smoothie like butter

To my horror, I realized I had to venture to the mall to get one last present on the weekend before Christmas. And it couldn't just be any old ghetto, uncrowded mall, it had to be Lenox, the mall of the Great Food Court Project, but also a very popular mall guaranteed to be absolutely packed. It's the kind of mall with high-end stores that makes you look around and go, "Recession? What recession?" There were LINES to get on the escalator. I broke a sweat. To get to just one store and back out took me an hour.

Anyways. To reward myself for my effort I decided to get a sweet treat from the food court as part of the Great Food Court Project. Because the line at Haagen Dazs was kinda long I headed over to Freshens Smoothies and Yogurt. This is a place that used to be in the food court at Emory, and I have long admired this chain for their ability to turn their windowed countertop into a fruit display. They make fruit look so good, even when encased in glass.

But ordering a smoothie has gotten a lot more complicated since my college days. There were a few basic categories: fat-free smoothies, non-dairy smoothies, low-cal smoothies and tropical oasis smoothies. So you had to figure out which category you wanted, and then hope that there was a fruit combination within that group that you liked. Then, you had to decide if you want a BOOST. I don't know who thought of BOOSTs first, if it was Jamba Juice or Freshens or some other smoothie place, but I'd be interested in some sort of scientific study of their alleged benefits. Whenever I get a free boost, I get the one that's geared toward women, but then I walk around feeling nervous that I might spontaneously become pregnant.

In addition to smoothies, every single other beverage you could think of is available now, including sodas, vitamin water, icees and juice, in case you want the taste of fruit but not a smoothie I guess. Also, there was something called Thrive frozen yogurt, which made promises to improve my immune system, though the menu board was suspiciously mum on how that would be accomplished. You can also get milkshakes with this magical miracle cure yogurt. There are also soft serve candy blasts, which is basically a Blizzard if you speak Dairy Queen.

I settled on a frozen coffee drink. How much was sugar, and how much was coffee? It's impossible to say. But it was delicious.

The food court was crowded for 3 pm, with many people enjoying some sort of meal that was either a late lunch or an early dinner. In fact, while I was taking my Freshens notes, several people were sorta standing around my table, ready to pounce if I left or perhaps even to guilt me into leaving, as if by merely enjoying a beverage I didn't deserve an entire table. I gave them the stink eye, which I hope sent the message that I was in the midst of an important anthropological and sociological study of food courts, but who knows if they understood. Tensions were running high. So after I finished taking notes, I got the hell out of there.

As I sat in my car for what seemed like an eternity, just trying to get out of the parking garage, I noticed that my Freshens cup promised that the drink inside would nourish, invigorate, energize, refresh and provide me with fuel for my body and mind. A tall order, and perhaps on some days such a promise could have been kept. But even a vat full of Freshens wouldn't have prepared me for the hell that is a mall parking lot at the holidays.