It Tastes Like What?

After I finished working out the other day, I made a protein drink, just the powder and milk. I don't like to get fancy. And it's not ridiculous bodybuilder protein mix either with human and sea lion breast milk mixed. Whatever the generic Vitamin Shoppe mix is, that's what I get.

Usually I pick up chocolate just because I can't picture vanilla or bananas and cream being any good. Powder in the glass, milk on top, stir stir stir, drink. This was no different than any other protein drinking day except for the fact that this particular drink was the most delicious drink I've had in years. It was like sucking from God's own chocolate protein shake teat.

This drink was even better than the one day at lunch in high school when I chased the Tuscan chocolate milk dragon and won. While drinking the first down, I openly declared it to be the best chocolate milk I had ever had and then, risking eternal disappointment and endless longing for the original taste of the brown bovine, I got up and spent another 60 cents (that sounds too high doesn't it?) and was rewarded for my boldness with another icy treat from the heavens.

I'm betting something is wrong with this batch of protein. Spiked with ephedra or something. How else could it taste so good? It's probably really just chocolate milk mix, but really good stuff from an artisan chocolate maker in Switzerland or Jersey City.

So as I'm slurping loudly on purpose for my own entertainment, I remember doing the same thing back when I first moved to Mine Hill, when our kitchen had Previous Owner disease and was a brown and orange dump with an island in the middle that made it almost impossible to move around with more than two people in there at a time.

One day I was making Nestle's Quik out of the metal tin with the circular cap on top. I could never get the spoon out without clanging it against the opening and knocking mix onto the top of the tin. Instead of pushing the mix back in, I'd just blow it off, thinking that no one would notice the accumulation of repeated mix scatterings. I seriously thought the mix would go away, like dissolve or evaporate.

My favorite thing to do after making the chocolate milk was to drink the first couple of sips with the spoon. It was only the first few because after that it feels like you're wasting your time and I was too impatient to be bothered with savoring.

As I do every day of my life, I was talking to myself, in this instance about how much I love chocolate milk, and in particular, how much I love drinking chocolate milk from a spoon.

"I love it because it tastes colder and more metalier!"

The exclamation point is warranted as there was genuine excitement. I wouldn't be surprised if the excitement also caused me to break into laughable dance as happens every day of my life.

It really does taste colder, though. And metalier.