Stolen Steam Bun

The case of the stolen steam bun came about in this fashion: I took a lunch break today at Veggie Heaven. I was ushered into the back room (I had no idea that they even had a back room) as the front room was full...I ordered my usual: Lucky 7 (funny little vegan "meat" balls with veggies in a spicy sauce with brown rice). Five minutes later an indifferent young man who did not speak English tossed a funny looking white blob onto my table. I pondered what it might be...I thought perhaps they had started serving weird white blobs as appetizers the way Mexican restaurants serve tortilla chips: free of charge and a nice filler/time killer while you wait for your meal. I poked it with one of the lime green chopsticks that had been waiting for me to pick them up and use them, though most assuredly they had not been intended for poking white blobs. It should have bounced back but it had a slight stickiness that failed to produce the rebound I had anticipated. I then poked deeper and discovered that inside of this white blob was some brown stuff with chunks in it. I went ahead and tore off a piece and took a bite...not bad. At about that time, the indifferent non-English speaker tossed another thing onto my table that I did not recognize. This time I stopped him. "What is this?" I asked. He did not reply, shrugging his shoulders and trying to escape. I asked again, "What IS this?" Then the guy at the table behind me called out that perhaps it was the food HE had ordered! I carried the food to him and sure enough, it was his "usual," not mine. It then occurred to me that I had eaten part of a white blob not intended for me. I grabbed a menu (conveniently loaded with pictures of weird looking blobs and funky mixtures of seemingly ad hoc oriental looking food) and looked up the picture of the white blob. "Steam Bun," the caption beneath my white blob's likeness read. I asked the man behind me if he had ordered a Steam Bun. Indeed he had. I then carried the half-eaten, ill-fated Steam Bun back up to the front and explained to a waitress that a mistake had been made. I felt sheepish because clearly, before correcting this mistake, I had eaten part of it. She gave me a nasty look and took the blob and disappeared. The man at the table behind me got a new Steam Bun and all is well in the land of things that can but should not be poked with lime green chopsticks.

In other news, just watched the debates...speaking of white blobs...