Bagel Rage
I love bagels. I'm not supposed to eat them, mind you, but I love them nonetheless. Especially with butter!
These days we're all supposed to watch what we eat, and not just watch ourselves eat - but hey, most of us are guilty of these crimes against ourselves - it's why the corner burger stop thrives while the vegetarian grocers go out of business. This is also why 7-11 stores sell big bite hot dogs, and bigger bites, and four kinds of "tacquito" rolls, and possibly the reason behind the growth and distortion of portion sizes at all the major food joints out there.
Most kiddies don't realize this, but when I was growing up, the small drink was really small, and yesterdays large is now today's medium. I could rant on this crap for hours, but I digress.
Bread and butter are two of the staples in the vast popular food basket of the American diet. Other staples include soda (part of the sugar group), french fries, apple pie, and the stuffing found in Twinkies.
For those of my few readers who really do enjoy food as I do, you'll realize that I've touched on a few culinary hot spots. When Coka-Cola changed the recipe for Coke and called it New Coke, well, they got slapped for it - and slapped hard. When MacDonald's announced they were changing their fats into healthy fats, we all feared that their french fries would change - and they did, but fortunately, they managed to control the change and the result is a slightly healthier, but still indulgent french fry. Burger King didn't fair as well - they messed with their recipe, and their french fries suck. Twinkies have changed too - I used to like putting mine in the fridge to stiffen up the filling - but now the filling has gone "healthy" and now it's just... well, yuck.
MacDonalds even changed their apple pie, but folks who really liked their old style fried one found that Kentucky Fried Chicken still makes them the right way - deep fried sweet apple perfection. The local KFC near me closed last year, and now it seems the "combo" chains have taken over - I may never again know if the the KFC/TacoBell/PizzaHut place sells the apple pies that I miss, but mostly because it's incomprehensible to me that someplace could make all those foods properly in the space of a single MacDonalds.
But now we come down to the last bastions of gastronomic pleasure - bread and butter. Bagels. With butter! Well, the camels back is now broken. I went to Einstein Brothers Bagels recently and I got my usual - an everything bagel with butter. I then quickly scuttled off to work, got my coffee and sat down to get started on another long day, secure in that I can skip lunch now that I have my forbidden pleasure to carry me through the day.
I managed to down my coffee, start on the second cup and at this point I'd opened 2 tickets, been through a morning conference call and debugged some firewall problems, and I was ready to enjoy my bagel. And boy, was I disappointed! Some idiot at the Einstein's Bagel shop had put some butter substitute on my bagel! It wasn't margarine either - it was something else, something akin to smart balance, but with the flavor removed. This was something even my wife wouldn't eat, and trust me, she prefers the "lite" stuff - even cooks with it too, which at times can be somewhat nasty.
Now, let me take you on a side trip here regarding butter substitutes. Lets start with this - I need to use them because I'm getting old and there's multiple good reasons I shouldn't eat butter, and I have, for the most part, removed it from my mainstream diet. Smart Balance, their 50/50, and some other substitutes have found their place in my home, and I tolerate them. Smart Balance lacks flavor however, and the best flavored substitute I have *ever* experienced is something called Canoleo (I found it at the local Sunflower Grocery here in Colorado) and that stuff is about the only thing I've ever used that can truly substitute for butter in both taste and cook-ability - but it's not nearly as healthy as Smart Balance, so it's been relegated to the "I buy it" category and the wife complains when I do because it's so bad compared to Smart Balance. It is still healthier than butter.
But back to my rage. What REALLY burns me is when someone decides that changing butter into something else is justified. Today I returned to the same Einsteins, mostly because a long phone call on the drive into work left me fewer options than normal, and I asked for my usual -and then I asked the gal at the counter for a bagel with butter - and please use real butter this time. What I got was "I'm sorry sir, but that's all we have." Meh.
I decided that a plain bagel was better, so I went that path - and was fortunate enough to see the assistant manager on the way out, and I let him know that they're going to loose business if they don't put butter back on the menu. I seriously doubt this guy's going to say a thing though - I think people in those jobs have learned not to say anything back to management because the old adage "don't kill the messenger" is lost in modern society - and stores like Starbucks and Einsteins probably don't care enough about people to listen to them, but do remember what is said at review time, and then probably dock their pay based on how much compassion they show to customers and to the company.
So now I'm stuck in a dilemma - I've got only a few bagel shops left in Denver that actually use real butter and sell good bagels, and only one near the path to work. I suppose I'll survive, probably even get thinner, but I think now there's a lesson that I hope corporate America can take from this: Don't mess with bread and butter. Einsteins, saying it's butter, calling it butter, referring to it as butter - and then serving simulated butter is just wrong. I hope others read this and consider better mobile dining options on their way to work. I hope our war veterans return and march in outrage to what you've done to the foods they missed while fighting our wars.
You don't see burger joints replacing the meat in their burgers with tofu, you don't see pizza restaurants using turkey pepperoni in place of real pepperoni (and why I don't know - both are great) or converting to part-skim mozzarella, why on God's name would you take it upon yourselves to stop serving butter, while still calling it butter!
I ask the SEC to audit the person at Einsteins who did this and see if they purchased stock in the simulated butter company that supplies Einsteins before they decided to stop using butter. I ask the National Butter Council to arrange a cow-protest at all Einsteins locations on the next Milk Day. I ask that you Americans, stop shopping at Einsteins - there are better bagel shops out there - now find them!
These days we're all supposed to watch what we eat, and not just watch ourselves eat - but hey, most of us are guilty of these crimes against ourselves - it's why the corner burger stop thrives while the vegetarian grocers go out of business. This is also why 7-11 stores sell big bite hot dogs, and bigger bites, and four kinds of "tacquito" rolls, and possibly the reason behind the growth and distortion of portion sizes at all the major food joints out there.
Most kiddies don't realize this, but when I was growing up, the small drink was really small, and yesterdays large is now today's medium. I could rant on this crap for hours, but I digress.
Bread and butter are two of the staples in the vast popular food basket of the American diet. Other staples include soda (part of the sugar group), french fries, apple pie, and the stuffing found in Twinkies.
For those of my few readers who really do enjoy food as I do, you'll realize that I've touched on a few culinary hot spots. When Coka-Cola changed the recipe for Coke and called it New Coke, well, they got slapped for it - and slapped hard. When MacDonald's announced they were changing their fats into healthy fats, we all feared that their french fries would change - and they did, but fortunately, they managed to control the change and the result is a slightly healthier, but still indulgent french fry. Burger King didn't fair as well - they messed with their recipe, and their french fries suck. Twinkies have changed too - I used to like putting mine in the fridge to stiffen up the filling - but now the filling has gone "healthy" and now it's just... well, yuck.
MacDonalds even changed their apple pie, but folks who really liked their old style fried one found that Kentucky Fried Chicken still makes them the right way - deep fried sweet apple perfection. The local KFC near me closed last year, and now it seems the "combo" chains have taken over - I may never again know if the the KFC/TacoBell/PizzaHut place sells the apple pies that I miss, but mostly because it's incomprehensible to me that someplace could make all those foods properly in the space of a single MacDonalds.
But now we come down to the last bastions of gastronomic pleasure - bread and butter. Bagels. With butter! Well, the camels back is now broken. I went to Einstein Brothers Bagels recently and I got my usual - an everything bagel with butter. I then quickly scuttled off to work, got my coffee and sat down to get started on another long day, secure in that I can skip lunch now that I have my forbidden pleasure to carry me through the day.
I managed to down my coffee, start on the second cup and at this point I'd opened 2 tickets, been through a morning conference call and debugged some firewall problems, and I was ready to enjoy my bagel. And boy, was I disappointed! Some idiot at the Einstein's Bagel shop had put some butter substitute on my bagel! It wasn't margarine either - it was something else, something akin to smart balance, but with the flavor removed. This was something even my wife wouldn't eat, and trust me, she prefers the "lite" stuff - even cooks with it too, which at times can be somewhat nasty.
Now, let me take you on a side trip here regarding butter substitutes. Lets start with this - I need to use them because I'm getting old and there's multiple good reasons I shouldn't eat butter, and I have, for the most part, removed it from my mainstream diet. Smart Balance, their 50/50, and some other substitutes have found their place in my home, and I tolerate them. Smart Balance lacks flavor however, and the best flavored substitute I have *ever* experienced is something called Canoleo (I found it at the local Sunflower Grocery here in Colorado) and that stuff is about the only thing I've ever used that can truly substitute for butter in both taste and cook-ability - but it's not nearly as healthy as Smart Balance, so it's been relegated to the "I buy it" category and the wife complains when I do because it's so bad compared to Smart Balance. It is still healthier than butter.
But back to my rage. What REALLY burns me is when someone decides that changing butter into something else is justified. Today I returned to the same Einsteins, mostly because a long phone call on the drive into work left me fewer options than normal, and I asked for my usual -and then I asked the gal at the counter for a bagel with butter - and please use real butter this time. What I got was "I'm sorry sir, but that's all we have." Meh.
I decided that a plain bagel was better, so I went that path - and was fortunate enough to see the assistant manager on the way out, and I let him know that they're going to loose business if they don't put butter back on the menu. I seriously doubt this guy's going to say a thing though - I think people in those jobs have learned not to say anything back to management because the old adage "don't kill the messenger" is lost in modern society - and stores like Starbucks and Einsteins probably don't care enough about people to listen to them, but do remember what is said at review time, and then probably dock their pay based on how much compassion they show to customers and to the company.
So now I'm stuck in a dilemma - I've got only a few bagel shops left in Denver that actually use real butter and sell good bagels, and only one near the path to work. I suppose I'll survive, probably even get thinner, but I think now there's a lesson that I hope corporate America can take from this: Don't mess with bread and butter. Einsteins, saying it's butter, calling it butter, referring to it as butter - and then serving simulated butter is just wrong. I hope others read this and consider better mobile dining options on their way to work. I hope our war veterans return and march in outrage to what you've done to the foods they missed while fighting our wars.
You don't see burger joints replacing the meat in their burgers with tofu, you don't see pizza restaurants using turkey pepperoni in place of real pepperoni (and why I don't know - both are great) or converting to part-skim mozzarella, why on God's name would you take it upon yourselves to stop serving butter, while still calling it butter!
I ask the SEC to audit the person at Einsteins who did this and see if they purchased stock in the simulated butter company that supplies Einsteins before they decided to stop using butter. I ask the National Butter Council to arrange a cow-protest at all Einsteins locations on the next Milk Day. I ask that you Americans, stop shopping at Einsteins - there are better bagel shops out there - now find them!
Comments