So I was in the grocery store the other night (one of my favorite things to do) when a bunch of food mysteries crossed my mind. A few nights before, I had prepared some citrusy chicken wings for dinner, and they were delicious, but they were enormous. It made me think about the rest of the chicken. It made me think of chickens in general. How do they get so big? What kind of miserable, fast lives do they have to live to produce enormous wings that someone will throw under the broiler a few days later and then forget about? Where do these chickens come from? Some kind of Giant Chicken ranch?
I promise I will not begin any sentence with “When I was a kid.” But years ago (when I was not an adult) chicken was smaller, and chicken was tastier. No matter where I shop these days, and no matter how I prepare it, chicken tastes plasticky to me. It is not the chicken I remember. It is twice the size of chickens I remember, but that’s probably because American dinner plates are now the size of what my mom used to call a “platter.”
This is not my mom, but it's probably how she'd look if she wore glasses and if she happened to see the size of dinner plates in 2012.
Speaking of chicken, did you know there are about 75 varieties of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup? I didn’t, either, because I don’t eat canned soup and I don’t buy cereal, so those aisles are largely foreign territory for me. But I had a coupon for 4 cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup which I was going to donate to the food shelf. Naturally I became dazed and confused trying to find them, and of course picked up four cans of the wrong stuff, and then had to hold up my grocery line while I ran back for the right ones. (I know. I hate when someone else does that, so I apologize to everyone in that line who had better things to do with their time than to wait for me. I saw you rolling your eyes, but I forgive you. Been there.)
There is Homestyle Chicken Noodle, Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle, Chicken Noodle with Vegetables, Healthy Choice Chicken Noodle, Low Sodium Chicken Noodle… God. I thought of simply running out of the store, but I figured security would be all over that. So I get back to the counter, breathlessly apologize to everyone, and leave with my (probably 15 cent) savings. Mission accomplished.
When the clerk told me I’d picked up the wrong cans, I thought about just buying them to be done, until she told me they were $1.55. Apiece. That would be about $6 for four cans of sodium-enriched plasticky soup. Who buys that stuff? For $6 you could buy an entire (again, plasticky and genetically enlarged) chicken, roast the thing for two dinners and still have parts left to make your own soup. Tasty chicken soup, too.
Meanwhile, down the meat and poultry displays, I am saddened to relate that you can no longer buy a pork or beef roast with a lot of marbling in it. You know what marbling is, of course… it’s fat. It’s the stuff that tastes good. It’s the stuff that makes roasts juicy and tender, taking you back to winter dinners at your aunt Kay’s house. (Okay, MY aunt Kay.) The reason we can no longer buy these is that the public demands less fat in their cuts of meat, and farmers have responded, and the resulting product is generally dry and stringy. I weep for a 1950 pork roast.
Yeah. I don't know, either.
In the produce department, I have to wonder what’s happened to lemons over the years. I remember those small pretty yellow lemons that had thin skins and you could squeeze juice out of them. Remember? Maybe it’s just where I shop, but I can’t seem to find them anymore. The lemons I find these days are huge, with pebbly skins that are about half an inch thick, and the lemon itself is dry once you finally get to it. Where are the good lemons?
Oh, pretty juicy lemons ... how I miss you!
Limes seem to have been spared this fate. You can still buy good limes.
Whew! That was close.
Can you even buy yellow grapefruit anymore? The pink ones are good; juicy and sweet, but where are the tart yellow ones? Did America give up on those, too?
(Where was I when this vote was taking place?)
I can remember when you could buy celery that came with a thick rubber band around it, and I remember when each piece of fruit did not have to have a sticker on it.
Yeah, that’s how old I am.
And really: do we need that many brands of cereal? Cereal at my store takes up both sides of an entire aisle, except for Bob’s Red Mill oatmeal, which is found in the health food section. What does that tell ya? (“Yeah, we know this is all sugary non-food crap, but the kids seem to like it….”)
Do I need to start shopping elsewhere?
Those are my grocery store gripes for this week. Do you have any? Dish, she said, keeping with the food theme.
That's the kind of crop circle I'd like to leave.
How did you miss the Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Soup? You’re not a very careful shopper!
Soon you will achive the epiphany that people “of a certain age” are NOT in the target demographic of anyone selling anything in the grocery store.
Or any other store, for that matter.
Well. Now that you have tapped my inner Andy Rooney, I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the subject of fresh tomatoes, which seem to taste a little less tomatoey each season. Of course, there ARE tasty types of produce that didn’t seem to exist when I was a tad. Honey Crisp Apples. And Baby Cut Carrots, although I’m pretty sure there’s nothing immature about those ‘babies’. Full grown adult carrots, chopped up and thrown into some rejuvenising machinery. I suspect a more accurate name would be Rock Tumbler Carrots.
Mr Rooney,
I’d long ago given up on tomatoes. You are lucky to live with such a wonderful gardener! Salads in a bag have got to go… no matter how much you wash them, they still taste like chemicals. Years ago Mad Magazine had a cartoon feature about how toothpicks were ground down from huge logs, and I suspect that’s how “baby carrots” are made, too. Those things are not very good, either, because they taste watery and bland. Real carrots have survived our efforts to chemically engineer foods, I guess. Perhaps they are the cockroaches of the vegetable world?
Patt
PS: I think Honey Crisp apples were developed in Minnesota. Huzzah!