bad ham

safeway has a running promotion where if you buy two of their ready made hoagie sandwiches, they are 1.99 each as opposed to the usual 2.49 each with club card. i fell for their ploy last thursday and got two sandwiches, both ham and cheese because that's all they had. i would also like to note that these sandwiches are not great - two slabs of faux artisan bread with standard luncheon meat ham and kraft single cheese, sad lettuce, and two even sadder slices of tomato, with two little packets of mustard and mayo neatly tucked in. it's not really about savoring the meal, it's about the calories.

i ate one sandwich on friday and left the other in the fridge, expecting to eat it the next day or whatever. i didn't get a chance to eat it until today, monday, for lunch. i slathered on the mustard and mayo and took a bite.

on first bite, it tasted kinda funny but i attributed it to the bread being soggy because it had been sitting in the fridge for a few days in very tight quarters with ham and cheese. so i kept on eating. it tasted funny again, so i decided to give it a visual test and inspected the sandwich for any offending players. the tomatoes looked sad so i tossed them out. i sniffed the sandwich because that's what i do for dirty laundry and i feel that my food requires the same deference and respect, if not more. it smelled okay, i guess.

so i took another bite. and that's when i realized that the ham was the offensive part. i thought about trucking on because it would be a waste of a sandwich to throw it out, but at some point even the cheapest of us need to listen to our body's instinct to want to dry heave, throw it out, and move on.