At the deli where I work (the deli BY my work, I don’t work at a deli), you can build your own salad. Over time I’ve arrived at a list of items that make up a good salad for me;

1. Buffalo chicken
2. Cheddar cheese
3. Jalapenos
4. Shredded carrot
5. Kidney beans
6. Green Peppers
7. Thousand island dressing

It’s a spicy salad and it works well. I get the same thing every time, in the same exact order. In this way I avoid wasting time making needless decisions on stuff that doesn’t ultimately matter. It’s like Seth Brundle (BrundleFly) and his suits. BrundleSalad. They should just add it to the menu* ; "I’ll take the BrundleSalad".

Anyway, to get to the point; today the deli-lady made the mistake of including Mandarin Oranges in place of Jalapenos. She heard me say "Jalapenos" and interpreted that as "MAN-DAR-INS". A fatal mistake.

So now I’m eating a sweet citrus fruit in an otherwise spicy salad; If you’re ever stuck making some nachos and you’ve run out of Jalapenos, DON’T reach for the mandarins. These flavours are NOT inter-changeable. Is it fair to say Jalapenos in mexican food are immutable? It just doesn’t work.

This’ll likely throw off the rest of the day completely.

* as a side note, in the years I’ve worked at Exchange place, the local diner created a Shanahan menu that had two items, "The number one" and "The number two".