Smart Energy

At work at WSU I try to employ (in the loose sense of the word: we don’t pay but they do get course credit) student interns from the Murrow College of Communications. We’ve had some fantastically talented and industrious students come work with us, primarily as news and marketing writers. Rachel Weber was our intern a while back. She’s since graduated but while she was at WSU she started a blog. The blog has morphed since she’s graduated and is now called “Rachel in the Real World.” As if college weren’t real! In any case, she’s a witty-as-hell writer with a wonderfully wry sense of humor, so I do recommend you check her out. She’s started a new feature called “What Does It Taste Like Wednesday.” Here’s the low-down:

We are people. People eat. And even though we go to the grocery store all the time, I never really stop to look at how many different foods exist (acknowledging, of course, that so much of it is the same: modified corn). That is, until my aunt and I took a pit stop at Safeway last night. While browsing through gefilte fish, she inspired me to start What does it taste like Wednesday. No, it isn’t about the flavor of the actual week day, but instead the opportunity to embrace delicious, odd, never- before-tasted-in-my-life “cuisine.” Two rules: 1) I can’t have eaten or remember ever eating the item. 2) No purchases over $5.

Her first foray was into something called “DONA MARIA, NOPALITOS TENDER CACTUS”:

After duking it out with can openers, oven mitts and finally a corkscrew, I popped open the yellow lid to smell vinegar and what I think would be okay to describe here as tangy. What does it taste like? Like a light kick to the back of my throat leaving a lingering spice–like the tequila of edible plants. A crossbreed between a pickle and a hot pepper in the texture and shape of the green bean and length of a worm… And like many things in life, once you get through the spikes, it isn’t so bad.

Great pics, too!