The McRib : A Love Story

In all my years of fast food eating, I have rarely if ever seen the phenomena and fascination that surrounds the McRib. Just what is it about this simple little sandwich that can bring tears of joy to some people, yet to others….. just plain tears? For some this sandwich is AMBROSIA. For others, it’s more DECOMPOSURE. Wherever you stand on this topic of this sandwich, I guarantee your position is an impassioned one.

As most of you know, I enjoy fast food sometimes. Heck, as most of you know I enjoy ANY kind of food most times, so of course I had to try this sandwich to see what all of the hoopla was about. The following is my story, my firsthand account, of my experiences with the sandwich that seduces you for a short time each year to visit the home of Ronald McDonald, Mayor McCheese and Birdie, the Early Bird….. the McRib. 

“Of all the Mickey D’s, in all the towns, in all the world…..you walked into mine.”

(Well actually it was in ALL the Mickey D’s across the United States….but just go with me on this.)  Those were my thoughts as I walked up to the counter, placing my very first order for the legendary McRib sandwich with the girl behind the counter as she was adjusting her the hairnet. I took my tray of food and scoped out the tables, hoping to find just the RIGHT one for me to experience…..my first. I found a lovely booth by the window with a view of the people passing by outside. (Oh how voyeuristic of me!) As I sat down, I took off my coat to make myself comfortable. I didn’t want ANYTHING to spoil this moment. I carefully opened the McRib box. It’s scent to me was nothing short of  intoxicating and although I know I should have taken that first special bite slowly to savor the moment…I didn’t. I couldn’t. The anticipation to at last taste and experience this sandwich was just TOO much for me, so I just dived in and went for it.  Ohhhhhhh yes! The sandwich was everything I had heard and imagined it would be like. The flavor of the sweet yet sassy BBQ sauce mixing with the onions and pickles and the smoke flavored pork patty was delectable. It was a marriage of flavors that fairy tales could have been written about. In that moment of magical consumption, I suddenly knew the wonder of this sandwich that I always heard so much about. I was under it’s spell. I believe I even wiped a tear from my eye as I chewed….smearing barbeque sauce across my face as I did, but it was worth it. My experience with this singular McRib sandwich was so rich, so tantalizing, so amazing that my hunger …no, I should say my new found PASSION…… for this saucy little pieced together patty of pork could not be satisfied with just one. So I did what any other red blooded American woman would do who had just experienced a pleasure that had, until this point, went unknown to her. I had to go back for more……..two days later. (Hey, I gotta watch my figure ya know!)

Two days later, I returned to Mickey D’s, the place where I had found what now made all my past fast food experiences pale in comparison. I sat down in the same booth with my luscious little tidbit before me again. I looked at it wantingly, admiring it’s beauty and tantalizing appearance for just a moment before deciding when the time was right to begin devouring it. Once I could not take it anymore, I went for it! I took a great big bite yet AGAIN just waiting for that thrill that I had felt before to hit my tongue and tastebuds. I chewed and waited…..and waited…and waited some more. “Where did it go?”, I asked myself sadly. “Surely my tastebuds just needed to warm up before being exposed to such delight again. The shock must have just been too much for them, right? “ This is what I told myself as I took another bite. But with that one, too, suddenly…..my thrill was gone. “What happened???? Why were my tastebuds not jumping for joy and absolute pleasure like it had before????”  Without haste I opened the sandwich and made a discovery. There wasn’t as many onions on it as there was before. There also wasn’t as much sauce on this sandwich as there had been on my first one, either, and without the sauce, the true flavor and texture of that pork patty came through. “How could this be???? With this McRib book of love, could the cover made of BBQ sauce truly be better and more attractive than the pork pages found inside???? It COULDN’T be!!! “

Through a shaken heart and brain, I somehow managed to continue to eat, hoping I would find some kind of answer. As I ate, I noticed that the meat itself did not have much flavor on it’s own. I also noticed it’s texture was actually quite rubbery. Was this my beloved McRib’s true nature that I was slowly discovering and had been kept OH SO WELL HIDDEN to me before under all of that sumptuous BBQ sauce? Was that sauce merely a distraction??? Oh say it wasn’t so! Take my Big Mac, take my McNuggets but DON’T TAKE MY McRIB!!!  But alas, from start to finish, this sandwich was nothing like my first. It was bland and blah. Our love was gone. It was over. We were through! What once was so enjoyable and brought me much so much happiness and satisfaction, in one brief moment, came to end because one McDonald’s employee didn’t give that pork patty an extra dip in the BBQ sauce and went light on the onions (I wonder how they can live with themselves and how they sleep at night). I left the restaurant dejected and alone. I never went back…..until the McNuggets went on sale a few weeks later. You can ALWAYS depend on the McNuggets!

So there is my story of discovery, sweet and spicy love, and then the heartbreak of it all! Yes, life is like a McRib sandwich, isn’t it? The McRib……the stuff of legends.

(NOTE: Even though my last experience with the McRib was so disappointing and I had no intentions of every having another again, after writing this blog, I am considering changing my mind trying it again this week. What the HECK is with those sandwiches???? Do they hypnotize people or something????)

All rights reserved.  Do not

use without permission.

Pictures courtesy of Google Images.

Cranberries.....schramberries!

Throughout the course of a year, there are certain things we can expect and depend on, such as the sun rising and setting each day, having to beg for extra ketchup and napkins when you go to McDonald’s because they somehow believe that only one of each will suffice, and seasonal holidays. To some, these yearly traditions bring great joy and fond memories. But to others, they bring nothing but dread and sadness. I think it’s safe to say that each of us have probably experienced at least some of each kind, but hopefully more good ones than bad.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays. Mine were never spent with tons of family and instead just my immediate family of my parents, aunt and uncle, but I remember them fondly. All of that changed, however, once my aunt and uncle passed away. To us, Thanksgiving basically died along with them. But the traditions were revived in a new way a few years later when I invited my then soon to be boyfriend (now my ex) to spend Thanksgiving with us. But this new found renewal for this holiday was short lived when the Thanksgivings with him that followed (which we also considered to be our anniversary) were wrecked by us fighting over how he couldn’t sacrifice drinking to the point of getting drunk for one day…our anniversary…just to make me happy.

Since then, I have come to accept the fact that my days of an “ideal” Thanksgiving are now over. Instead, I have learned to enjoy and embrace what have become my “new” traditions for Thanksgiving. Now the day is usually spent doing nothing but relaxing and not doing much of anything. At the age of 40, I still watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and intend to do so until it either ends…or I do. Whatever comes first! For me, the magic of the parade is my small way of re-connecting to those Thanksgivings of the past that I fondly remember. We visit with my parents for awhile and then come evening, my boyfriend makes the 10 lb turkey I get for $5 at our local DEALS store, along with a box of Stove Top Turkey Stuffing, some Heinz Turkey gravy, a can of Libby’s creamed corn, some instant mashed potatoes and of course….a can of Ocean Spray Jelled cranberry sauce, left in the shape of the can. Yup…THAT is Thanksgiving for me!

Is it fancy? Heck no! Some people might be disgusted at even the thought of eating that on a regular week night for dinner, let alone for Thanksgiving. But you know what? I no longer stress myself making and preparing a huge meal and better yet, we actually ENJOY the day and a nice quiet Thanksgiving holiday, without all of the bells and whistles. Granted, it’s not the Thanksgiving for everyone…but it works for us and that is all that matters to me.

My point in sharing my experiences with everyone is simply this.

1)      Life changes and so do the traditions that we hold dearly. There is nothing we can do about this but hold those sweet memories of the past dear to our hearts, while we look forward and create and embrace new traditions to carry with us into the future.

2)       Traditions do not need to be traditional. What makes you happy might not make everyone happy….but who cares!  If you spend your life trying to make everyone happy, you will discover it’s impossible to do and one day look back and realize just how much time you wasted trying to. And if you wind up spending your day in the most untraditional way of perhaps not doing anything special at all….just remember…

3)      It’s only one day in the year. If you think your otherwise “perfect meal” is totally ruined because you spilled the green bean salad on the floor, you’re wrong. Instead, you have just made a humorous family memory that will last longer then the memory of how juicy your turkey breast ever would have.

4)     If you are spending it alone or without everyone you would like to spend it with, just remember that what happens the other 364 days of the year is by far more important than what happens this one single day. It’s just a DAY and you will get the chance at a new one tomorrow.

Remember, Thanksgiving, or any holiday, is like life….it can be whatever you choose to make of it. So choose to make it the best one for YOU, and you’ll never regret it!

Roses Are Red

In each of our lives, we have turning points. Those moments when something happens, or maybe doesn’t happen, where the direction and view we have of our lives shifts and finds a new focus, for better or for worse. One of those moments happened for me on a Valentine’s Day about 10 years ago when I received a dozen long stemmed red roses…that were not meant for me.

When you are single and have no significant other in your life, Valentine’s Day is one of the WORST holidays around. It seems to be a day whose sole purpose to exist is to remind those who have no one of their own to love just how much they are missing out on. You see ads and commercials and movies all around you with happy couples, holding hands and just being oh so much in love with each other. That’s all great and warm and fuzzy when you have someone to share those special moments with, but when you don’t…..it sucks! I spent many a lonely Valentine’s Day just that way and what just made it all that much worse for me was that I was a hopeless romantic. I bought into all that romantic stuff lock, stock and barrel. I ate it up as if it were chocolate covered cherries dipped in ice cream and covered in sprinkles and cream. My already vivid and overactive imagination would often wonder if there was someone else out there somewhere who felt as I did and that somehow, someway, we would find each other and live happily ever after. Yep…..I think I watched Sleepless in Seattle just one time too many.  

This particular Valentine’s Day that I am talking about right now started out just like every other one for me…..boyfriendless. My parents would always get me a card and a box of candy for Valentine’s Day and I always appreciated it greatly, but that was about all I could ever expect to receive for the day. But on this Valentine’s Day, something unexpected happened. About 3 in the afternoon our doorbell rang. When I answered the door, it was a delivery boy holding a large box filled with a dozen long stemmed red roses! For one brief second…just one brief moment…I allowed myself to indulge in the fantasy that maybe….just MAYBE…somehow these roses were meant for me. Perhaps somehow my one true love from some far off kingdom had found me, after looking for me for so many years, and discovered that perhaps he should have thought to first look for me in Brooklyn as opposed to Camelot or Sherwood Forest as he MUST have been doing all of the years up until then (hey, even Prince Charming can goof sometimes). But once my moment of fantastical bliss was complete, reality took over and I knew those roses were not intended for me. They were for my next door neighbor who wasn’t home at the time. The delivery boy asked me if I would mind accepting them for her. When I brought them inside, I just looked at them, admiring their beauty. I held the box in my arms as if I was a newly crowned Miss America. I closed my eyes and breathed in their sweet perfume. For those few moments, I had experienced what so many others would get to experience on their Valentine’s Day. I had received a dozen red roses on Valentine’s Day. But I didn’t indulge in my fantasy for too long and allowed reality to enter my mind and swiftly clear away the traces of the bliss that remained. I closed the box, put them down, and started to cry. That single moment felt like a massive culmination of all of the sadness, loneliness and hopelessness that I had felt every year on this day. That had to rate as one of the lowest points of my life. It was that moment that made me realize that I needed to do SOMETHING to change things for myself…..which took some time and hard work for me to do.

A year or so later, I met the man who would become my boyfriend for close to five years (we broke up 4 years ago). The first time we met, he brought me a bouquet of flowers…which included a single red rose. It was the first rose that was ever given to me…..and I still have it. I would have loved to kept it suspended in a bell jar forever like in the Disney movie “Beauty and the Beast” but instead I dried it and have it safely tucked away in a small Rubbermaid container (not quite the bell jar, but it was the best I could do).  Money was tight for us in the beginning but one year on Christmas Eve after he had gotten a good paying job, he brought me home a dozen long stemmed red roses…..and this time they were really for ME and were mine to keep. I am fortunate to have received roses from him after that as well as from my boyfriend now, too, and I save the petals from all of them in a pretty glass jar. I waited a very VERY long time to receive roses from someone special….so I don’t take ANY of them for granted.

With that, I would like to simply say this…..

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

With some hope and patience,

Some wishes REALLY CAN come true!

A Letter to Myself at Sixteen

Dear Me at 16,

I’m glad I have this chance to write this for you because there is so much I want to tell you about your future. I remember how much you wondered about your future when you were a teenager. I remember how lonely and hopeless you felt because you thought things would never change for you. I remember how much you hated what you saw in the mirror everyday. I remember how although you always held on to the hope that one day things would be different for yourself, you also resided yourself to the fact that things would always be as they were for you then and you just tried your best to accept it. Well I have something to tell you……you were wrong.

I know right now at 16 your fondest wish is to be beautiful and to have it that for once….just ONCE….it would be YOU to turn the guys heads and not just the girls around you. I know you feel like you’re nothing right now, like your invisible to the world, but guess what….you’re really not. You make yourself invisible because you don’t want the world to see you as you see yourself. But some people care and will care more than you realize, if you just give them the chance to get close to you. Not everyone around you is going to hurt you. Okay, some will, I wont lie to you about that. But for every thoughtless jerk in the world, there is someone who has a warm, kind and compassionate heart who will sincerely care about you. Be brave and put yourself out there once in awhile. Yes, you will get hurt sometimes doing this, but what you get in return from the good people will make it all worth it. But in those times when you do get hurt by life and from some of the people in it, try to remember that all of those hurts and all of that pain in the end will help you to become the person you are meant to be. You will remember those times and how you felt and it will help you to empathize with others who are experiencing pain and make you want to try and help them in any way that you can ….just as you wished someone would have done for you. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and you WILL be stronger from it all and have a more loving heart because of it, too.  Surprisingly, it will all be worth it in the end.

And believe it or not yes…one day…you will look into the mirror and like what you see. What, you don’t believe me? Now why would I lie to you? I know it’s hard but you just gotta trust me on this one. One day, as if your fairy godmother waved her magic wand over you, you will bloom. Some rosebuds need more time than others, more love and care, to be brave enough to allow the beauty that they hold deep inside of their petals to be seen by the whole world., but just be patient with yourself. One day you will realize that it hurts more to remain hidden inside of your rosebud than it will be to risk it all and allow yourself to bloom. And once you do….words wont be able to describe how you feel! You will take every compliment you receive and embrace it as if it was one of the greatest treasures on Earth because you and I both know to you….it is. Yes, sometimes what seems to be impossible actually is possible. So have faith, don’t ever give up hope and whatever you do, don’t listen to or pay any mind to the naysayers of this world who put you down and who don’t appreciate all the love and gifts you have to offer. In the end they don’t matter, so don’t give them the power to make you feel bad about yourself in anyway.

Now after knowing what your future has in store for you, I want you to remember something very important. For as much as you want to be pretty…in the end….it’s NOT what is important. As you wait for your time in the sun, you need to continue to work on what is TRULY important. Keep working hard in school and studying because developing your mind and intelligence is important and so is developing your personality. You see, everyone’s looks fade over time and in the end if that is all you depended on and all you had to offer the world, you will be sadly left. What beauty lies on the inside is TRULY what’s most important. Also, always keep your heart and mind open. Offer kindness to people for no other reason than because it’s the right thing to do and it’s what you would want others to do for you. Always put out into this world what you would hope to get back from it and you will never go wrong. In the end…..just be the kind of person you would want to know and be around yourself.

Beyond this, you don’t need to know right now. A peek into the future is fine but to stare at it is impolite. Be happy with what I have told you and just remember to hang in there….it all does get better.

Love,

Me at 38…..yeah, I can’t believe it either!  {{SIGH}}

As Winter Approaches

The last of the leaves has fallen off the trees and the air gets a bit crisper all the time....at least lately...... after a rather warm Autumn for us here in NY. But this particular morning as I looked out my bedroom window, the sky was particularly blue and was enhanced by the clouds, although the sun made it's presence known and announced that it wasn't going to let the clouds have their fun all day. 

Autumn at it's best

This is one of my first new photos taken with my new camera. This leaf was high up in the tree top but my zoom brought it THAT close to me. To say I was thrilled with the shot is an understatement :) 

The Road Not Taken

Recently, my boyfriend and I visited upstate NY for a day trip. We left about 8AM in the morning and didn’t hit the road for the return trip home until around 10:30 PM that night.  Around midnight, we were just approaching the tri-boro bridge, which would have meant we were only about another 30-45 minutes away from home. The drive up and back until that point was thankfully drama free but right then, just as we started to approach the bridge, traffic started backing up BADLY and suddenly a police car, fire truck and an ambulance cut through the barrage of cars that were piling up quickly and made their way towards what was causing the back up ahead. We knew it had to be a pretty bad accident. Of course, we felt bad for whoever was involved in the accident but we also felt bad for us, because the police were redirecting everyone in that lane…the lane we needed to be in to get home… to the far off right lane instead, causing us to take an unexpected turn and causing us to get totally lost.

With no access to the internet (I’m lucky I have a cell phone these days, never mind internet service on it) no map (when you only take the subway into Manhattan you usually don’t keep a road map to drive there very handy) and no one that I would want to bother at midnight on a Saturday night just so I could ask some directions…we were in some serious trouble. With no where for us to pull off to the side of the road and try figure things out, we just had to keep driving, and get further and further lost. I started to get really scared and then started to pray. Thankfully it wasn’t too much longer before I recognized a familiar exit we were starting to approach… the Battery Tunnel….but before we reached it, we came across some policemen who had pulled someone over (I think it was a drunk driver) and asked them for directions. With their help and directions, we finally arrived home safely…after 2:00 in the morning! We were tired, stressed and weary, but thankfully we were now HOME!

I like to believe that life throws lessons at us when it feels we need to learn something and I felt that this was, indeed, one of those moments. Like I always say, if I have to go through something crappy, I would like to at least try and take SOMETHING positive from the experience. I also like to learn quickly from the exceptionally crappy experiences so I don’t have to re-learn from them again at some point in the future. So with that said, here is what I learned from taking the road that should NOT have been taken.

When life throws us a curve, you can do several things with it.

1. Panic

2. Go “Woe is me”, have yourself a great big ol’ pity party, and just wallow in your “Boo-hoo’s” and “Why me’s.”

3. Just stay calm, go with the flow, ride the wave and see where you wind up.

The experience also showed me that just ONE wrong decision, choosing left instead of right, can throw you off course and off the path that you are meant to be on in the blink of an eye. If this happens, you have two choices. Realize what happened quickly and make every effort to recover from your error, make things right, and get back on the right path again. Or you can choose to do nothing, stay on the path you know is wrong, and wind up lost and unaware of where you are going for a very long time, taking you further and further away from where you belong.

Sometimes the road that is not taken can be just as important as the road that is. Sometimes the lessons of “what could have been” can stay with us and effect us even more than the results of “what actually was” can.  Remember, the next time you come upon a fork in the road of life, choose wisely, because you just might not realize what you could be losing by choosing the wrong path until it’s too late, and some paths you just can’t simply turn around on and return to what you left behind so easily.

The road not taken….not just a direction to travel in, but also a way of looking at life itself.

Copyright October 5, 2011

All rights reserved.  Do not

use without permission.

Pictures courtesy of Google Images.