Utensil Troubles

While in Fayetteville, I found myself in the midst of a plastic utensil situation. I did not realize the true problems until I'd returned home and was reviewing my pictures. Purely by accident, both events involved a Taco Bell. Let me state up front that I had not planned to eat at Taco Bell twice in one weekend trip to Fayetteville, but after sitting in the McDonald's "Late Night" drive thru line for 30 minutes one night, I decided that ANYTHING would be better than that. I mean come on, for the late night drive thru they reduce their menu to like 10 items. There is no line inside. How hard can it be to serve 10 different items quickly to a single file line? If your service sucks more the later it gets, then you should probably just close up til breakfast. But anyway, early in my weekend I had made a special trip to the other side of Fayetteville to the Taco Bell/Long John Silver combined restaurant. The reason for that trip will be in my next post, which I need to warn you, will venture back into the PG-13 or perhaps R ratings. Just so you know.This is supposed to be a "Chicken Soft Taco." I remember when the chicken soft taco first came out. It was wonderful. Taco Bell knew it was wonderful. So they did what they always do. They screwed it up. The original chicken soft taco was meat, cheese, lettuce. Period. Then they decided to put "Pico Sauce" on it. Not salsa, not taco sauce, not picante sauce, but "Pico Sauce." The stuff was revolting and since It tended to be rather runny, you couldn't just remove it if they put it on your taco. I would ask for my chicken soft tacos "with no Pico sauce" and I was either told repeatedly "we don't put pico sauce on chicken tacos" or they'd put it on anyway. I stopped eating chicken soft tacos for years because of this. Note to Taco Bell: if you take a good thing and make it crappy, people will stop eating it. See also my comments on "Service" above Apparently now they've decided that "just Pico" isn't enough. Now they don't have a simply chicken soft taco. You get it with some frightening ranchlike sauce. You know me. You know of my love of all things Ranch!! With that in mind, I feel it only fair to ask: Who the heck came up with "Avocado Ranch Sauce?!?!?"Oh and just because you now call "Pico" by the name "Fiesta Salsa" doesn't make it any less disgusting. As you can see from my picture above, I had some taco-disestablishmentarianism to do. Thank goodness for that Spork! Unfortunately, I threw that Spork away, not knowing that later that weekend I would be in desperate need of a good utensil. You see the next night on my way home from the hockey game, I opted for Taco Bell since McDonald's' service was horrible the previous night. (You see how easily poor customer service can lose you customers?) I wasn't terribly hungry, so I got the "new" 5 Layer Nachos. (I am unsure how these are different from any of their prior nachos, but that's not the issue.) I also saw the fabled "Fruitista Freeze" on the menu and decided what the heck. Taco Bell wants to go up against Krystals' fantastic Freezes? Bring it on Taco boy! Once I arrived at my hotel room I unloaded my bag of goodies. It was then that I discovered a problem. I got my nachos. I got PLENTY of napkins. I did not get anything to eat my nachos with. I know, nachos are supposed to be their own utensil. In a perfect, triangular chip world they are. Taco bell, however, really like to put the "chip" in tortilla chip. As in Place full side chip on a table Drop college textbook on chip Remove College textbook Sweep chip "chips" into serving bowl Sure you get "plenty" of chips, the problem is, none of them are big enough to hold anything. on the rare occasion that you find one big enough for scooping with it's usually floppy from being buried until the other 4 layers to be useful. Simply put, you must eat Taco Bell nachos with a spoon or a fork, thus the reason Taco Bell has Sporks. Except, apparently, at the late night drive thru. (See Customer Service, above. AGAIN.) As I sat in my hotel room, hot under the collar at once again getting screwed by late night drive thru customer service, I decided to try my Fruitista Freeze to "cool down." I unwrapped my straw and just as I was about to plunge it into my beverage I noticed something.This is called a "Straw Spoon" or perhaps a Spoon Straw. (Why is a Spoon/Fork a Spork, but a Spoon/Straw isn't a "Spaw" or at least a "Stroon?") From the two previous links you can see these things are quite popular. They sell them in fancy reusable metal, standard cheap plastic, and even some cool ones that change color in hot and cold. (Why would I need a Strawspoon in something hot? Slurping Soup? Plucking marshmallows out of cocoa?) Purely by accident I'd found something hot to put my Spoon Star into. While it might be slow eating, I could make my way through some Nachos with a spoon straw. Obviously I can't slurp the nachos THROUGH the straw, it would simply serve as a really crummy spoon. I did make the decision, though, to drink my Frutista first then go after the nachos. The idea of a Mango/Strawberry frozen beverage with Beef and Nacho cheese mixed in was a bit more than I could handle at midnight. So in conclusion, here is what we have learned today: Spork: good at getting the food you didn't want off the food you did want. Stroon: workable for eating nachos, better for slushy beverages. Late night drive thru: not good at all for anything. Taco Bell: Trying hard to make bad food worse.