The Secrets of Chef Boyardee

The food aisle of the local Big Lots had a big display of Chef Boyardee cans. They were labeled "Spoon-Sized Pasta Shapes," but the labels were unusual - the usual photo showing the product (the "serving suggestion") was missing. Lynnafred picked up a can to take a closer look, and noticed a bil;ingual "Nutrition Facts" label (English/French) faintly showing through the red background next to Chef's picture. We decided to buy a can to see what was underneath.

At home, she carefully worked her way under the top label with a knife and then started peeling away the glued seam, revealing Chef Boyardee NHL Pasta. The pasta was shaped like little National Hockey League logos, and all the text was in English and French, for sale in Canada. The label was cluttered with graphics and information about a special contest; the lucky winner would receive tickets to the 2009 NHL All Star game!

The contest ended in December 2008. ConAgra must have found itself with thousands of unsold cans of Chef with obviously outdated labels and decided to cut their losses by sticking on a new label and sending the cans out to the remainder market.

So - the contest ran from September 29th to December 24th in 2008, and the NHL All-Star Game was on January 25, 2009. That pasta must have been pretty old, eh? Was ConAgra tarnishing the good name of Chef Boyardee by slapping on new labels and putting the stuff out at Big Lots?

Nope. Contest dates notwithstanding, the bottom of the can includes a quality assurance code and a "Best by" date of July 13, 2010. We're good until next summer if necessary.

Vintage Sunday: 1969 Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucket

Of all the strange things I've found at estate sales, this 1969 (yes, it's dated) Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket was perhaps the most unexpected. The estate sale was at a house that had more clutter than I'd ever seen before, and the sale organizers had simply opened up the house, set up a cashier's station at the front door, and let everyone sift through everything to find treasures.

I found the bucket in the attic, balanced on the bannister. I was gobsmacked to imagine that someone had finished a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken forty years ago and had actually taken the time to stash away the bucket rather than throw it away. This is true ephemera: it's an artifact of everyday life so common and so unappreciated that almost every example was thrown away after use.

Along the rim of the bucket, there are small spot illustrations suggesting situations where one might want to serve delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken. The Colonel knows that his chicken is perfect for Meetings, Guests, Parties, Traveling, Picnics, and "Mom's Day Off."

I love these little spot illustrations. Check out "Mom's Day Off," for example. That is amazing economy of line. The artist combined a bare minimum number of brushstrokes and a few splashes of red to define negative space and complete the drawings. And he made it look easy.

Also, he kind of made Mom look like some cape-and-cowled superhero launching herself into flight as she waves goodbye to the Good Citizens she has fed with chicken. Up, up, and AWAY!!

Burger King Sponsors Getafe CF, Awesome Shirts Ensue

Spanish soccer club Getafe has a new sponsor: Burger King! And as part of the sponsorship, their kit features the BK logo prominently on the front:

Now, it so happens that this sponsorship is creating something of a controversy in the world of Fútbol - not so much because of the big BK logo on the front (though that is kind of over-the-top, I admit) but because of what's printed inside the shirts:

The King is printed upside down on the inside of the shirt so players can pull the hem of the shirt over their heads and celebrate goals in stylish royal splendor. The shirts come with an "instruction sheet" which I find pretty hilarious:

If you read any footie-related message boards, you'll find that this idea is being met with some disparagement by many fans. But personally, as a fan of the King, I think these Getafe shirts are pretty damned awesome. I might even be tempted to click over to Univision to watch a Getafe match now and again in hopes of seeing a goal scored and the player royally celebrating.

And if anyone knows where I can get one of those shirts, please email me.

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Why I'm Buying Imported Charcoal

I don't like using charcoal briquettes. It's not that I'm some kind of "barbecue snob" or anything, I just prefer plain hardwood charcoal (it's usually labeled as "lump charcoal" on the bag) because it burns hotter and cleaner and it's kind of cool to see real wood embers in the bottom of the grill or fire pit or whatever.

Last year, I wrote about my disappointment with a charcoal company that seemed to have some pretty low quality-control standards (I kept finding rocks in the bags of charcoal I was buying from them.) I stopped buying that brand and switched over to buying World Classics Trading Company lump charcoal and Kingsford Charwood. World Classics is pretty good stuff, I have to admit, but it's pricier than most of the other brands. And unfortunately Kingsford - the number-one brand of charcoal - seems to have quality-control problems of their own; they don't seem to be able to pack bags of charcoal without letting in chunks of firebrick. Cooking over live coals is expensive enough as it is without getting shorted because the bag has heavy chunks of brick hidden inside, and whether it's accidental or not, I still get irritated when I'm cleaning out the ashes and find rocks and firebrick.

But recently I found a brand that I can recommend without reservation: Amigos lump charcoal, manufactured by a company called Charcoal International, Inc. in Paraguay and imported to the US by the company's offices in Miami. I first gave them a try because of the price - a full 20-pound bag was around $12.00 at a local market, a good deal because it's hard to find lump charcoal in bags larger than 8 pounds around here. And unlike most of the other lump charcoals I've used, Amigos is made of natural wood: branches, logs, tree limbs. Not scrap oak flooring or old pallets or hunks of plywood (Yeah. Plywood. Quite a surprise the day I was pouring out some of that shitty Cowboy Charcoal and got a 9-inch by 18-inch piece of perfectly carbonized plywood, like some kind of fossilized Home Depot artifact.) Although I sometimes have to give the Amigos lumps a good whack to break them into pieces that will fit into my charcoal chimney, that minor inconvenience is more than compensated for by the natural purity of the product. Charcoal International products are guilt-free, too. The wood they use is sourced from environmentally responsible, sustainably-managed plantations and mill yards.

Check this out. It's a fairly typical example of what you get when you reach into a bag of Amigo charcoal. There's no sense of scale to that picture, but the big piece standing up on the left side of the pic was almost eight inches in diameter. The branch alongside was about 10 inches long and a little over three inches in diameter. There are plenty of smaller pieces and bits in the bag too, but the large hunk of obviously natural wood set this brand apart from most of the others I find in my area.

Links:

Charcoal International Company's website.

Kingsford Charcoal website - They're a great source of info for barbecue and grilling, including recipes if you need them. Click here to go to the Kingsford Charwood page directly.

World Classics Trading Company products - an info page at Big Y (a locally-owned supermarket chain in my region.) World Classics Trading Company maintains a "placeholder" site here, but you'll get more information by either clicking on my Big Y link or by checking with a supermarket near you that carries the brand.

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The 4H Fair, and Cheeseburger Cake

My wife Maryanne and I went to the local 4H Fair last Saturday; it's the smallest of the regional agricultural fairs, but one that's important to us because the exhibitors are all kids from local farms showing off their budding skillz, and we want the kids to know that we appreciate their contribution to sustainable local farming.

We went through the livestock and poultry exhibits, playing with the chickens, petting the goats, and visiting with young dairy farmers and their prize cattle. My amazing Animal-Fu™ was at 100% power - the goats were being extra-friendly, most of the chickens came up to the edge of their cages to have their heads scratched, and even the cows wanted to nuzzle. Don't accuse me of being Dr. Doolittle, I can't understand a word they're saying, but I genuinely like beasts and they seem to like me most of the time, too.

The poultry exhibit was bigger this year than it's been for a few years. I love chickens, and we had a great time visiting the hens. Kids from a couple of local dairy farms were there with their cows, and there were a lot of goats. Mostly nannies, actually, because this area is seeing rising demand for goat's milk and goat's milk cheeses. We chatted with some of the young goatherds and gave the goats scritchies and belly rubs. The goats behave a lot like friendly dogs. Well, friendly dogs with hooves and big wobbly lactating udders who like to grab the edge of your sleeve and give it a nibble if you don't pay enough attention to them. I wonder if I'd be able to get away with keeping a goat on my half-acre suburban property?

When we were done with the animals, we checked out the garden produce and the "household arts" exhibits. The pickles and preserves were delicious-looking as usual and therfe was quite a selection of jams, jellies, pickles, and canned tomatoes. Maryanne and I put up a lot of stuff every year as local produce shows up in the garden and at farm stands, so we're always inrterested in what the kids choose to can and enter in the competition.

This year, the baking competition was particularly interesting. In addition to the usual sheet cakes and layer cakes, there was a great-looking Cheeseburger Cake - a cleverly-decorated layer cake with fondant "fixin's" presented on a sheet of McDonalds burger-wrapping paper. Well done, and it won a Best In Show ribbon.

If you enjoy local agricultural fairs, keep an eye open for your local 4H events. They draw significantly smaller crowds than the big "State Fairs" so they're easy to get around in, and it's easy to pass the time of day chatting with the young farmers and their parents. And you'll be showing the kids you care about their interests, local agriculture, and the future of farming in your region.

Links:

4-H website - Includes an interactive link to the 4-H organization for your region (it's not magic, a script on the page can tell your general location from your IP address.)

If you didn't understand that part in parentheses above, and want to know more about how a website knows where you're surfing from, click here.

4-H in Connecticut - Part of the UConn agricultural extension office.

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Oscar Mayer No-Lean Bacon

Yeah, I know it's bacon and there's supposed to be fat, but I don't remember a "premium" brand like Oscar Mayer having quite this much.

Frozen Swedish Meatball CAGE MATCH

For the past couple of weeks, I've been having various frozen Swedish Meatball meals at lunchtime, trying to figure out which one of the various brands is the best. I've eaten five different brands, and let me tell you: There is a big difference in quality between the best and the worst of what's available in your supermarket "frozen meal" section.

The five Swedish Meatball meals I've chomped my way through are (in no particular order):

• Stouffer's Homestyle Classics
• Stouffer's Lean Cuisine
• Weight Watchers Smart Ones
• Boston Market
• Banquet

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We'll start with Banquet.

The noodles were huge, thick, and tough. They didn't like being chewed - in fact, it was like they were actively fighting against my molars the whole time.

The gravy was strange - sticky and kind of gummy. It tasted strongly of artificial beef flavoring, and there was a distinct sour note to it, and a close examination of the ingredients revealed that sour cream was a component (surprise!) Although the box illustration shows some kind of herb or something sprinkled throughout the noodles, I didn't find anything like that in the actual gravy.


Banquet was the stingiest of all the brands when it came to the meatballs. There were just four tiny meatballs in the tray, and they were spongy with TVP filler. As far as flavor goes, they were nothing special - fairly typical "frozen meatball in a bag" flavor.

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The Boston Market Swedish Meatballs meal is a strange mixture of good and horrible. Like Banquet, the noodles were thick, tough, and resisted chewing. Big, He-Man noodles with a grudge against mastication. On the other hand, the gravy was close to being delicious. The taste was well-balanced with sour cream, beefy, and mushroom flavors all evident - and there was even a background kick from cayenne pepper in there.



Boston Market (made by Heinz) is also the most generous with the meatballs, offering nine big and rather tasty meatballs. Although they did have a certain amount of filler, the texture was firm and not at all spongy, and they tasted much more like homemade.

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Stouffer's Lean Cuisine, put out by Nestle, had the best noodles of any of the meals. they were light, tender, and delicate - just like properly-made egg noodles from the cellophane bags in the grocery store. The gravy was also surprisingly tasty. No weird sour flavors, no artificial bouillony taste, just a rather run-of-the-mill "brown gravy" flavor that you might get from a middle-of-the-road canned gravy or packet mix. (Yes, I know, that might be objectionable in itself to many people, but after all, we're talking about frozen meals here. Lower your standards a little.)



Speaking of lowered standards, the six meatballs in the Lean Cuisine meal can only be described as "epic fail." Irregular blobs of grey matter, they look like they were carelessly pinched off a loaf of Acme Meat Ball Substance and tossed nonchalantly into the serving dish. The initial flavor wasn't bad (mushroom flavor and beef bouillon) but the texture was extremely off-putting. Kind of spongy, sticky, and almost slimy all at once.

I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong with the meatballs at first, but eventually it occurred to me that they tasted a lot like my grandmother's meatloaf. Grandma never used breadcrumbs in her meatloaf, she used oatmeal. And oatmeal makes meatloaf disgustingly oozy and slimy. I scanned the ingredients panel on the side of the box, and sure enough: oatmeal, right next to the TVP. Gahh. Wretched slop.



As long as we're talking about Stouffer's meals, we might as well look at the non-lean Stouffer's Homestyle Classics Swedish Meatballs meal, because there was not all that much a difference between the regular Stouffer's and the Lean Cuisine. The noodles, for example, were pretty much the same as in the Lean Cuisine variety; not so curly and thin, but still recognizable egg noodles, tender and eggy and not tough.

The meatballs were also identical: disgusting blobs of oatmealy sludge. There were more of them in the package (eight instead of six) but they were identical in composition.


The real difference - and this was not in any way an improvement - was in the gravy. The Homestyle Classics gravy was thick and pasty. A clear yellowish liquid separated out of it during heating (turned out to be some kind of oil. Very unappetizing.) There were hints of mushroom and visible bits of parsley and just a hint of sour cream. The clotty gravy stuck to the noodles and bound them pretty tightly - stirring the mess just made it look even worse as the noodles tore up into smaller bits and the gravy just sat there in congealed lumps.

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Weight Watchers Smart Ones Swedish Meatballs are, like Boston Market, made by Heinz, but the two brands could not be more dissimilar. The noodles, while not as tender and egg-noodley as the ones in the Stouffer's meals, were not as leathery and aggressive as the Banquet or Boston Market noodles. That might be the best thing I can say about these, though.

The gravy was pretty nasty. Mostly, it was a mushroomy slurry with sour cream notes. Loaded with xanthan gum, methylcellulose gum, and guar gum, this stuff had more gums than the mashed potato line at a nursing home. There were six meatballs: tiny, spongy masses of mostly filler that were devoid of any flavor beyond cheap beef bouillon.

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My ratings, from best to worst:

1. Boston Market - despite the tough, chewy noodles, the gravy was decent and there were plenty of big meaty flavorful meatballs. There was more there for the money - this was the largest portion of any of the meals - and the only one that left me satisfied from lunchtime to supper. If I weren't so damn sick of Swedish Meatballs after eating them for two weeks, I'd buy this Boston Market meal again.
2. Banquet - Yes, believe it or not, Banquet came in second because despite the strangeness of the gravy, there was nothing actually offensive about the textures or the flavors. Damning with faint praise, to be sure, but the others were so bad that Banquet actually seemed good by comparison.
3. A tie between Stouffer's Homestyle Classic and Stouffer's Lean Cuisine. I have a strong aversion to oatmeal as a meat filler, and there is nothing about either of these meals that can compensate for the lousy, sticky, mushy, disgusting oatmeal-filled meatballs.
4. Weight Watchers Smart Ones - utterly unredeemable filth. There is no way I would ever buy this meal again. Ever.
   

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Healthy Frozen Meals: Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers - Sweet & Spicy Orange Zest Chicken

When I picked this up at the supermarket the other day, I thought it would be pretty good. I love getting Orange Chicken at those Chinese fast food places in the mall, so I was thinking of something like that, but, well...healthy, I guess.

I was terribly, terribly wrong.

I chucked it in the microwave for the five minutes the package called for and as it steamed itself, I went and did other things that needed to be done. When I passed through the kitchen, I noticed the faint smell of mint, and while I thought that it was kind of odd, didn't pay too much attention to it.

When the microwave beeped after my five minutes had passed, I pulled the plastic wrap off of the top and was hit in the face with the strong smell of mint.

I flipped the package over and re-read it. Odd. Mint wasn't anywhere on the ingredient list, and if it had been I wouldn't have gotten it. (Mint in food always gives me heartburn.)

But I decided that it was probably just my imagination, because if there's no mint in the ingredients, there couldn't possibly be any mint in the actual product. So I dumped the contents of the steam tray into the sauce, stirred it up, and took a giant bite of rice and veggies.

And all I could taste was mint. There was no spicy, no sweet, no orange goodness. Nothing but mint.

The only thing that didn't taste like mint was the chunks of chicken, which were the same as the other chicken bits I had gotten in the last Healthy Choice meal: beefed up with soy protein, a bit chewy, and speckled with fake grill marks. But that was the best part of the whole ordeal.

The veggies in this one were all overdone. The peas were overcooked to the point of mushiness, while their strings were too tough to chew. The finely cubed carrots and bell peppers were also overdone to mush, while the rice managed to come out just a little on the underdone side. (Not that it mattered much, because the whole thing was inedible.)

I got through a few bites before having to get rid of it. It was seriously that bad.

NUTRITION BREAKDOWN:
Calories: 300
Calories From Fat: 40
Sodium: 380 mg; 16% DV

TOTAL PREP TIME: 5 minutes

Dave adds:

I thought Lynnafred was kidding me when she called me up and told me about the heavily minted flavor in this meal, but I got a taste later and she wasn't kidding. Tasted like it was made with toothpaste. Nasty. I wonder if there was some kind of mistake made on the manufacturing line...no other food blooger has noted this flavor in any other online review.

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The Freshest Chicken You Can Buy

Welcome to a new feature at Dave's Cupboard: Vintage Sunday! Each Sunday we'll feature some type of bygone food- or cooking-related topic or item. It might be a cookbook, an old advertisement, a cool or unusual old kitchen gadget, or even an old handwritten recipe found tucked away by someone's grandma. Today's Vintage Sunday feature is a newspaper ad from the 1920's.

This ad appeared in the 25 April 1925 edition of the St. Petersburg [Florida] Times. Short of going out the back door to the family henhouse, you couldn't have asked for a fresher chicken.

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Blast from the Past

Originally published on 7 July 1977. The Little Woman by Don Tobin was a popular syndicated newpaper comic from 1953 until late in the 1970's - with a book of collected strips being published in 1965.