Confidence

I'm not one to waste food if it can be helped. This is due in part to how I was raised, but there is also the practical consideration that there is little room in the food budget for redundant extra food. In any event, there must be a terribly good reason before I don't eat something. It being gross is a pretty good reason. That is to say that if the food is something I can't get myself to choke down even with fervent pleas to God, I do just get rid of it. I may not substitute anything, but at least I won't make myself eat it.

It doesn't take much before I reach that point of grossness. All it takes is that I get to a point where I no longer trust the dish before me. Perhaps I find something rather bad nestled in it, like a hair. Maybe it's not something that obvious. I was eating my trademark (but not actually trademarked) dish of rice with tomato sauce when something rather odd popped up. I can't say what it was, but I know I wouldn't have found it in my usual sauce.

My usual sauce is cut-rate stuff, but it's dependable. I decided the other day to take a chance on what looked like higher-end stuff. It happened to be available in this section of discounted goods which is located by the restrooms. I know that sounds bad, and I usually don't buy anything from that area, but jarred pasta sauce seemed safe. Clearly I overrated the significance of food being contained by a glass jar, because I've been burned.

The sauce had seemed good. It was flavorful enough to not require the hot sauce to bolster it. That doesn't matter though, because I'm not going to put myself in the position of biting on something unpleasant to taste which I can't even identify. I don't know if it was meant to be in there or not, and I also can't decide which of those possibilities is worse. As I write this I also write off not just a bowl of rice already made, but perhaps the jar and a half of sauce which now has lost my confidence. It's a shame.