#93 - lunchability.

during the work week, as often as i can, i restore my sanity by punching a random, lucky co-worker in the face in my mind (jk! i love you all!) and leaving my office, perched high on the 24th floor (penthouse, bitches!) of the live nation building in times square for a lunchtime break. usually i walk around manhattan aimlessly for twenty minutes or so, for the ridiculous time sq sights, extreme tourist dodging, podcast listening & mile of walking exercise i get out of it. multi-tasking off the clock!

it's an opportunity to clear my head & step away from work & also an opportunity to secure foodstuffs. other than the mcdonalds immediately downstairs, my main lunch spots are the BK across from port authority, a mediterranean joint over on 44th & 10th and the food emporium. i've only hit up a few places other than that. on special days, i give my love to the wendys eight blocks away, down on 34th street.

it's also an opportunity to scout for snacks amongst all the times sq stores, although i haven't even done much of that, as it would mean having to navigate my way through the more heavily-tourist trafficked areas of times sq & i'm trying to restore my sanity, not rake it across the coals. as such, my current main snack procurement destination is the slurpeelicious 7-11 across from port authority, followed by the duane reade on the corner of 8th & 42nd.  i know...yawn.

there's also an auntie annes across the street from duane reade, but i haven't snacked there yet. i probably should try it out, since i'm an official member of the auntie annes pretzel club. i get a monthly newsletter delivered directly to my email inbox every month, with a coupon included. this month, it's for a "free 21-ounce soda or lemonade with the purchase of a new pepperoni pretzel." it's a pretzel with pepperonis affixed to the front of it!  i'm sold. auntie anne, i'll see you next week.

#93 - lunchability.
snack: doritos late night tacos at midnight
drink: sweet leaf sweet tea



without fail, i always end up ravenously hungry by the end of the work day. this past wednesday, i planned ahead & on my walk, stopped by the 7-11 and picked up a snack & drink for when the 5-5:30pm hunger came a callin'. for my snack, i broke all the rules by picking up a bag of doritos late night tacos at midnight IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON. living life on the edge is the only way to go, i tells ya.

i ended up breaking into the bag about an hour after lunch, more out of curiosity than anything. i've been saying this a lot recently, so maybe it's my new catch phrase, but HOLY CRAP. these things taste like the beef tacos of my "dad's cooking tonight" childhood experiences. dad also made good smelts. but the folks at doritos have taken whatever seasoning you use for tacos & fused it with what they learned from the beefy taste of the doritos X-13 chip (photo from my kitchen wall), an ambiguously-named chip labeled with the clue "all-american classic," that tastes like a friggin' big mac. the flavor sort of weirded me out/overwhelmed me & i couldn't eat a ton all at once...so i brought a half bag home with me at the end of the day.

btw...congratulations, doritos. you've created the most bandwidth-sucking, least user-friendly website ever. what is this secret property? is that a friggin' helicopter pad? some sort of xbox 360 fortress? a giant tv that has crashed to the ground & was just left there because well, it's a giant tv? what the f is "snack strong productions?"

ok. after discovering that holding your mouse over stuff on the secret property makes cool things happen, i decided to check out the "flavor lab." i chose it mainly based on the fact that it appears to be many sublevels below the earth, which rules, and partially because it makes the helicopter take off for lands unknown when you hold the mouse over the lair. whoa! they have segways & floating bags of chips down in the flavor lab! actually, it's not as cool as it sounds. you can see what flavors they have down here if you care.

my beverage for the afternoon was a bottle of sweet leaf sweet tea. seriously, this stuff is not good. i've tried two sweet leaf beverages now & both have had an f'd up flavor. like with the taco doritos, i ended up bringing half home with me to finish later that night.  eventually, i finished the whole bottle despite its weird ass taste, but at my own peril.  the odd taste can't be entirely because it's made with cane sugar & black tea, can it? how can i describe it?...it goes well with a chaser.

i feel bad because sweet leaf is from good ol' austin, tx and has that rosy-cheeked granny mascot on the label, but the taste is just too abnormally abnormal to ignore.  since i love baseball & our legal system (both proponents of a three-strike rule), i'm willing to give sweet leaf one more chance...but if granny fails me again, i'm putting her & her slightly-creepy cartoon grin out to pasture.