to give me a free massage this evening" then you need to investigate the purchase of some cherry butter, stat. And re-evaluate your life, probably. Anyway, so I found this hitherto unseen bottle of instant euphoria and realized that I could therefore eat the last portion of the stuff I've had lingering in my fridge since last fall without freaking out about "I cannot go without cherry butter for five whole months until Cox farms starts selling it again! I cannot do it!" So I ate it. Alone. Standing in the kitchen with the light off. And then, as I was holding the empty jar in my hand contemplating the need to rinse it before adding it to the recycling pile, behold the heavens did open and mine eyes did see. I stood there in the kitchen reverently staring at the glass container in my hand and sighed "Oh, a mason jar!" with the wonder and awe you would imagine in that scenario. And then I appeared to disappear.

Anyway, thanks to that empty bottle of cherry butter, the salad-in-a-jar pin has come to vibrant life in my workweek. Yesterday I packed fresh Italian greens with sliced strawberries, poppy seed dressing, and pine nuts. Today I have only just finished the quinoa, fresh pineapple, poppy seed dressing, and baby spinach that I packed into that magical jar this morning. Am I detailing my salads so you will think I am possibly less of a junkfood eating gross person and more of a healthy produce-conscious winner? Dudes, the first two paragraphs are about sucking the salt off of crackers and binging on waxy animal cookies and the forth hinges on my late-night consumption of jam straight out of the jar. What do you think?

1 comment:

Gloria Craw-Barry said...

Of course, you make me laugh hysterically (although spell check wants me to us histrionically). Thanks for that.