Vague Food Found Inside the Food Lion

It began when my brother, Jeff, reached into his cupboard one evening in Black Mountain, and pulled out a small can. "You want to see some vague food?" he asked holding the tin out.

"Vague?"

"Yes, vague," he said. "Just what is "Potted Meat" anyway? Has it been smoked, drenched, strained, and then slammed into the can with extreme prejudice? What animal gives potted meat?"

I looked carefully at the can and turned it to the list of ingredients "as required by law." Not vague in the least.

Mechanically Separated Chicken, Beef Tripe, Partially Defatted Cooked Beef Fatty Tissue, Beef Hearts, Water, Partially Defatted Cooked Pork Fatty Tissue, Salt. Less than 2 percent: Mustard, Natural Flavorings, Dried Garlic, Dextrose, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite

The first item caught my eye since I had no idea what "Mechanically Separated Chicken" was except that it sounded bad for the chicken. Since then I've learned what the process entails:

Mechanically separated meat (MSM) [I'll let the acronym "MSM" pass without comment], also known as mechanically recovered meat (MRM), is a paste-like meat product produced by forcing beef, pork or chicken bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. Mechanically separated meat has been used in certain meat and meat products since the late 1960s.

That really perks up the taste buds, doesn't it?

My brother, to his eternal credit, didn't open that can of "Potted Meat." If he had we might have had to vacate his home at high speed surfing just ahead of the odor wave. Instead he prepared a very good dinner using real food.

Still, his concept of "vague food" stuck with me. How much vague food was there and what was it like? The next morning I found myself roaming through one of Food Lion supermarkets that are scattered about North Carolina. It was a bit of spontaneous cultural anthropology. My mission was to discover what other strange offerings had crept onto the grocery shelves during the years in which my own tastes had tended towards the more high end of offerings at YuppieChic Whole Foods style markets. I was not to be disappointed.

It was a series of small satoris. Here are some items that caught my attention. None of these things are on my current diet.

First up was this mercifully seasonal offering from Starbucks:

In this one offering we see a grand harmonic convergence of everything that has gone terribly, terribly wrong for Starbucks over the last few years. To get an abomination like this on the shelves means that hundreds of people at the company are working overtime to put it there. But before that can even get started you need a small group of executive marketing bozos sitting around trying to justify their phony baloney jobs.

"Okay, here's what we'll do. We'll take some bad coffee extract, dose it with some cheap chocolate syrup, and then lace it with peppermint!"

"Sounds suitably disgusting. How do we get people to buy it?"

"We'll tell them that it's available for a "Limited Time Only."

"Fookin' genius!"

Of late I note that some 300 jobs at Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle were eliminated. One can only hope these soooper-geniuses were not only among them, but rowed out into Puget Sound and put into the water with chains wrapped around their legs.

The next things not to make it into my shopping cart were the musical Tuna Medleys:

I did take one down and hold it to my ear to try and discern just what songs the tuna chunks were singing, but I couldn't quite make it out.

I also noted that, deep in the mountains of North Carolina, the "living in the shadows" population of illegal aliens had been spotlighted by Food Lion. Offerings of food favored by Mexicans took up fully half an aisle, with the following item asserting a kind of gastronomic assimilation we can only dream of.

Humm, Mayonesa-Mayonnaise. That's one massive train wreck of Spanish-French-American cultural concepts contained in a single jar. I suppose that this is some sort of sauce designed to appeal to the demographic of WASP Mexicans, but I really can't see why anyone in their right mind would whisk chipolte peppers into the otherwise palatable white-persons condiment of choice.

Still the Food Lion constantly reminded me that I was not in Mexifornia but in the deep South. If I harbored any doubts in the Mexican aisle a few regional specialties the next aisle over brought me around.

I can't even begin to imagine the tooth-fulness of these snacks and it is my profound wish that you would need to prove residency from birth in the South in order to be allowed to purchase them.

Clearly though, the above are only side-dishes. Main courses are strange as well. This region seems to be one inordinately fond of getting its teeth into necks:

But enough of what's for dinner in Vague Food Lion. Better to ask, hey, what's for lunch?

Here too you can depend upon being suitably revolted. First up are various sandwich fillings like:

Say that slowly several times: "Liver..... cheese.... liver.... cheese...." It's the kind of thought that would make a toddler contemplate suicide.

Of course I did find a few things that you could slap on a Liver Cheese sandwich to improve it.

Things, and I do mean "things," such as:

(Dubious even at the fabulous price of 99 cents!)

Things such as:

(The one slice of potted meat to have if you're having only one.)

Things such as the ever-popular:

(Which I am sure have never been within 6,000 miles of Vienna.)

And things such as:

(Very small fish making for very small steaks in very small tins.)

Now if you stack those altogether you will get some very distinct eating -- especially if you slather them with some Chipolte Mayonesa-Mayonnaise. But what would be, in Vague Foodland, an appropriate item to put them between in order to make the ultimate vague food sandwich?

Food Lion did not disappoint. In the very next aisle I discovered, to my horror:

Yes, pre-cooked and pre-packaged waffles already infused with syrup. No effort required at all. Is this the age of miracles and wonders, or what?

True, the conjoined twins of "De Wafelbakkers" might give you pause, but once you get past the potential of long mustache hairs getting into the batter, it's all good.

It's more than all good, because with these syrup-soaked waffles wrapped around your sandwich, you are ready to choose from the vast selection of vague desserts offered.

These would include, but not be limited to:

"Ready to eat!" Yumm. Why bother with putting it in a crust when you can just pop the lid and dig in?

Not to your taste? Not to worry,there's always:

This is an item that has a somewhat soft and flexible pastryesque shell surrounding a semi-solid and slick inner fluffed filling. The advantage of this item is that one can be eaten for dessert and the other saved for vague food emergencies.

By this time you're probably thinking, "Well, that's just the natural depravity of the packaged foods industry. It can't possibly represent the more natural inclinations of America's current diet."

Well, you're wrong. Because while I was fleeing from the Food Lion and the aisles of dead and vague food, I ran past the bakery counter touting "Fresh Baked Goodness." I paused long enough to snap a picture of the current cupcake offerings:

Now I don't know about you but I tend to reject any food that is blue that doesn't come with the word "berry" right after it. Not so the bakers of Food Lion it would seem.

Having driven all thoughts of eating any thing from my mind, I left the Food Lion and fled back into the hills of North Carolina.

The last thing I photographed before leaving was this label:

The vaguest food of all. I bought three. After all, it was a good price.

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Posted by Vanderleun at February 27, 2008 2:50 PM | TrackBack
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