Make Mine Schwetty
Like all good kiddies, I take my lunch to work every day. Well, alright. In the interest of full disclosure, I will point out that this is a new thing, this hauling food in with me every day. But it does save money, and I need that money to buy shiny things. The tricky part to this, though, is working out what, exactly, to actually have for lunch on any given day.
Parker Lee noodle bowl
Occasionally, I resort to bringing frozen meals. What? It’s not cheating! Sometimes you just run out of ideas! Ahem. Anywho, I discovered these Parker Lee brand frozen noodle bowls in my local Loblaws a little while ago. Having had successful lunchtime adventures with the Beef Brisket & Shrimp Wonton varieties (yes, I went down both those paths, and they were surprisingly delicious), I got a little bolder this time and elected to try the “Vietnamese Style Rice Vermicelli with Beef”, despite the slightly disturbing looking picture on the front.
Never. Again.
To start with, I’m puzzled by the choice of describing these noodles – these noodles which are IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY to those found in the Beef Brisket version – as “Vietnamese Style Rice Vermicelli”. So, alright. Maybe they didn’t mean the noodles themselves were Vietnamese style, but they certainly don’t fit any definition of ‘rice vermicelli’. I mean, other than being made from rice flour. So, you know. Maybe one definition.
Still. A minor detail. I nuked these as required, then added the necessary chili sauce & water and sat down to enjoy. I plunged the spoon into the piping hot bowl and began to stir, bringing up the delicious meats from the depths of the soup. Or, what I assumed would be delicious meats. What I got instead, was some tripe – yes, TRIPE, aka OFFAL, aka OH-MY-FREAKING-GOD IT’S INTESTINES IN MY BOWL – along with some beef brisket and, disturbingly, two unidentifiable spherical masses. I poked at these masses and was barely able to get a fork prong in. I tried biting into it and was met with resistance and a somewhat disturbing texture. In the end I was forced to leap to the only possible conclusion: my bowl contained two testicles.
Now, the list of ingredients denies this. But, you know what? I’ve seen Funny Farm, I saw those “prairie oysters” on Chevy Chase’s plate. And I’ll be damned if this evil faux-Chinese coporation wasn’t trying to fool me into eating too many parts of the cow – or whatever animal these things came from. I ate the brisket. I even ate the tripe. It actually wasn’t that bad. But I could not bring myself to eat those balls. No amount of humming “chocolate salty balls” to myself could make me force them down. I had a moment of inspiration and doused these things in hot sauce… “Now they’re ‘Great Balls of Fire’!” I giggled to myself. “At least with this much hot sauce I won’t be able to taste anything.” But alas. My testicles-as-food prejudice remains intact and I finally had to throw them in the bin, together with my artfully shaped – and strategically placed – napkin.
