When we were kids, our exposure to foreign cuisine came from the grocery store. Pizza came in boxes with doughy crusts, sweet tomato sauce in a packet, and desiccated cheese. And Chinese food came in a can. And to this day, I can still hear the jingle “La Choy makes Chinese food…. swing American!”
We got these things, along with Rice-a-Roni, sometimes, and they were always a treat. A break from the Hamburger Helper that was the staple. My sainted mother was many things, but a cook she was not.
As my beautiful wife is traveling this week for business, I picked up a can (well, a package of two cans taped together). But instead of going with the chow mein, which is probably we got annually or twice every three years, I went with the sweet and sour chicken.
And…. bleh.
Decades later, I have a more sophisticated palate, having eaten a variety of different cuisines at various levels of competency. But there are definite limits in what you can put into a can, and this is it.
Although perhaps I didn’t do it right–I didn’t rinse the vegetables enough, and I absolutely messed up the rice by thinking the 1/2 cup scoop was 1 cup (leading to some very wet rice).
Maybe I’ll try again with the chow mein. And add a little red pepper to it. Maybe beef instead of chicken.
But, man, the 1970s. We lived there. It was different.
My mom never got that when I was a kid. I got one of those many years ago, sometime in my 20s. It would have been beef. It was worse than the worst Chinese restaurant food I’ve ever had.
There’s got to be a pretty low ceiling for how you can season food that’s stewed and served in a can. On wonders if they just assumed that people would either add seasonings of their own if they were the type to buy a lot of it, or if they were expected to just douse it in La Choy Soy Sauce.
It’s still out there, so it’s doing something
rightprofitable.