the other day i was home sick from work and was in need of comfort food, so i had a can of chef boyardee beef ravioli. i’m kind of a purist with chef boyardee- i’ll eat the beef ravioli and spaghetti but won’t touch the overstuffed or pizza or italian sausage or cheeseburger or any of the other varieties that are out there.
i also enjoy mac and cheese from a box, i actually like publix’s house brand better than kraft. it makes a good side dish, or it can be a meal in itself.
still like soft batch chocolate chip cookies. yum.
on the other hand, i recently discovered i’m no longer a fan of totino’s pizza rolls. i haven’t bought them in years, but they were buy one get one free a couple months back so i picked up a couple of bags. i ate the cheese ones even though eh, and the bag of cheesy garlic ones are still sitting in the freezer. i think the moment has passed.
next up are the little debbie snack cakes. i used to love the hell out of oatmeal creme pies and swiss cake rolls and the brownies. no more. it tastes exactly like what it is-cake like something or other with sweetened lard filling. blech.
capri suns fall in the middle. i picked up a box on a particularly hot day last week and they taste pretty much how i remember, but they have kind of a weird aftertaste, i guess from the container.
For some of us when we were growing up junk food items (Coke, candy, cookies…) were a special treat which we only had occasionally. So when we had them they tasted very good. Now we can have them whenever we want and they no longer taste special.
Mom’s Gross Macaroni Salad. Cubed Velveeta, chopped green olives, mayo and milk, all mixed with cooked and chilled elbow mac. Sounds disgusting. Looks absolutely disgusting. Smells even worse. But it tastes like the happy tears of angels.
I swear to freakin god the Cookie Crisp cereal recipe is different. Those tasted JUST like cookies when I had them in the 80s. Now they taste like…cookie shaped…slightly sweetened…crap
KFC. When I was young (and it was called Kentucky Fried Chicken), I lived for the special occasions when I could sink my teeth into those moist, crispy, delectable pieces. I didn’t even mind the hugs and smooches from the powdered old ladies at family reunions, because someone always brought a bucket from the colonel.
Now, I don’t know if my taste buds have changed or if the quality has really taken a dive, because I cannot stand that greasy, fatty, rangy-tasting mess. Just smelling it makes me nauseous.
For me, the two things were Spaghetti-O’s and Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Spaghetti-O’s are limp pasta in a ketchup sauce with a couple of ladles of sugar added. Campbell’s Tomato Soup is a little better, but it is salty and has no texture of any kind. It’s like a warm tomato shake. There are so many better alternatives available now that it’s hard for me to understand why anyone still buys it.
The tomato sauce and butter sandwich: Loved them from when I was 8, up until about age 20. A few times a year I think about making one, and then feel a little ill. Maybe tomato sauce isn’t as nice as it used to be, but as a kid I’d put it on everything. Nowdays I only use it a few times a year.
Fried soy sauce eggs (eggs beaten with enough soy sauce to turn the lot a dark gray, and then fried): Invented as a joke to gross people out in 1986. I actually liked it, and then had it at least once a week for about 10 years. I haven’t had it for about 20 years, and probably never will again.
The party pie pizza fry: Invented in 1990. Party pies cut into cubes, fried in oil, and then simmered in a thick pizza sauce. It was a weekly favorite, but I don’t think I’d ever eat a party pie again, let alone with pizza sauce.
As I wrote this, I think I’ve realised the common element - all these dishes were very salty. I guess I liked salty when I was young, but I grew out of it in my early twenties. I can’t say if it was a natural change, or if the message that ‘salt is bad’ in the media had an effect on me.
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (Deluxe)
Chef Boyardee Spaghetti
Chef Boyardee Lasagna
Hungry Man frozen dinners
Nostalgic foods that now suck:
Franco American Spaghetti O’s
Oreo’s
Totino’s Pizza Rolls
Even my beloved Cocoa Puffs don’t taste right anymore. I’m eating them right now, but they seem kind of, just, well, not right anymore.
Foods that still work:
Ground Spam and velveeta sandwiches under the broiler, yum.
Grilled cheese with tomato soup.
Hostess Orange cupcakes (may they become available again soon.)
Foods that stopped working:
Spaghettios or any canned pasta product
Cap’n Crunch
Peanut butter and butter sandwiches
Any other hostess product.
I wouldn’t say no to a Spam or canned corned beef sandwich, on occasion.
I used to like Campbell’s Chicken Rice soup, though I think now it’s pretty flavorless. I once in a blue moon heat it up in cold weather, but used as a base, and add a few things to tart it up. Chicken, vegetables, scallions, soy sauce.
Raspberry (if I can find it) or grape Kool Aid, not too sweet, using less water than recommended. This is good mixed with plain seltzer water over a big tumbler of ice.
Frozen Banquet fried chicken, or fried chicken TV dinners with mashed potatoes and peas! I still have a craving for that stuff, though since We’re All On A Diet around here, I’d have a lot of 'splaining to do.
I’m finding a similar pattern too. Case in point: I would have died for Good Humor chocolate eclair bars as a kid because I ADORED that gooey chocolate center. My husband brought home a package of them not too long ago to surprise me. I tore open one, took a bite…and promptly spit the rest of it out because now it’s too damned sweet :shudder:
OTOH I’m starting to develop a taste for salty stuff, something which I never had as a kid (yes, I was the weirdo who never ate potato chips, hot dogs, or nearly anything else processed because I hated the salty taste). It’s very weird and I don’t know why it’s happening.
Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli is the reason I came into this thread. I don’t eat it anymore, but I did up until I was 30. It was one of the few things I could stomach in my first trimester of pregnancy.
Also, Campbell’s Chunky soups are still awesome. Again, don’t eat them anymore (don’t eat any processed foods, really), but the chicken corn chowder and the sirloin burger are both fucking delicious. I made something in the crock pot recently that tasted a touch like the sirloin burger, and I was in heaven. I think I might have to actually try to do that again, only this time make some adjustments to the recipe so that it has the same veggies as the soup did.
Stuff that works:
Kraft Mac and Cheese
Hostess Cupcakes
M&M’s
Stuff that doesn’t
Spaghetti-O’s (except on very rare occasions when I kinda crave them)
Dolly Madison Zingers (they completely changed them from when I was a kid. Now they taste like vaguely sugary sponges)
Cocoa Puffs (again, complete change of recipe. I remember them before they had the chocolate coating, and they were wonderful. I still like them but not nearly as much.
Most Campbell’s soups (I craved Chicken Noodle O’s the other day and they were bland, boring, and utterly forgettable)
I still eat McDonald’s and KFC occasionally, but neither tastes like I remember them as a kid. McD’s fries are still good but the quarter pounders are too dry and salty. Sometimes I crave KFC and that lasts until I actually eat it and remember I don’t like it much anymore.
Most stuff with sucrose is associated in my mind with feeling tired afterward so I avoid it even though it tastes good.
Oddly enough, I disliked mayo and chef boy ardee while growing up, and thankfully they turned out to be bad for you as well. I still dislike canned spaghetti pasta products: when something is so salty that it smells salty, you know it really packs in that sodium! I also still hate mayo except in things with such overpowering other ingredients that I can’t taste it, and when that taste is good enough that it will overcome the cloying texture of the mayo.
McD & KFC taste the way “they used to” in Canada, because of what they feed the livestock. I noticed this in the 90s and maintain it’s still a valid observation.