I
was reminded the other day of the unsuccessful Dutch cocoa powder
quest from a few years ago.
The
basic story goes like this. While looking for some dinner ideas,
I came across an old dessert recipe and thought I would try to
make it. One of the ingredients is Dutch cocoa powder, and to
my memory that was a fairly easy purchase. Go to a grocery store,
find the baking aisle, locate the chocolates, and there, right
next to cocoa powder would be the Dutch cocoa powder.
It
was not an easy purchase.
We
had moved since the last time I had made it, and none of the grocery
stores up here carried Dutch cocoa powder. And the thing that
kept upsetting me the most had nothing to do with not finding
it. No. I was actually ok with that. I’ve become used to products
that aren’t available.
Terry
and I have moved a few times over the years. Want a fun quest?
Try finding your favorite brand of baked beans after moving to
a different state. And add to the fun by deciding that a hot dog
and baked bean casserole sounds like a comforting easy meal, which
would be especially comforting with a can of brown bread. (Yes.
A can of brown bread. Geez people, this is culinary magic, stay
with me.) Forget it if you think you’re going to have some coffee
syrup to make coffee milk to go along with it. That definitely
ain’t happening once you get a few hundred miles away from Rhode
Island.
Whether
it’s simply not available in different regions, or, in many cases
over the years just an item no longer produced, I’ve gotten used
to products that you can’t find these days.
But
looking for Dutch cocoa powder kept bringing me into the baking
aisle. Store after store, and that means different chains of stores,
the result was the same. I wouldn’t find Dutch cocoa powder. But,
in that baking aisle, was agave nectar. And…
What
the hell?
Agave
nectar?
I
could find agave nectar, and in some cases multiple brand names,
taking up significant baking aisle shelf space, but Dutch cocoa
powder was nowhere to be found.
Seventy-five
different styles of milk, including soy milk, almond milk, rice
milk and oat milk. Oat milk. Seriously, oat milk. And if you’re
not stunned by oat milk, well, look the list goes on, and…
This
isn’t about milk. Because honestly, if you use any of these different
varieties of products, including oat milk and agave nectar, that’s
fine.
For
me, the reminder the other day was ketchup.
If
you walked into a store for ketchup, and you came across the Simply
Tomato Ketchup from Heinz on a shelf, would that make you pause?
You know, because you’re headed in, and you’re looking for Heinz
Tomato Ketchup. Just the basic bottle of ketchup. Nothing fancy.
No special styles. Regular old original ketchup. And then you
spot the ketchup bottles, all recognizable red Heinz bottles,
and after moving quickly past the organic and no salt and no sugar
and so on, you see a label that says Heinz Simply Tomato Ketchup.
It
sounds right. Simply ketchup. That sounds like what someone would
call the basic ketchup. Right?
But
it also sounds incredibly wrong. Why wouldn’t it just be the original
ketchup? Why not a label with no creative adjectives or descriptions?
And if you are looking for the bare basic Heinz original style
ketchup, it turns out that Heinz Simply Tomato Ketchup is wrong.
And
before you go crazy and start preparing to send me an e-mail asking
me to relax about this, there are styles of Heinz ketchup out
there with reduced sugar sweetened with honey and blended with
other vegetables.
I’m
not saying any of them are wrong. It just makes me laugh when
I can’t find Dutch cocoa powder, but there’s a good chance an
aisle or two away I could pick up some carrot cake or lemon Oreos.
(I won’t. But I could.)
I
can’t count the number of items that have been removed from my
kitchen, or the recipes I’ve either needed to adapt or stop making.
Time has faded the memories of many of them entirely. At least
until one day happens to find me absent-mindedly flipping through
a cookbook or folder of recipes, and there it is.
And
as long as I only need oat milk and agave nectar for it, I should
be fine.