Pickles & Dimes

I’m not a fan of the saying: “Penny for your thoughts.” Mainly because people always act weirdly nervous when they say it, like they can’t believe you’re going to fall for it so their robotic mind probes will be granted access to your private brainwaves. Also I don’t like it because then I am forced to tell them I am usually thinking about food.

Specifically, cheese or bacon.

Regardless, I think about food a lot. Even when I’m eating. In fact, it is not unusual for me to ask Jason – as we are in the act of eating – what we should have for our next meal.

There may be a problem there, but as I have yet to weigh 900 pounds, I’m not going to worry about it.

My obsession with food will sometimes lead me to develop an insatiable appetite for a particular food item. This would be fine if I was pregnant, but instead, results in culinary demands at unreasonable times, such as when Jason’s asleep in bed at three in the morning: “I’m hungry for French toast. With root beer. Mug root beer, not A&W.”

My biggest food obsession has been with Kraft’s Egg Noodle dinner. It used to come in a brown box with yellow lettering and consisted of small pasta squares that you mixed with a chicken-flavored powder. I subsisted on this concoction throughout my college years.

I can’t find it anywhere. I thought I found it online last year through a Canadian distributor. I ordered a three-pack of it; it was not the same.

However, it appears that Kraft has renamed this Kraft Noodle Classics Savory Chicken, but I do not trust them. Fool me once…

Anyway, while on my insane Kraft quest, I stumbled across a few other discontinued items from my childhood. Of course, that means I now crave them desperately.

For instance:

Chewels gum

Remember – the gum with gel inside? Believe me, it tasted so much better than it sounded. Also, for some reason I distinctly remember having cases of this in our cupboards when I was a kid. Perhaps my parents were Chewels shareholders.

Hostess Pudding Pies

The kind with vanilla, not the radioactive Teenage Mutant Turtle ones, because seriously? Why?

Soup Starter

I believe the company that made this was bought out, so Soup Starter still exists, but in different packaging. I remember it in red canisters. My Mom used to make it a lot on Saturdays because I remember watching CHiPs as she made it.

Speaking of CHiPs, I firmly believe the guy on the Husker Du? board game was the same guy who played Sgt. Getraer on CHiPs.

Prove me wrong. And bring me some Kraft Egg Noodle Dinner while you’re at it.