Today I relate three instances of such disappointments, all food-related (because really, my life revolves around food, which all human lives should) and all within the past month. These have also all been due to my ever-continuing attempts at eating "healthier"... clearly I should just give up and succumb to a life of morbid obesity. In sequential order:
1) Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich... the most glorious, euphoric item Wendy's offers on their menu. I'd been abstaining for nearly a year now because hello, it's a deep fried chicken cutlet smothered in mayonnaise. Every time we drive from D.C. to Rochester and back, we stop at Wendy's for something to eat (it's the only drive through we both like) and every time Matt orders one, and every time I have to tell myself, "no spicy chicken sandwich, it's bad for you."Well, this past July we were driving past Wendy's for the nth time, and I had been restraining for so long, I finally caved in. So we ordered TWO spicy chicken sandwiches (mine without mayonnaise though), they gave us our food, we sped away, I merrily tore open the fake foil, sunk my teeth into the fried chicken... no spice. No taste. In fact, it was the blandest piece of fried chicken I've ever consumed. Well okay, it had *some* taste, but apparently they had given us two "Homestyle" chicken sandwiches instead of spicy. Matt claims his was "less spicy than usual" but was later finally forced to concede that they had made a mistake. As we drove by another Wendy's literally minutes later, he offered to drive in and return it, or demand a new one, but I had already morosely finished my homestyle sandwich and now could really not justify a spicy one.
Do you KNOW how awful a Homestyle chicken sandwich is, especially without mayonnaise, and on TOP of expecting a spicy beautiful mouth-watering crispy heaven? Torture I tell you. Extreme let-down. Do I have to wait another year before consuming again?
I have a pretty boring work-breakfast regime. It's altered between oatmeal and granola-with-yogurt for the last five years. I have tried every single grocery-shelf granola out there, and recently discovered my absolute favorite: Quaker Natural Granola: Oats, Honey and Raisins. It's delicious. It stays satisfyingly crunchy in milk, not so much that it hurts the roof of your mouth, but enough so that you're not eating mush by the end. It's positively magical.
The problem is, hardly any store sells it. I have the hardest time finding it, mostly because there are like forty different grocery chains out here and they all carry different things. Every time I go to Wegmans they sell a teeeeeeny box for $5 that I grab but bemoan the absence of the large hearty boxes. I try other granola brands, only to be disappointed by their cardboard taste. I have several boxes of substandard granola slowly fossilizing in my office cubby.
Two weeks ago I was at Safeway and voila! Large boxes of my favorite granola! Glorious glorious day! As I swooped in to grab one, my eyes lit on the "low-fat" version of my mecca. Oh what the heck, I thought, switching boxes and putting that in my cart instead... it's gotta be delicious too right? It's just the healthier version, right?
WRONG. It is the most foul, disgusting granola of ALL the discarded granolas I have ever tasted. It tastes like little cardboard pellets mixed with crunchy cardboard flakes. It is vile and yucky and to add insult to injury, when I went back to Safeway and out of indignation grabbed the regular kind, and compared their nutritional value, they pack the same number of calories in each serving! The low-fat version just pumps theirs with sugar to account for lack of EVERYTHING ELSE. Lesson learned... low-fat provides no additional nutritional value whatsoever.
3) Greasy Chinese food. Let me preface with the statement that I have an *extremely* high tolerance for crappy Chinese food, and my husband, if possible (and probable), an even higher tolerance. We really can eat just about anything. Both of us had been very good about abstaining from crappy food, so for about a week we had been discussing having a "greasy Chinese food night", planning the date of said night, and where we would go.Given that there is a crappy Chinese food restaurant about every three blocks in Alexandria, we thought we'd try the one just down the street from us. What the heck, all Chinese places are about the same middling-level of MSG-infused garlic heaven, right?
No.
Whatever you do, stay away from the Lucky Dragon or Kung-Fu-Hustle or whatever that place is in the Bradlee Shopping Center on King St. It was literally inedible. The green beans, while satisfactorily cooked to a tender crisp, were smothered in a positively alarming viscous neon-orange sweet-weird goo. Our "three-meat-special" or whatever it was we ordered that was supposed to involve chicken, eggplant and beef, was deep fried to the point where we could not tell one item from another, soggy-crisp, and also smothered in a dark brown viscous weird goo. We only ate part of it, Matt insisting that he would eat the leftovers, but as we were driving home even he was forced to concede "okay... you should probably throw that away." One greasy Chinese food glorious night, wasted... As my mom commented later when I shared our experience, "wow, it is very hard to cook that bad Chinese food!"
I should just stick to Panda Express from now on... at least it's dependably bad.
So I really could keep going... Matt reminded me of my "candied beef curry" fail this past Sunday (note: coconut cream does NOT substitute for coconut milk in curry recipes), or the cold Pizza Hut supreme delivered to our door just last night (those of you who know me know how rarely I eat pizza, Supreme being the only kind I tolerate and it was COLD!)... but I'll let you chime in now... what food disappointments have you had recently? The kind that make you shake your fist at the heavens and yell "nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.!!!!!!!!" You know what I'm talking about. :)
10 comments:
You forgot the molasses for vanilla baking tragedy...
I TOTALLY feel your pain on the Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich. I love those things. They are my constant. Well, they're what I always get at Wendy's, anyway. Once I went and they gave me a freakin' junior bacon cheeseburger instead! That's not even close, people.
Other than that I can't think of any recent food travesties. I'll comment again if I think of something.
Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww. Food disappointment is almost unpardonable. I feel for you on all 3 occasions. I know that I've had some similar experiences, but my experience this morning has just about eclipsed any minor disappointment I could possibly remember right now. I find it kind of hilarious and fitting that we should post on semi-similar topics on the same day. It's only sad that it should be such a disappointing topic. Argh.
Again, technically speaking Cabeza, the molasses/vanilla incident wasn't exactly a "tragedy" since it never happened... but clearly I will never be forgotten for that one. One of these days I will substitute it just to see what happens.
And junior bacon cheeseburger for spicy chicken sandwich?! Heresy!!!
Smelly cars trump disappointing food any day, Christina. You win.
All I can think of recently is the one single time I tried to eat ice cream in Kenya. I was kind of craving ice cream the entire time because it's just so hot there! And also because I just love ice cream. So on a particularly hot day close to the end my stay, I finally buckled down and bought some at the grocery store. How bad could it really be, right?? Well...it was bad. The texture was this mushy, too-thin goo, like when you leave ice cream out for WAY too long and it's beyond saving. The flavor was some kind of mix between really bad artificial strawberry flavoring and cardboard (why is it always cardboard?!?). Total, utter disappointment. Lesson learned, don't eat ice cream in Kenya.
I like that this post was written with the explicit background that you and I were trying to eat better, yet 4 of the 5 food disapointments involves very very not good for you food. Perhaps we need to rethink our dieting approach?
I think the one I was most bummed about was the crappy inedible toxic sludge Chinese food. Part of me thought I was going to mutate into a Ninja super hero after eating some of that ooze. I mean, you and I can stomach pretty much anything China has to offer... Stomach, bring it on; chicken feet, I've totally tapped that; dog with chopped vegetables, been there; Yak butter tea; done that (although this one was disgusting). All I am saying is that it has to be pretty bad for me to say "toss it." Congratulations Dragon Palace... you win.
I totally relate to your Wendy's story. The spicy chicken sandwich is one of the very best things in the whole world... and also one of the worst. As you mentioned, it's not the healthiest thing on the planet, so it can only be justified on rare occasion. My problem with the Wendy's locations here is the inconsistancy. I go there expecting the delicious crispy, spicy, juicy chicken sandwich, and sometimes that's what I get. However, half the time, I end up with some cold rubbery flat gross representation of what probably would have been a wonderful spicy chicken sandwich.... if it had been eaten hours earlier when it was cooked instead of sitting under a heat lamp all day long. This honestly has happened so many times that I don't order them at the drive-thru anymore, since I'm usually way to lazy and hungry to drive back and get a new one by the time I've discovered what injustice has been done to me. Then I am stuck, sadly eating my spicy hoppy taw sandwich, too hungry to pass it up, but very unsatisfied when it's gone, and unable to justify getting another one anytime soon.
"Boooooooooooo!" is really the only way to describe it.
Meg: what's "hoppy taw"? And I may have shared your "when I worked in Wendy's in high school I used to give extra fries to the skinny witches who came in" story to um... a lot of people. :) Matt even tells it now. And I totally understand the inconsistency; at least with a deep fried chicken it's a *little* safer than the grilled... back when I was REALLY eating healthy, I survived on the grilled chicken sandwiches, but you can only imagine how rubbery and gross boiled chicken gets after awhile. I haven't been able to eat one in three years.
Abbynormal, I TOTALLY empathize with crappy international desserts! NOBODY does delicious desserts like obesity-ridden Americans. I think other countries just cannot bring themselves to inject the proper amount of sugar and fat into foods that we so happily gobble down. As much as I LOVED everything I ate in Taiwan, sometimes I just really wanted a big thick brownie. :)
I love that granola, too! Do you ever go to Costco? They sell our FAVORITE granola in an awesome double bag contraption. Each bag is equivalent to a BIG box. And the best part is that it only costs about $8!!! It is a great deal, for sure, and well-worth every penny of the Costco membership. And I agree. . . low-fat granola sucks.
Oh phew, you were talking about Dragon Palace. I thought you may have been talking about China Delight, which is even closer to your house - it's in that little strip mall across the street from Wendy's. Please go there. It will redeem your faith in Chinese eateries in the area.
Abby, I *have* been to China Delight, and it's really not bad; Matt loved their spicy eggplant and I'm totally fine hitting them up in a pinch.
HOWEVER, and I was going to post about this, we determined to try Chinese food again this past Friday, so I looked up some places in the Washingtonian, and found one called Hong Kong Palace waaay up by Seven Corners in that plaza with Michaels, Shoppers, etc. right before you hit the intersection... HONG KONG PALACE IS AMAZING. It's fantastic. It's authentic. They only use soup spoons and plastic chopsticks and at one point Matt was the only white person and not once did I see any white people come in to pick up a take-out order. This place is the real deal, Matt and I have quite possibly found our new favorite Chinese place in town. Try it out!!!
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