Glocally Newark

This whole “eating right” thing sucks. Smaller portions, greener meals, and less red meat consumption for more sandpaper ingestion.  Why am I doing this to myself?  I must be a masochist. Regardless of my own instabilities, insecurities and inveterate tendencies to shake things up for no apparent reason, I charge forward in my quest for a healthier me.  That journey brings me back to Mom’s Food Cafe, which looks vastly different from my first few visits in the waning days of summer.

Gone is the ranch-like grazing field of tables and copious buffet – the buffet is still there, but very scaled back.  In their place are bottles of herbs, amino acids, vitamins and pills stacked from floor to ceiling, a few islands of general store goods (juice, chips, nuts, raisins and the like), and a corner of the space designated for floral arrangements.  It all really threw me off.

I’ve tried a few of their fruit smoothies, loaded with powdered proteins and vitamins, and I have to say, psychologically, there’s something to be said for the theory that any food or drink that tastes like shit must be good for you.  The initial ingredients are fine: any combination of banana, mango, orange, pineapple, strawberry, blueberry and ice blended before your very eyes.  But it’s those damn added nutrients that get you every time, scarring the roof of your mouth with a chalky residue, as if your tongue were punished into doing a Bart Simpson writing assignment on the blackboard.

At $4.99 for a 16 ouncer (add a dollar for another 4 ounces), I’m probably better off getting a salad.  Despite that, the horrific aftertaste is the reason why I think I’m being healthy in drinking what anyone under a blind taste test would surely consider poison.  The perky Asian woman blending this witch’s brew is always so pleasant, and even lets me slide for not meeting the $7 credit card minimum, so I almost feel like I owe it to her to suffer through these smoothies, which would be more aptly titled “harshies.”  So yeah, I suppose I really am a masochist.