{"id":34905,"date":"2026-02-18T07:29:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34905"},"modified":"2026-02-17T18:15:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:15:56","slug":"it-was-the-1970s-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/18\/it-was-the-1970s-man\/","title":{"rendered":"It Was The 1970s, Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;La Choy makes Chinese food&#8230;. swing American!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zbHJMxXLOac?si=8IPaaY_qaH0lvjZY\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/lachoy.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>And&#8230;. bleh.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Although perhaps I didn&#8217;t do it right&#8211;I didn&#8217;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).<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I&#8217;ll try again with the chow mein.  And add a little red pepper to it.  Maybe beef instead of chicken.<\/p>\n<p>But, man, the 1970s.  We lived there.  It was different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;La Choy makes Chinese food&#8230;. swing American!&#8221; We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34907,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34905\/revisions\/34907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}