I ticked one item
off the bucket list recently: I had my
first corndog. If they existed in
America when I lived there, I’d never heard of them, which is unlikely. So I’m guessing they were invented sometime
thereafter. I had heard them disparaged
in the mass media as a junk-food abomination.
But anything coated in cornbread has to be worthy of consideration, I
told myself.
Then they
unexpectedly appeared on the grocery store shelf. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A local hotdog manufacturer has started to
make them. I can’t imagine what they
were thinking. American food doesn’t do
well here, except among Americans. Israelis
tend to like their meat loaded with cumin and other spices until there is no
meat-flavor discernable. Needless to say,
I brought the precious item home and tried it right away. It did not disappoint. I cannot say the same thing for the next
junky thing I tried.
I saw the package in
the store freezer: potatoes with pizza
sauce in a crispy coating. For some
reason, at the time it sounded irresistible.
I don’t know why, I must have been suffering from sunstroke. Anyway, I tried them, too. It’s hard to explain exactly what they
are. It’s sort of what you’d get if you
squashed a Tater Tot down into a triangle shape. So far, so good. But when you see something promising “pizza
sauce” you think, tomato, oregano, garlic.
Maybe some more herbs like basil if you’re lucky. There was a tomato presence, but there was
nothing saucy about it. Worse, there was
no trace of oregano or any other flavor associated with pizza.
It’s not that it was
bad. It wasn’t. It was just so bland in its ho-hummishness
that I can’t understand how it made it to the manufacturing stage. A lack of pizzazz should be the kiss of death
for any junk creation. In any case, I
have learned my lesson. From now on I
will stay away from processed convenience stuff, no matter how delectable and
tempting it looks, and concentrate on food that doesn’t come in wrappers. That is, except for corndogs.
3 comments:
I can't even wrap my mind around a non-saucy tomato sauce that's crusty on a potato. I might have needed to be three beers into the night to consider it food, lol.
Although I completely agree that if cornbread is involved, you can't go wrong.
For me, after three beers nothing looks like food. Come to think of it, I should have spent the money on beer.
You live, you learn.
Meanwhile, I just discovered this new snack at my grocery store, called Pita Poppers. They're like small, crunchy, lightly salted pita pillows filled with air. One of the most addictive things I've ever encountered.
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