The Sweet Pepper Panini

Introducing "Chili," the Barbie that will teach kids everywhere to enjoy spicy foods of all kinds.  Remember, you heard it here first.

Sweet Pepper Panini.  That was today’s lunch special at the coffee shop.  I sold loads of the delicious things.   Here's a reenactment of the lunch hour:

Customer walks in.  I bound up to the service counter:  “Hi there!  What can I get for ya’?”  Customer realizes our menu is quite large and the font is quite small.  Fumbles with words.   

    “Uh, I think I’m going to need a minute.”  I slowly back off, still smiling.   

    “That’s fine, and we do have a special today, the Sweet Pepper Panini.”  I wave my hand towards the white board.  Their eyes lock in on the slightly larger handwriting of the Specials Board.  They step closer.

    “What’s a Sweet Pepper Panini?”  I quickly glance at the description on the board:  Cream Cheese, Peppers, Cheddar Cheese.  My inner chef screams “Mucho muy delicioso!!”  But how to express that in English?  

    “Well, it’s a Panini, so it’s on Foccacia, which is this really hearty, soft bread brushed with basil and olive oil.  And then we spread cream cheese on the inside and sprinkle some basil on it, and stuff it full of sweet peppers and cheddar cheese, and then grill it up.”  Blink innocently at customer.  Customer smiles, relieved.

    “Ok, that sounds good.  Yeah, I’ll do that!”  I grin and traipse over to the register.  

    “Alrighty, that’ll be 7.21, sir.”   

Boom.  Bam.  Done.  The funny thing is I unequivocally hate peppers.  All types, all forms, all colors.  Even tried one today, just to make sure.  The test results came back Negative Infinity.  

However … this sandwich is seriously appealing to me.  It just sounds so creamy, so crisp, so fresh!  But I know I would hate it.  So I indulge vicariously through my words.   Which works well for business, I guess.  Because sometimes it’s not about selling the sandwich, it’s about selling the idea of the sandwich.  

When I was younger, I used to hate Sloppy Joes.  And to this day, I’m still not a huge fan of them.  However, I distinctly remember playing with my Barbie dolls and thinking “Sloppy Joes are just awesome.”  I’m not sure how or why I got this idea, but it was somehow connected to my Barbie’s yellow Sloppy Joe Maker.  As Barbie served up Sloppy Joes under my direction, I realized that Sloppy Joes were actually pretty cool.  So I asked Mom to make them for dinner.  She was shocked.  But she agreed.  (What kind of mom wouldn’t agree to make a cheap, easy, all-American meal like that, especially when it was her Picky-Eater who requested it?)

The next day while she made dinner, I played “Sloppy Joe” with Barbie and fanaticized over how awesome dinner was going to be.  Never mind that I had hated the taste, the texture, and the color of Sloppy Joes for years.  Not to mention the smell.  But I ignored all of this, and sat down for dinner, fork in hand.  (Well, not literally, because you don’t eat Sloppy Joes with forks, but ya' know what I mean.)  

It only took four bites to remind me why Sloppy Joes are not awesome.  

But I continued to think they were a nice idea.  Romantic, even.  Which made it easier to become a Joe-eater later in life, once we finally found a recipe I could handle.  Again, sometimes it’s about the idea of the sandwich, not the sandwich itself.  Basic marketing principle.

This makes me nervous because how many things have I bought (or ate) simply because I liked the mere idea of them?  How many marketing campaigns have I been a sucker for?  Am I completely delusional about my life, do I truly like what I think I like?  Or do I just like the idea of what I think I like?  What if I don’t actually like coffee, but I just like the idea of being a mature adult who drinks coffee?  What if I subconsciously hate set life, but have convinced myself its cool because it’s part of the film industry?  What if single-shot lattes are just a placebo (and actually don’t give me a caffeine boost) and all my self-restraint against the Venti White Mochas has been in vain?  What if I’m ADOPTED?!?!?!  Needless to say, the paranoia escalates quickly. 

Until I remember the disgusting pepper I ate this afternoon.  Thank the garden gnomes, a touchstone on reality!  I guess that makes the pepper my totem.  Same with the Sloppy Joe I ate when I was nine. 

Because underneath the ideas and the fantasies and the marketing campaigns are the taste buds.  I know when I hate something and I know when I love something.  Everything else is middle ground, and I’ll leave it to the commercials to do battle there.  After all, I enjoy a good show, a good yarn, a good fairytale.  So, go ahead, Marketers, try to sell me something I don’t really care about.  I’m settled on what I do care about, and I don’t mind being entertained over the rest of it.

(Plus, I'm kind of miserly with my money, heh-heh!)