Hiromi_X

Thank you so much for being braver than I am; your descriptions made me laugh out loud, especially the spaghettios. . . amazing what we like as children. I am thinking of vienna sausages (bleah), and honey-nut cheerios drenched in melted butter. Wait. Actually, the Cheerios would probably still taste good to me, but my arteries would immediately revolt. Damn getting older.

I don't seem to ever lose my taste for nostalgia kid food, even as I recognize it's supposed grossness.

I've had Spaghettios in the past few years and actually still liked it--though I hated the meat/hot dog versions even as a kid. It made the sauce taste all weird and chemical-y. Tomato sauce with cheese is the way to go.

And as for cake products, well, for absolute constant perfection you have to ditch anything Hostess and go for Tastykake. They are FAR superior--barely in the category of junk food. Don't have that carboard chocolate shit going on. Just damn good cake. The only thing coated is their peanut butter Kandy Kakes, and that'll melt in your mouth. One bite of any of their stuff and I'm right back to childhood, AND they're just as good as I remember them. But they're kind of regional, so most people out your way don't know them well. You can get 'em in boxes in the supermarket sometimes, but you can't get individual ones.

Deep fried Twinkies rock.

Fantastic! A fish and chips shop in my neighborhood (Greenwich Village) makes the deep fried twinkies . . . and mars bars . . . as well as some other candy treats too! Mmmmmmmmm.

As for the spaghettios . . . by comparison, the chef-boy-r-dee beefaroni/ravioli/etc. sauces are salty, salty, salty! But palatable.

I have so many nostalgia foods, and I still eat a lot of them every once in a while. Really bad Chinese buffet, the $4.99 kind. And the Mexican version of that (do you have Pancho's there?). A special treat my mother used to make - jello, with holes poked in it with a knife, then condensed milk poured over the top. Add me to the vienna sausage list, too.

Some relative of mine used to work for Taskycake. They're one thing I loved as a kid that I can't stand now. I never liked Twinkies, but I have had the deep fried kind, and they are much better then the non-fried version.

Along those same lines, I have a terrifying link for you: Recipes from the White Castle Cookoff. Yes, it's sliders as ingredients!

Well, it isn't just food that doesn't taste right from your childhood:
Rediscovering He-Man

:)

It's funny because I have no actual nostalgia foods. The most nostalgic thing I can really think of is a beer that Magnolia Brewpub in the Haight here in SF makes called Proving Ground. I mean, it's not something I ever had as a child, obviously, but the smell and flavor of it is like nostalgia in a glass for me for some reason. It taste the way I remember fall feeling when I was a kid.

The foods I liked in my childhood I still like and consider good food now, like Southern cornbread (distinguished from yankee cornbread by the fact that it doesn't have sugar - it's break you yanks, not cake!), black eyed peas cooked with bacon fat and sprinkled with salt, and sliced and salted tomatoes straight from the garden.

Everything else... well, you know, it was stuff I ate but don't really remember. I vaguely remember trying those nasty Vienna sausages (if I were the city of Vienna, btw, I would sue that company, since the sausage I had in the city of Vienna, Austria was simply some of the best food I have ever had), a few canned things like you have mentioned, but overall, I can't really check off in my head any particular thing aside from maybe Pixie Stix that I would called a nostalgic guilty pleasure).

For some very interesting Web surfing, google "twinkie science" and have fun. I'm sure that HoHo's, Cupcakes, and Ding Dongs respond in similar ways to similar stimulii. I am damn sure that, like politics and sausage, we would not enjoy watching any Hostess Treat being made.

On kid foods. Having had been one and raised two, it is astounding what they crave and like. Never follow a child's recommendation on where or what to eat! Never! They eat things that are so sweet that my teeth hurt within six feet of the item. They mix things together that give me the "swirlies" just to imagine, much less smell! Then they consume the resulting mixture with obvious gusto...

Of course, I now enjoy things like beer and Serious Cheeses that would turn me inside out as a kid.

Delicious post, Hiromi!

I bet you can buy condoms without hiding around and waiting for the line to go away.

I used to eat spaghetti-os and the like all the time as a kid. Well, until a fateful night in first grade whe I woke up and started vomiting spaghetti-os ALL OVER THE FRICKING PLACE. I mean ... that was a lot of vomit, and it was in such a hurry to leave my body that it came out throuhg my nostrils as well. That shiz BURNED, yo!

I took it as a sign.

-danny

The first time I moved out of my ex-wife's (then girlfriend's) house, I had nothing to cook with. So I hit the grocery store and bought an aluminum sauce pan. But what to cook in it?

I bought a couple of cans of Spaghettios, remembering my ever present childhood desire for them. Mom would never buy them insisting that her "real spag" was better, and better for me. She may have been right about the latter, even with my current palate.

I cooked the Spaghettios and thought to myself, WTF? Why were these good when I was younger? My immediate thought was that they must have changed the recipe over the years, like they fucked with the fries at Burger King with that fiberglass coating, or kept adding mummified marshmallows to Lucky Charms.

As far as the Hostess cakes with whipped lard products, I haven't eaten one in years. And a deep fried Twinkie does sound really yummy, but with my current red meat, beer and nicotine diet, I'd just be testing the fates by trying one (I keep imagining instant heart blow-out even before I've even digested it).

Ironically, I'll have that county fair corndog any day, but deep fried Twinkies? I irrationally equate them to cyanide.

About once a year, I have an overwhelming atavistic desire to eat Twinkies, and I have to consume an entire box. I always feel sick and ashamed afterwards, like I just fucked the family dog or something.

I still love my Spaghetti-o's. They taste different now because they took out all the sodium. The Spaghetti-o's with the little franks still taste like the good ol' days, though.

Kraft Mac & Cheese is another childhood favorite that still tastes good.

Nope, NEVER liked Spaghetti-o's. Damned stuff was always so frickin' sweet, it just tasted like bad ketchup thinned with water. Have you ever seen the various names they marketed Ding Dongs under? I seem to recall King Dons and some other name I can't recall at the moment. Twinkies never did it for me, either.

Nice experiment Hiromi. Ever try doing one of those things that as a kid you would imagine being able to do as an adult because your parents wouldn't let you at the time? Like "when I grow up I am going watch cartoons all day!" Every once in awhile I go for those super sweet breakfast cereals that I thought were so great as a kid. Most are terrible - Cap'n Crunch tears up the roof of your mouth. But Fruity Pebbles are really not bad....

I don’t care for Tastykake, instead preferring Drake’s Cakes. Even though they’re now owned by Hostess, there is still a difference in taste. For example, Yodels taste better than Ho Hos.

As for fried Twinkies, great advances have been made in the fried food category, as can be witnessed at any county fair. Fried Snickers bars, dill pickles, Oreos, Cheesecake, and so on. There are technical challenges to each of these, especially in the candy bar sector. You don’t want the thing to explode into a mass of goo right through the batter while you’re frying it.

I am told the preferable method for Twinkies is to first pop it in the refrigerator to chill. Then, roll in flour, dip in tempura batter and fry in oil at 380 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple minutes.

The fried Twinkie was invested by Chris Sell at ChipShop in Brooklyn. Want to see them fry something? Visit their website.

As for the Franco-American and Chef Boyardee products, my 22-year-old daughter still likes to eat them occasionally. I’ll take a bite and remember how awful they taste.

I at Spaghettios, HoHo's, and Hostess Cupcakes as a kid, too! Haven't had the Spaghettios or HoHo's in a looong time either. The cupcakes, tho, are a great treat when driving across the Pennsylvania.

I also remeber drinking Tang and eating some other type of 'astronaut' food stick that I can't remember the name of.

Thanks for taking the tempura twinkie challenge for all of us chicken shits out here. Twinkies do NOT taste anything like they did when I was a kid, but I could be mistaken because we were not allowed to have them in our house since, horror of horrors, my grandmother made home made cookies and bread and so processed stuff, the stuff we wanted more than anything, were out of the question.

I like ho-hos (I do not know how to make that plural) I must admit and your description of the "leather like" quality of the chocolate was dead on.

Great blog.

And my divorce was about that simple too, and in Illinois, the court date is when your divorce is final. Hope it is the same in Texas. Sounds like it. Good luck. I agree you deserve at the very least, a red carpet to walk to the courtroom on. A little trumpet playing along the sidelines would add a nice touch I think.

Ding Dongs are also packaged under the names Ring Dings and King Dons (same exact product, different regional names, I think... the same way Hellman's and Best Food's are the exact same mayonnaise).

As a kid, I ate a can of Spaghetti-Os almost every day after school (a 3 O'Clock meal)... at least when I didn't have McDonald's or Burger King food to devour. I loved how the thin sauce was a tart, sweet mix of tomato and cheese, and I loved cutting all the meatballs or mini franks in half, to make them last longer. As a result of the jonze (and other snack habits), I was a very fat kid in high school, and I didn't get thin again until college, when force of will, and then poverty, and later apathy, led to a sort of starvation diet.

As for nostalgia foods, I have a very strong negative nostalgia factor when it comes to cheap ramen noodle soup, which I ate for lunch every day for several months, in the mid 1990s, while working an awful office cubicle job and existing on nearly no money. I was perfectly happy eating this dirt cheap soup day after day, until, all at once it seemed, something inside me said "No more." I don't think I've eaten a single bit of it since, although since I moved to Los Angeles, I've gained an appreciation for the real thing... there are several great noodle houses in and around my neighborhood of Silver Lake. As for the cheap supermarket stuff, even if I wanted to try it again, I can't justify paying what LA grocery stores charge for it. I remember it being around 4 for a dollar in Virgina, and often even cheaper than that in Syracuse... here in LA it's like a dollar for a single package, I think.

Great reviews!!! And soooo on the money. ANY Franco-American product was and is shit(to me) even when I was a kid! And now it's worse ... go figure. Someone in the Board Room had to scare the CEO into cutting corners ... mainly quality and flavor.

Nothing tastes like it used to, I mean NOTHING! And its not because our tastes have changed ... it's because it all really sucks! I prefer my McDonald's burger to be freshly cooked (believe me, when it is it's good)instead of being pulled from a sock drawer, which they refer to as a "holding bin." And my biggest complaint ... LEAVE FUCKING FRIES ALONE! It's very simple ... cut a fucking potato ... and fucking deep fry it(twice)! That's it! Don't coat them with that salty crusty dandruff-ry shit! I can't taste the potato anymore. We got along just fine the way they were ... JESUS CHRIST! Also, remove "Kids" meals from all fast food menus ... FUCK'em ... fuck the toys and playgrounds that are used to lure them in by pestering their "Spineless" parents to death.

In closing ... put Coke back in "glass" bottles and make it with SUGAR! You cheap, fucking sell-outs!

Happy Holidays!