I’ve been spending time in the Midwest this winter where my husband is working on a project.

Having lived in quiet, idyllic places for the last 25 years, being in a big city has been somewhat of an eye-opener. And as someone who prizes the authentic, some of it I like and a lot of it I don’t.

The biggest bane to my existence is a place across the street called the Quik Trip. It is the granddaddy of all convenience stores that happens to sell gas – almost as an afterthought.

Walking in there is a bit like going to Disney World for the first time, where everything is clean and bright and overwhelming. You stand at the door and you’re overcome with the feeling that you just want to do it all, but you don’t even know where to start.

Should you roll around in the perfect aisles of potato chips first, lit softly from above like in a museum? Or should you dash over to the six shiny kegs of ice tea sporting a variety of flavors like blue mango and papaya, sweetened or unsweetened and with little packs of lemon juice for extra zing.

There’s a wall of soda, with its 25 perfect nozzles lined up in a row with every conceivable flavor of pop known to man and two different types of ice. There’s a milkshake machine that takes one of three flavors of ice cream, lifts it up into its innards and swirls it around, delivering a perfect shake in minutes. And there are smoothies, too, in 22 flavors and something called a Freezoni, which offers endless flavors of icy slush.

Are you getting the picture yet?

If this weren’t enough, there’s a hot dog bar with six varieties of hot dogs and sausages and a row or two of taquitos. There’s a nacho bar, a pastry display case with fresh baked goods and a world of coffee with machines that will deliver fresh whipped cream, coffee flavorings and five different kinds of cappuccino.

But what really gets me is that there’s a restaurant inside – a real restaurant that makes take-out sandwiches and other things.

All of this commerce is expertly overseen by an operations center in the middle of the store, where no fewer than six employees in clean uniforms ring up the endless drinks that come in eight different cup sizes and a choice of materials: styrofoam or plastic.

As a person who has, on many occasions, extoled the virtues of carrots and the merits of juicing and eating whole foods, I am ashamed to admit that I’ve been lured to the dark side. Even worse, I barely even put up a fight.

It wasn’t long after I arrived here before I was dancing back to my car with chocolate milkshakes and a paper tray filled with nachos with every imaginable topping. I developed a favorite cup size and style and could soon pick out the corresponding red lid in a sea of lids without fumbling.

I was hauling giant cokes home with giant straws and, on occasion, snow cones in a shade of chemical blue.

It wasn’t long before I looked forward to my daily trip there, addicted to the thrill of choice, to the color of things, to the feeling I’d found an oasis on the corner that would feed me stuff from a forbidden menu.

“I think I need to get back to the lake,” I told my husband. “I need to pick blueberries and visit a farm stand.”

Bad food is just too easy. It’s too easy, and now it’s purposely alluring. They know what they’re doing when they outfit 6,000 square feet in these new convenience stores. They can make a bag of potato chips look as good as a T-bone steak at a roadhouse in Texas.

“Ten kinds of snow cones aren’t enough!” the marketers yell. “Make it 22!”

The truth is, I haven’t had this much sugar since I was 8 years old and spent every cent of my allowance on candy for an entire year.

I finally cut myself off from Quik Trip and for a while, I’d stare at it from across the street, kind of missing the thrill of it all.

“This is obscene,” I’d tell my husband. “Who lusts after a convenience store?”

“Maybe we should move,” he offered.

For the first time in my life, I’ve joined a gym. I’m working off weeks of things that come in shades of blue and yellow and 30-ounce plastic cups.

I still miss the oddly shaped ice cubes, though.

Ice cubes just taste better there.