One of my favorites are plain Fig Newtons.
I love how they're not sickeningly sweet, and they're about as healthy as a cookie can be. They have that soft baked crust, real fruit filling, and that nice seed-like crunch. This may be why I don't normally feel guilty when I look down to see a complete row missing from the bag.
So while walking through Wal-Mart at 11:00pm the other night, trying my best to not make direct eye contact with all the misfits that congregate there at those hours, I stumbled upon the sun-dried fruits. They had all your normal items, like raisins, prunes, orange slices, and such. Then my eyes drifted onto something different.
Eureka! This is exactly what I want! The very source item that gives me joy, in little cake form! I read the package: "Premium Garland Figs. Sweet, sun-dried fruit." How much more tasty can a label sound? It even has some healthiness built right in, being sun dried and all. These weren't dried on some dirty conveyor belt feeding through a kiln. These were surely laying out on the sunny side of a hill. A hill with children playing off to the side, and a clean brook wandering by while exotic European women cater to the figs; flipping them, pulling stems, or gathering them into their bushel baskets. All while that's happening, 5000 miles away there's a fat dude tossing them in his Wal-Mart cart at 11:00pm, right next to the Cap'n Crunch and Bunny Bread Soft-Twist. He then goes to his house, dumps them in the fridge, then forgets about them till the next morning when he tosses them in his laptop bag to take to work as a snack.
The next morning at work, I decided to pull out these things and give them a shot. That's when I decided to do what I didn't at the store, which is look at the bottom of the package.
Good gravy! Did I just buy a package of sun-dried buttholes? And why are they all slimy looking? I thought they were sun-dried, not sun-oiled. Something tells me this is not what I had in mind. 5000 miles from here the women are starting to giggle under their breath. Ok, I figure I have to at least try one of them. If for nothing else just to better appreciate the cookies. Or something. I open the package, and take one out.
Ugh, it's all sticky! I'm now not sure if these are necessarily buttholes, or rather some kind of basted animal nut. The lid says "Product of Turkey" but I'm thinking it may be "Product of Turkeys". They do have a semi-recognizable smell though. Kind of like cramming a Fig Newton up each nostril for a day or twelve. Well, time to man up. The Turkish women are waiting with bated breath:
Ugh, why did it have to make a snap sound? I mean, it's already bad enough that unless a marching band was going to come out of it, it was going to be a downer. It's the same feeling you get when you forget to take the wrapper off of candy before you fist it in your maw. Don't deny it. A lot can happen in the time you're raising it up all the way to your mouth. Then you have that instantaneous debate with yourself on what to do next: a) toss it out and lose out on candy; b) try to fish out just the wrapper and gross out anyone looking; or c) just force your way through it, and wash it down with a cup of grit and determination. Naturally I went with "C". I hate those Turkish bitches at this point. You know, come to think of it, there's also Turkish Delight. What the hell is wrong with that country? Unless something is made from chocolate, beer, or sex, the word Delight should not be anywhere in the paragraph. Where the hell am I, Narnia?
After looking at the innards and what the little seeds look like, I'm fully expecting to have vasectomy nightmares for a few months. The rest of the figs are going in the trash.
