OK, I just got back from lunch, and I feel sick.

I work in the neighborhood of the Whole Foods on North & Farwell in Milwaukee. Every so often, even though I think it’s a store for hippies, I’ll drop in for lunch. They have a nice salad bar, and a decent hot & soup bar. Today, the lunch special was a $5.95 bowl of pasta with whatever toppings & sauce you wanted. I opted for spinach, artichoke, and mushrooms with a pesto sauce over spaghetti noodles, and on the side came a “free” piece of toasted garlic bread.

To cut to the chase, the veggies were sautee’d in about a half cup of either a cheap olive oil or vegetable oil; my money is on vegetable oil, but I can’t be certain. After eating a few fork fulls off the top, the bottom of the bowl was under about a full half-inch of oil. The garlic bread was also drenched in a buttery substance. I literally gave it a twist, like you would a wet sponge, and the buttery substance just came pouring off.

Is this really how hippies eat? It would explain why they smell so damn bad - I think it will take me several days to get that oil out of my system. But how do they stay so thin?