Day two and I’m going strong. This dedication thing is getting easier. It is either that or I am getting really good at lying to myself. I should probably figure out which of those two is the truth at some point, but for now, I’ll just assume the former rather than the latter is the truth. Now that I am pretty certain I have that pesky determination thing beaten, I am running into another problem. What to blog about. There is only so much monotony I can incoherently ramble on about. Once that runs out–and honestly it may have already–I am at a loss for subject matter. I guess, after that statement I just made, maybe I don’t have determination beaten. If I did, I should be able to write about something. And because I don’t want to find out that I have in fact gotten way to good at lying to myself, I’m going to go ahead and find something to put in this days blog post.
So here we go…
I have nothing…
Still nothing…
I think something maybe coming to me……nope, I was wrong still nothing.
Ok, I’m really extra determined this time….
I guess it will just have to be a Crossfit story. I was asked by the owners of the gym I work out at, to do an interview of some sort, for an inspirational or empowering story of some sort. It is still about a month away, but I got an email from them asking me to answer a couple general questions in as much detail as I could. Seemed easy enough at first. Then I started reading the questions and realized I am going to look like a douche if I answer all of them completely honest.
The first question was–Why did you join Crossfit. That seems like an innocuous question at first. What harm could come from that, right? But, then the truth dawned on me and I realized it was a loaded question. What I’d like to say in response to this questions would be something along the lines of, “Well, because I have dedicated my life to protecting animals and their natural habitats, I realize that in order to be able to save as many baby seals, penguins, polar bears, and puppies I needed to be in better physical condition. When oil spills and other ecological disasters threaten their habitats, I need to be able to care those defenseless baby animals to safety. If I could do 80 pull ups or dead lift 500 pounds, I am sure that would make me capable of saving more animals.”
That would be a great answer to that question. The truth however sounds nothing like that. When asked why I joined Crossfit, my honest answer is girls. See, I told you it sounded kind of douchy. I spent 9 months driving by the Crossfit gym every day on my way to and from work and every time I passed, I’d see a massive group of fit, tan, toned women working out. I wanted to know what was going on, so I joined.
All the questions end up being loaded like that, at least to some degree. So I can either lie to everyone or be honest, probably look like a tool, and hope for the best.
So, with this new found determination I have, I realize that I am determined to lie and lie well. Hopefully my determination to keep up this lie is as strong as my determination to blog.
I really like to write–not so big on following the rules of grammar though–so I can’t seem to figure out why I post to this blog so sporadically. Every time I begin to start writing, I get that sudden rush of motivation and tell myself that this time I will not let days or weeks or even months–damn you resolve!–pass without posting something. Of course two minutes after telling myself that, I get side tracked by something shiny or a girl or the dull humming sound that the internal fan on my laptop makes or the smell of the detergent I used to wash the shirt I am wearing right now or trying to think of something funny to end this sentence with and then I immediately lose my resolve to update this blog entirely.
The paragraph above was actually written 3 days ago… Seriously. I saved it as a draft because I got distracted by Angry Birds in Space. I am stuck on a stupid level on the 3rd planet and spent the last few days trying to get past it before given up entirely and remembering this blog. Telling you how spectacularly short my resolve to write this blog consistently is, probably isn’t winning me any regular visitors, but I figure I should at least get a few brownie points for honesty. Right? If you said no, then you are a terrible person.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Please don’t leave.
Anyway, after starting Crossfit and Grad School, I do find myself with a surprising amount of determination and pride in seeing things to completion. I don’t know if that is going to translate into this blog, but I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens. If the blog fizzles out again, I’ll blame it on the pressure that comes with being a completely obscure, random, semi-broke, possible insane or psychotic blogger. Then going on a sugar, bacon, and diet coke binge, before crashing a stolen Ferrari into a parked police car and checking into Betty Ford for a sex addiction–What a phony ailment to be suffering from!
If all that does happen, I’ll be sure and turn this blog over to someone else so that they can chronicle my fall from normalcy into utter and complete stupidity in the funniest, most exaggerated and personally vicious way possible. Either that or we’ll just make YouTube videos of it all.
Either way, stay tuned one more time and see what happens….
Well, my diet came to a conclusion at the end of last week…or so I thought. I was told it would be 21 days of eating cleanly, then I’d maybe modify it a little myself. Turns out, Coach Crystal had other plans. Now, I am supposed to continue to eat the way I am for the next 30 days on my own, food log, and give her the results.
I do actually have plans to eat this way all the time, but still felt like I needed some help.
All I actually heard though was, “on my own,” which in the context of dieting was a synonym for “I am screwed.” Before I went into a panic attack and collapsed into the fetal position crying, Crystal said something else that made me calm down a little. She said, “AJ, you get one cheat meal a week.”
“A cheat me,” I asked, “you mean anything I want!?!?!”
I’m pretty sure my eyes glossed over as I started wondering if I could stuff an entire Mangia deep dish pizza into a Freebird’s Super Monster Burrito, then sprinkle donuts, jelly beans, chocolate syrup and sprinkles on top of it, and not get sick or die from eating it?
I think Coach Crystal could see what was running through my mind, to some degree (she might have kicked my ass had she really known what I was fully thinking), and stopped me before I could get too far further into my food fantasy. “AJ, when I say cheat meal, I don’t mean go crazy. Still try and exert some self-control. Also, try and make your cheat meal a good one, like when you go out with friends or something social.”
Once I got over the disappointment of realizing my food fantasy would never happen, I realized that her suggestion seemed like a good idea. So that night, after we did our final measurements—I lost 6 pounds, 4 % body fat, and lowered my insulin intake—I decided I had better go to the grocery store to get some food for the remainder of the week.
I had some bad experiences at some of the grocery stores I had gone to prior to, so I decided to go to this place called Sprouts which was about a 10 minute drive from where I lived. Along the way I passed a What-a-burger and had to fight the urge to drive over the median, through on coming traffic, over a 4 foot tall hedge, and crash my car right into the restaurant’s front door, so that I could get my cheat meal as quickly as possible.
Thankfully I had the will power to overcome that urge and the other 12 urges, when I drove by, McDonalds, Jack-n-the-Box, Wendy’s, Pluckers, Cover 3, Chipotle, Taco Cabana, Conan’s Pizza, Elevation Burger, Krispy Kream, Tiff’s Treats, and a place called, We Fry EVERYTHING!!!
That last one was the hardest, but I finally made it to Sprouts. Unfortunately for me, I was pretty weak from fighting all those earlier urges and had no defense against the most dastardly diet killing villain ever. Girl Scouts and their cookies!
“Sir,” this cute, very innocent, albeit completely evil little girl asked, “would you like to buy some girl scout cookies? They are for a good cause.”
I just stared blankly at her for what must have been 3 minutes, begging God to smite this little demon down with a bolt of lightning. Before that could happen though, her mom noticed me just staring at her and thought I was a creeper or something because she came running over to investigate.
“Sir,” the little girl said again with her mom now standing next to her protectively, “well, would you like some cookies?”
By that point, since no lightening had come down and my will power was spent from the drive prior, I started shaking violently. Finally I screaming, “Ok! I give up,” and knocked both the little girl and her mother over as I ran to the table loaded down with boxes and boxes of multicolored Girl Scout cookies, like I was chasing gold at the end of a rainbow. Thin Mints, Trefoils, Do-si-dos, Tagalongs, and those other crappy flavors no one ever really eats were all there for the taking.
I ripped into the first box, eating card board and packaging along with the Thin Mints I think. One of the other girl scouts tried to stop me, but I growled at her when she reached for the box and pushed her tiny hands away. That might have been a mistake.
As I went for my second box, I noticed movement in my peripheral vision and looked to my left. Had I not been on a cookie high the likes of which only Cookie Monster could relate to, I may have stopped what I was doing when I realized I might be in a bit of trouble with this little demon girls.
Out of nowhere, Girl Scouts were popping up everywhere. One dropped out of a tree, two jumped out of van that had raced into the parking lot, one little girl crawled out of a storm drain, another appeared from out of a cloud of smoke that had sprung up, as if she were Batman, and a handle full of others arrived from places I didn’t see. It was like a horde of 10 year old, tiny ninja’s in Girl Scout uniforms. It was crazy!
A few of them were actually brandishing ninja stars, swords, and nun chucks. Where the hell does a 10 year old girl get a pair of nun chucks and why does she carry them with her normally?! Also, how the hell did she get so good at using them at such a young age. Again, it was crazy!
I eventually realized I had made a mistake as they all slowly advanced on me, looking to murder me I assumed.
“Those were for display! Not for sale!” one of the angrier little girls screamed.
“Don’t worry Umpa-lumpa, I’ll pay for them. You take Visa?”
“No! Cash only. And I am not an Umpa-Lumpa. I am 10!”
“Tell it to Willy Wonka, munchkin.” I am not sure why I thought it was a good idea to antagonize them, I was probably too high on sugar to know any better.
“You’re gonna die now mister,” the first little girl who I knocked over earlier said as she almost got close enough to hit me with her nun chucks.
Luckily for me, but not so good for the ninja girl scouts, Crossfit or maybe being 20 years older than them, had made me bigger, stronger, faster, and I had a longer reach then any of them. Also thanks to Coach Crystal’s diet program, I was lean and able to think clearly because I had stopped drinking diet coke a month ago. And most important of all, because I hadn’t had sugar in a month, I was hoped up on the stuff like a crack head on drugs, which clouded my common sense enough to let me fight with a group of 10 year old girls….
So I saw all these little evil ninja’s clearly, in a sort of slow motion. I assume Coach Crystal’s diet had finally given me some tyoe of super power (read a previous blog to understand this), because as the first girl ran to attack me with hate written all over her face, I picked up the table the cookies use to be on, and swatted her tiny ass out of the air like at a super speed, baseball player hitting a curve ball.
She went flying backwards into another girl where the both lay unconscious. The rest of them attacked in a style only seen in bad kung fun movies; one at a time. I was in the zone. I dodged, countered, kicked, threw punches, tossed, slapped, drop kicked, sumo chopped, hit them with tables, and even upper cutted one of them like I was Ryu from Street Fighter 2 Hyper Turbo Champion Edition.
In the end, I was the only one left standing as I yelled out, “It was my cheat day!” Or at least that is what I thought I had done….
It turns out I actually didn’t have nearly the will power I thought I did. I had in fact driven through the median, through oncoming traffic, over the shrubs, and right through the front door of the What-a-burger and knocked myself unconscious when I hit my head on my steering wheel. Everything passed this point, was just me and my over active imagination. Which sucks, cause I really did want to use my cheat meal on Girl Scout cookies.
The EMS would later tell me that they had to restrain me when they put me in the ambulance, because I kept trying to eat their equipment, throw punches, and I was screaming something about Girl Scout Ninjas trying to kill me and cheat days.
This last 30 days of Coach Crystal’s diet is going to be really hard…..
Someone asked me what that other 2% of Coach Crystal is, if not rainbows, smiley faces, and hugs. This is it…
I didn’t have time to blog Friday about my diet. I’ll explain why in a second. Thursday I went to a potluck at Coach Crystal’s house—Crystal, I am so jealous of your house—with some other friends that are doing the Fuel 21 diet with me.
We were all supposed to make a dish and bring it to the potluck. Obviously I was pretty nervous about doing this. You’d think it was because I would be embarrassed about making something that looked and tasted terrible, but no, that wasn’t it at all.
Everyone in this program is similar to Coach Crystal in the sense that they are 98% rainbows, smiley faces, and hugs, so I knew, even if what I made looked and smelled like I fished it out of a dumpster 5 minutes before coming to Crystal’s house, they would all be polite, try it, and say it was good. So what I was really afraid of was killing 6 new friends with some type of horrible ailment that inevitability would be traced back to my prepared dish…
To avoid committing mass involuntary manslaughter(I think that is what I’d be charged with if my food killed a lot of people), I bought prearranged kebabs from a butcher’s shop called The Meat House—yeah, insert nasty joke here. I simply had to put the kebabs into an oven and leave them to bake at 400 degrees for a while. There was a small chance of E-coli or Mad Cow disease taking some of my friends out, but I was far more concerned with burning the food than anything else.
For me, “a while” is not a unit of time I can really measure, so I really had no idea how long to cook let them cook. Eventually I just took them out when they looked good and hoped for the best. Thankfully, from watching Gordon Ramsey yell at people on TV, I do know you don’t serve chicken pink. So I cut one kebab open and it looked ok.
Well, it turns out my kebabs did in fact kill two people, but six others who ate them lived. So I am going to go ahead an assume it was something else they ate that killed them and chalk this cooking adventure up as a culinary success. FYI, if I invite you over for dinner, be sure that I am getting take out, having someone else cook, or you are looking for a way to cash in your life insurance policy so that someone you love can collect a dump truck full of money, because you most likely will die from my cooking… I am guessing that last comment makes me irresistible to women!
After getting over the shock of someone dying at the potluck–it only took about 5 minutes, there was another surprise. Coach Crystal made butternut squash soup, which sounded horrible to me when she told me about it a few days prior to the potluck. Squash is one of those vegetables I imagine you eat when you live in a communist controlled country, not in America. In America, here we have vegetables like pizza sauce—THANK YOU CONGRESS!
So when Crystal offered me a bowl of the soup, I was hesitant to try it, even though it smelled good, it was an orangeish brownish color that brought back horrible childhood memories of when my crazy vegetarian Grandma made food for me when I had to visit her. To this day I am still of the belief that it was a combination of whatever mail she had lying around in her spooky old house, unwashed turnips from her garden (also known as her animals litter box), and possibly a stray raccoon that had the misfortune of wandering close enough to Grandma’s house to be caught and killed by her dog.
Still, I didn’t want to offend Coach Crystal, so I tried the soup. I found it had passed the first test; I didn’t vomit on myself or anyone else. That is when the shocking part happened. I liked it and not in the way I’ll sometimes humor pretty girls by saying I like whatever it is they are offering me, I really liked it. I actually ate two bowls. Crazy Grandma would be so jealous of Coach Crystal.
The only explanation I have for this change in preference for vegetables is that this diet has somehow mutated my brain, taste buds, or both. I am pretty sure I already had brain damage before starting this diet, so I have assumed this diet had mutated me into some type of X-Man!
I had to test this theory out pretty quickly to see what other mutant powers I might have now possessed. So I ran home and started experimenting.
Here is what I have learned:
1. Flying power—Nope. Jumped off the roof of my house, swan dived into the 6 foot tall agave cactus with razor sharp tentacles that I have in my front yard. Where upon I broke a couple dozen bones and cut myself up so badly that it is a miracle I didn’t bleed to death.
2. Invulnerability—Nope. Broke..well, everything and cut myself up pretty badly from discovering I can’t fly.
3. Super healing—Nope, bones are still broekn and I none of my cuts have sealed themselves up instantly like in the movies.
4. Super Strength—Nope. Tried to take out my anger from failing to fly, be invulnerable, or heal myself by ripping the cactus out of the ground with my good arm. All I did was pull a muscle. Really wishing I had invulnerability or super healing at that point.
5. Super Intelligence—Not a chance in hell! No one with super human intelligence would have jumped off a roof into an agave cactus…without the influence of alcohol or maybe a hot girl wanting to see him do it. Because even with super intelligence, guys are still dumb around hot girls.
On Friday another unexpected discovery happened.
My office catered breakfast and brought in donuts from Shipleys. There were about six hundred. I sat and counted each on a few times… Normally when breakfast is catered it is put in one of the break rooms of a floor above me. Now, seeing as how I don’t have the mutant ability to fly, I am generally too lazy to walk upstairs to get any free breakfast most Fridays.
However, on this morning, they decided to put the donuts in the break room directly across from my office. So I spent 4 hours, 4 very long, very awkward hours staring at donuts I wasn’t supposed to eat.
During hour one I tried to avoid looking at the donuts by crawling under my desk, putting on my head phones, listening to Florance + The Machine, and crying. I figured that if I couldn’t see them, I wouldn’t want them. This sort of freaked out most of my co-workers, having to hear me cry under my desk, but none of them said anything.
During hour two I had stopped crying and was now screaming at the donuts to get the hell away from me or I’d kill them with a pair of scissors I had been wielding in my hands menacingly ever since I crawled out from under my desk. This started to scare my co-workers finally and most of them gave me a wide birth if they had to walk by my office.
There is nothing odd about a grown man with eyes red from crying, yelling at a box of donuts while wielding a sharp object, is there?
During hour three all my co-workers now looked like giant, walking, talking donuts. I just stared at them with hungry eyes as I licked my lips slowly, imagining tackling and eating them whole . This got a call put into HR and I am sure some type of reprimand will be coming eventually.
By hour four I had caved in and eaten 2 donuts in 3 seconds. I don’t know if I even chewed the second donut. I may have just swallowed it whole like a snake eating a mouse. Worse than the fact that I didn’t really get to enjoy the donuts because I ate them so fast, was that the only donuts left to eat by this time were the pink sprinkle covered donuts… which sort of suck anyway.
So why couldn’t I blog about this sooner? Well, because after eating just two donuts, I felt so bad for 3 days that I thought I might die. Death by donuts use to be my dream death, but it always involved eating till I exploded and Anne Hathaway was always around for some reason (celebrity crush and all). This was actually painful and was not how I wanted to die.
Just 3 weeks ago, 2 donuts would have been a warm up to a real breakfast of 12 donuts. Like stretching before exercising. Now, if I eat one I want to die? No one told me about these types of dieting side affects. What happens if I eat pizza? Will my legs fall of? If I have a bowl of cereal will I get Ebola? I’m afraid if I mess up on this diet now, even slightly, I am going to die. If so, burry me in a casket filled with Krispy Kream please. I’ll eat them in the afterlife. Angels—yes, I am assuming I’ll be made an angel when I die. Why do you doubt that!?!—don’t have to diet, right?
Also, in case anyone was wondering. One cactus was very much harmed in the making of this blog. Not because I took a swan dive onto it, it was harmed because I got mad that it hurt me and burned it to the ground with gasoline and matches!
After making some of my other posts, I have had some funny and nice offers to help, some questions, and some girl I don’t know spamming my comments page with messages about how I am a monster for eating steak. Here is my response to her. I think it is very elegant…
Dear Vegetable Lady who clearly hates me for no good reason,
The food I eat poops on the food you eat… Think about that. Also, haven’t you seen the Lion King? This is the circle of life. Mufasa told me this was ok. And if an anthropomorphic lion with Darth Vadder’s voice tells me it is ok to eat animals, then who am I to argue?
Sincerely,
A Meat Eater
Now, back to the diet.
I have received a couple questions from friends and readers about this diet. The most common one is, “What exactly is this diet?” Looking back, I guess I forgot to actually explain that part.
Basically, it is a diet where you don’t eat grain based carbohydrates, diary, sugar, legumes (this is a fancy word for beans), or soy. What you do eat is somewhere in the range of 30 percent protein, 40 to 50 percent vegetables, 20 to 30 percent fat, and a little fruit. If you are like me, you had a few reservations about this or were already forming an argument against this diet in your head as you read the rules.
I got into a few arguments with Coach Crystal about eating grains. Most of them went like this:
Me—No grains!? Are you insane? I’ll die
Coach Crystal—No you won’t. Studies have been done that link grains to many physical, emotional, and medical issues most of us deal with on a day to day basis. Like obesity, inflammation, and digestive problems.
Me—But grains are good! Are you insane? I’ll die!
Coach Crystal—No you won’t, we just have to get your body use to eating more primal foods.
Me—Pizza is primal, right?
Coach Crystal—Sorry, but no.
Me—But grains are good! Are you insane? I’ll die!
Coach Crystal—Just give it a shot for 30 days and lets see if you don’t look and feel better.
Me—But grains are good! I’ll die!
Coach Crystal—Is that the only argument you have? Can you not think of anything else to say?
Me—But grains are good! Are you insane? I’ll die!
Coach Crystal—Just try it or I’ll kick your ass! I might be 98% smiley faces, rainbows, and hugs, but do what I say or you’ll see what that last 2% is made of.
Me—Yes ma’am
So I have been trying it and Coach Crystal is right. I do feel better. I am not going to say that I look better, at least not on a public blog because that would come off as incredibly arrogant but……well, I do look better, leaner, and that odd smell I had that use to chase people away is gone. (Only one of those is a joke, can you figure out which one?)
Coach Crystal took measurements of all parts of our bodies when we started this program. On Day 21, I’ll go ahead and list those numbers and maybe a before and after picture, not sure. I haven’t lost much weight myself, but I am actually not trying to. I am pretty lean already. What I am hoping to do is lose body fat and until I can have Coach Crystal measure that for me—yeah, she pinches me with calipers and it is as awkward as you can imagine—I won’t know how much fat I have lost. I am hoping it will be 4% or more and I’ll then begin my career as a Calvin Klein underwear model…
If you are wondering if it really works though, here is what Coach Crystal looks like. I am pretty sure she is in as good of shape as anyone I know. Pretty hare to argue with those results. Also, for those who are about to ask, no, I wont hook you up with her. I don’t think she is single, sorry guys.
My little brother and mom have both decided to try this diet with me too and each of them have lost more than 10 pounds, so weight loss is an obtainable goal usually. I say usually, because I already can picture the one or two friends who will read this and say, “I’m going to try it and lose 100 pounds in a month!” Listen stupid—you know who you are—you can’t lose that kind of weight that fast. It is healthy eating, not sorcery.
The other question that I have gotten a lot is, “What do you eat” or “Isn’t what you eat boring now?”
The simple answer is no.
But more specifically, there are a ton of things you can still eat. Diary isn’t that big of a deal. Yes, almost everyone likes milk or ice cream or cheese, but you can live without them. If you just said to yourself, “No, I can’t live without my queso,” or “No, I’ll die without my 44 ounce chocolate milk shake from What-a-burger” then you are a fat kid for sure. You also are going to most likely be stricken with diabetes in the future. If you want some help with that too, call me… Keep in mind, we are the only mammals on earth that drink milk past infancy. There might be something to that.
I eat a lot of steak, chicken, hamburger patties, turkey, bacon, bison, and fish. Then cook some type of vegetable or make a salad. I also have some fat in there, usually bacon or almonds and usually have some blue berries to finish it off.
Coach Crystal says, “Eat across the animal kingdom.” I am trying to do that, but even the yuppie grocery stores don’t sell bald eagle, pterodactyl, leprechaun, Care Bear, and pizza-chicken (A chicken that smells and tastes like pizza but is the same nutritional value as chicken). So I can’t eat across the whole animal kingdom just yet. I’m getting close though.
Does anyone know how you catch a Care Bear?
I do miss grains or more specifically, donuts, cake, apple turnovers, chips, french fries, hot dog buns, deep fried everything, funnel cake, Hot Tamales candy, sausage biscuits, waffles, pancakes, been and cheese tacos, cheese cake, carrot cake, packs of straight sugar, blow pops, chocolate covered anything, corn bread, pizza, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, chicken fried chicken, chicken fried anything actually, kohlaches, cinnamon rolls, corn dogs, tatter tots, burritos, anything from Free Birds, ice cream sandwiches, cotton candy (haven’t eaten this in years, but want it even more now), and apple pie.
Everything on that list above I loved to eat just a few months ago, which is really sad because as a diabetic, everything on that list could potentially kill me. In fact, it might be a miracle I am still alive today….
In an attempt to start cooking for myself more regularly, I went to a grocery store that has “clean” food. Which I learned means vegetables without chemicals, meat with out hormones, animals that get to run around as they please, and other adjectives for food that I haven’t ever really cared about.
So, finding out that this kind of food isn’t regularly sold at “normal” grocery stores, I ventured over to a yuppie grocery store. Upon entering, I knew I had made a mistake. First off, I appeared woefully under dressed to shop here. Normally I can go anywhere in shorts, converse, and a t-shirt, but here it seemed you either needed a pair of skinny jeans, a sports coat, or an ascot. In many cases, most shoppers had all three.
My suspicions were confirmed shortly there after, when an employee approached me and offered me a complimentary shopping jacket and ascot. I politely declined and made my way deeper into the store, in search of the butcher’s counter.
When I got the the butcher’s counter, I had to take a number and wait. When my number was finally called, a guy wearing a butcher’s apron, splattered with what I assume was animal blood and wearing an ascot asked, “What can I get you?”
“What is the price on your New York Strip?”
“37 dollars a pound.”
“What,”I asked, thinking I had to have heard him wrong. “Did you say 37 dollars a pound!?”
“Yes sir. These here,” pointing to a piece of meat that looked just like every other piece of meat I have ever seen at a butcher’s counter, “is 100 percent grass fed beef.”
“As opposed to what? Pudding fed beef?”
“Sir, this is the cleanest beef in the world. I should also point out that the grass the steers are fed is only watered with Fiji bottled water.”
“That is stupid. How much for pudding fed beef? Preferably chocolate pudding.”
He rolled his eyes at me, “3 dollars a pound.”
“I’ll take that.”
After getting my steak, I needed seasoning for it so that it didn’t taste like a flip flop–maybe a chocolate pudding flavored flip flop depending on what my steer ate before being butchered… So I wandered around the store’s aisles looking for the spices section.
Now it isn’t as though a grocery store is a foreign country where I can’t read any of the signs, but that is how it felt when I walked down some of these aisles at this grocery store.
Of the first 3 aisles I walked down, on the sign above the aisle, telling you what was stocked in that aisle, I only recognized two items; hemp and scones. There were things like Ghee, polentas, sea beans, kohlrabi, cocoa nibs, and Yerba Mate. Seriously, those were actually things listed on the signs. I had to use my Iphone to figure out if I was in a section that salt might be in. I wasn’t, but eventually found the right aisle.
There was another store employee in this aisle too, but he was preoccupied with someone else, and didn’t notice me. I looked through the spices and picked out a few of the ones I recognized: chilli powder, basil, oregano, and cumin. Finally I got to the salt and was shocked to see that the cheapest salt they had was 200 dollars! I turned to the employee, who had just finished helping the other customer and asked if there was a mistake in the pricing.
“Oh, no sir. Those prices are right.”
“How can your salt be so expensive, it is just salt,” i protested.
“Just salt,” he said stunned as if I had just made fun of his ascot. “No sir, it isn’t just salt. This here,” he pointed to one row of salt,”is deconstructed salt. It is the latest in salt.”
“Deconstructed salt?”
“Yes, it is salt reduced down to its basic components, so that you can taste them individually. It is all the rage in Europe.”
“So you are basically selling sodium and chloride? If I’m not mistaken those are poisonous in their raw forms.”
“No they aren’t, they’re more healthy this way.”
“No, I am pretty sure they’d kill you.”
“Well fine then, if you are not evolved enough to understand the amazingness of decontructed salt, we have other options,” he said pointing to a small bottle wrapped in gold foil. “This is a more traditional salt.”
“Thank you. How much is it?”
“1900 dollars.”
“What the hell!? Why? How could salt be so f*ing expensive?”
“Because sir,”he said rolling his eyes slightly,” this salt is extracted from the dried up tears of unicorns.”
“Are you retarded? Unicorns, really?”
“Yes, unicorns. It is very exclusive.”
“Don’t you have just normal, everyday, table salt?” He looked at me the same way a normal person would look at someone who just told them they got salt from the tears of unicorns.
“I don’t think so sir. Maybe try What-a-burger across the street?”
“Thanks…”
Being pretty annoyed at this point, I walked towards the produce section, determined to get some spinach for a salad and then get the hell out of this horrible place. Of course it wasn’t going to be that simple though. When I got to the produce section, an employee was just stocking the shelve with vegetables of all sorts. I looked around for the spinach, but didn’t see any anywhere.
“Excuse me sir, but do you all carry spinach,” I asked and immediately regretted this question when the stocker turn and acknowledged me. He too was wearing an ascot…
“Spincah you say? Of course we have spinach, it is the best spinach in the world.”
“Oh yeah,” I said laughing politely at his cheery comment. “And why is that?”
“Because it is grown in Narnia, picked fresh, and flown in weekly.”
“Oh for God’s sake…. Did you just say Narnia?”
“Yes sir, have you tried it? They have the best spinach in the world.”
“Of course I haven’t tried it. Narnia is make believe. It is the setting of C.S. Lewis’ childrens books.”
“Oh, no sir, I think you are confusing Narnia with Harry Potter.”
“And I think you are confusing Narnia with China.”
This was the point I had had enough and put my small shopping basket down, turned, and walked towards the exit.
“Sir,” the stocker yelled to me, “you forgot your food. Where are you going?”
