A supposedly fun food I'll never eat again...

My car is in the shop. (This was a planned in-the-shop day; the brakes needed some work - it's a nearly 10 year old car and this is the first brake work it's needed). BUT. Sometimes I've found that leaving the car there tends to slow down the progress of work (as opposed to me sitting fuming in the waiting room).

I was told it would be done by noon. Nope! "We need a few more hours"

Of course, I did not bring a lunch. (And I do not have a loaner car. I live in a small town and none of the mechanics here have twigged to the concept of loaner cars, which would be really nice). And I am in my office building. And no one else is here. And the cafeteria is closed for break. And the nearest food-purveyor is about a half mile down a busy street with no sidewalks.

So, I hit up the vending machine. My lunch was NOT nutritious but at least I tried. A little sleeve of peanuts, a snack cake (yeah, yeah, I know. But when you're stuck with no food access until MAYBE 5 pm...) and a packet of beef jerky. I got the last snack cake and the last packet of jerky. There is almost nothing left in the machine.

I had never tried beef jerky before. Never in my life. It was one of those foods that kind of scared me as a child. But I figured, how bad can it be? And the package trumpets right on the package that it has "PROTEIN!!!"

Um, yeah. It has protein. So does leather. So do wichetty grubs. So does Bovine Serum Albumin.

Beef jerky...it's interesting. I did not know they could make cow so hard and chewy. And this was teriyaki flavor (my apologies to the Japanese for this flavor being used in this way) so my overall impression was: "Oh...my. Salt." I do not like highly salted things. I'm usually the one who doesn't add salt at table.

I know beef jerky is highly touted on those high-protein diets and all, but it's just not for me. I suppose it was nourishing, one can say that (And wasn't that really the original purpose of jerky/pemmican? Not so much to be a preferred food, but to be the thing that kept you from starving when you were trapped in the soddie by a blizzard and were having to melt snow for drinking water and had nothing else to eat?). But really not something I need to eat again in my life, at least not by choice.