Can you have too much choice?

A new Aldi’s grocery store has opened about a mile from my home. The foundation is being poured this week. I must ask:  Do we need a new grocery store? Within fifteen minutes of my home, the following grocery stores are available to me:

Stop & Shop Super Stop & Shop Whole Foods Price Chopper Roger’s Shaw's Waldbaum's Trader Joe's Stew Leonard’s BJ’s Wholesale Sam’s Club

And this doesn’t count the small, local grocers and butchers like Hall’s Market.

Do we really need another grocery store?

Consumer choice is a good thing, but the problem with all these stores is that people aren’t making any choices. I can’t tell you how many people I know who buy their meat at one store, their produce at a second store, their dry goods and dairy at a third location, and so on. This sounds fine and dandy on the surface, but all this choice is sending people all over town, clogging our roads, burning gasoline, producing CO2, and (worst of all) wasting inordinate amounts of time on the purchase of food.

Not to mention how inadequate and stupid some of these stores are.

Like Whole Foods. They’ll sell me a slice of pepperoni pizza but can’t deign to sell me a Coke to wash it down.

Or Stew Leonard’s, the amusement park version of a grocery store, equipped with just one aisle that zigzags through the store, complete with animatronic entertainment and carnival-like hawkers at every turn.

When I grew up, there was one grocery store in town. Almacs. If my parents chose to drive into the neighboring town, there were two more grocery stores available to us. That was it.

From my home today, I am a fifteen minute drive from twelve full-size grocery stores, one butcher and at least two smaller, local grocers.

I ask again: Do we really need to add an Aldi’s to the mix?

Fresh veggies? Bah!

I’m currently re-reading MINDLESS EATING. It’s a compelling and eye-opening book about how our eating decisions are often impacted by unconscious and seemingly innocuous factors. Last week I learned an interesting fact about fruits and vegetables that was repeated on NPR this morning: In general, frozen vegetables are considerably better for you than fresh vegetables.

As soon as a fruit or vegetable is plucked from the ground, off the vine, or off the tree, it begins to degrade in terms of its vitamin and mineral content. This degradation will continue at an accelerating rate until the fruit or vegetable is cooked or eaten. Therefore, the fresh fruits and vegetables that you purchase in your average grocery store have lost a considerable number of vitamins and nutrients.

However, frozen fruits and vegetables are almost always flash frozen within hours after being picked, sealing in their vitamins and nutrients until they are thawed. As a result, they typically contain more than twice the vitamins than their fresh counterparts.

So curse you, you vitamin-deficient fresh vegetables! I’ll stick to the frozen food section, where my vegetables are more vitamin-packed and (as an added bonus) can double as an ice pack when I burn my hand or bump my head.

Of course, I'll probably be buying ice cream instead of frozen peas, but still...

She must think she’s married an idiot

Elysha:  You know that you shouldn’t wash the whole container of strawberries at once.  Right?  If you do, they will spoil faster.  Just wash the strawberries that you’re using.  Okay?

Me:  I need to wash the strawberries?

My two most common restaurant complaints

Elysha and I decided to share a shake at dinner tonight. “Would you like one glass and two straws?” the waitress asked.

“No,” Elysha said. “We don’t need to do that. We’re already married. Two glasses is fine.”

I was upset, having already envisioned our two smiling faces converging on the two straws in the center of the table. It got worse when the waitress sided with Elysha, informing me that it is not the 1950s and I needed to get over my disappointment.

Not nice.

This was not the first time I was the victim of the wife-and-waitress double-team, but it’s hardly my biggest restaurant complaint.

Two of my more prominent restaurant complaints include:

1.  The singing that takes place when a guest is celebrating a birthday has gotten completely out of hand. Last month Elysha and I went to Red Robin for a quick bite to eat and were forced to listen to four renditions of Happy Birthday, sung to various customers throughout the restaurant. It seems like I can’t enjoy a single meal without having to listen to a bunch of off-key waiters and waitresses sing to someone who just wants them to go away. The proliferation of this tradition is frightening. At Texas Roadhouse, the restaurant staff actually hoists the guest atop a saddle that is mounted on a rolling sawhorse as they sing.

That said, I have twice told waitresses that it was a friend’s birthday when it was not. It’s always amusing to watch their surprise as the cake is placed in front of them and the singing begins.

And once, I told the good folks at the Texas Roadhouse that it was a friend’s birthday, forcing him atop the saddle.

As far as I can tell, humiliations like these are the only good use of this otherwise ridiculous practice of singing.

2. The expediter also irritates me a great deal. Expediters are restaurant staff members who bring your meal to the table when your overworked waiter or waitress can’t get to it fast enough. Though I appreciate the idea behind the expediter, I don’t want a stranger delivering my food. It’s my waiter or waitress with whom I have established a relationship. She knows what I ordered and how I wanted it cooked. She knows that I’m drinking Diet Coke and not Coke. She is the one whose tip is dependent upon the service I receive. Asking an expediter for another drink, an extra napkin, or for a correction in your order is always a crap shoot.

I’d rather wait three minutes and have my waitress deliver my meal herself.

Admittedly, when your waitress has joined forces with your wife for less-than-noble intents, the expediter can sometimes be a welcomed change of pace.

Only in corporate America

I was sitting in Red Robin yesterday, waiting for my wife to arrive. Beside me, spread across two tables that had been pushed apart, was the cartoon map of a Red Robin restaurant. A manager, a middle-aged man with a perpetually furrowed brow, and a younger, more affable corporate wonk were placing cards on the map. At first I was confused, unable to discern the purpose of this exercise, and then the corporate wonk spoke.

“Here at Red Robin, we can only treat our guests as well as we treat ourselves. Look at the map and find examples of team members working together and helping one another out.”

I stole a glance at the map and realized that the cards that had been placed represented cartoon people in various locations in the restaurant. The manager examined the map, looked back at the wonk, and then back down on map. I am certain that he was thinking the same thing as me:

Are you kidding me? Whose stupid idea was this? Why not just look around the real restaurant and find examples of teamwork instead of playing this insane version of Restaurant Monopoly.

Instead of saying this, he replied, “Well, I guess these two people are helping to clear a table, and these two guys are stacking bun racks. But I don’t know why that would ever take two people.”

Elysha was about fifteen minutes late, giving me plenty of time to watch this tortured manager read aloud Customer Response Cards, Unexpected Situation Cards, and similar board game paraphernalia.

“Here’s a family of nine,” the wonk said, placing nine cardboard people on the board.  “Including three infants.  How do you accommodate them?”

The manager began to describe his solution, but three words into his explanation, the wonk said, “No.  Show me on the board.  Move your pieces.”

The manager and I both rolled our eyes simultaneously. 

In the corporate office of Red Robin, some executive had decided that playing this game with restaurant managers was a good way of improving leadership skills, customer interactions, and overall management expertise.

Based upon my years of experience managing a McDonald’s, I can assure you that whatever idiot dreamed up this idea never actually managed a Red Robin restaurant in his or her life.

I felt bad for the manager, who clearly found this exercise as futile and foolish as me. At one point, I almost said something to the wonk, who was either too stupid or too brainwashed to realize the lunacy of this experience. But I refrained. If I’ve learned anything about restaurants in my many years of management experience, it is this:

Don’t insult an employee who may have access to your meal at some point.

Besides, the whole situation was highly entertaining.

It’s coffee.

New statistic

97.3 percent of all jokes regarding coffee are not funny.

Listening to a podcast the morning, the hosts began the show by warning listeners that “Brian just drank a mocha cappuccino, so we don’t know what’s going to happen today!”

“Look out!  There’s going to be trouble!”

“This guy’s already a lunatic!”

“Emergency teams are standing by!”

Not funny. 

Seriously, in a double-blind study conducted over the course of my lifetime, I have determined that 97.3 of all jokes, quips, anecdotes,  Facebook status updates, Twitter posts and all other forms of humor, amusement and jocularity regarding coffee are stupid.  Also included are jokes regarding caffeine, coffee shops, coffee addiction and all the variants on coffee.  These jokes are tired, worn out, not funny and most often annoying and stupid. 

Facebook status updates that read:  Need. Coffee. Now.   STUPID.

Twitter posts that read: All the #coffee in Columbia won't make me a morning person.  STUPID

Even an early morning declaration that “I’m not going to survive this meeting without a second cup of coffee” or comments implying the need to inject or free-base your first cup of coffee to kick start your day.  STUPID

Based upon the results of my peer-reviewed research study, you should never risk a joke or even attempt a mildly amusing wisecrack regarding coffee unless you are as talented as Chris Rock and have recently been possessed by the spirit of the late George Carlin.

In the hands of a professional, almost all of these jokes about coffee are still stupid, which is why you would never hear a comic like Chris Rock or even the ghost of George Carlin making such a stupid remark.

You should follow suit.  Coffee is something that you drink.  Sometimes it contains caffeine, as does soda, chocolate and a hundred other foods.

It’s not nearly as vital, special, singular or important to your life as you think.

Religious bias and Old Testament catsup

A few comments about my Fourth of July burgers and hotdogs at my in-laws:

First, my mother-in-law and my wife both assert that Hebrew National is the finest of all the hotdog brands.  I disagree, but more importantly, I discount their objectivity when it comes to  Hebrew National because they are both Jewish.

Am I wrong?

Even my mother-in-law admitted that her proclivity toward Hebrew National might have more to do with the fact that she ate this brand of hotdog as a child than the actual taste of the product.

Indoctrination can be a powerful thing.    

I’m a Ball Park man, myself, and I was raised on Almac’s hotdogs, so no childhood yearnings, religious proclivity, or cultural bias involved with my preference.  It’s just a good tasting hotdog.

It should also be noted that if you ever have the pleasure of enjoying a meal at the home of my in-laws, be sure to verify the expiration dates on any of the condiments that you may use.  While the food will most assuredly be delicious, the accouterment may leave something to be desired.  While I eat my hotdogs plain, I enjoy catsup on my burgers.  When we finally managed to locate a bottle in their refrigerator, I checked the expiration date based upon a previous experience with jelly that was older than eight-year old niece.  

Check out the expiration date of the catsup:

it expired more than five years ago and looked that old when I examined the bottle.  My father-in-law, Gerry, challenged my unwillingness to partake in the catsup, asking if I had ever heard of anyone dying from an expired condiment.

In Gerry’s mind, what doesn’t kill you can apparently be applied to hamburgers without concern.

Glass-on-glass contact not required

I don’t understand the obsessive need to clink each and every single glass during a toast? With six or eight or ten people at the table, is it really necessary to navigate your glass amongst the half dozen others in an effort to make glass-on-glass contact with each and every one? What ever happened to the ceremonial raising of the glass, or better yet, the un-orchestrated joining of glasses at the center of the table without concern for which two glasses ultimately touched?  As with many customs, we’ve managed to turn this festive, spontaneous gesture into some type of complicated, etiquette-laced procedure.

No more!

I hereby renounce all future intent in regards to the clinking of each and every glass during a toast. I will raise my glass during the toast, and if appropriate, move said vessel to the center of the table for the ceremonial clinking, but I will in no way attempt to make contact with every glass thus raised.

It’s the spirit of the toast that matters.

Who is with me?

Would I even be hungry?

This list of final meal requests from death row inmates fascinates me. Each represents the last request from a dying man. Like Gerald Mitchell:

One bag of Jolly Ranchers.

And how about Miguel Richardson:

Chocolate birthday cake with "2/23/90" written on top, seven pink candles, one coconut, kiwi fruit juice, pineapple juice, one mango, grapes, lettuce, cottage cheese, peaches, one banana, one delicious apple, chef salad without meat and with thousand island dressing, fruit salad, cheese, and tomato slices.

I don't support the death penalty so perhaps this has something to do with my morbid fascination.

My last meal request would be would be a hot dog, a bacon double cheeseburger with an egg on top, fries, and a Diet Coke.

For dessert, a root beet float, a box of Girl Scout thin mint cookies and a slice of Carvel ice cream cake.

You?

Blame my distaste of broccoli on advertising. Or the lack thereof.

I have always believed that massive amounts of money are wasted on advertising. The highway billboard, the late-night restaurant commercial, and the scented magazine ad have always seemed ridiculous to me. Intelligent people like me are immune to the mundane and transparent trappings of the advertising world. This is what I have always assumed.

Apparently I was wrong.

Stanford University researchers recently learned that anything made by McDonald's tastes better to preschoolers, according to a study that demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children. Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids if it was wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches. The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand or unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

In addition, the strength of the branding was directly linked to the number of televisions in the child’s home. The greater the number of televisions, the stronger the branding.

It makes me wonder how my life might have been different had the International Fruit and Vegetable Alliance done a better job promoting leafy, green vegetables when I was a kid.

Dessert for dinner

Since when did sweet potatoes become a dessert item rather than a vegetable?

It seems as if one cannot make sweet potatoes any more without topping them off with a one-inch layer of marshmallows and brown sugar. Isn’t the only vegetable named for its sweetness sweet enough?

And am I actually expected to look upon a casserole like this and not think dessert?

Instead of sweetening something that already is sweet enough, why not add sugar and marshmallows to a vegetable that could use a little sweetness?

Like green beans. Or carrots. Or broccoli (though admittedly there’s no helping broccoli).

This sweet potato madness is akin to the people who think that chocolate chip pancakes are a breakfast item. Just because the pancake is a traditional breakfast food doesn’t mean you can add chocolate to it and still consider it a healthy breakfast alternative.

What's next?

Sugar-encrusted chicken wings?

Chili and Skittles?

Peppermint-flavored pork chops?

Actually, all three of them sound pretty good.

Simplicity

I don’t drink coffee.  I don’t like the taste and don’t like hot drinks.  They cause me to overheat.

Despite my aversion to the drink, I also took a stand against coffee at an early age.  Watching my bleary-eyed mother and father grumble about needing their first cup of coffee in the morning, and watching customers at McDonald’s do the same, I decided that I never wanted to rely on a cup of coffee, or anything else for that matter, to get me started each day. 

One of the smartest decisions I ever made.

Thanks to my decision not to drink coffee, my life is so much simpler. There are no hassles or harangues about coffee in my everyday life.  No complications over its preparation.  No debate over sugar versus Splenda versus Equal.  No concern over the quantity of cream required, the flavor of cream required, or the curdling of said cream.  No need to understand the difference between a small, tall and grande cup.  No mugs with ridiculous quips or declarations of fervent allegiance to my collegiate past.  No endless amounts of droning, inane conversation about grinders, beans, flavor, water temperatures, favorite shops and the like.  No screaming milk steamers.  No coffee rings on the table.  No coffee breath.  No meaningless tweets or Facebook posts screaming “Coffee!” or “I need a Starbucks!”  No need to add words like cappuccino, frappachino  and macchiato to my lexicon.  No concern about the top or the bottom of the pot.  No debate of coffee in a can or a bag or a single-cup dispenser.  No filters or Styrofoam cups or plastic stirrers.

Has there ever been a food or drink more fussed over, spoken about, discussed, debated, deliberated, pondered, or relied upon for meaningless small talk?  Has there ever been another food or drink that required as much conversation, knowledge or accoutrement?      

I don’t drink coffee, and the number of hours that I have saved as a result are astronomical.  When asked how I manage to accomplish so much in so little time, I often reply that I sleep less, embrace minimalism, prioritize and I don’t drink coffee.   

Is your life too complicated?  Are there not enough hours in the day?

Then join me in ridding yourself of this inefficient, time-consuming, oftentimes overpriced and pretentious  burden. 

Give it a month and I promise that you’ll be thanking me.    

Vegans. The annoying kind.

I don’t mind vegetarians, vegans, and the rest of their ilk. In fact, I admire them and am envious of their ability to eat and enjoy vegetables and fruits to the exclusion of other foods.  Some of my closest friends are vegetarians. 

But when militant vegans attempt to disturb my own meal with their nutrition-turned-religion, then I become annoyed. I may annoy many people, and I may be callous and inconsiderate when doing so, but I don’t ever make it a point of ruining someone’s dinner with talk of slaughtered cows, rotting meat and families of chickens torn apart, killed and fried for my benefit.

It is my sincere hope is that one day, we will discover that plants are sentient beings, capable of the same thought, communication and feeling as human beings, and all the self-righteous vegans of the world will finally shut the hell up as they writhe in a stew of unbearable guilt and shame.

And considering the number of times that human beings have been ignorant and flat-out wrong about the world around them, who is to say that this might not one day happen?

Dreams can come true.

Enough with the ten minutes

I spent the afternoon writing at Panera, which is always a delightful spot to work. Good food, caffeine-free soda, free Wi-Fi, and comfortable surroundings.

I have just one complaint.

I typically order one of two sandwiches.  The first is made with an ale mustard.  The second is made with chipotle mayonnaise.

I’m allergic of mustard and I despise mayonnaise, so I always ask that my sandwiches be made without these condiments. And every time I ask, regardless of who is taking my order or where I am, I am told that it will take ten minutes to prepare my “special order.”  This is always said to me with great regret, and this evening, it was said in such a way that the server was clearly hoping that I might change my mind.

I wish these ten minute warnings would stop, for a few reasons:

First, it never takes ten minutes.

Second, every meal, regardless of what you have ordered, takes at least five minutes to prepare, so ten minutes is hardly a problem.  Think about it:  If you’re going to take my name after I order and hand me a buzzer to alert me when my food is ready, you’re probably not going to be handing it to me in a minute or two.  Right?  So what’s ten minutes?  

Third, ten minutes to wait for a palatable sandwich that I can eat without it killing me is not a bother.

Last, ten minutes for a fresh sandwich sounds like a good deal to me.  It’s not as if I’m sitting in the McDonald’s drive-thru, running late to an important meeting.  It’s Panera.  Not fine dining but not fast food either.  And if I have to wait ten minutes to enjoy a sandwich that is not prepared ahead of time, I’ll do so happily.

Broccoli is poison. Seriously.

And another thing about my genetically superior taste buds: A new study takes this argument one step further, providing evidence that broccoli (and its leafy cousins) are actually toxic to more than a billion people worldwide because of a component inside the vegetable that inhibits thyroid function. Thanks to evolution, individuals to whom broccoli is toxic also find the vegetable and its cousins unpalatable.

You can read more about this study here or listen to the podcast that summarizes the research here.

More importantly, to those self-righteous, so-called sophisticated palates who are constantly finding the need to judge me based upon the foods I choose to eat or avoid, I now have further evidence that I have no control over what I find edible.

In fact, my choices might be keeping my thyroid working efficiently.

It’s evolution. So leave me the hell alone.

Plants have just as much right to life as bacon

I have had an interesting and oftentimes contentious relationship with vegetarians. Recently, a vegetarian told me that while she does not eat meat, so has no issue with people who choose to do so except for one minor bit of confusion:

Why not eat all meat?

“If you’re going to eat cow and pig and duck, why not dog or horse?”

I respect this type of logic a great deal.

Another friend of mine has claimed that he is a vegetarian for years but continues to eat fish. “You’re a pescartarian,” I had told  him over and over, but he never believed me, assuming that I was making up the word.  Recently, he pulled out his iPhone to prove me wrong and discovered that he had been mislabeling himself for the past ten years.

I found this quite amusing.

But it’s the ethical vegetarians with whom I often come to verbal blows.  Almost without fail, these individuals find it necessary to proselytize as I am devouring my third helping of pork chop, preaching about the evils of slaughter houses, the cruelty associated with eating meat, and most recently, the way in which the meat industry contributes to global warming.

And over the years, I have said the same thing to these self-righteous leaf eaters:

What makes you think that plants don’t possess have the same right to life as the pig whose muscle and fatty tissues are now on my plate.  Do you really think that human being’s understanding of the workings of nature are so advanced and complete that we can assert, without any question, that plants possess no sentient powers?  Just because a pig can walk and oink doesn’t mean it has any more right to life than a potato or a head of lettuce.

This argument has been scoffed at and mocked for years, then low and behold a New York Times piece comes out last week arguing essentially the same thing!  Writer Natalie Angier writes:

“But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.”

My initial reaction to this piece was utter annoyance at the thought that Angier had unknowingly stolen my dinner table argument , but after I overcame this bout with petty foolishness, I found myself pleased to have an ally on the side of plants.

I have two wishes for plants and for the vegetarians who devour them:

1.  Someday scientists will discover a way to communicate with plants in a meaningful way, and we will all discover that carrots and corn possess as much sentience as human beings and more advanced mental faculties than pigs and cows. Ethical vegetarians would be sent into fits of confusion and remorse, leaping off buildings, launching into starvation diets, and attempting to digest rocks, dirt and styrofoan in the place of plants.

2.  A race of plant based aliens will arrive on Earth, horrified at the way we treat their distant cousins. Devouring them in salads, using their bodies to build our shelters, and locking them up inside greenhouses for their entire lives, these plant-based aliens will hardly believe what they are seeing.  Enraged, they will use their photosynthesis death ray to eliminate all human life on Earth, beginning with the ethical vegetarians.

Obviously, both wishes are slightly tongue in cheek, but you get the idea.

You can put lipstick on a pig…

A couple years ago, I wrote about my distrust of flowery, ostentatious names, as well as any name that attempts to make something sound more cosmopolitan or international than it actually is. At the time, my issue was with the Chilean sea bass: I wrote:

__________

In this spirit of distrust, I questioned the authenticity of the Chilean sea bass at dinner last night.

“That name sounds like total marketing to me. How can a sea bass even hail from Chili? What if it is caught off the coast of Peru, or Ecuador, or even Argentina? Does that make it an entirely different species of fish?”

Turns out I was right.

First off, the Chilean sea bass isn’t even a bass. It’s a Patagonian tooth fish.

Secondly, it does not necessarily hail from Chili. Patagonian tooth fish are found throughout much of the southern hemisphere and are caught by fishermen off the coast of almost every South American nation.

But if you’re easily impressed with ostentation or a mindless sheep who is unwilling to question things, it’s easy to sell you on the wonders of the Chilean sea bass. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? So what if it isn’t a bass and probably didn’t originate from Chilean waters?

It’s a little harder, however, to get you excited over the Patagonian tooth fish. But that's what I'll be ordering in the future.

I can't wait to see the look in the waiter's eyes, right before Elysha knocks me upside the head for being an idiot.

__________

Since writing that post, I have added other foods to this list, including the ridiculously-named haricots verts (the French name for green beans, adopted by American restaurants who apparently cannot deign to put such a pedestrian name on their menu) and the criminally misleading field greens (a name that attempts to conjure images of wild plants and shoots growing in a mountain meadow).

I’d like to add a new food item to my list:

Crudités.

Another often-used French word used to describe an appetizer that amounts to little more than rabbit food and vegetable dip.

Crudités, which literally means uncooked vegetables.

I assume the word was created b dinner guests who bring a platter of carrots and celery to a party but want their contribution to be considered on par with a bottle of champagne, a platter of those fabulous mini hot dogs or a coconut crème pie.

It’s not.

It’s a plate of inexpensive vegetables that require no preparation and could be served to most small rodents. I don’t care how many accents are used in the name. It’s a stupid name and a lousy appetizer that deserves no accolades.

Giving hotdogs a bad name

Hotdogs are my second favorite food, but some things should not exist.