Falling Off the Wagon

For years now we’ve been good. We make things from scratch. We buy organic. We get our eggs from our chickens. We keep our high fructose corn syrup consumption to a minimum. Most of that was just avoiding processed foods.

Well, that was then, this is now.

We went to Schnuck’s today. There were lots of 10 for $10 deals which appeal to the grocery store hopping cheapskate my mother raised me to be. We were behaving for the most part. We got the makings for Rubens, phyllo to make chicken pies, milk for corn flakes. We really were being good.

But then, it happened.

There they were, just sitting in their boxes on the bottom shelf behind the glass in the frozen food section. We stopped. We looked at each other. We looked at the price. 10 for $5?!?! We just had to.

Oh, Patio burritos, how did I ever forsake you?

For both of us, Patio burritos are processed nostalgia. For me, they are the taste of coming home from school in the afternoon. For Paul, they’re being in college and eating cheap. For Patric, they’re totally new. We’re corrupting our child. But in a tasty way.

I can make burritos. I can actually make fresh flour tortillas, homemade refried beans, ground beef seasoned from scratch. They’re good. But they’re not the same thing as a Patio burrito. I can’t make tortillas that thin, and I can’t make the meat just disappear into beany goop where no real beans are even visible. It sounds like it should be horrible. But it’s not. It’s so very not.

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