FRIDAY FOOD THING
In today’s tightened grocery store product economy, it is getting more and more difficult to buy food items designed for singles. I suppose this is a cost-cutting production step, although I suspect manufacturers enjoy making and shipping larger quantities of their product and not messing with the more expensive smaller shipping size hassles.
Yesterday I noticed my local Food Lion had discontinued “small size” jars of prepared pasta sauces, which — even at the smaller size — were too large for me. No matter how hard I tried, there was always some amount left over in the fridge that eventually got tossed long after the expiration date. Since I use pre-made brand name sauces as a starter, by the time I finish doctoring them up they bear no resemblance to the original product, and by then the volume of the sauce has increased dramatically, resulting in even more expiration wastage in the fridge unless I freeze the leftover sauce.
Like most folks, my freezer quickly becomes an unsettling no-man’s land of poorly marked Tupperware and Ziploc containers whose frosted contents are anyone’s guess.
Another, more insidious example of single-sized product extinction was the sudden disappearance of foil-sealed, single slices of sandwich Spam about a year ago. A single Spam sandwich was perfect for me: again, the smallest can of Spam is way too much to contemplate. One or two Spam sandwiches and my Spam enthusiasm fades considerably.
All of which supports my feeling of loss as single-size food products — like typewriter ribbons and bottles of office White-Out — are slowly fazed from our collective consciousness.
Have had the same problem finding small sizes of products. Even with the smaller sizes you still have to throw away a lot of food. As a child raised during “hard times” this goes against my upbringing.
And white out has so many other uses! It is truly a tremendous loss……
Hi, Tim,
As a kid I loved spam and eggs…chopped spam fried a little before adding the eggs to scramble. That should take care of two slices of the stuff!!
Take care,
Elaine
Tim, You need to buy a Foodsaver. You can package and freeze for the future. It’s just the wife and me now so it saves alot of food that would be wasted. We love ours. Keep up the great posts and Happy Thanksgiving ! Ron
Ron, I have a Foodsaver that’s about 10 years old, and I’ve tried using it on several occasions. I have a problem with trying to shrink-wrap food items that contain any amount of moisture (meats, for instance), because the vacuum-sucker thing always sucks product juice into the sealing area and it is a real bite to clean. I’ve tried freezing moisture-prone items first, THEN sealing them. But that kinda defeats the entire Foodsaver “quick seal”, time-saving concept.
For me, the rolls of sealing plastic are a nightmare to use: in order to seal a package you first have to cut the roll into an appropriately-sized piece, which I always manage to cut unevenly using a pair of scissors, or making the package too large or small for the product. I tried using the more expensive, individual-ready-to-seal plastic bags (already sealed on one end), but then it all comes back around to the vacuum-moisture-sucking sucker problem.
Maybe one day I will figure it all out.
Tim,
You DO get yourself into the most contrived and convoluted fixes.
Reading about them in your blogs I wonder if you are living in a state of semi-chaos part of the time and are a sometimes-stumbling and recovering “technocrat”.
Timothy
“Semi” chaos is a kind word. I used to race ahead of technology, and enjoyed doing it. Now, I don’t even bother trying to catch up. (I am one of the elite few human beings who doesn’t own a cell phone.)
In Peter principle terminology: I suppose I’ve reached the highest level of my own incompetence.
And it doesn’t bother me one iota.
Apparently families, extended families, family-values, and gigormous packaging designed for families of anywhere from 5 to 12 bickering family-members have overtaken North America when we weren’t looking.
I have never encountered single-slice packaging of Spam – it must be an American novelty unknown to the rest of the world. But I LIKE the concept!
You invented cheddar cheese spread (Velveeta?) in a spray can and Western civilisation has yet to recover from THAT.
Sometimes when I am in a funk or feeling rebellious I construct a Spam sandwich on Texas-style (thick) white bread with full-fat, salted butter, “baseball” mustard – French’s, and eat it furtively in a dimly-lit room out of sight and smell of my black Labrador Retriever. I don’t want Chester to copy my bad habits.
This usually occurs at 4 a.m. during a full moon.
But then in a fit of remorse I will spread a swipe or two of Marmite or Vegemite on the whole thing to add SOME nutritional value.
These “autolyzed yeast extract with vitamins (B!)” spreads can usually be found at the back of my refrigerator in a semi-fossilised state.
Enough of the boringly healthy 15-grain, whole wheat (with germ) thinly-sliced bread, Dijon mustard, shaved white turkey breast meat (reduced-salt), and reduced-fat margarine.
When I am in that kind of mood I want my guilty pleasures served up junk-food style.
Spam does the job brilliantly and is also great fried in lard.
Timothy from Canada