It started out as a regular conversation at the office. My coworker hadn’t eaten Saltine peanut butter sandwiches until last night. It’s a simple process, really: get out the Saltines, get a jar of Skippy or Jiff or some organic gunk, then spread it on the Saltines and go to town. Yummy. Still, she’d been denied the pleasure up to that point.
She went on to say that another of her favorite dishes is cottage cheese with salt, pepper and chopped up pieces of tomato. Ummm… excuse me? Salt and pepper, sure, but tomatoes? That’s just… how do you come up with a combination like that? Maybe it was like the Reese’s peanut butter cup commercials: “Hey, you put your tomato in my cottage cheese!” “Hey, you got cottage cheese on my tomato!” But unlike the apathetic peanut butter and chocolate people, these two start kicking each other’s asses because they eat healthy foods that give them plenty of energy for ass-kicking, thus leaving my coworker the opportunity to sneak in, grab the bowl and chow down.
So she likes that food, but gets weirded out by some of her friends who eat cottage cheese with peaches in it. Apparently, the idea of cheese and fruit together gives her the willies. Which means she might have trouble ordering food in a high-end restaurant where they serve fruit and cheese plates.
No, she prefers fresh fruit, untainted by substances such as cottage cheese. Not only is fresh fruit healthy, but it usually tastes better that way, too. Fresh peaches are way better than canned peaches, but canned pears aren’t too bad compared to fresh pears…
Now you may be asking yourself, “Huh?” More specifically, “What are you talking about?” Even more specifically, “Was there a third person yelling ‘Hey, you got cottage cheese and tomato on my salt and pepper!’?”
The reason that stream of conversation was interesting is because while talking about the canned pears, someone was rolling a cart amongst the cubicles that had a basket of fruit on it. What kinds of fruit were in the basket?
“Apples, oranges and bananas, oh my!”
And yes, it had peaches and pears, too. Given our conversation, I felt morally obligated to eat one of the peaches, which quickly attempted to drip juices all over my pants when I bit into it. (My coworker wasn’t as lucky—her peach succeeded where mine failed. Which is to say that it dripped on her pants, not mine. We’re friendly, but not that friendly…)
Upon finishing my peach, I declared that it was “delectable”. She looked at me for a moment, so I clarified: “That’s a sophisticated way of saying ‘yummy.'” She said she’d have to remember that word to use it in the future, which may not be too likely. After all, how many high-end restaurants serve vegetable and cheese plates?
