Recently, we reminisced about Tang, candy cigarettes, Sugar Babies, Bazooka and other products from our youth. That opened the floodgates. Many of you shared memories of products we rarely see today. Let’s take another trip down the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly, A & P, and Shop-Rite stores we visited every Friday night.
I’ve often said that I’ve never encountered a pizza I didn’t like. When people ask me about the best pizza I’ve ever had, I’ll often answer, “The very first one, and they’ve just been getting better ever since.” Truthfully, the first one was probably the worst one. I just didn’t know it at the time. Our family store’s freezer case was always stocked with Chef Boyardee’s frozen pizza. The crust was average, the sauce was, well, not enough, and the toppings were little sprinklings of sausage and pepperoni. The chef was not particularly generous with his serving portions.
And yes, there really was a Chef Boyardee whose products were hot items in cans, boxes (a pizza mix), and frozen food cases. In 1914, Hector Boiardi came to New York from Italy at age 17, and within a year he became the head chef at the Plaza Hotel. President Woodrow Wilson loved his pasta dishes, which were soon distributed nationally under the phonetic spelling of his name.
Since I had become smitten with the Chef’s frozen pizza, I asked my mom to whip up a pizza from his box of “pizza mix,” located near the flour and sugar shelf. It seemed simple enough: just mix hot water, the envelope of flour and the envelope of yeast mix and wait for the dough to rise. Then you made the dough into a ball, placed it on a cookie sheet, flattened it out and added the sauce, the cheese, and your choice of meats or mushrooms. The resulting mess made me realize how wonderful his frozen pizza was.
My life took a remarkable turn for the better when we discovered Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. I can still taste a Shakey’s sausage pizza today, even though I haven’t had one in decades. You could look into the big kitchen and watched the dough being hand-tossed. For whatever reason, they had a player piano, and silent movies on a big screen. Sorry, Chef Boyardee. I discovered the real thing. The freezer pizzas of today are better than they used to be, but a fresh pizza is still part of my food pyramid, along with peanut butter sandwiches and cheeseburgers. I guess you could call me a “roll model,” with that roll of fat around my belly.
But that wasn’t the only popular ready-to-eat meal in our store. The canned meat section was the closest thing we had to a quick lunch for the construction workers who were starved by noon. Out in the country, there were no Burger Kings or Taco Bells. The general store provided cans of Vienna Sausages, Van Camp’s Pork ‘n Beans, sardines, Spam, and the runaway favorite, Armour’s potted meat. We often referred to our school lunches as “mystery meat,” but none of us wanted to know what was actually inside those cans of potted meat. Not quite a solid, and barely more than a liquid, it somehow fueled those working men through an afternoon of road paving and roof repairs. In doing research for this column, I found a can of potted meat at Walmart last week. I took a bite, and I can report it was exactly as I remembered it from the 1970s. That is not meant as a compliment.
But I will put in a good word for Jiffy Pop popcorn. I was sold the first time I saw the commercial. It started out in a flat package. We held it over the stove burner, using the handle to move it in a circular motion. It would then start popping and inflating. Within a couple of minutes, it slowed down, then the popping stopped, and we split it open with a knife. Inside was steamy, delicious popcorn. A true highlight of the pre-microwave oven era.
Do you have fond memories of snacks, toys, and other childhood delights? Let me know, and I’ll share it with everyone.
