This is dried apricot paste. It's kind of like fruit leather, only a little more sticky. It has an intense apricot flavor, and it makes a great (if sticky) snack. I've loved this stuff since I was a kid, and had completely forgotten it existed until this summer, when my sister-in-law brought some to my Mom's house. When I told her how much I loved it, she bought me a few packages to bring home.
Apparently, the TSA employees at the airport don't see a lot of dried apricot paste. If you're going to travel with this stuff, here is my advice:
1) Do not pack it at the very bottom of a suitcase which is then over-filled with clothes.
2) Do not tell the TSA guy that you hope your bag doesn't explode when he unzips it. (I meant that the clothes would all fall out! Really, that's all I meant!)
3) Do not babble on at length about getting this stuff in Middle Eastern markets.
I speculate: do dense materials like apricot paste resemble plastic explosives? I have no idea. It was "interesting" enough to them to make them unpack my entire bag to get to it.
Thankfully the TSA guys did not take me seriously as a terrorist threat. I'm sure that's because I was standing there with my three kids around me while they went through my bag. I'm also sure that my incoherent babbling didn't help, but under the circumstances it didn't hurt, either.
When they finally got to the apricot paste, they ran it through the little machine that tests for dangerous chemical signatures,and of course it passed with no difficulty -- so they were then left with the Herculean task of shoving everything back into the suitcase. I really felt sorry for them, but they were good-natured about it. It's their job, after all.
Now I know better than to overstuff a suitcase. It was never a great idea, but nowadays it's even less of one. Remember, random bags are pulled out for searches, and if you have too much stuff in your bag, who knows what's going to happen to it. It's only stuff, right? You can always get a bigger bag, another bag, or ship it, if you have to.
1 comment:
That's up there with me having a rubber hammer taken away. Why was I traveling with a rubber hammer? My student-daughter needed it to put together some exercise equipment. The TSA said no tools allowed. Okay, but I can do more damage hitting someone over the head with my lap top. Oh the rules, the rules! Let's hope they do the job.
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