Published on Facebook in the wee hours of the morning of 5/13/2010
Old friend, it's time to say goodbye. You were a novelty of my youth- causing indigestion with your overindulgence of the nacho cheese- tantalizing me with the sweet tangy taste of cool ranch. You went well with sour cream dip and were always a pleasant surprise to see at family picnics. As I grew older, I avoided you at first- but once I hit college, I did what all college kids do: I found an appaulingly bad staple for my diet and I stuck to it. Yes, college was where our love affair truly began. Do you remember? Do you remember when I first found you- those semesters in Apartment #12 on Burlington St, where I subsisted off of orange chicken and crab rangoons from the now departed genius chinese culinary emporium Easy Place Chinese Food?
But, like The Byrds sang, for everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn. (But don't turn too much- you might throw up.) Or something like that, so it's time to let you go once and for all. It's time for me to do what I should have done a long time ago. Go to that pale meeting room in a church basement somewhere, stand up in front of everyone and admit: 'Hi, my name's Tom and I'm addicted to Doritos.'
Yes, it's sad but true- but somewhere along the way in college, I did develop a little bit of a problem when it comes to Doritos. They used to have these salsa Doritos that were damn near as close to perfection as you could get in a chip. They had the right balance of spiciness and flavor and there was a good two, three semester stretch where I would go through a bag of the damn things every single day. I miss that aspect of college sometimes: just eating whatever was lying around in the fridge, regardless of nutritional value. There's a beer garden at Joe's Place where it was now, but it used to be Easy Place Chinese Food- and it was the first Chinese food place I came across that delivered- and it was pretty cheap. So there were a couple of semesters where I lived off of their orange chicken and their crab rangoons. God, I miss that place! Those crab rangoons were perfection- the perfect balance of crab and cream cheese and that orange chicken? (In fact, the way I judge Chinese restaurants now is based solely on their crab rangoons. So far, few, if any have measured up to Easy Place.) So. Damn. Good.
But even after it burned down: there were always the Doritos. I can't remember what I did after the salsa flavored ones went away- but suddenly, there were a flood of flavors that were intriguing to say the least. Mystery flavors that might have been cheeseburger, but just tasted plumb weird- the Smokey Cheddar BBQ and the Spicy Sweet Chilli flavors... wow. Almost as good as those salsa flavored ones, but not quite... combo flavors of pizza and ranch, enchilada and sour cream. Weirder combinations still of Tacos At Midnight or Jalapeno Popper or even Cheesebugers All Nite or some odd homage to noir films that I haven't quite wrapped my head around. Doritos seemed to be on top of the world, this risk-taking, edgy chip company that was willing to dump whatever weird flavorings on pieces of chip and put in a bag and market it to the eager American consumer- namely me, who went on to eat most of those weird-ass flavors.
Ah, Doritos. Throughout college, you've been my constant culinary companion. Even though there's no IMU Food Court in the basement anymore- I miss those bacon cheeseburgers they used to make. There are good cheeseburgers and there are bad cheeseburgers- and these were the best of the latter quality. I don't know what it was about them- probably the fact that they were made by students paid minimum wages and that uncaring, 'I hate my job' mentality made it into the burgers somehow. The squashed bun, the straight out of the freezer bit of cooked meat slipped in between them- melted cheese and a circular slip of bacon all combined into the most pathetic bacon cheeseburger ever made. They had all the appeal of masking tape- and some days, they really tasted like it, but damn, were they good. I ate a lot of those too, back in the day...
One grease fire took the best Chinese food I ever tasted away. A flood of apocalyptic proportions denies me the pleasure of some truly delicious bad bacon cheeseburgers. But Doritos remained- until now. The time has come, my friends, to say Goodbye to Mr. Chips...
I'm getting older. I'm exercising less. I'm trying to be a super-fertile specimen of a man, so the Missus and I can start shucking out kids at some point. I bought some Asics and should the weather actually start acting like its May and stop raining at some point, I'll be using them to actually start running again. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- and this is an important step that's a long time in coming. Eating healthier is a concious choice and it begins with saying goodbye to Doritos once and for all.
So I've made a healthier choice. It's a choice that can be chocolatey, sweet, savory or spicy depending on my mood. A choice that's got 60% less fat than the chips I used to like. A choice that... hang on a sec. [Insert crunching noises here] Just tastes so damn good...
Yes, Goodbye Doritos... hello Chex Mix.
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