No Thanks (clickclickclick), I'm Tryin'-A Cut Down

I love food.
I love to cook. And bake. And mix and frappe and knead and roll and pour.
I love to read recipes and make them for my family and the guys at work and make up stuff and hear Sergei say, “That recipe’s a keeper, hon!”
I love the Food Network. Alton Brown gets me hot. And Morimoto from Iron Chef. And, yeah, okay, Rachael Ray is pretty hot.

But there’s some food that could just drop off the face of the earth, and I wouldn’t care. Worse yet, I’d cheer and wave banners saying, “Good riddance, ya bastards!”

1) Mocha. What the hell? Whoever thought of combining two of the most perfect foods on earth, hoping to unlock some sort of super-secret chemical reaction that would make us all gush in our panties was wrong, wrong, WRONG. Chocolate is chocolate. Coffee is coffee. Never the twain, folks. I’ve tried Mocha as coffee, I’ve tried it as ice cream, and as candy something. And every damn time I’m expecting some sort of orgasmic experience with it, some sort of !BAM! explosion of chocolate, and !POW! eruption of coffee...and all I get is...(sputter...spark...coooough...)...something that looks and tastes like the mud puddle that forms in the low spot in our lawn. No. Uh-uh. Doesn’t work for me. Unless you pour half a jar of caramel in there, and a handful of itsy-bitsy chocolate chips on top, I get nuthin’. Just fat coffee. Maybe my tongue just wasn’t meant to appreciate this. I want a cup of coffee, a bar of chocolate, and I’ll be happy.

2) Lime (fake). The real thing, a real, fresh lime, is a wonderful thing, squoze in tonic water (maybe a bit of vodka or gin in there, whatthehell) or on a lovely piece of fish or chicken, or in guacamole, oh-yum! But anything fakey-fake made to taste like lime makes the pits behind my jaws ache and my tongue telephones my gut, “Uh...no one take a coffee break...we might have to blow.” I can identify exactly why the revulsion. My family. The green jello at family reunions with what looked like lovely fruit inside, but was really studded with...BLEAH!...shredded carrots and celery??? THAT’S dessert? Or those stupid lime Dum-Dum pops we got at the bank, and I’d always have to let my younger siblings pick first...the root beer...the cherry...the butterscotch...and the lime goes to Mona! ‘Cause she’ll eat it, and the younger kids are SO precious and get the good flavours! Stupid bank tellers. Nowadays, though, sometimes candy makers are kind enough to make green candy taste like sour apple, which is fine. I always make my kids taste the green ones first. If it’s lime, I leave the room to avoid a scene.

3) Malted milk balls. Urgh. My stomach is doing flip-flops just thinking about this one. Malted milk balls have two components which annoy me: 1) they taste like bad, boiled-down beer, and 2) the sound...OHMYGOD, the sound!, that awful scraping sound of whipped malt against yer teeth, like you’re eating some sort of dirt clod, FAAAACK! Never liked ‘em as a kid. As an adult, I’ve tried them from time to time, seeing if my taste has changed, and I’ll let one melt in my mouth until it’s soft enough to suck into mush (I WILL NOT crunch it, you can’t make me!). Nope. Still reminds me of syrup-du-skunky-beer. I love Bridge Mix, the fruit and nut mix of candies. I’m usually pretty good at picking out the malted milk balls from the bag, but every once in a while I mistake one for a nice cherry nougat, bite into that sucker, and YAAAAAAAAAHHH!!...spitspitspit. Like some damn malt-bomb. I will buy them for Sergei and the kids at Easter, but I handle the box like it’s full of nitro.

I’m gonna have to stop now, as I distinctly remember seeing part of a Hershey bar in the refrigerator tonight...nowhere near the coffee....