Yum

The cheetos and donuts and fast food and other shallow vices must be corraled. Like terrible, wild animals that feed on slow children, these starving, savage beasts of junk food eat at my insides and they must be caught and shipped to somewhere very far from the temptations of my mouth. .

Love Me A Good Bender

Lulls in mood swings sometimes explode into great lapses of judgment. They also provide the clarity needed to laugh about all the little stuff that don’t mean nothin’ anyhow.

Milk chocolate bars, sweet potato chips, hours of football and over-produced Hollywood movies cranked as loud as the walls can handle, this sweet and weary body just spent three days in a blur of hiding out and saving dividends. Dodging streetwise savages and perfumed women of inebriation by holing up and battening down. Or more accurately, battening up while glazing my donut eyes over 72 hours of big screen television. Even if the bag of M&M’s is pushed over to the far corner of the table, it will inevitably be pilfered by my deviant fingers. Pastries, I love you. Dirty baked goods infiltrate my prurient inclinations. Peanut butter, caramel, nougat, I’m bound by evil while devouring my vile secrets behind drawn blinds, feeding my gnawing face-hole with decadent poisons until I weep with glee and shame. Crammed every piece of junk food not bolted down deep into my gullet until my stomach sat rotting and bloated with sugar, butter, sweet cream and animal fat. Wallowing in horrible splendor, I realized that living for a moment without visible restraint or apparent self-respect sometimes affords unexpected and delicious rewards.

3 days to wander off the radar and throw discipline over the ledge is a beautiful way to burn a weekend.

Chocoholics Anonymous

Chocolata. Like dope or junk you pound into your veins or the pills you swallow with breakfast, like what you smoke and exhale or put into a glass with ice, chocolate is the savior of doldrums, that momentary friend that, with your eyes closed, can take you to dream states and foreign lands. While your mouth savors every delicate morsel of decadence, chocolate delivers you far from everything presently tangible. A place where for a few seconds nothing else matters except for the happy chemicals in your brain.

Throw in some peanut butter or ice cream and it’s all over.

Watch That Waistline

Coming to Vietnam means eating some of the healthiest foods in the world, the freshest of produce, meats and seafood whose quality and taste is arguably some of the best food anywhere.

Vietnam also has quite a bit of French influence so much of the food has the best of Europe and Asia on one plate.

I came here thinking that I would eat healthy and be fit and trim during my stay. Little did I know that Vietnam has a large assortment of pastries and baked goods which are irresistable and readily available on many a street corner which makes a guy like me a slave for his sweet teeth.

After 10 months of eating my way through 10 cities in Vietnam I am now officially walking around looking like I’ve got a couple of bear cubs under my shirt. Like I’m Mr. Peanut after eating a small child, like I’m waddling through Asia in my final trimester.

I’ve now put myself on a strict diet that includes only the healthy foods of Vietnam and allows for only one chocolate croissant a week. Dammit.

There Is A Hair On My Bug

Ever find a fingernail in a hot dog? In between the meat the bun, just sitting there like a little sliced onion?

What about a band-aid? Ever see one of those poking out from underneath a pile of French fries?

Cigarette butt in a salad?

Hair is a pretty big no-no when it comes to “Objects Being Found On My Plate Of Food At A Restaurant.” I think I’d rather find an old Pall Mall than someone’s hair, organic human or animal products (that aren’t seared or marinated) are monumentally nauseating.

Insects, on the other hand, need their own big paragraph. I once found an earwig in my Chinese food in Portland, Oregon but as far as bugs being in my food, I can understand how it happens. Not saying that it’s right, just understandable. Bugs are everywhere and you could even argue that your salad would be considered ultimately fresh if it had a few bugs in it. Additionally, Americans are nearly the only people on earth who don’t eat bugs as a delicacy or seasoning or appetizer, it’s a global consensus that bugs ain’t so bad. So for every time someone finds a caterpillar or worm in their food, there is someone fishing out a condom or short curly hair out of their spaghetti or calamari wishing they would have just stayed home that night.

Eating out is a luxury and privilege that many don’t have, but with the ability to pay someone to make your food comes the ignorance of origin. That’s the gamble with opulence, just because you’re spending money doesn’t mean you know what’s going on. Just ask these brilliant individuals.

All I know is that I won’t be eating at the hardware store hot dog stand anytime soon.

I Love The Street Food Dude