News You Can Bruise for 2009 January 6

Permalink [Comments] (4) Tue Jan 06 2009 21:52 Foodcrime Experiment:

In another of my really stupid ideas, I decided to recreate one of my favorite Bachelor Chow meals from college: a Trader Joe's chicken sausage calzone and Mountain Dew. Needless to say it was terrible. Mountain Dew stopped tasting good to me around the time I graduated from college, which may or may not have been coincidence. Although I fell off the wagon in late 2000, I don't think I'd had MD for five years, and now it just tastes like a generic oversweet soda. Note to my younger self: consider tea as a caffeine vehicle. There's no social stigma and you won't get as fat.

The calzone was really bland. I don't know what I was thinking. I remember the calzone being kind of soggy when cooked in the microwave, so I decided to go all out for quality and cooked it in the oven. The whole time it cooked I was forming hypotheses about how I was very impatient in college and needed to cook my calzones immediately. Then I tasted the calzone and it was barely warm in the middle and I had to microwave it anyway. I left it unfinished.

So, lesson learned. You can't go home again, where "home" is a room in a former frat house on Gayley that you share with Dan Helfman.

food

Comments:

Posted by Rachel at Wed Jan 07 2009 04:07

HAhahahaha

Posted by Rachel at Wed Jan 07 2009 04:09

tea - also cheaper. my roommates and I brought our own stash and thermos. you could ask for hot water at any cafe and use their milk and sugar to doctor it. at ucla they never cared. it's practically free!

Posted by Nathaniel at Fri Jan 09 2009 05:57

Not just at UCLA -- it turns out you can walk into any Dennys*, ask for hot water and honey/sugar, and then leave, and no-one bats an eye. This also works at Starbucks's and at least one Carl's Jr...

I think this is a side-effect of the whole American customer-service ethos, where calling you on your (mild) jerkiness is unthinkable and the only alternative is appeasement.

* Disclaimer: There exist Dennys locations where I have not tried this.

Posted by pedro at Tue Jan 13 2009 10:39

Nathaniel: I think it's actually one of the last frontiers of the customer service thing. While I feel like in general, companies are getting cheaper and stingier, giving away hot water and a tablespoon of honey is so inexpensive to them, but it builds goodwill in the recipient, especially at places like Denny's (or Perkins) where refills are already free. Free refills on free liquids! Somebody call Richard Stallman. For myself, I used to stop at Perkins on my drive between Chicago and Poplar to fill my coffee thermos. Coffee was only $1.29, it's "bottomless" (so I didn't feel bad about filling a thermos and walking out) and the coffee was way better than Amoco's.

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