Oh Dave! Now

My parents said I was “fussy” because as a kid, I was a premature vegetarian. Not because I loved “Bless the Beasts and the Children” book, movie, and Carpenters’ song, but because I hated to chew. Chewing a tough piece of meat was undainty and boring. Therefore, I liked fish, tolerated ham and poultry, and refused pork chops, liver, hamburger, and steak. My staples were mashed potatoes, pudding, canned zucchini in tomato sauce, canned ravioli and tamales, and fudgesicles, anything that would slide easily down my parched little throat.

Today my parents would be shocked at the wide variety of meats that have been in my mouth, both chewed and unchewed. The charcuterie plate is to die for! Rather than fussy, when I found something I liked, I was loyal and stuck to it with passion.

So it was a slap in the face to be stood up again last week in the grocery aisle. My flavor, Cool Gel, of the Sensodyne family of toothpaste has apparently been pulled from the production line. At the third store with no luck I practically broke into tears when I realized it was really gone. I settled for a non-gel flavor that would never compare to my lost, not exactly loved, product companion.

We were a Crest family. In the 60s/70s there was one flavor of Crest, one. Eventually they introduced spearmint or something, but we remained loyal to Regular. That became extinct years ago. My old teeth have become sensitive to weather changes, so I gave up on the ever changing flavor line-up of Crest and switched to dentist-recommended Sensodyne. At the time, there were maybe three flavors of that brand—now there are close to a dozen. Like Jelly Bellys, the popular flavors seem to be vomit and snot—no more Cool Gel.

There is a long list of lost product loves over the last couple of decades. My favorite granola which I ate faithfully every morning for several years one day disappeared. Morning shaving cream facials with Edge unscented sensitive? Over. Quaker Oats Squares—Cinnamon were for a long time supplanted by the inferior Brown Sugar—I could only find Cinnamon at Target of all places. Even the contact lens solution prescribed to go with my expensive custom lens vanished from the shelves. For 10+ years I used the Original formula, as recommended, and never switched to the Advanced formula. Now apparently the choices are Improved formula vs. the Advanced, with no mention of Original anywhere. When I asked my eye doctor what to use, he said to use another brand now—”we have lots of trial sizes to get you started.”

I’m not an idiot. I know it’s all marketing and profit and kick-backs. Years of loyalty day after day from one person, me, is not enough to keep the product gods from moving on to new, younger customers. Human nature compels us to always look for the new and improved, bored as we get with same old, same old. But it’s enough to make me want to move to the forest in the mountains and concoct my own sustainable toothpastes and breakfast cereals and tell them all to go to hell with their profits and “multicultural” product lines.

But then I turned into the next aisle and picked up a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, a staple from family camping trips. Nothing tasted better around the campfire on a chilly evening. I was amazed to see that the ingredients were all real foods and it stated plainly No Preservatives / Gluten Free. Wow! Even my gluten sensitive partner could eat Dinty Moore! I calmly put several cans in my cart.

When I got home I popped the convenient pull-tab top and heated up the stew in a pot on the stove, the old-fashioned way. Safely in our recliners, we settled in for an HD episode of “Top Chef Masters” porn and ate our stew. The hearty stew warmly bathed my tongue and mouth, and slid easily down my throat, no real chewing necessary as the beef was tender and melt-in-your-mouth. Tears welled up in my eyes. Thank you, Hormel, for not changing the original, basic recipe and flavor that is so, so good. Thank you for not abandoning me after 50+ years. I will love you always. As long as you don’t come out with Dinty Moore’s Chipotle Beef Stew Fiesta…