I Nearly Cried

Today I walked into one of my favorite restaurants, a vegetarian buffet, to grab some lunch on the way home. I usually love everything there, but I have to be careful because they use a lot of walnuts, and I'm allergic.

Upon entering, my eyes were immediately drawn to a fabulous looking pasta salad, much better even than the one in the photo.

This pasta salad had spiral pasta, cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, baby spinach, and to top it all off....pesto. Oh how I love a good pesto.

Before loading a to-go box full of the delectable looking dish, I had the soundness of mind to ask, just to be sure, if there were any nuts hidden in there.

The girl thought for a moment, and then stated that there were probably pine nuts in the pesto.

"Pine nuts are fine."

"Let me ask the cook real quick, just to be sure."

She came back with the tragic news.

Instead of using pine nuts like any normal pesto, they use walnuts.

Why must they spoil a good thing??? Everybody else makes their pesto with pine nuts, and the whole world loves it! Haven't they ever heard, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"??

"Are you sure it's not pine nuts? Pesto is normally made with pine nuts." (the word for "walnut" is just "nut", so sometimes there's confusion when I'm asking what kind of nut something is)

"I know but our restaurant makes it with walnuts."

As pathetic as it may sound, I almost cried just then.

I stood there staring at the buffet, longing for the pesto, knowing it was poison to me, and I felt the tears welling up inside me.

The man paying for his own meal looked at me with pity.

I lingered a moment, trying to decide if there was something else on the buffet that might interest me.

Bean salad: walnuts.

Vegetable omelette: walnuts

Crepes: walnuts

Everything on the buffet today either had walnuts or looked completely unappetizing.

I said "thank you" and walked on out.

I considered going to the grocery store, but at 2pm the olive man and the cheese man and all the yummy things men go home to eat their own delicious, non-poisonous lunches.

I considered going home and trying to throw something together out of the randomness that is my refrigerator at the moment, but at the moment there's not a vegetable to be found in there.

So I went to Starbucks to get a nice, healthy turkey/onion/spinach sandwich on cranberry bread and of course, they were all out. I was too late.

Crushed, I opted for my second favorite, chicken pesto, which although delicious, has not a single vegetable aside from the tiny pieces of sun-dried tomato in the bread.

Margarita said, "here's Laura, back home again."

They love me at Starbucks. And I love them. I should have known that going anywhere else would be a bitter disappointment, but I did it anyway, and I paid for it. I'll never make that mistake again.

But it's okay. They'll have another turkey/onion/spinach on cranberry bread sandwich waiting for me tomorrow. And it will be gloriously sublime.