Stop the madness

 Sometimes, I wonder what is up with me. I have taken the food business thing further than I ever have before. I absolutely am pushing forward too. I was all set to apply for my catering license which will allow me to produce and sell food made at home, but I do need to take the Serv Safe Managers Certification. That is the big one, and once I have that, apply for the license, undergo an inspection. Because I have not had the time to study for the test which is actually administered live on video with a real person, I have not moved forward in a month.

I had an early morning meeting at work yesterday which caused me to skip breakfast. At around 11, I ran up to a local gas and convenience store that had a food kitchen with a drive-up window and dared to call itself a "Bistro", desperate for something to eat. I knew it would not be good, but how bad could it be? 

As I looked at the warming bin's offerings and its ridiculous prices, I knew I was in trouble. I ignored what I knew and kept steady on the effort knowing that I must make a choice out of things I did not want to eat. Scary things that sounded interesting, such as fried hash browns with bacon egg, and cheese embedded inside of them. I could only imagine those ingredients having at some point being in a blender.

I picked up something called a "breakfast empanada". It was flaky on the outside and was shaped like those old hostess fruit-filled pies from the 70s. Other than those two words, there was no description of what was inside. Although there was a paragraph of fine print ingredients printed on the back of the label, the best I could see, it was merely a list of chemicals and may as well been a Material Safety Data Sheet. 

 Needing to cut to the chase I asked the people behind the counter what was in them, (I am not picking on them) who were the most un-culinary type of people I had ever seen.  I could picture them sitting on rocking chairs in rural western Pennsylvania on the porch of a run-down cottage. Everything was so out of place that it is still bending my mind even now. I was told egg, sausage, cheese, bacon. With tears in my eyes, I bought this abomination.  You guessed it, it tasted just like a Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich, by which I mean, dusty cardboard.

For lunch, none the wiser, I went to Walmart to get the things we needed for the house. There is that Twilight Zone-ish void that happens sometimes when you are at Walmart. You go in, walk around for ten minutes, and suddenly, you cannot account for the last hour. If aliens are experimenting on us, then most likely, they are anesthetizing us while shopping, and doing who knows what, leaving us with these gaps in time while Walmart provides the perfect cover for them.

Suddenly I realized there was no time for lunch, so I went to the hot food bar.  I already knew I was in trouble. My friend Dave has warned me about this place. He once said he had to resort to this place providing most of his meals one winter in Florida. "I don't know what sort of Satanic Nutrient Extraction Process they use on that food, but I started to notice I never felt good anymore. If I had a cut, it never healed." As I stared down the barrel of my options a friendly patron stood next to me, smiling and telling me, "They are just pulling fresh mozzarella sticks and popcorn chicken from the fryer now." I should have listened to him, but instead, I blatantly ran into the culinary dumpster choosing a 6 pack of chicken wings that was already in the warmer.

After eating this back at the office, I had to clean the area, remove the trash, and change the bag, to get the non-food, burned-down-village smell out of my workspace.  Texturally it had to be similar to what it would be like to chew through a plaster wall. The next morning, I could still smell a faint remnant but could find no surface that was not thoroughly cleaned.

It gets worse. Friday back in the office, I had lunchtime errands to run and had no time to select a decent lunch. Avoiding McDonald's and its familiar assault I stopped in Hannaford and checked their hot bar. Stupidly not learning my lesson, I grabbed the bag of Nashville hot chicken tenders, bent on righting yesterday's wrong, hammering the square peg into the round hole. What ensued was 10 hours of intermittent stomach cramps

I have no one to blame but me and I know that. But let me tell you something. We as a society NEED to get it together. This non-food food is so abundant I get worried that the real food will disappear!  We need to stop the madness! How on earth can they charge what they do for this Frankenstein like garbage? I am of course an idiot for buying this crap and that is on me.  I needed this lesson, however! Nothing lately has shown me more than how important it is that I push forward. It is not just for me or for my family. It is for the good of everyone!  I owe it to myself and yes, I owe it to you! I need to take this very bad thing and make it into a lesson and a motive to do it. It is always rage that makes it happen for me, everything else is not enough. After all, it is in the name: FIGHT FOR TASTE!