I’ll have a muffin – but hold the sprinkles
Sept. 4, 2005

If you live in Dallas and you've been thinking about going on the low-carbohydrate Atkin's diet, you may have waited too long.

The ideal time to start would have been … oh, last spring, maybe. Before a local cabdriver allegedly started sprinkling dried feces on pastries in a local supermarket.

That’s right -- 49-year-old Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh went on trial this week, accused of putting fecal matter on pastries at a Fiesta grocery store.

In the area of More Information Than I Really Need, police said the cabby would dry his own poo, either with a microwave or by simply letting it air dry, and grate it with a cheese grater. He would then take it to the supermarket, where he gave selected baked goods a little “personal touch.”

News reports did not indicate if it was finely or coarsely grated but a store employee testified that, "It looked like cracked pepper at the time." “Crack pepper” might be a little more descriptive.

In his opening statement, prosecutor Taly Haffar told jurors that store workers endured seven months of customer complaints that baked goods "smelled and tasted like manure."  A couple of questions sprin g to mind here. Number one is, how did the customers know what manure tastes like? Number two (if you'll pardon the pun) is, if they know what manure tastes like, what's so bad about this particular batch? I mean, how much worse could it be? If you know the answer to that last one, please keep it to yourself.

Nahidmobarekeh's defense attorney did not give an opening statement. And who could blame him? What are you going to say about a client who dries his own doo-doo and sprinkles it on pastries? This is clearly a case where it's better just to keep your mouth shut. Your nose, too.

I have friends who served in the armed forces, and speak with a certain fondness about a mess hall staple consisting of chipped-beef gravy served over toast. Army cooks refer to this dish as "SOS," which in polite company stands for "stuff on a shingle." Nahidmobarekeh may have stumbled on the perfect dessert to complement this delicacy: "COC," or "crap on a crepe."

Nahidmobarekeh faces two felony charges of tampering with consumer products and could get 20 years in prison if convicted. If he goes to the big house I'd love to hear his conversations with fellow inmates. When you're making small talk with lifers who are doing time for things like murder and rape, being a poo-sprinkler seems kind of lame.

If this story hasn't put you completely off of baked goods, it's not too late to stop ordering sprinkles on your donuts. Better safe than sorry.