Crisis Averted

This is a walnut.

According to wikepedia, it grows on the deciduous walnut tree, genus juglans, and can be eaten in a variety of ways.

Except by me.

I am allergic to them.

Not in the, "if I eat you I shall immediately die" sort of way, but rather in the "if I eat you I will become like Hitch" sort of way.


Today I ate at one of my favorite restaurants in town - a vegetarian buffet. You pay by weight, so you just load your plate with as little or as much as you want and enjoy a delicious, healthy meal before you recycle your plates and plasticware in their hippy-friendly recycling bins.

But vegetarians often eat a lot of nuts (Because they're nuts themselves? That's SO something my dad would have said) so I always check the ingredients before scooping onto my plate.

Today they had a delicious looking pasta salad. Thanks to Jason's Deli, I have a relatively recent obsession with pasta salads, so this was an ideal choice.

I checked the listed ingredients: no nuts.

So I served myself a heaping scoop and sat on a bench outside to savor my meal in the sunlight.

Later as I was finishing up my last bite of one of the more delicious pasta salads I've ever enjoyed, I thought to myself, "something doesn't feel right."

My body was telling me something, but I didn't understand until I looked down at my plate and saw two lone, teeny tiny pieces of walnut* where my pasta had been.

Oh dear. This could be bad.

Enough time had passed since I took my first bite of the salad that I figured if I was going to go into anaphylactic shock it would have happened already, so I decided to take a moment to speak to the only restaurant employee I saw.

She was involved in a very important phone call, and as I had nothing in my hands to buy didn't seem too concerned with me standing in front of her.

After I stared at her smiling for a moment she got the idea and told her bff to hold on.

I told her, "the pasta salad has nuts in it, but it's not listed on the ingredients [I double checked before speaking to her] and I'm allergic to nuts [this is where a look a horror started to spread across her face] and ate it without knowing. I'm going to get some medicine right now, but I just wanted to let you know that you need to list nuts on the ingredients."

She looked horrified.

She apologized profusely and tried to make excuses.

I assured her I wasn't going to die but that yes, I needed to take some medicine right away, and again, please list nuts on the ingredients because nuts is a very common allergy.

And then I left, in a hurry to find some medicine as my ears continued to clog, my throat itching more and more, and my chest steadily tightening, partly due to the nuts and partly due to my growing anxiety. I really and truly knew I wasn't going to die or even have very serious problems, so long as I could get my hands on some medicine quickly, but my physical discomfort was steadily growing.

However on a Sunday afternoon during siesta time, the pharmacy around the corner was closed and a 15-20 minute walk home loomed before me.

Thankfully pharmacies in this country are like Starbucks in College Station** - there are far more than you could ever need or want - and I soon came across a 24 hour pharmacy.

I walked in and told them what happened and they knew exactly what to give me. I took it right away, still standing at the check-out, and after just 1 or 2 minutes I could feel a significant difference. It was incredible. I don't know what that stuff is, but I'll be keeping some in my purse from now on.

Crisis averted.

Now I'm not familiar with the laws in this country, but I can assure that in the United States there would have been fine print somewhere listing nuts among the ingredients with little asteriks like these: ***

And then after I ate the salad with the nuts they either would have pointed it out to me, or if they were non-compliant with the Food and Drug Administration laws I could have sued for 5 million dollars and treated myself with lasik eye surgery and one of these:




That's a Jaguar XJ.

The dude from Top Gear drove all the way across England and Scotland and back in one and never got bored or uncomfortable.

I've secretly wanted a Jaguar ever since I first became aware of what one even was on LBJ freeway in Dallas roughly 8 years ago.

I have diverted and thus it is time to end this post, after a few brief footnotes:

*the walnut was chopped so finely that not only was it difficult to see among the pasta and pesto sauce, but since I have not eaten one since my childhood I didn't know how to recognize the flavor

**I love Starbucks but anybody who has been through College Station surely must have noticed that we have an over abundance of this over-priced yet oh-so-addictive coffee chain

***the United States is obsessed with lawsuits, which is why hot coffee cups have written warnings that the coffee inside is hot