TheSnackHound

Lidian, over at Kitchen Retro, presented the eerily and unnaturally green Rose Brand Pickles over on her blog. (The photo is courtesy of Live Journal Ads.)  Perhaps the unusual hue was due to some post-war radiation or perhaps a food chemist wished to appeal to the kiddies who hated to eat their veggies.  Either way, as a pickle aficionado, I wouldn’t touch em with a ten foot cattle prod with a bottle of hand sanitizer on the end. Turning down pickles may not be so earth-shattering to you, but since I was the author of the 3rd Grade penmanship assignment, Paul Bunyan at the Pickle Factory, it almost qualifies as a downright conniption fit.

Upon careful investigation, The E.T. Car Conservators Club holds the key to the true mystery.

“…The name was Matthew-Wells Ltd. and they picled cukes for Rose Brand. The house you see in Thompsens on Mt. Edward Road. You can see the vats they used for pickling. There were 4 rows I think and there was a wooden walkway for the men to push their wheel barrows on. they would dump the cukes in the brine. The vats were quite tall and as I said before every kid peed in them, and a few guys went swimming in the pickles.”

Read the rest of the recollection HERE. Even though folks poo poo sanitation standards today, I am darn thankful swimming in my salad dressing, Vitamin Water or cheese popcorn is not allowed.  Of course, the vinegar content in some dressings may offset the effects of well, kiddie pool syndrome, and bits that broke off the ends of rubber swimming flippers could be camouflaged in the herbs and spices. Yeesh…I don’t even want to think of that.

Another pickle contractor to Rose was Bick’s.  The Bick’s family of Canada also supplied pickles to Rose. (The Bicks moved to Canada in 1934, which leads me to believe they were Americans.  Everyone else emigrates; Americans move.) After Rose cancelled the agreement, perhaps because none of the Bicks swam in the pickle vat, the Bick’s struck out on their own, and later went on to be the biggest supplier of Pickles in Canada. Bick’s was purchased by Smuckers in 2004.  What became of Rose?  Well, Rose still sells the popular Pork Brains in Milk Gravy and other canned meat delicacies. I think I will stick with pickles. I don’t even have to think.  I just know.

Betty Crocker has undergone transformationsover the years.  The latest makeover she had was in 1996.  There was a whole scientific study done before changing her look.  In fact, a large group of American were taken, and their features were incorporated, so that Betty doesn’t look like a particular woman, but many women.   There are whole sites devoted to the racial makeup of the new Betty, some downright scholarly.

One report goes on to say: “The perception of what is typically American is also shifting. The old Betty Crocker symbolized the blending or mixing of bakery ingredients. The new Betty Crocker symbolizes the blending or mixing of races. The racial average of a population is its racial destiny, the racial future. The new Betty Crocker is a symbol of our intended future. The racial destiny of the American population is to be “Betty Crockerized,” its ingredients blended together toward the racial average, and cooked in the racial meltdown of the “melting pot.” 

The next time someone asks me about my friends who adopted two international children, I am just going to say that they have a “Crockerized” family.   I am sure that will go over well.   As far as my friends go, it is the first, and only marriage for both of them, otherwise if it wasn’t and they both came with kids from a previous marriage, I think “blended family” would just be rude.  I’ll call them a “KitchenAid” or “Cuisinart” family and people would think I am totally off my rocker or insensitively assuming my friends are such culinary aficianados that they would think the reference was cute.

More so than mulling over such serious topics, I thought it would be much more fun to ask:

Which Betty are you?

I am not so much asking what you physically look like, but which Betty Crocker embodies your attitude?

Are you the new Betty who is neat but casual, shown prominently on my site?    Are you the 1972 Betty with the Ann Landers hair, ready to dole out sassy kitchen advice?**

I think I am more like 1965 Betty.   I think I always wanted to have flipped hair, except I came of age during the era of the spiral perms and peacock’s butt hair.    My hair would have probably wanted to be more of a “That Girl” flip, though, which came later.   I would carry my proper little purse, but wear miniskirts.  Betty and me would be like Barbie and Midge. Midge was always slightly more mod than Barbie.  Or I would be Little Sister Skipper.

I would, as 1965 Betty, like to make things that required serving pieces that you only used for that particular dish and were useless otherwise.  For example, clam shell plates for clams casino, that you wouldn’t use any other time.

I know my choice is a little superficial…let’s see what you come up with.

Which Betty would you be?    

Choose from the Bettys  (Betties? Betty’s?) above.

Below: 1986 Betty vs 1930s Betty

(**= My Mom was 1972 Betty Crocker.  She taped Ann Landers and Dear Abby Columns to my bedroom door)

I broke Twitter. Not singlehandedly, of course, but maybe I was the key person who just merely thought of issuing a tweet and that caused the whole thing to take a dive bomb. Some website give you a generic 404 message, but NO! Twitter gives you Fudgie the Whale

Okay, it is not really Fudgie the Whale.  That is just what popped into my head.  In fact, I don’t think I know any other name for a traditional whale.  Of course, there are plenty of Killer Whales with names, but I didn’t know any Blue Whales to have a name.  No one would have one as a pet on a show, except of course Aqua Man.  However, I think Aqua Man would have been the 200 ton whale’s “little pet” instead.

Fudgie the whale was and is a Carvel Ice Cream Cake that was brought back in the new millenia.  Why did they think a whale and chocolate ice cream cake went together?  Who knows.  What we do know is that the voice of Fudgie the Whale in commercials was originally that of Tom Carvel himself, letting kids know that they can find Fudgie or Cookie Puss at their local Carvel!  of course, now you can sometimes buy Fudgie at select grocery stores, as I have not seen a Carvel store often aside from on the East Coast.

The very unsettling idea is the prospect of being able to order your very own Fudgie Mascot Costume.  I don’t know if it is officially endorsed by Carvel, or not, but I saw one on a mascot site.  There is a BIG rule of thumb when it comes to costumes.  Aside from the plastic costumes with masks that were around in the 70s through mid to early 80s, until people decided kids couldn’t breathe in those masks, if you have to put the characters name on the front of it to let people know what you are, it is not a good costume!

I would have put more of a tail in the back or had the back part of the whale back there.  Instead of having it like he is standing up on its fin like Jabberjaw.  I would have the costume look like the cake, just with the feet sticking out the front.   Or put the whale sideways and then the persons face is the eye on the side.  There would be no way people wouldn’t know what you were then.   To me, the costume looks like a ginger bread man.

Anyways, I digress…

Oddly enough, all the cakes are Kosher, and if you go to the Brooklyn Carvel, you can even get one that is Cholov of Israel, meaning it is the very highest Kosher certification that you can get.  I did not know there were different levels, but what I am more surprised at is the fact that the cakes are kosher, because I always pictured Kosher foods as somehow healthier.   Oh well.

Maybe I will get a Fudgie the whale cake for someone who is way past kid age as a joke.  However, ice cream to me is no joke.

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I have always found Ruth’s Chris Steak House to be a tongue twister.  I don’t know why they just didn’t call it Ruth’s Steakhouse or Chris’ Steakhouse.  My best theory is that there was a bunch of people in the family or neighborhood named Chris.  There was Christopher, Cristine, Christian, and of course Christopher Junior and all that stuff.  Because there were so many, everyone wanted you to know that it was Ruth’s Chris that owns it.  Just like my Grandma who has two sons-in-law with the same name and my late Uncle was forever known as “Betty’s Tom.” Maybe Chris was Ruth’s son, daughter or husband.  It wasn’t that other Chris who was Ruth’s brother’s daughter or Ruth’s cousin’s husband.

Recently, I was corrected.  Who knows why I never bothered to read the company history on the website, but there was actually a Chris that had nothing to do with Ruth. Chris Steak House was in a down and out section of New Orleans when Ruth Fertel decided to buy it in the 1960s.  Instead of changing the name, she called it “Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.”  It sure probably saved a ton of money on signage because she would just have to put a sticky note or tap in a little plywood board to ad the Ruth part.  Pretty ingenius.

Now, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse is a national chain.  What if someone else bought it.  Maybe a guy name Horatio would buy it and it would be Harold’s Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  Then, later on a lady would come along and it would be Ellen’s Harold’s Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  At that point, they would probably call it EHRCS (pronounced Eric’s).  But then Harold’s wife and Ellen’s husband worked there as equally as they did, even though Ellen and Harold owned it before their respective marriages.  Then, what would happen after that is they would ad little hash marks or little slanted lines under the names, so it would go like this:

That is what would be on the menu, but they would probably come up with some logo with all the names around it, similar to the design of one of those Grandma sweatshirts that has all the kids names on them with hand prints.  Expensive, you say?  Expensive to keep changing the corporate name?  They wouldn’t have to keep changing the name with the U.S. Government.  They would just tack up little boards or signs every time someone new came around or got married.  All the locations would do it and it would be sort of one of those unspoken things.  People in the communities would probably have to come up with their own name for each location based on geography and proximity to the nearest Radio Shack.  Sort of like “Mickey D’s” or “that restaurant by the movie theater.”  Hey, it could work.  You would just have to show up, though, because directory assistance would have no earthly clue what you were talking about.

This weekend, the story came up again about “51 In a Bucket,” the mythical menu item at Charlie’s Shake Shop in Mukwonago, Wisconsin.  It seems that any time a new person comes into my life and the subject of ice cream comes up, I have to mention it.  Pretty soon, people are going to believe I am just making it up, as I have yet to find a reference online.  Truth be told, one website does come up when I search, and that is my own blog.

I have posted on local “remember when” sites, and the craigslist that would be local to the area and have not come up with one person that can recall the existence of the shop with Scratch N Sniff Stickers sold at the counter and a chocolate syrup smudged Joust video game in the back.   Charlie’s closed sometime in the late 80s and either became a bicycle shop, or had been a bicycle shop before the ice cream shop.  My memory is a little disorganized on that fact.   At any rate, go read the post to be either delighted or grossed out by the celebrated dairy gluttony.

In the 1930s, the Homer Laughlin China Company produced this informative look at how china is made. There were a few items in the process I thought looked like Fiesta Ware, but the finished items are other products from their vast selection of patterns. It was not a training video, as we only get a cursory look at the process versus drilling down each step, but it is definitely entertaining.

Not so entertaining is the selected soundtrack. See? You should have read the entire blog entry before your itchy fingers pressed “Play,” so you could be fairly warned. When you watch this video, turn down the volume on your computer. The music may seem quaint at first, but then evolves into a somewhat distracting “smooth jazz’ that has nothing to do with the film, nor does it match the action.  It seems as some folks who have discovered the video on Youtube share the sentiment.   Perhaps this footage will be reevaluated at some point and era appropriate, or at least music that matches the action, will be included.   For now, the silent version is even highly entertaining.  At least to me.  But I’m a big geek about these things.