Here’s one for the “What Were You Thinking????” file.
Every now and again, I get a craving for Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls. Really, really bad cravings. Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls are one of those weird comfort foods from my childhood – I can remember making the things with my Mom, being allowed to lick out the little plastic container of icing, waiting impatiently for the rolls to bake.
I try not to succumb to these cravings more than one or twice a year, given that Poppy Fresh is an evil little wad of dough full of trans-fats and corn syrup and other shit that will clog the arteries and send the insulin levels catapulting. But when I want the things, I really, really want the things. And today was one of those days.
Greg willingly allowed himself to be dispatched to the two variety stores nearby in search of the tantalizing blue can of fat and sugar. I offered to come with, but I had my nose in the paper and his assurance that he’d only be a minute left me complacent. Surely I could trust my husband to walk the half block to the Hasty Market and select a package of pastry.
He was a long time in returning, though, and when Greg finally entered the apartment again, my first thought was: “Why did he pick up a Burger King bag off the ground and put the can of dough in it?” Because this is the only thing my mind could come up with to explain why there was a Burger King bag inside my apartment.
Now I never really ate at Burger King back when I ate fast food. Mostly because there just wasn’t one nearby. MacDonald’s was far more prevalent and if I wanted a burger, I tended to prefer the Canadian chain Harvey’s, although I was more likely to head to Kentucky Fried Chicken or Swiss Chalet. So the Burger King bag left me mighty confused, mostly because the idea of actually entering the place and buying something there would be as likely to pass through my head as going to the salon beside the Burger King and having a set of fake nails with airbrushed palm trees applied to my fingers. In other words – not at all.
So with great fear I asked, “Why do you have a Burger King bag?”
Apparently, Burger King sells cinnamon buns.
“You bought food at Burger King?”
At first, my darling husband got defensive. “You wanted cinnamon rolls! You don’t have to eat them.”
The Burger King is next to a Coffee Time, a donut chain where he could have purchased a reasonably passable cinnamon danish. Not quite Poppy Fresh with that sickening sweet icing that works like crack for the carb-addicted, but an acceptable substitute.
“Dude… you bought food from BURGER KING!!!!!!”
Then, I watched the various levels of realization cross his face. First, that he had presented burger chain food to his wife who is inordinately proud of the fact that she hasn’t eaten food from MacDonald’s since 1989, who stopped eating at burger chains not because of the food itself, but for ethical reasons. Then, as he took the little boxes out of the bag, and the smell hit his nostrils, that what he had carted home was a little box of grease masquerading as breakfast.
The cinnamon rolls at least were baked. Hard, nasty little things that not only tasted like cardboard, but actually had the same texture, they were redeemed by the dipping tub of Pillsbury-like sugar and shortening, aka frosting. But… why was there also a container of table syrup?
French Toast sticks. These looked, smelled and tasted like chicken nuggets. Yes, I did taste one, and promptly spit it out. I don’t know if they were fried in the same grease that the nuggets are deep fried in, but that was by far, THE most disgusting thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.
We gave the dogs one of the French toast sticks and threw the rest away. The cinnamon rolls we did eat, I am ashamed to say, but they continue to sit like a rock in my gut, even now, hours later, reminding me that it’s not just some elitist sense of moral superiority that keeps me from the junk food chains, but the fact that the food is really and truly awful.
Greg is good-naturedly enduring my quite merciless taunting, honest and accepting in the fact that we all make some really terribly misguided decisions in our lives every now and again and that this most definitely was one of his.
I worry about the people for whom French Toast sticks from Burger King constitute a real breakfast, however. The people who think such food is actually tasty, and even delicious. Do those people exist? Are they all smokers with no tastebuds? Because I can’t believe that anyone is able to sell what Greg brought home this morning as “food”.