Worst thing since sliced bread
Dear Subpar Pita Bread,
I just wanted to commend you on so successfully ruining my lunch. Perhaps you haven’t heard the stories of me eating leftover cake off strangers’ plates in restaurants, but I have fairly low standards when it comes to enjoying something delicious. If I want to eat it, it’s hard to make me regret it. And you know what, other than leftover cake, is usually quite delicious? Turkey wraps. A healthy and refreshing yet portable meal that sadly promises to be the highlight of my otherwise bleak workday, during which I sit hunched at my grey desk putting in enough paid hours to fund my pointless existence. While hunched over a contract I am proofreading, I usually glance at the clock in the bottom right corner of my screen at least six times a minute, counting down the seconds until I can sit hunched over a distracting meal. Today’s meal: turkey wrap with a side of chicken soup. Today’s verdict: fuck you, Subpar Pita Bread.
Perhaps, as a piece of pita bread, you have never enjoyed a pita of your own. Perhaps you do not understand the basic fundamentals of constructing and subsequently eating a pita. It’s actually quite a simple concept to grasp.
1) Put pita on plate
2) Put toppings on pita
3) Wrap pita around toppings
4) Wrap mouth around pita
You’ll notice that these basic instructions do not include any steps that involve throwing the plate at a wall, hopping in a cab and burning down a local pita factory. You know why? Because a pita that can accomplish the four simple steps listed above will only result in the eater of said pita being temporarily satisfied with her life, which she will then continue to mundanely live out without any pesky interference from court dates or three-year jail sentences.
The problem with you becomes evident when one asks the question, “What is the point of a pita?” The answer, of course, is for this bread to act as a vehicle for far more delicious toppings to reach one’s stomach in an efficient manner that requires no utensils and very little cleanup. In this crazy world we live in today, foods such as the pita are more important than ever. The woman on the go does not have time to wash a load of dishes before getting back to her Outlook inbox. Equality started the day it became acceptable for a woman to eat like a savage with her bare hands and curse her miserable 9-5 existence like men have done since the beginning of time.
So, without the ability to safely house toppings, you, Pita, are a useless piece of perishable garbage unfit for any food bank. And this, Subpar Pita, is exactly how and why you ruined my lunch. Maybe you’re not familiar with the month of January, but it usually involves people making fleeting healthy eating choices to rid themselves of the eight pounds they’ve gained since baking that first test batch of Christmas cookies on November 25th. This is prime time for you to prove why you are a valuable member of the food groups and a better choice than a microwavable dish of Michelina-brand chemicals.
Today you were part of my plan to better myself, to eat nutritious meals that do not compromise when it comes to ingredients or shelf life. But you let me down from the very moment I removed you from your plastic pita womb filled with a litter of circular breads and placed you on my plate. In that short journey you developed a crack I immediately knew would interfere with my pita ingestion. But I accepted this small blemish on what otherwise appeared to be a tasty wheat creation. I very carefully placed my romaine lettuce, real turkey breast and tomatoes along the strongest part of your spine. I carried you back to my grey little desk, added some salt and pepper, and – in the daintiest and most gentle of ways - folded. That’s when you fucked everything up. You split open in three different places. A whole inch of you fell right off, exposing a thin inner wall of lettuce. My tiny hands now gripped what was basically a pile of bread chunks balancing a frightened mix of poultry and vegetables. My only option was to fully commit to this wrap, shoving it down my throat as quickly as possible. This is not how I like to eat. I like to take a bite, put the edible object down, do something efficient, then re-clasp and take another bite. Occasionally I like to sip some water or dab a napkin to my cheek. But you did not allow me to do any of these things. With every bite another fragment of bread would crumble to my plate below. This resulted in my hands and face getting messier than ever, but I had no freedom to reach for a paper towel. Lucky for both of us I have an aversion to white sauces and you were free from any mayonnaise, ranch dressing or other vomit equivalency. Had you been the lunch of a normal human being who likes to plop creamy slime all over the place things would have been far more disastrous. That being said, the inherent problem with avoiding sauces is that it results in a rather dry wrap, especially when white turkey meat is involved. So, while I may have been spared globs of pus-like wetness dripping all over my arms, my throat became more and more parched as I was unable to reach for my nearby water bottle. Not to mention that all the while my chicken soup was sitting by sad and alone. The whole point of the sandwich/soup combo is so that one can juxtapose the warm brothy goodness of the soup with the cool crispy freshness of the wrap. Perhaps after four boring wrap bites I would want to throw in a couple soup slurps to mix up the texture, temperature and taste sensations. You allowed me no such freedoms and made my tongue a prisoner of your faulty genetic makeup. Not only was I racing against your ultimate demise, but I was also racing against soup coldness. I had to ram you into my face simply so the rest of my meal could go unspoiled.
Now, had this soup I was waiting for been delicious, perhaps I could forgive some of your shortcomings and think, “Well, at least I had that tasty soup.” But this was not the case. Today I was conducting a soup experiment with a can of Smart Ones chicken noodle. I purchased this soup because it claimed to be low in calories and fat. I believe they abide by this claim by making their soup so tasteless and disgusting that the consumer throws half the can away, thereby saving some precious Weight Watchers points. I have never had a soup that tasted so little of sodium, and even after dumping a litre of salt and pepper into the bowl the dim yellow slop remained tasteless. The so-called chicken - the ingredient around which this entire soup is based – was so revolting my cat would have sent it back if I had passed him a tin of it. Tiny little factory-formed squares of pink that tasted spongy and dystopian. I had to use my spoon to fish them all out and slap them into my under-desk garbage. Had you not fallen apart on me, I would have experimented with this soup much earlier in the meal. Realizing it was disgusting, I would have consumed it first, leaving myself with a delightful turkey wrap to look forward to. Instead I finished my meal by begrudgingly swallowing some boiled carrots floating in yellow.
I realize this is just as much the soup’s fault as it is yours, but at least the soup was still, by scientific standards, soup. You were, by all standards, no longer a pita. You were a pile of rubble under which all my love of lunch was buried and suffering. I could have tried to dig it out but I knew if your remnants were to be the building blocks of any future hunger I would rather let my desire to eat slowly die.
I’m not sure why you chose to destroy my lunch and, subsequently, my work ethic. I treated you with respect. I used you well in advance of your expiry, I did not overstuff, did not tightly fold – I didn’t even do the bottom-end fold-over, which is really quite essential for wrap-wrapping. I knew you were fragile and tried not to hurt you. All I did was think of you and you couldn’t even hold it together for 20 minutes to make me happy. I don’t know why your creators are even in the business of pita-making. If one owned a car factory but only produced cars that could not drive he’d be run out of town. But maybe that is what happened – maybe your makers were run out of Lebanon, which is why they’ve had to bring their Lebanese-style breads here, selling them for a whole dollar less than the other pita breads. I’d vow to never buy a pack of your kind again, but, as I said, your pitas are a whole dollar less per package and I am just sssoooo cheap. I mean, I’m willing to eat leftover cake off restaurant tables. I clearly have no standards.
Sincerely,
Laura
I just wanted to commend you on so successfully ruining my lunch. Perhaps you haven’t heard the stories of me eating leftover cake off strangers’ plates in restaurants, but I have fairly low standards when it comes to enjoying something delicious. If I want to eat it, it’s hard to make me regret it. And you know what, other than leftover cake, is usually quite delicious? Turkey wraps. A healthy and refreshing yet portable meal that sadly promises to be the highlight of my otherwise bleak workday, during which I sit hunched at my grey desk putting in enough paid hours to fund my pointless existence. While hunched over a contract I am proofreading, I usually glance at the clock in the bottom right corner of my screen at least six times a minute, counting down the seconds until I can sit hunched over a distracting meal. Today’s meal: turkey wrap with a side of chicken soup. Today’s verdict: fuck you, Subpar Pita Bread.
Perhaps, as a piece of pita bread, you have never enjoyed a pita of your own. Perhaps you do not understand the basic fundamentals of constructing and subsequently eating a pita. It’s actually quite a simple concept to grasp.
1) Put pita on plate
2) Put toppings on pita
3) Wrap pita around toppings
4) Wrap mouth around pita
You’ll notice that these basic instructions do not include any steps that involve throwing the plate at a wall, hopping in a cab and burning down a local pita factory. You know why? Because a pita that can accomplish the four simple steps listed above will only result in the eater of said pita being temporarily satisfied with her life, which she will then continue to mundanely live out without any pesky interference from court dates or three-year jail sentences.
The problem with you becomes evident when one asks the question, “What is the point of a pita?” The answer, of course, is for this bread to act as a vehicle for far more delicious toppings to reach one’s stomach in an efficient manner that requires no utensils and very little cleanup. In this crazy world we live in today, foods such as the pita are more important than ever. The woman on the go does not have time to wash a load of dishes before getting back to her Outlook inbox. Equality started the day it became acceptable for a woman to eat like a savage with her bare hands and curse her miserable 9-5 existence like men have done since the beginning of time.
So, without the ability to safely house toppings, you, Pita, are a useless piece of perishable garbage unfit for any food bank. And this, Subpar Pita, is exactly how and why you ruined my lunch. Maybe you’re not familiar with the month of January, but it usually involves people making fleeting healthy eating choices to rid themselves of the eight pounds they’ve gained since baking that first test batch of Christmas cookies on November 25th. This is prime time for you to prove why you are a valuable member of the food groups and a better choice than a microwavable dish of Michelina-brand chemicals.
Today you were part of my plan to better myself, to eat nutritious meals that do not compromise when it comes to ingredients or shelf life. But you let me down from the very moment I removed you from your plastic pita womb filled with a litter of circular breads and placed you on my plate. In that short journey you developed a crack I immediately knew would interfere with my pita ingestion. But I accepted this small blemish on what otherwise appeared to be a tasty wheat creation. I very carefully placed my romaine lettuce, real turkey breast and tomatoes along the strongest part of your spine. I carried you back to my grey little desk, added some salt and pepper, and – in the daintiest and most gentle of ways - folded. That’s when you fucked everything up. You split open in three different places. A whole inch of you fell right off, exposing a thin inner wall of lettuce. My tiny hands now gripped what was basically a pile of bread chunks balancing a frightened mix of poultry and vegetables. My only option was to fully commit to this wrap, shoving it down my throat as quickly as possible. This is not how I like to eat. I like to take a bite, put the edible object down, do something efficient, then re-clasp and take another bite. Occasionally I like to sip some water or dab a napkin to my cheek. But you did not allow me to do any of these things. With every bite another fragment of bread would crumble to my plate below. This resulted in my hands and face getting messier than ever, but I had no freedom to reach for a paper towel. Lucky for both of us I have an aversion to white sauces and you were free from any mayonnaise, ranch dressing or other vomit equivalency. Had you been the lunch of a normal human being who likes to plop creamy slime all over the place things would have been far more disastrous. That being said, the inherent problem with avoiding sauces is that it results in a rather dry wrap, especially when white turkey meat is involved. So, while I may have been spared globs of pus-like wetness dripping all over my arms, my throat became more and more parched as I was unable to reach for my nearby water bottle. Not to mention that all the while my chicken soup was sitting by sad and alone. The whole point of the sandwich/soup combo is so that one can juxtapose the warm brothy goodness of the soup with the cool crispy freshness of the wrap. Perhaps after four boring wrap bites I would want to throw in a couple soup slurps to mix up the texture, temperature and taste sensations. You allowed me no such freedoms and made my tongue a prisoner of your faulty genetic makeup. Not only was I racing against your ultimate demise, but I was also racing against soup coldness. I had to ram you into my face simply so the rest of my meal could go unspoiled.
Now, had this soup I was waiting for been delicious, perhaps I could forgive some of your shortcomings and think, “Well, at least I had that tasty soup.” But this was not the case. Today I was conducting a soup experiment with a can of Smart Ones chicken noodle. I purchased this soup because it claimed to be low in calories and fat. I believe they abide by this claim by making their soup so tasteless and disgusting that the consumer throws half the can away, thereby saving some precious Weight Watchers points. I have never had a soup that tasted so little of sodium, and even after dumping a litre of salt and pepper into the bowl the dim yellow slop remained tasteless. The so-called chicken - the ingredient around which this entire soup is based – was so revolting my cat would have sent it back if I had passed him a tin of it. Tiny little factory-formed squares of pink that tasted spongy and dystopian. I had to use my spoon to fish them all out and slap them into my under-desk garbage. Had you not fallen apart on me, I would have experimented with this soup much earlier in the meal. Realizing it was disgusting, I would have consumed it first, leaving myself with a delightful turkey wrap to look forward to. Instead I finished my meal by begrudgingly swallowing some boiled carrots floating in yellow.
I realize this is just as much the soup’s fault as it is yours, but at least the soup was still, by scientific standards, soup. You were, by all standards, no longer a pita. You were a pile of rubble under which all my love of lunch was buried and suffering. I could have tried to dig it out but I knew if your remnants were to be the building blocks of any future hunger I would rather let my desire to eat slowly die.
I’m not sure why you chose to destroy my lunch and, subsequently, my work ethic. I treated you with respect. I used you well in advance of your expiry, I did not overstuff, did not tightly fold – I didn’t even do the bottom-end fold-over, which is really quite essential for wrap-wrapping. I knew you were fragile and tried not to hurt you. All I did was think of you and you couldn’t even hold it together for 20 minutes to make me happy. I don’t know why your creators are even in the business of pita-making. If one owned a car factory but only produced cars that could not drive he’d be run out of town. But maybe that is what happened – maybe your makers were run out of Lebanon, which is why they’ve had to bring their Lebanese-style breads here, selling them for a whole dollar less than the other pita breads. I’d vow to never buy a pack of your kind again, but, as I said, your pitas are a whole dollar less per package and I am just sssoooo cheap. I mean, I’m willing to eat leftover cake off restaurant tables. I clearly have no standards.
Sincerely,
Laura
posted by Laura @ 3:30 p.m.
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