Instead of foie gras, I should have just ordered quackers

Everything is a struggle.

Everything.

Our Airbnb thoughtfully left laminated menus of the local restaurants in the kitchen which then spurred a lively (and exasperating) two hour debate of dining destinations. Fanning out our choices like a deck of poker cards, we each had an ace in the hole, unwilling to gamble on a lousy club sandwich.

Sydney (whose primary diet consists of boiled hot dogs, Bagel Bites, and cheap wine) kept insisting on a nearby pretentious (or as pretentious as you can possibly get in Kansas City where Brad got into a maddening wave-on war with merging traffic..."No, you go." "No, I couldn't possibly. You go." "I'm sure where you're going is time sensitive. You should go."  "My wife is seven centimeters dilated but she'd never forgive me if I didn't let you merge first") pub because her hunger over-rode her common sense. "Sydney, I don't know 3/4s of the words on this menu," I told her, raising my voice to be heard over her uncle's passionate discourse. 

This, of course, spurred an enthusiastic investigation of the whimsical word, "quark." A google tour taught us to be careful because quark could curdle when cooked. "So is it a yogurt or is it a cheese?" Douglas asked as I tossed out fifty fun facts about quark. Tapping into his math brain, I compared it to the age-old paradox that every square is a rectangle but not all rectangles are squares. Douglas didn't actually care. He just wanted to eat. And, preferably, NOT quark.

So, yeah. Of course.

Quark it is.

Except it wasn't.

Imagine my disappointment (and Doug's delight) when we discovered that they were out of quark. "I don't even know what quark is...how could you possibly be out of it?" I asked, paralyzed with indecision as I had no back-up plan. 

And that is how I ended up with foie gras.

Obviously I didn't have ample time to research and, in my quest to become a fearless, adventure eater, veered off my moral meal road and merged onto an inescapable, unethical exit to Hell. Foie gras is tasty but tasteless. It should have come with a warning label. My apologies to male ducks and geese for my indiscreet choice. 

It was not surprising that, in a city famous for meat, the name Temple Grandin would be invoked as I described her innovative design for the calmly concise method of channeling cattle through the meat-packing process. "Nature is cruel," she had said, "but we don't have to be." 

THIS is why I prefer lab-originated, highly-processed foods ridden with unpronounceable names with questionable and concerning long-term health effects on my quality of life. MY quality of life. Not some mild-mannered little mallard just trying to live his best life without our liver-inflating tube being jammed down his throat. 

I went from quark to quack and just completely ducked up.

Sydney wisely ordered fries. 

"Your french fries are delicious," I said, snagging my third, fourth and fifteenth, guilt-free.

"They're not French," Sydney said, shooting a wink at her father who was picking up the bill, "They're Portu-geese."