Damn France!

So Michael and I have been talking about taking a trip to Europe for about a year now, but now we're really closing in on deciding where to go. Last year, we had started with Spain and Germany and the Netherlands and and Iceland and all those little Eastern European countries. We were all over the place. Michael had even gotten me to come around to Paris. Before, I figured I'd go there when I'm old, but I was in no rush. But then we started talking about the food and it went up to the top of my list.

So we renewed our discussion a couple weeks ago. With the exchange rate for the dollar being low, we are debating going to Great Britain and blowing a wad of cash or going to some Eastern European countries and saving a little. Coincidentally, this article about Europe trying to entice Americans to travel came my way. It's in USA Today, so it's short and sweet. All those Europeans were so happy to come here and get good bargains. Ah, but then they realized that with our weak dollar, we were not spending as much of our sad money in their countries. So countries like England and Ireland are coming up with advertising campaigns and discounts to entice American travelers. I'm sure these aren't super great deals, but at least they're doing something. France on the other hand, could care less. Their spokesperson from the Paris Convention and Visitors Office says about the drop in American tourists, "This is somthing we cannot really fight." What the hell? I had finally come around to wanting to go to Paris! See, now I'm going to wait til I'm 70 and the dollar is king again!

I Can't Stop Eating Bad Food

OK, so I had the WORST SANDWICH I've ever eaten on Saturday. This sandwich beats out my previous worst sandwich ever from Shari's in Oregon. It was a badly made BLT. How does a restaurant screw up a BLT? Old lettuce, limp fatty bacon and really bad tomatoes. Anyway, this sandwich that I had on Saturday was MUCH worse and I only have myself to blame.

So we went to a place called Lee's Sandwiches (I didn't know this is a big chain at the time). It's across the street from the best international market that I've been to in my whole life, Lee Lee Oriental Supermarket in Chandler. Lee's Sandwiches is a self-descriped Euro Asian sandwich shop with fresh baquettes coming out of it's "baguette factory" and Asian fillings (as well as all the classic sandwich combinations such as ham and cheese). Both Michael and I decided to order the Asian variations. Michael, being the wiser, ordered the BBQ Pork. I decided to go for it with the "shredded pork", my first mistake. My second mistake was my response to the girl behind the counter taking our orders. First she asked me if I had eaten the shredded pork before and I said no and asked her why. She gave me a look and said, "It's different meats and some people don't like it." I had positive visions of "different meats" and I replied, "I like all sorts of meat, let's go for it."

So I picked up my sandwich from the counter (a very pleasant computerized voice and TV screen announce your order number - I love this place other than my sandwich), take it back to the table and look inside (it looks nothing like the picture). I don't really see any meat; I just see some little crumbles that might be meat and some carrots, daikon and what I believe to be noodles. So I eagerly eat about half of my sandwich. It tasted strange and I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with it. The texture was weird and those little crumbles tasted like old meat and sawdust mixed together. Michael noticed my distress and took a look at the receipt. He pointed out to me that my sandwich was listed as "pork and pork skin" and that our sandwiches cost $2.85 each. Hmmm. Here was third mistake. I took another bite of my sandwich, which had a big helping of those "noodles". They had a distinct stretch and rubberband-like snap to them that I've never tasted in noodles. Oh, those weren't noodles. They were strands of pork skin and fat. So that was what was strange and bad. I scraped out as much as I could (which turned out to be about a cup of these skin noodles) and continued to finish my sandwich. That was my fourth mistake. Michael offered to give me the rest of his pork sandwich (which was very tasty) and to order a new sandwich. But I decided to finish my gross pork skin sandwich and wash it down with a very aggressively sweetened neon-orange Thai iced tea. I couldn't get the taste of that sandwich out of my mouth for TWO HOURS. It just kept coming back. Anyway, I hope I've learned my lesson this time. I have a really bad habit of finishing bad food. I'm not sure why I do it. But I have a long list of finishing bad food that's been served to me in restaurants. Oh wow, there's a really bad crab cake in my past...IDIOT!