Bon Appetit!

Every once in a while I'll make myself an outstanding meal, one that's well-balanced and healthy. Yesterday for lunch I made one such meal. It was beautiful, a sight to behold.

The main meal was from Trader Joe's. Grilled chicken strips with tortellini, and a side of organic corn. The salad was visually stunning, every color of the rainbow. Baby spinach, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, red onions, and corn sprinked on top. Just looking at it made me salivate.

I set the meal on the dining room table instead of the coffee table, for a change, and turned the tv on its Ikea tv turner so that it would face me. I got my glass of water, my chopsticks (for the salad), and my fork, and prepared to dig in. And that's when I saw it.

A worm. A white little caterpillar-looking thing, sitting very comfortably on the corn. Oh my god, I wanted to vomit. Vomit, vomit, vomit, gross, disgusting! I lost my appetite in record time. I felt nauseous. I immediately got one of my many bug containers and put it inside, so that I could show it to a friend later to confirm it's identity as a worm. I got a magnifiying top and inspected it closely. Could it be a very long grain of white rice? Was it moving? Did it have little leg stumps? Though it wasn't moving and I couldn't see stumps per se, my gut told me that this was, in fact, not a grain of rice.

I tossed the whole meal in the trash, apologizing to the compost gods as I did so. I went to sit down and collect myself, and Shelby came to sit on my lap. She had a nice nap, and when she was done, enough time had passed so that I could think about food again. I went down the block to the local Italian food place and had a pepperoni roll and a bag of onion and yogurt potato chips, mmm, grease and fat and no worms!

Later I to my friend's house for dinner and showed him the container. He confirmed that in fact, my specimen was a worm, and told me that worms are often found in organic corn, that's why they cut off the ends of them at the Farmer's Market. Organic schmanic, Green Giant cans of Nibblets corn, here I come! It's about the product and the processed, in this case. While I'm at it, maybe I'll go see my friend Little Debbie.