Reality Bagels....

Happy Monday....we seem to be on edge lately....

Well , somehow the Nation survived the recent crisis of “who is LeBron going to play for?”, but now there is an equally distressing situation facing us. This may be of even more importance than LeBrawn, we’ll have to see. The oil disaster pales in comparison to “who will the new judges be on American Idol?”. Apparently somebody named Simon is leaving which may mark the end of our civilization as we know it. NBC is spending countless hours analyzing the importance of this event. Oh, did I mention that the show airs on NBC. Once again I must be in the cultural backwash of the country since I am unaware of the recent incidents on “Big Brother”. Continuing in seedy “reality” culture I hope those of you local enough to see the Sunday Washington Post, read the piece in the Arts section regarding the upcoming series of “Real DC Housewives”, featuring none other than the queen of Sleaze herself, Michaele Salahi. It’s an interesting piece, excoriorating the show, the network (have you ever heard of Bravo?), and her in particular. A good read with good points.”The home kitchen, that ancient, hearthy symbol of oppression and chores, is useful to Real Housewives on when, say, “Janet Jackson’s personal chef” is coming by for an exclusive cooking tutorial: how to marinate in your own sauce”.

With MFO on the road, I decided to stop at Panera on Saturday morning to get a bagel to go with my Latte. I am particularly fond of the ET version with lots of bits of stuff on it. I also get a chance to marvel at one of the triumphs of mechanical engineering, their automatic bagel slicer. Have you ever seen that thing work? Pop the bagel in the top, and in barely a second (really) it drops out the bottom sliced. How it chews through the (somewhat tough, as it should/could be) crust in that short of time amazes me. Anyhow, I walk up to the counter and say I’d like a sliced ET bagel please (It was probably 8:15 by this time) and was told: “we’re out”. Somewhat daunted I surveyed the rack and finally settled on the sesame seed variety “Sliced by not toasted”. She fed the hapless bagel into the machine of death, and then popped it in a bag, and said: “Do you want cream cheese or butter with that?”. Butter on a bagel? “Cream Cheese please”. During the scanning of the bagels I noted that the price of one was 99 cents. So she added the cheese to the bag, rang it up and said “that will be $2.45”. What? The bagel is only a dollar. Well, guess what, the “Cream cheese with that” costs you an extra $1.45!!! They would be better served to sell you cream cheese and ask if you wanted a bagel with it. I asked for it to be removed, which it was after a haughty trip to the back to get the register key. Nice try, Panera. Let the buyer be aware!. Oh, when I finally got home, the little machine succeeded in slicing only maybe a quarter of an inch off the top. Sigh. Nothing is forever.

Enough for a Monday morning, capping a weekend with (for once) livable weather and no particular culinary events (save above). Hope to get out and support restaurant week this week. Maybe I’ll have to

DFD