I’ve come up with this crazy notion. I think that from now on foods and drinks should taste like what they are—that particular food or drink.
I know—insane isn’t it? I guess I’m just an old-fashioned kind of gal.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me give you an example. I first experienced this “things tasting like other things” when I was a teenager. A local store began making popcorn that, well, tasted like anything but.
They had blueberry-flavored, cinnamon-flavored, and even—gag—bubblegum- flavored popcorn. The stuff no longer tasted like popcorn, but it still had the consistency of it. So here’s what happened in my brain: Mmmmm…popcorn. Great, I could really go for some yummy popcorn. Munch, munch, munch. Hey. Wait a minute. This doesn’t taste like popcorn; it tastes like bubblegum. Maybe I got it wrong, and Michele put bubblegum in her mouth when I wasn’t looking. Let me get her to blow a bubble.
Pththththththt—popcorn ends up everywhere. Why? Because my brain thinks I’m eating bubblegum.
I stayed away from the various-flavored popcorns ever since. I didn’t want to deal with the mess.
When my husband and I began dating, his family would have gourmet jellybeans at Easter time. Before this, the only jellybeans I ate were the kind that tasted almost-sickeningly sweet. My favorites were pink and purple—whatever flavor they were.
But when I tried these gourmet ones, the pink ones didn’t taste “pink.” They were cotton candy and—again, blech—bubblegum. In this case, though, the bubblegum flavor wasn’t that bad because at least the consistency of gum and jellybeans comes a bit closer.
Didn’t work when trying to blow a bubble again, though.
I admit that I became intrigued with these jellybeans and began trying various flavors: orange (tasted like orange juice), watermelon (this one wasn’t bad), and even blueberry (this was really sweet). But then I decided to try a white one with yellow specks.
Blech—it was buttered popcorn. And the yucky thing is that it tasted very much like buttered popcorn. Why don’t they just have jellybeans that taste like candy and buttered popcorn that tastes like buttered popcorn? Are the markets for these products really so competitive that they have to try to take each other’s customers? I think not.
If you think my brain couldn’t wrap itself around the popcorn that tasted like gum, take a guess what it did when I got candy that tasted like popcorn. If I were a robot, this would be one of those times when I was running into walls while sparks flew out of my neck and smoke seeped out of my head.
I recently heard about the worst example, to me, of mixing tastes. If you like, you can now have the option of doing without eating actual mashed potatoes and gravy, but instead, drinking a soda—yes, I said soda—and enjoying those same tastes.
When I heard this, I was sure we were on our way to the apocalypse. Mashed potatoes and gravy is such a wonderful, pure, comfort food. It’s warm and goes down smooth. It tastes creamy and makes us sigh with delight.
But now you can get that same experience, only with the added carbonation of soda that would have me burping like nobody’s business.
Think I’ll go make some butter popcorn, the real stuff, while I still have a fighting chance.
Michele Wojciechowski, while enjoying foods that taste like what they are, writes Wojo’s World from her office (which is really an office) in Baltimore.