Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

[Note to COASS fans: I apologize for the delay of posting this week. In the time since last Friday, work has considerably picked up, I am about to leave for Las Vegas in a few days, and I have decided to move to downtown Hoboken (!! details to follow). Life is always like that–either there’s nothing, or everything happens all at once. Call me crazy, but I always prefer the latter…only if they are positive happenings…

Friday was HOOKY DAY for my Momma and I. (For a split second, I thought I spelled hookah. Now, that would be an interesting post, but you are stuck with this story.) Although it was about 100 degrees outside, we pick this day to be our excursion into Central Park. My mom, having lived in NYC from birth to about 32 years of age, always talks about hanging out in the park when she was younger–going on the carousel, the Alice in Wonderland statue, walking her cousin’s dog on a warm summer day….

While she hates to admit it, though I was born in NYC, I am NJ grown. I know nothing of this park except that the Reservoir is up by 97th St. and a lot of horses hang out by the 59th St. entrance, err rather, Central Park South, by the Plaza. Hello, tourist. For the longest time we have wanted to explore the park to revisit my mom’s childhood and see places where many movies have been filmed, for fun. Also, as my mom and I love, love, love food, we always have fun planning where we will go for food, or for a treat during the day, usually a sweet treat. As I keep a laundry list of places I am dying to check out, I know that a few of the cupcake/cookie destinations I have wanted to try are on the Upper West Side, so this was more motivation to visit the park.

Here are the highlights of the day:

–lunch at Bouchon Bakery in Columbus Circle. I got a ham and gruyere on baguette and wanted a Nutter Butter Cookie–a honkin’ sized sandwich cookie with peanut buttery icing in the middle for only $2.75, but we decide to wait and see what other options we come across. Worst comes to worst, we can come back…

–the carousel at Central Park was a fun ride–only $2!! You may have to shove a few kids out of the way to get to the good horses in the inside of the carousel, but that only heightened the fun for me

–two light beers at the bar in The Boathouse…didn’t feel too touristy until you take a look at the menu, which looks like it’s straight out of Disney World

–a walk up the Literary Walk, the Bethesda Fountain, the Alice in Wonderland statue, and timing it right to run past the sporadically placed sprinklers so we wouldn’t get wet

–a visit to the Buttercup Bake Shop on 72nd btwn Columbus and Amsterdam. 2 FOR 1 CUPCAKE SPECIAL. We got: a classic vanilla cupcake, a German chocolate, and….drumroll please….A PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY CUPCAKE. I am not kidding. Whipped peanut butter icing (crunchy!) with grape jelly delicately piped into the middle of the golden vanilla cake. I couldn’t even take a pic of it because it was gone that fast. My new favorite.

–an incredibly extensive conversation with the cabbie who drove us to Penn Station for our train…I was going home for the weekend. He saved us from walking through the masses of sweaty, Reebok wearing, fanny-packed tourists of Times Square. Would it be rude to say “Dude, can you just drive?”

All in all, a perfect way to play hooky.

Last week I treated myself to a bag of Terra Chips, those fancy schmancy veggie chips made from sweet potato, parsnips, and a few odd colored root veggies the food company somehow made into a rather tasty snack. Imagine my disappointment when I opened up the 1 oz. snack size bag to find that it was all air. All air–read–the only chips were mushed up at the bottom into a salty potpourri.

(This is what I was expecting…)

We are all victims of what I refer to as “optical illusions,” when food companies make our portions look bigger with a few tricks of the trade. I know a lot of companies seal packages like bags of chips with a puff of air so they appear to have more product in the bag. I have come to accept this. Whatever. But when I shell out (as a treat mind you, because I never buy lunch out) almost $3 on a bag of chips, they better delight my senses. They better be like ambrosia of the gods.

But, I think I actually gasped when I opened the bag.

Now I’m not what you would call a super-active citizen. I vote and all, I try to keep up with local and national politics on CNN or the 11 o’clock news, but it then occurred to me that I should speak up against the Man. When it’s food related, to me, it’s a big issue. I urgently needed to email the Terra Chips complaints office. I didn’t even know if such things still existed, but I got really excited. I don’t even know if people still write to “Complaints Offices” and I had visions of myself hunched over a typewriter writing “Dear Sir or Madam” and tearing them a new one with my wit as I angrily punch the keys on a fancy letterhead. Then, I would march to the post office and have them stamp on it “URGENT” and send it right off. I would feel like I did my job as an American citizen, voicing my opinion and concerns about the quality of junk food in this country. I would also be living in a retirement home in Florida in this scenario.

Today when I got into work, I Googled “Terra Chips” and prepared to write a masterpiece complaint. Sadly, I have no typewriter (I may be the only 24-year-old I know that would love to have one), so I rely on my Mac. “If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send us an email.” And so I did. I complained and whined my heart out, and I received an email back telling me that I will hear from them in the near future.

While I didn’t exaclty shake the earth with my complaint, I hope they will at least give me a free coupon or two, because, let’s face it, all I really want out of life are free goodies.

You know when it’s nice weather outside and you feel obligated to be out in the sun as much as possible? In that aspect, Saturday was an extremely productive day. Women’s Health magazine had a ARE YOU GAME? event all day, where everything was FREE: free fitness classes sponsored and taught by Crunch fitness instructors, free treatments from Oasis Day Spa, free FUZE drinks all day long (I had about 10) and the best cincher of the day-a free happy hour with free Michelob Ultra Light—I guess the healthiest way to booze. I’m sorry, I just can’t help typing “free.”

Ria and I did a street fighting course, complete with kamakaze-type head bands (which a few women refused to take off for the remainder of the day), a retro-robics class where we got free American Apparel leg warmers which everyone pulled on despite the 90 degree weather, and a free Women’s Health wife-beater (which sounds ironic) after shooting some hoops. Ria got extra points for shooting her ball into the Hudson River.

While we were high off of free goodness—we just couldn’t help but look the gift horse in the mouth.

Enter: the Women’s Health yoga mats, complete with a cute Women’s Health yoga mat bag. As we sipped our free beer, we had had enough. All day long, the only free item we did not score were those mats. And it killed us. Here we are, having fun, staying fit, shaking it while a fabulously gay man taught us moves to “Jump” by the Pointer Sisters and “Funkytown,” and in our hazy exhaustion we started to plot our scheme to score the free yoga mats that we were not offered because we missed the yoga class and missed the line for Pilates due to our kung foo-style, street fighter class.

When I say plot our scheme, I really mean slowly stroll by the white tents in the back of the park with beer in hand, to eyeball what was inside while the breeze flapped the tent entrance open every few minutes. No luck. I even ran to chase down a woman carrying about 20 mats, asking her if I could have one. The ones she were carrying were clearly extras, but she told me that if she gave me one, everyone else that didn’t take the yoga or pilates class would want one too. Boo. We followed her with our eyes to see where she went, but then she got lost in the sea of red shirts, which was the color the event staff wore in support of Women’s Health. Ah well.

But were then distracted by three children dancing to the Reggae Band that began to play during happy hour. They were so cute–which means a lot coming from me—a little blonde girl spinning around in a pink dress, and two little boys chasing each other. All of a sudden Ria freaked out—and told me that we were in the midst of a celebrity baby sighting. The fact that the kids had about five nannies confirmed it—they were the offspring of Heidi Klum and Seal! Too funny, or sick, depending on if you are either impressed or grossed out by the fact that Ria can spot celebrity children.

After Ria climbed the inflatable rock wall, the clock struck 4pm, and we realized we had been there since 10:30am and questioned if we should throw in the towel. Pondering the thought, we realized that the crowd had drastically changed from the time we first got there. While the morning and early afternoon attendees were mostly women in yoga pants and tank tops like us and much more family-oriented, as the afternoon continued and the Westside Highway got word of the free happy hour, you can only imagine how the crowd slowly morphed from women in sports bras to men with nipple piercings. ‘Nuff said. We grabbed about four more Fuze drinks and decided it was time to go. I think Ria actually took five.

I can make classic cartoon-ish like expressions with my face.

Happy:

Sad: