Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Today's fortune: March 16, 2011

Today's fortune: Be good to yourself. Dessert three times per week is OK.

Actually, as I outlined in yesterday's post, I eat "dessert" seven times per week.

But I don't think this fortune is referring to the 100-calorie snack packs I eat at night as part of my diet. I think this is talking about warm-chocolate-cake-dripping-with-caramel-drizzle-and-covered-in-pecans-and-whipped-cream type dessert.

It's ironic, too, because this fortune came out of a dessert. Literally. From my zero hours and zero minutes of research, I've discovered that fortune cookies are the most widely eaten dessert in America. The lightly-sweetened and tiny cookies may not meet the definition of "dessert" for many people, but you have to admit - Americans eat Chinese food a lot, and a fortune cookie ends every one of those meals.

Speaking of fortune cookies (as, I guess, I do every day on this blog), I have a bit of a problem. I'm running low on my stash.

Faithful readers are asking, "But Matt, you bought four hundred cookies to start this project. How can you be running out?"

One contingency I hadn't considered before January 1 was that I would get duplicates. Big surprise: not every fortune cookie ever made has an original fortune in it.

Although there may be some cosmic significance to receiving a duplicate fortune, I don't believe that significance exists when I'm pulling cookies out of the same crate. So I've been skipping over duplicates each day until I hit an original.

As you can imagine, that's depleted my supply. I'm actually surprised I've gotten this many original fortunes out of the batch.

So the solution to the problem is to buy more cookies, which is fine, but I'm thinking I'll have to switch to a different manucacturer. I've been loyal to the Fortune Cookie Factory, Inc., of National City, Illinois, but to get original messages I need a new supplier. However, it's kind of difficult to find fortune cookies for sale. You don't exactly see them at the corner market. When I first tried to order fortune cookies over the phone and I told the supplier I needed 400, he thought I needed 400 cases.

Let's talk about dessert for a minute, since I'm supposed to be eating it three times per week. The best dessert I've ever had exists only as a memory now. It was at a now-defunct restaurant called Amigo's, one of thousands of Mexican restaurants to share that name. The place was in south Kansas City, and my family would eat there with our dearly departed family friend, Ralph, who was the grandpa I never had (both of my biological grandfathers passed away before I was born).

Amigo's had amazing food. My brother and I enjoyed their foot-long tacos. Only a few years ago did I discover the secret ingredient to their delicious taco meat. It was cumin. For dessert, their specialty was a warm sopapilla stuffed with ice cream. Beautiful.

A few weeks ago, my wife made a chocolate cake from scratch. The icing from scratch, too. It was the best cake I've ever had. No kidding.

On the pie side of life, I'm partial to a dessert served at the Corner Cafe, a chain-ish family eatery here in the Kansas City area. The dessert is Platte County Pie. Basically, it's chocolate chip cookie-meets-pecan pie. Served warm, with a scoop of ice cream.

Those three desserts would make up one heavenly week.

On the way home from work, I decided to stop by Aldi to stock up on desserts. I bought the usual 100-calorie snacks and stumbled around the store looking for someting a little more original that would still come close to falling in line with my diet.

Then I saw this:


Believe it or not, Aldi sells fortune cookies. Sixteen to a box for $1.29.

That's about 8 cents each, a bit more than I spent on my original batch, which cost a little over three cents apiece. But I'm not going to complain about a nickel a day.

I opened one up just to make sure the fortunes didn't say "Shop at Aldi for low, low prices!"

Fortune: Soon, someone will make you very proud.
So the fortunes look normal. This is good. I'm going to open one of the Aldi fortunes tomorrow morning to give it a test run.

Today's fortune led me right back to the source.

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