You Want a Drink with Those McNuggets?

My salad today was sort of boring. A little Boston/Bibb/Butter (pick a name!) lettuce, a few sliced black olives, slivered almonds and some garbanzo beans thrown in for good measure. But no meat. Guess we haven’t grilled any chicken at home lately and haven’t had any to add to our daily salads.

Yes, I make salads for our lunches every day. Except for the nights we’re out and get home too late or I’m just plain too tired to make them. Vince might say that happens a lot, but I say the percentages are on my side and we have salads for lunch more days than not.

Anyway, I was bored with a salad without meat, so I went through the McDonald’s drive-thru at lunchtime. I ordered a Diet Coke and a 5-piece order of Chicken McNuggets so I could break them in half and add them to my salad du jour and give it a little extra ‘something.’ (A discussion about the unhealthy aspects of Chicken McNuggets not appearing in this particular blog. Thanks for asking.)

Anyway, I drove on my merry way to the park to enjoy my now chicken-filled salad. There I was sitting on a bench in the sunshine, munching away happily and reading yesterday’s newspaper (I’m a little behind the times, what can I say?!). And then it happened. I took a sip of Diet Coke and discovered it wasn’t Diet Coke at all – but regular Coke. With sugar. Bleh!

I’m one of those people who didn’t drink sugary sodas as a kid and was only introduced to the caffeine aspects of Diet Coke as a freshman at Ohio State. I didn’t like coffee in any form and when I tried regular Coke (now called, what? Coke Classic?) I thought it was way too sweet with a sugary aftertaste I didn’t like. I know it’s sort of backward since many people don’t like the “chemical” taste of Diet Coke. Anyway, I must say that Diet Coke got me through many an all-nighter at OSU.

But I digress. The point – and, yes, there IS one (!), is that I was annoyed because I ordered a Diet Coke. I paid for a Diet Coke. But I received a regular Coke, which I wasn’t remotely interested in drinking. And by this point I didn’t want to take the time to drive all the way back to McDonald’s to complain and get what I’d ordered.

So instead, I whipped out my trusty iPhone and called the store to complain. The manager was very nice and told me to use his name and when I came in the next time I would get a Diet Coke at no charge. Well, that’s nice and all, but I honestly don’t make a habit of frequenting McDonald’s so I can assure you I won’t remember the manager’s name, nor will I remember the date of my last visit. And it’s a pretty good ploy on their part to get customers who were dissatisfied with the service the first time around, to come back in and spend more money.

I guess that’s a good lesson for me. Vince would tell me that, yeah, the lesson is to stop buying Diet Coke! That’s because he’s been trying to wean me off Diet Coke and has been urging me to drink coffee. Only he has to doctor up the coffee so much with sugar-free flavorings and soy milk and whipped cream to get me to drink it, I shudder at the number of calories involved! (Hey, honey, guess how many calories Diet Coke has? ZERO!)

Yes, I could drink water. And I do – believe me. I drink water from the time I come in to work in the morning until I leave at night. Sometimes I even drink a glass of water in the evening, provided the preferred glass of red wine is not on the table. So I have no problem getting in the requisite number of glasses of H2O. Sometimes a person just wants a different taste.

But apparently not Coke with sugar. Bleh.

And, while I’m not exactly sure what we’ll be doing tonight, I sort of suspect it will involve chicken on the grill. But, that’s okay because, hey, I’ll take Vince’s grilled chicken over Chicken McNuggets any ol’ day!