conquistadoritos

Hi. My name is Steve -- and I am a junk food addict.

They say the first step of any 12-step program is to release power over your own life.

That is easy. Age has done it for me. Getting older is a perfect way to realize we may be responsible for our decisions, but we control little else other than our own moral agency.

That is certainly true with junk food for me. When I started my exercise program about a year ago, I swept my shelves of snacks. I had to. If it was here, I would eat it. And it was the prime cause of my weight gain.

My years as a junk food addict taught me quite a bit about what tasted good or bad -- at least, to me. If I get bored with a food, it is easy to quit it. And the universal use of chili and lime in Mexico quickly grew old when I moved hrere in 2009.

I stopped eating chips and snacks, and immediately lost thirty pounds. But, the local stores soon started importing new flavors of snacks -- and my pounds returned.

A couple of years ago, Doritos began experimenting with new flavors. Some were horrendous; others Pavlovian in their temptation. The best worked because of the bizarre combination of tastes.

When Darrel and Christy arrived, one of the first things they did was to purchase chips and nuts. Because the snacks were in the house, I fell into my old trap.

With them gone, I thought I could get back on the road to recovery. But that was not to be. A young Mexican woman accompanied me on my trip to Manzanillo to see if I could find a cellular telephone plan that would work in Colombia. (That story will wait for another day.)

We stopped at La Comer to buy a few items. Raid. Pine nuts. That sort of thing.

She bought a bag of Doritos. A flavor I had not yet seen. But the "awesome mix vol. 2" and "chili and spices flavor" caught my attention.

I will hand it to Doritos. It knows its youth audience. Other than the retro look of the tape cassette, the package was stylish with its silver foil.

But the contents struck me as being a bit -- well, unappetizing.

The chips looked as if they had been leftovers from a chilaquiles breakfast served on Revolution Day 2012. The red dye in the corn chip was clever. But the teal-dyed spices looked far more like a scientific experiment gone wrong.

My young friend was not deterred. She thought the color combination was "cool." Her word, not mine. And that the flavor was "perfecto." On that, I agreed. Visually, I would give it a D. For taste, it was an A+.

But that was merely a dalliance. From here on out, the likes will not enter my front gate.

Instead, I will be far more oriented to a nice chicken kumquat stir fry -- that should be tomorrow's lunch.

No chips required.