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Japan’s doing it. Will we do it, too?

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 5:35 PM

I happen to like Utz's Classic Potato Chips, Cape Cod's are pretty good too!

I tried Utz's "Sea Salt and Vinegar" chips, blew my sinuses out!  "Strong" is putting it mildly!  I call 'em "Utz Gassies!"  But if some folks like 'em, well  who am I to judge?  

Anyone remember the greenies and the blackies that used to show up in packs of Wise potato chips? 

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Posted by Convicted One on Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:07 PM

Can you remember when "salted  in shell" pistachio nuts were actually glazed white with salt  on the shell surface?

Man those were good, but these  days any salted pistachios that I find are dyed red, and barely salted.

I'll bet those ones I fondly recall wreaked havoc on blood pressure.

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Posted by York1 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:24 PM

Flintlock76
I happen to like Utz's Classic Potato Chips, Cape Cod's are pretty good too!

 

I can't remember ever having Utz's.  If I travel east, I'll have to try some.

 

Convicted One
Can you remember when "salted  in shell" pistachio nuts were actually glazed white with salt  on the shell surface?

 

I used to think it was my imagination, but most snack foods have tried to reduce salt.  My wife just bought some salted in the shell peanuts.  If you didn't read it on the package, you would swear there was no salt on them at all.

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Posted by Miningman on Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:41 PM

Roast my own mixed nuts at Christmas. I sprinkle in a good helping of salt and a bit of sugar. All matter of nuts. Dosen't take long, come out nice!

i luv salt liquorice... have to bring it in by mail. Dutch treat! Grew up with it, even better now. Lots of varieties of it. I do not tell my docs!  

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:48 PM

Lady Firestorm had to sound off on this, she loves Wise potato chips, or whatever brand I bring home since they don't cost her anything.  Not being a salt junkie she prefers lightly salted but won't split hairs. 

She considers chocolate-covered potato chips an abomination and a crime against nature!  Hates "Black n' White" cookies too, but she'll kill for Oreos! 

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Posted by Deggesty on Saturday, April 25, 2020 6:56 PM

Quoting Flintlock "She considers chocolate-covered potato chips an abomination and a crime against nature!" I never heard of such! Potato chips were not created to be coated with chocolate! Do these people coat their steaks with chocolate?

Johnny

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 7:14 PM

Johnny, chocolate covered potato chips are popular in the Philadelphia area, they also show up in gourmet candy shops in New York City.  

I can't see the point, but it takes all kinds.  I don't understand deep-fried pickles either!

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Posted by MidlandMike on Saturday, April 25, 2020 8:06 PM

I can't understand why everything carmel is salted nowdays.

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Posted by York1 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 8:12 PM

I've had salted peanuts mixed with M&Ms.  In spite of how it sounds, it was actually good.

Back to how this started, I wonder if anyone's tried chocolate covered Cheetos?

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Posted by Gramp on Saturday, April 25, 2020 8:26 PM

So many brands are not what they were. A Hershey's chocolate bar isn't. I've wondered if it is the influence of Nestle's. A Nabisco Graham Cracker also is different. Sad. 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:03 PM

Ever see that 1927 movie "Wings?"  Classic aviation film, however one part that grabbed Lady F's and my attention was when a young Gary Cooper does a walk-on eating a Hershey bar. 

You should see the size of that 1927 Hershey bar!  It's darn near as big as a brick!

It's so big he doesn't live to finish it!  He gets killed in a mid-air collision a minute or two later.  What a shame.  Crying

Anyone remember Milk-Shake bars?  Man how I miss those things!

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Posted by Miningman on Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:13 PM

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:23 PM

Miningman

 

Doesn't THAT look interesting?  I don't think it's ever made it south of the border, I've never seen it anywhere. 

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Posted by Convicted One on Saturday, April 25, 2020 9:24 PM

I preferred Cheese Doodles to Cheetos.

Other old candies I fondly remember: Bit-o-Honey, Mary Janes, and Black Jacks. All varients of flavored taffy chews.

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Posted by zugmann on Sunday, April 26, 2020 9:38 AM

Gramp
So many brands are not what they were. A Hershey's chocolate bar isn't. I've wondered if it is the influence of Nestle's. A Nabisco Graham Cracker also is different. Sad. 

Hershey stopped using cocoa butter and started using vegetable oil.  It's why their products aren't labeled as "milk chocolate" anymore, but instead read "choclate candy" or "chocolate flavored".  They don't meet the FDA definition of milk chocolate. 

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 9:47 AM

C-O, Bit-O-Honey and Mary Janes are still with us and very much alive.  Black Jacks I'm not sure, I haven't gone looking for that one although Black Jack gum is still available from specialty candy retailers.

While we're on this wonderfully diverted subject (Isn't this fun?) we have to ask.  What candy or candies did you absolutely hate  getting on Halloween?  Might make a fun survey!  So much to choose from!

Zug, that sure explains a lot!   Ick!

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Posted by York1 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 10:15 AM

Confession time:  I did not particularly like Boston Baked Beans as a kid, but my brothers and I always bought them when we went to a movie without our parents.  Each summer we had movies just for kids -- 300 kids packed into a movie theater without any parents around.  Those were fun days.

The baked beans were shiny, and when you threw them in the theater into the projected movie light, they would light up like meteors through the dark theater.

 

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Posted by York1 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 10:17 AM

Flintlock76
What candy or candies did you absolutely hate  getting on Halloween? 

 

I didn't hate any specific brands, but any candy that had coconut in it was given to someone else.  There's something about the taste of coconut that I don't like to this day.

York1 John       

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, April 26, 2020 11:09 AM

zugmann
Hershey stopped using cocoa butter and started using vegetable oil.  It's why their products aren't labeled as "milk chocolate" anymore ... they don't meet the FDA definition of milk chocolate. 

I trust you know that cocoa 'butter' is not made by churning milk or in fact has anything to do with the 'milk' that's used in milk chocolate at all.  It's the important ingredient in 'white chocolate', though.

I wouldn't put it past a mass-market chocolate company to tinker with the stuff it used as 'milk', though -- especially with increasing potential 'market presumption' that milk=bad nutritionally (or medically for lactose-intolerance or gluten/casein in autism).  So they might be using substitute or processed ingredients that no longer 'count' as the 12% or whatever that the FDA requires in products branded as 'milk'.

You might find this reference interesting in this context...

https://foodensity.com/fine-milk-chocolate/

it certainly seems to be 'opportunity knocking' for the next wave of overpriced but obsessively-delicious milk chocolate products...

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Posted by tree68 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 12:08 PM

Remember that soup companies reduced the amount of actual solids in their soups and replaced them with MSG...

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, April 26, 2020 12:23 PM

Tree, MSG is just a flavorant; it produces the 'taste' the Japanese call 'umami'.  Its name is the same kind of scare-the-marks-with-science that using 'sodium' instead of table-salt content in those 'nutrition' labels is; people think it's some kind of weird processed chemical but it's not.

Reducing the solids content is something completely different, except insofar as 'reducing the solids' also reduces the material 'in a spoonful' that produces the flavor.  
(Of course one of the ordinal 'premises' of Campbell's soups was to increase the 'solids' content of what actually got shipped in a cab by removing a proportion of the water via reduced-pressure evaporation... you have to dinstinguish 'solids' as identifiable things like meat chunks or mushrooms from the actual 'soup' that isn't water, and that's much more a marketing than a nutritional 'thing'.

(Yes, I participated in more than one specific technical discussion of the 'finer points' in those discussions with marketing reps recruiting marketing MBA candidates during the receptions after presentations ... the food served at those usually didn't suffer any 'solids reduction' either...)

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Posted by Convicted One on Sunday, April 26, 2020 1:43 PM

I also remember an uncle giving me these spicy-hot tiny lozenges called Sen-Sen that had a liquorice base underneath the heat, that I absolutely used to love. I believe they were breath fresheners for smokers.....sadly no longer manufactured.

Circus peanuts seemed to taste much better in the pre "Hi-fructose corn syrup"  days.

As far as halloween candy I didn't enjoy getting, there were these tiny cellophane packs of candy corn that only had like 6-8 kernels in each pack that always left me feeling like I had been handed the short end, and there were these small bottle shaped wax capsules that contained a sweet liquid that I found annoying. The inch long mini rolls of 'Sweet-tarts" were a disappointment too.

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Posted by Convicted One on Sunday, April 26, 2020 1:53 PM

Overmod
(Of course one of the ordinal 'premises' of Campbell's soups was to increase the 'solids' content of what actually got shipped in a cab by removing a proportion of the water via reduced-pressure evaporation... you have to dinstinguish 'solids' as identifiable things like meat chunks or mushrooms from the actual 'soup' that isn't water, and that's much more a marketing than a nutritional 'thing'.

Grew up in a Campbell's "household" and for decades preferred their products to the competition.  For years, a can of Campbells "Chunky" soup was all I needed for a workday lunch.

Somewhere about 5-6 years ago, that satisfaction went away.  Can't put my finger exactly on it, but what I used to perceive as "rich and savory" now comes aross as "slimey and greasy". And the vegetables no longer seem to boast of their nominal flavore as they once did.

No doubt the value engineers at work palming off their version of New and Improved

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 2:08 PM

Campbell's "Vegetable Beef" soup, the condensed version, is actually pretty good, however I don't water it down too much, just a half-can of water, and I jazz it up with a shot glass of red wine.  Comes out pretty good!

I'll do the same with their "Manhattan Clam Chowder," but if I want MCC I prefer Progresso's.  I still give it the red wine treatment. 

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Posted by 54light15 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 2:18 PM

What goes for model trains now goes for almost everything. Does anyone really need a refrigerator with an internet connection? Does anyone really need a car with a touch screen? Or that parks itself? If you can't park a car you shouldn't be driving one. I looked at buying a washing machine, one had all these digital doo-dads on it and the lady at the store to her credit said that it doesn't get your clothes any cleaner so I bought the simple Maytag. I was in my friend's Ram pickup and the dashboard almost looked like it belonged in the space shuttle. Why does everything have to be so damned complicated and expensive now? On my N scale layout I have several locomotives that run fine and are over 50 years old and are simple to service. Later models I have to send out to be overhauled because they are too  complex for me to do it. Why did all this happen? 

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Posted by Convicted One on Sunday, April 26, 2020 2:20 PM

Seems like the concentration of carrots in the mix has gone up considerably too.

I think a more apt name would be "Carrot soup with other vegetables and beef added"

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 2:30 PM

You said it 54', I concur completely!  I can't figure it our either!  

Again, with toy trains (of all scales) I think the manufacturers are chasing after the "wirehead" market, but I've never seen any indication the "wireheads" are all that interested in toy trains.  The end result being long-time hobbyists like you and I are dragged along for the ride, being forced to pay for features we don't want and won't use.  It's one of the reasons I'm looking more and more at the Lionel post-wars, those  I can fix!  

And C-O, yeah I wish there was more beef in the "Vegetable Beef" too, but everyone's stingy with the beef, it's why I've never found a brand of canned chili I liked enough to buy twice.  As the old lady said, "Where's the beef?" 

I'll tell you something we tried recently that's very, very good, excellent in fact. "Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie."  Great mix of meat and vegetables with a nice tasty crust.  Just a few hints, get the large 15 ounce size, about $2.50 at the supermarket, and don't microwave it, follow the conventional oven directions.  I tried microwaving one once and it didn't come out as well.  Very filling too! 

Their turkey pot pie is very good as well.  I haven't tried the beef pot pie.

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Posted by Convicted One on Sunday, April 26, 2020 3:14 PM

Flintlock76
And C-O, yeah I wish there was more beef in the "Vegetable Beef" too, but everyone's stingy with the beef,

I enjoy lima beans and celery in my vegetable beef soup too. But is seems Like Campbells has cut down on the green vegetables in their soups and really emphasizes the carrot and potato aspect.

I don't dislike carrots, but it just seems like their ratio has really grown in the mix these past several years.

I wasn't a big fan of them removing the mushrooms from the chunky chicken noodle either, but that change goes a few years further back.

Anyway, Cambells has gone from selling me 4-6 cans per week  to zero, and the aisle space they occupied at my local grocer is half what it was 10 years ago, so I doubt that my perceptions are at all unique.

 

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Posted by Gramp on Sunday, April 26, 2020 3:31 PM

I wonder how much these jacked-up electronics have increased the price of a car?  Some of them I highly value like a back up camera, but I think most are needless. Like a touchscreen on a 10 degree morning...gloves. And I do not want to prestart my car to make it toasty warm. 

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Posted by tree68 on Sunday, April 26, 2020 3:46 PM

Convicted One
I think a more apt name would be "Carrot soup with other vegetables and beef added"

I buy another brand (not the cheap stuff, either) that has that problem.  Mind you, I like carrots, but would prefer other "fillers."

LarryWhistling
Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) 
Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you
My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date
Come ride the rails with me!
There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...

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