Yesterday while grocery shopping I had an attack of childhood nostalgia. There was one of those free standing bins they put up at the end of aisles full of bags of spice drops. You know, those jelly-ish domes coated in crystal sugar, their assorted colors hinting of the intense spice-flavors waiting to be unleashed on your taste buds? Tons of happy memories of movie outings as a child… I fell for it.
Last night, I cut open the colorful pouch and dipped in while watching Traitors. The first one, hmm, well, it was very green so I was expecting spearmint. I guess it was spearmint, but so mild. The next one was a pallid yellow. I’m not sure which spice yellow is most frequently – allspice maybe? – but these were lemon. Faintly. The next I drew out were another green. Then two more lemon. Then a nice bright orange – clove, maybe? Nope. Wimpy orange. And future dips brought only more yellow and green and orange. I finally turned on the light and dumped out the bag.
That’s all there were! These ‘assorted spice gumdrops’’ included two pallid fruit flavored varieties and a single weak herb sorta spice one! No reds, no purples, no blacks, not even whites!
Where were the cinnamon ones? Anise? Clove? Peppermint? Wintergreen?
Nowhere, that’s where. I was so bummed. This morning I flung the rest of the bag out into the area where I feed birds and the occasional squirrels and such. Maybe something will l at least get some good from the calories in the sugar.
So, what other foods have disappointed you lately? Crushed childhood memories, perhaps?
I’ve always liked the spice drops as well myself. But they haven’t been disappointing.
The things that tend to disappoint me are more along the lines of home-prepared dishes where apparently the first time I had it, whoever cooked it had caught lightning in a bottle, and I’ve never had it so delicious ever since.
For example, I like “Texas Trash” (a variety of homemade Chex mix), but my childhood memories of it were that it was exceptionally intense and delicious, but nothing I’ve had since has come close to measuring up. And it’s not like my wife’s a bad cook or anything; I think I’m just chasing some sort of unrealistic Platonic ideal of Texas Trash that I’ll never actually achieve.
As far as commercial foods go, I think the recently most disappointing food was the “Na Chouffe” non-alcoholic version of the Belgian La Chouffe beer. I know they’re non-alcoholic, but still, it’s awful. Like barely drinkable. I was hoping for so much more out of a Belgian brewer.
For full disclosure, I am not on any sort of restricted diet or anything, but my best friend is. So I’m kind of trying out all the NA beers so he doesn’t have to, since I’ve gone beer drinking with him for 30+ years now and know what he likes. Plus, it’s an bid for connection and all that therapy stuff.
I love New England style creamy clam chowder. One of the local supermarkets has it sometimes at their hot soup stand, but they never have it in their refrigerated soup section, I presume because of short shelf life.
But I had a hankering for it and, in desperation, bought a can of Campbell’s Chunky New England clam chowder. Nope, nope. I mean, it was food, it filled your belly, but as to its culinary attributes, I ask you to imagine wallpaper paste with chunks of potato in it, and maybe a clam in there somewhere.
JFC, people, it should theoretically be possible to can a decent clam chowder. If it costs twice as much or three times as much, fine, at least make a decent soup.
This is why, with very few exceptions, I avoid canned foods.
ISTM that this has nothing to do with cookery and everything to do with rose-colored memories. And the novelty of kidliness. Everything is super tasty (or super awful) and super exciting when you’re age e.g. 7.
I can conjur up memories of party food from my childhood that was pure ambrosia. I bet Duncan Hines isn’t really much different now than then. It was my perceptions, and 60 years of savoring and renewing the memory, that make its then so exquisite now.
You absolutely can get decent canned clam chowder. But buying it from Campbell’s was a doomed effort. After all:
Progresso brand clam chowder is marginally better. Still, evidence of actual pieces of clam is mostly theoretical. What I do sometimes is open a can of chopped clams and mix the clams and some of the clam juice into the soup.
But nothing beats freshly made clam chowder, such as is made by my local supermarket which, honestly, is comparable to that at a decent restaurant, along with most of their other fresh hot soups. The only problem being that they only have it occasionally. I think the sterilization process involved in canning spells doom for most foods, even if good ingredients are used, which they rarely are.
One exception to my avoidance of canned foods in general is Bush’s Homestyle beans, but only if made with lots of sauteed white onion and Bullseye Hickory Smoke barbecue sauce!
And, though I know many will disagree, I have a strange soft spot for Campbell’s tomato soup as an accompaniment to sandwiches. That’s the only other exception. But otherwise my only other use for Campbell’s anything is their vegetable broth concentrate that I use for making rice. It comes in tiny little cartons that are supposed to be mixed with about 4 parts water. I use about two parts water and throw in some dehydrated porcini mushrooms and it makes a potent, versatile rice.
Totally agree that fresh-made clam chowder is far superior to anything canned, and also that it’s probably almost impossible to find a really good canned soup; since the very process of canning the soup requires compromises to be made in the inherent quality.
Dammit, now you got me craving a nice homemade clam chowder, and I don’t have any clams on hand
But how do you really separate that from regular old “not as good the second time”? I mean, I’ve had meals at restaurants that were fantastic the first time, and not nearly so amazing the second, and I can’t honestly tell if it’s some kind of lightning in a bottle situation where all the variables coincided to produce a sublime experience and the second time was more ordinary, or if it’s all in how I’m remembering it for whatever reason. And home-cooked dishes are even more so, because of the added variability of the home kitchen.
As far as first-time disappointments go, I think mine would have to be Bun Bo Hue, the Vietnamese beef noodle soup. It sounded really tasty on the menu, and I’ve read lots of reviews and articles extolling how delicious it is.
So one evening at our favorite local pho place, I ordered bun bo Hue, and wow, was that a disappointment. The broth was strange and not great, the meat was ok, but most of it was some sort of sausage type product I didn’t like and congealed blood pieces that still had the shape of the can on parts, kind of like a horrid version of canned cranberry sauce. Needless to say, I didn’t finish that, and grabbed a hamburger on the way home.
Wegmans sells hot clam chowder now and then. It’s not at all bad, but if I want to bump it up I throw in a can of minced clams, a good pinch of thyme, a sprinkle of old bay and maybe a touch of cream or half and half. I usually have all these things anyway. Never had any leftovers, and just compliments.
Darn good question. I too have had fantastic meals at places that seemingly never quite lived back up to that level when I returned.
I chalk that up to my mood or the company I was with or whatever. Or being just the right amount of hungry.
ISTM that this often happens on my very first visit. Which suggests there’s something about the novelty of a new place, an unfamiliar menu to explore, different decor and servers and … All of which add up to especially memorable experiences.
On a more practical note …
In the case of something like a big steak, different pieces of the same weight, cut, and vendor will differ a bit in tenderness or fattiness or whatever. And e.g. “medium rare” has a range of donenesses that are still acceptable to the kitchen. And any given piece of meat will be differently done across its extent.
Once in awhile by luck you’ll draw the best piece out of that case of 24 nearly identical steaks, it’ll come out unusually uniformly done, and by luck exactly to your personal favorite level of e.g. “medium rare”. The result is a transcendenal steak. The next one you order there? Probably not so much.
My larger point to you was just that the longer ago the original memory of [whatever], the more it drifts from the reality as you experienced it at the time. Favorable memories get exaggerated favorably. Kidly memories are very prone to that. Whether about food or anything else.
