Consolation Food

Remember that scene in Pretty in Pink where Duckie tries to avoid getting beaten up by some preppies by telling them "well, my broker is E.F. Hutton" and then, as he gets carted off to the girls' room, muttering to himself "it never works"?  Aside from being one of my favorite moments in film history, that's the sentiment I often have toward consolation food.

Medical science should have moved beyond the so-called technologies they use to test for allergies.  'Let's rub you with stuff and see if you blow up like a puffer fish!' just strikes me as rather primitive. Still, it's preferable to 'and, each time that doesn't work, rather than taking it as welcome evidence that you're not allergic to something, we'll give you a shot to make sure.'  After receiving the diagnosis that I'm an "allergic puppy," as well as being allergic to puppies, which wasn't the best news I've had recently, I went to seek out one of those awesome spinach and cheese empanadas sold by Moonbean's, intent on finding out who their purveyor was so I could buy them direct. 

Thwarted by the college's lack of parking, I then had the consolation food twinge.  If I couldn't have my filling four-dollar empanada I'd go to town.  I'd been used as a pin cushion!  It was my right!  I ended up driving down El Camino thinking about onion rings.  My first onion ring impulse was Wahoo Fish Tacos, where you need three times the guacamole to moisten up the fish, but you're paying too much attention to the fried goodness to notice.  Then the little piece of paper on the seat fluttered at me.  The one that told me I'd come up positive for every food allergy they tested.  Even with a 50% false positive rate, statistically I was pretty screwed, and my likeliest candidates were the fish and eggs I was using to make up for going veggie.  So I drove on past Wahoo's and ended up at The Counter, visions of friend onion strings dancing in my head.

For the first time in years, my pencil hovered over the burger choices.  Beef?  Turkey?  But having just had chicken shwarma at Old Jerusalem, I decided to be strong and arrest the slide into full-scale food relativism.  I ordered my usual veggie burger, slathering on not one but two premium toppings: the onion strings and some guacamole (a clear sign my brain was still back at Wahoo's).  When you want chicken and you have veggie chicken, it's usually fine.  When you want pork and you have veggie pork, at least the flavor can assuage your craving a bit.  But when you want beef, there's nothing you can do.  There's certainly nothing you can do if your burger doesn't have a taste. 

I'm betting that if I'd ordered the beef patty I would have found it disappointing too, since emotional eating, whether for good mood or bad, has just never worked for me. But lordy people.  If you call something horseradish cheddar it should clear out your sinuses.  If you advertise your guacamole as house-made, it should have something in it other than avocados.  And perhaps the onion strings, which I remembered so fondly, should not have been sitting out until they got soggy, and could have been made out of some higher quality of onion. And of course, some veggie burgers are more the black-bean and veggie variety.  The less soy, the less approximation of the springy, meaty texture of beef.   Nothing could really spoil my mood after having been a "trooper" through my testing, and I was watching the astonished Jo-Wilfried Tsonga take out Nadal in straight sets over the bar, but dammit, I deserved a triumphant meal.  My broker  is E.F. Hutton!