Fake Cheese: I Will Love Again

The 99c store and I aren't speaking. I went there the other day to buy an accordion folder (and then a liter of artificially-flavored peach lemonade carbonated beverage, a 5-pack of Bubble Yum Bubble Gum and beef jerky). Walking past the perishable foods section, I was immediately drawn to a bag of shredded cheese.


Now I've always told myself that I will never buy anything edible at The 99c Store with a life durability weaker than that of a cockroach. Well, that and condoms. Anyway, I saw this cheese and my vow against food cheaper than a dollar began to waiver. I mean, I'm a regular connoisseur of Jack in the Box's 99c tacos (TWO for a dollar!) and was literally (and pathetically) delighted when Wendy's added spicy chicken nuggets to their value menu (ALSO 99c). Actually, now that I think of it, I never order anything over a dollar from a fast food chain. So what was my problem? Besides, I needed cheese. How else was I going to make my famous quesadillas? (1 flour tortilla, 1 handful of cheese. Microwave for 30 seconds. Eat. You're welcome.) And this was Mexican-style cheese! So now my quesadillas would taste Mexican! Once again, I was sold.

I think it might have been late the next night (and after a few glasses of wine) that I set to work in the kitchen, exercising my Hispanic culinary skills. But Step 2 of my recipe (microwaving) did not deliver the expected result of melted cheese. Maybe the microwave wasn't working properly? I re-heated for another 30 seconds. No dice and no melted cheese. But my tortilla (1 flour tortilla) was so hot it had begun to take on a nasty, gooey quality. So I ate it.

Still curious about the cheese and determined to solve the mystery of its non-melting properties, I grabbed the bag out of the refrigerator. It read: MEXICAN SHREDS: Pasteurized Process Topping Pasterizado Procesado Coberturas. Awesome.

So I'm a bit upset with The 99c Store. I invest a lot of late-night snacking happiness in cheese, and when I find that I am in fact not eating cheese but pasteurized processed shreds made with powdered cellulose, I get a little upset. Now I know that The 99c Store never promised me cheese; it did, in fact, state that it was proving me with pasterizado procesado coberturas. But I guess I just got a little ahead of myself, what with all the delicious beef jerky and aisles of make-up tools that may or may not gouge your eye out.

Maybe we're just not at That Place yet. Maybe I said some things I shouldn't have and maybe I threw my "cheese" bag angrily on the ground (only to pick it back up, lovingly smooth out the plastic creases, and gingerly place it back in the fridge). I just need a few days to regain my trust and we'll be fine. Besides, I'm running low on I Be Profin.

Beef Jerky and Pregnancy Risks

Why did I ever forget about the 99¢ store? Or maybe it just used to be more forgettable. That and less applicable to my own life. As a college student, I didn’t really have a need for a two-pack of crappy dishtowels when I didn’t even have any dishes to be toweled anyway. Anything that required liquid-absorption could be obtained in the manner of fistfuls of napkins at fill-in-the-blank fast food chain or stolen from the toilet paper dispenser at work. (Okay. Well, I did pay for tampons.) And at that time you could get a pack of 10 ramen noodles for a dollar so I had no use for a specialized establishment.

I actually forgot all about the store until a few months ago when a friend offered me some 99¢ beef jerky. 99¢?!? How come the beef jerky I stare at and drool over and can’t afford to splurge on is $4.99 and this perfectly good (well…) beef jerky is 99¢?! I was deeply intrigued.
A few weeks later I got laid-off. This should have triggered an immediate call-to-action response of résumé revision and frantic Craigslist searching, which, in time, did – just after some well-deserved mystery meat for under a buck.

Of course, Plan A was a simple grab-my-grub-and-bounce operation. (What else could I possibly want for a dollar?) However, Plan A was aborted the moment I stepped through those once-upon-a-time-automated doors.

There’s a seductive power that overtakes you when you walk into a fluorescent-lit superstructure packed wall to wall with 99¢ inventory. “I can afford to buy anything in here,” I breathed incredulously. I had to stop myself from spinning around and around, arms outstretched, Sound-of-Music-style.

But you can. Buy. Anything. They had nylons and Cheetos and hair products and…condoms? Whoa. Now I can justify buying 99¢ dehydrated meat (and a huge bag of jelly beans and what I’m pretty sure is a shoe horn) but condoms? Protective material designed to prevent pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases? Sounds like saran wrap and a pair of crossed fingers will work just as good.

Thus was my snap back into reality. Don’t get me wrong. If the place had a membership, I’d be getting my tenth stamp on my little card right about now and my apartment is starting to look like Ariel’s treasure trove of crap. But frivolity has a line, and buying a 12-pack of condoms for 99¢ (trust me, you’re gonna need the extra dough for baby furniture in about nine months) is crossing it. So if you’ll just ring me up for my David Hasselhoff calendar and Jr. (not Junior) Mints, I’ll be on my way.