Enchiladas, Bad Cilantro, & The Great Depression
I made an industrial-sized amount of Chicken Cheese Enchiladas tonight. I’ve had 8 of 22 of ‘em which reduces to 4/11 which is a significant amount of elevenths. That’s what you do when you’re a divorced dad - you make industrial-sized batches of things like enchiladas and then you eat more than you ought and then you scratch yourself and mutter, “Eep, I shouldn’t have had the last five of those puppies.”
Oh Innanet, I never knew you could be so jealous:
I don’t think you can quite make it out in the picture but that cilantro is a bit sickly. I swear, it was mostly yellowed leaves and stems but it was the only package left at the store. I think the herb packing company hit the last of their cilantro crop and completed a few deliveries with selections from the “Eh, someone will buy it” bucket that they have.
My grandma Druzba would not have put up with that. She probably wouldn’t have purchased it in the first place but if she did and she brought it home to find it all wilted and yellowed, she would have wrapped it all up in Saran Wrap, brought it back to the store’s customer service desk, and got her full $2.49. She probably would not have coordinated this return visit to the market with more shopping, mind you. She would have made a special trip to go back to the store, just to return the cilantro and get her $2.49 (except she wouldn’t have ever been buying cilantro because what need of cilantro does an old Italian woman have?).
It’s the principle of the thing though. There’s not enough of the principle of the thing around anymore. Living during the Great Depression made her not put up with stuff like that. It seems that, back in the day, a grocery store wouldn’t put up with having expired produce out for fear of their reputation being marred. Not so much anymore.
Then again, Grandma sometimes returned ice cream to the store because she didn’t like the taste of it. So, it’s not always the principle of it. I mean, seriously, she would say something like, “This is shitty butter pecan,” pack it up, and return it to the store, telling them that it tasted “funny.”
