The Worms Crawl In . . The Worms Crawl Out

The topic du jour is weird, gross, interesting and how-the-hell-did-that-get-there items that turn up in your food and/or beverages. This is what prompted the subject. On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, my husband and daughter and I went to a local eating establishment. It's a national chain whose name you would recognize, so I will not name it, you know, to protect the innocent. I ordered nachos, which are listed as an appetizer. But given the size of the plate they bring, they are way more than most people need as a meal. I started to dig in and noticed something you don't, as a rule, find in a plate of nachos. A chunk of green apple. Which wouldn't be too surprising, the restaurant makes a salad with fruit in it. No, what was interesting about the apple was that it had one of those grocery store produce stickers on it. That's odd on several levels.

When the waitress came by to ask how things were, I showed her the apple with the sticker. She looked surprised and said she was sorry. I told her it wasn't a big deal, I just thought in was amusing. Anyway, she took the thing and showed it to her manager, who comped us the plate of nachos. Which I thought was pretty decent.

But that got me to thinking about similar incidents. Like the time we were in a Mexican restaurant and my mother found a twist tie in her burrito. That was pretty icky. But when she told the waitress, the girl looked at her as if to say, "And you're telling me this . . . why?" She didn't even take it and toss it, tell anyone in the kitchen that twist ties are not a common burrito ingredient. Just walked away.

Then there was the day my mom got a can of pop out of the machine at work. (I think my mother may have some bad karma with the food gods.) She said the pop tasted kind of funny, but she didn't think much about it and finsihed the can. And set it down and heard something rattling at the bottom. Which shouldn't happen. So she up-ended it and out came . . . a bobby pin! She actually called the company and reported the incident, for which they sent her coupons for free pop. Yeah, like I'm in a hurry to buy more of THIS stuff.

The grossest thing in recent history was about a month ago, when my daughter stopped at a sandwich establishment. She brought her sub home to eat, sat down at the counter, unwrapped it and said, "Oh, gross." She then proceeded to pull a hair out of the sandwich that went through the entire six inches of it. She ate that six inches of sandwich (don't ask me how, she seemed unperturbed). Then she picked up the other six inches and said, "And here's the rest of the hair," and pulled out another six inches. Then she ate that half of the sandwich. I was kind of grossing out about how she could stomach all of this. Then my daughter, who has worked at three different jobs where food was prepared and/or served, said, "Mom, if people knew what goes on behind the scenes in restaurants, no one would ever eat out again. This is nothing." Ugh. I'm not thinking about it. At least the apple was clean. Not sure about the sticker.