The Debriefing is a weekly series detailing my experiences completing missions in Checkverse. Checkverse is an app I built where you can share what you’re doing by snapping photos to prove your accomplishments in real-time. The app is full of interesting missions (hand-picked lists of objectives) to complete. You can even create your own missions to challenge other folks.
You think you’ve got it all figured out don’t you!? You hate black licorice and love The Godfather. That’s it, end of story. You know who you are and what you like. Well forget all that! Toss out those preconceptions! There’s a whole world out there. You’ve experienced very little of it. 7 billion+ people can make a lot of stuff to look into. This blog is where I try to make a dent in that giant menu of life experiences available to us all. I’m going to chronicle my journey one Checkverse mission at a time and this week I’m going to kick it off with something we can all enjoy: bagels.
The Mission
No, I’m not the most adventurous eater. I crunch dry cereal and sip black coffee. When I was a part of an office bagel pool, I got the same bagel every week (except the bagel-less weeks where thieving visitors would wander in thinking we were having some kind of bagel charity). I was a sesame bagel man through and through, that is until I took on the mission “Bagel Sampler”.
My girlfriend and I moved to Brooklyn this past August. NYC is known for its bagels. Everyone is always talking about the bagels. So I figured, hey, if I’m going to make an app about doing stuff, I should start with trying these “amazing” bagels everyone is raving about “because the bagel water is better”. Without any research beyond my vague memory of Bruegger’s offerings, I created “Bagel Sampler”, a Checkverse mission that challenges you to try the 12 bagel varieties that I thought were pretty popular:
- Plain
- Sesame
- Poppy seed
- Onion
- Garlic
- Everything
- Wheat
- Egg
- Cinnamon raisin
- Blueberry
- Salt
- Pumpernickel
The Debrief
I’ve had some of these bagels before, for sure, but never from NYC. With the highly rated “Bagelsmith” establishment a few blocks away, I was perfectly positioned to make a fresh run through these rings of dough. My strategy was simple: 1) Wake up 2) Walk to Bagelsmith 3) Eat a bagel. Almost every day I awoke and walked briskly (you have to walk fast here) down the street to try that day’s new bagel. Over a few grueling weeks of bagel consumption I learned some things about myself and about the world:
- At Bagelsmith, it’s pretty cheap to get an egg on a bagel. Definitely cheaper than if you got turkey or other meats. This was shocking. I love eggs. Why are eggs so cheap especially when they have to cook them for the bagel? Maybe it’s cause eggs are so abundant? According to the American Egg Board, 233 million eggs are laid per day in the US (keep that in mind for your weekly trivia jaunt).
- Cinnamon raisin bagels are great with salty cream cheese. I usually hate raisins, but something about olive or scallion cream cheese mixed with the sweet taste of randomly distributed grandma grapes is incredible. I highly recommend it.
- I’m done with salt bagels. They’re too much work. How many times have I thought to myself “Ooo a pretzel AND a bagel!? Great idea!” Wrong. Salt bagels are always, always too salty. Most of the experience of eating a salt bagel is just scraping and scrubbing to save yourself from upping your blood pressure, which ironically, ups your blood pressure. I‘m getting too old for this salt.
Well those were some smaller discoveries sprinkled along my bagel odyssey, but one thing changed my bagel life forever…
A Major Revelation
Every video game has a boss. The boss is the last and most epic challenge of the entire game. The “Bagel Sampler” mission has a boss, the one bagel I’d never tried before: pumpernickel, the odd-ball of the bagel world. I delayed trying the pumpernickel bagel as long as I could. As I checked-off more and more bagels and got closer and closer to the mystery flavor I feared, I started to wonder if this whole idea of trying new things was an naive one. Maybe I had it all figured out already. Maybe I really did know everything there is to know about me. Then the day came. The Day of the Pumpernickel.
Still terrified and not looking forward to wasting $2.49 on something I was sure I’d hate, I decided to lessen the blow by getting a “pumpernickel everything” bagel. It’s still pumpernickel, just with some stowaways. I got to the counter, paid for the coffee and the bagel and then I waited. Soon enough I heard my name called and I was handed the payload. I carried the one ring I feared to a standing counter along the wall and mentally prepared for my fate. I unwrapped the bagel, took a bite and…
…changed my mind. Pumpernickel is awesome!
So there you have it. I like pumpernickel bagels now. I say this as an experienced veteran whose slain 12 varieties of boiled dough. As a result, I’ve proven to myself that there’s amazing things out there for me to experience, some things right under my nose. I mean if pumpernickel is good, then what other of my misgivings are amiss?
Till next time,
Anton
