So, it seemed like a good evening to go out to the Whole Foods grocery store to do a little grocery shopping. It was raining hard, 45 degrees and the start of the weekend. We had to go to the sporting goods store to get a Bulls shirt for Ann (Wear RED for the playoffs). We needed to go out for dinner, so it seemed like a good idea. People, especially Nate and Dana, tell us that Whole Foods is an amazing place (but expensive). If you are not familiar with Whole Foods, it is what I would classify as a hippie grocery store, where my 1969 first year at college version of the hippie (make love, not war, let's go skateboarding!) has been replaced by the 2011 version (make whole grains, no gluten, please, nice Prius!). So we drove down to Schaumburg where they have a huge store and wandered around for a while. We picked up a few things: black cherry jam, sea salt caramels, dried veggie chips (for Ann), and saw lots of good looking food. But the trip was ruined when we came around an endcap and saw a display of coconut curry cashews. Let me say that again, because your brain probably skipped over some of that to avoid the pain. COCONUT CURRY CASHEWS. Now I don't know anybody that doesn't agree that the cashew is one of the finest foods on earth. Nice and salty, crunchy, makes you want to grab a diet coke and have some more. It would seem impossible to improve on that, although dipping them in chocolate is a nice touch. Dipping them in coconut powder and curry powder is not a nice touch. Now Ann (who is a much nicer person than I am) would say that it is impossible to speak badly about this "food" because I haven't tasted it. You and I know better than that, don't we. There are some people on this earth who will tell you that coconut tastes good (I'm talking about you, Dave). So let me tell you a little story.
My mother was one of those cooks who refused to tell you about everything that went into her cooking. I remember having stew one night for dinner, biting into something that sure looked like a potato, only to find out it wasn't. "It's a parsnip," my mom said. "It came from our garden." Well, spiders came from our garden, too, and I don't remember walking out to the garden with a salt shaker to chow down on some of them. "Are these onions in the vegetable soup, mom" I asked. "Don't worry about them; you can't even taste them," she said. If you can't taste them, why would you put them in? Carrots I could understand. At least they added color. But onions? But the harshest memory of my childhood dining was the first bite into that beautiful chocolate cake, a German chocolate cake, I found out later when I quit gagging. A beautiful chocolate cake, ruined by coconut. No wonder we went to war against the Germans. I don't think it had anything to do with Hitler. How could we allow a country to do that to one of nature's most perfect foods - chocolate cake? We let Germany off too lightly after the war, if you ask me.
So I don't need to taste them to know they are inedible. I'm not even going to start on the idea of cashews with curry powder. I've never believed that two wrongs make a right, so let's just assume they are evil, OK? I think in the new hippie age they are probably what parents use to frighten their children into behaving at Christmas. "You'd better behave or Santa will put coal (2011 version: coconut curry cashews) in your stocking."
Maybe later we can talk about other hippie (2011 version) concepts I don't understand at all, like play dates for your kids and bike helmets. Don't get me started.
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