Step 1: Admitting your addiction

Damn you, Trader Joe’s! Damn you and your damn tasty products!

Wandering the aisles of my local TJ’s I located my new addiction: dried naval orange slices. Unsweetened, unsulfured. Just little discs of dessicated citrus. Take an orange, slice it, dry it, pack it and ship it. Yes, it looks a lot like a bag of potpourri. And yes, this means the peel is still there. Don’t make that face. You eat candied orange peel, don’t you? Same thing here, just without the sugar.

These things are pure evil. I eat one. Then another. The next thing I know the entire bag is gone and I’m hunting around my office for the other bag I bought. Diabolical, I tell you! The ingredient listing is “dried California naval orange slices,” but I’m sure there’s some sort of addictive narcotic substance in there that they’re not telling me about. By the end of the bag I’ve gotten 480% of my daily dose of Vitamin C, so at least this narcotic will keep the scurvy at bay.

It’s gotten to the point that I’ve started pricing out food dehydrators at Amazon. I figure that the $35 machine would pay for itself in short order, considering that each bag of slices costs over $2.50 and contains a max of maybe two oranges. Yes, I could indeed become my own supplier of this new form of culinary crack. The idea is very tempting.