Meatballs, oh why do you taunt me???

The cafeteria at work has a small "serve yourself" pasta bar every Wednesday. It pretty much consists of one type of pasta, marinara sauce, alfredo sauce, and meatballs. It also comes with a complimentary bread stick. Without the meatballs, it only costs $2.99, with them, its $3.99. Three dollars is a fantastic deal as far as I’m concerned, especially since you get to load your plate yourself. Although they do display a plate showing what they think of as a “plate” of pasta, I personally see any type of serve yourself situation as personal challenge to see what you can all stack on one plate.

The problem comes in with the meatballs. Four dollars for a plate including the delicious little balls of fat also seems like a good deal, yet three dollars seems like so much more of a deal. You might be able to get a fast food meal for four dollars these days, but three, that’s not going to happen. Still, every time I load my plate with an unnecessarily high stack of pasta, and top if off with marinara sauce, the pan of meatballs are right there, taunting me, daring me to grab just one($.35), or two ($.70), or go for the discount and get all three. I try to tell myself that the cows that produced these savory delicacies lived long and happy lives, growing up under the warm California sun, and frolicking through the pastures, yet I know this isn’t true. I’ve seen California factory farms. The best thing that probably ever happened to these cows was to have a stainless steel rod shot into their head with a compressed air gun. Buying into their tempting little ploy would only encourage such practices which I abhor. Still, I think I sometimes hear them whispering for me to eat them. Not this time! Today I resist their urgings, and leave with a plate of meatless pasta. The battle is won, but the war is sure to continue another week.