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Quisp cereal boxes -- have they returned? Image courtesy of Flickr user CrazyUncleJoe-MoPho

Many readers sent in intriguing stories of lost food in response to this month’s Inviting Writing challenge. We don’t have room to publish all of them in full, but we wanted to share these final food memories before moving on to next month’s theme. Look for the next invitational on Tuesday, May 31st (Monday, our usual Inviting Writing day, is a holiday).

Food of the Astronauts

Michael Sessums

When I was growing up in the 1960s and early 1970s, we were all excited about NASA’s moon missions. We knew we would all get a chance to go to the moon and beyond someday. While we waited for our turn atop the Saturn 5, we could be just like the astronauts by getting mom to buy food the TV told us these intrepid explores consumed.

Drinking Tang would provide a refreshing cosmic cool-down after exploring our backyard moonscape while wearing our bouncy moon boots and talking to Mission Control on our walkie-talkies (or tin cans and string). Nibbling on compact Space Food Sticks gave us more energy (like we needed it), and its push-up packaging kept it in our mouths and out of our reel-to-reel flight computers.

I was so excited when my mom took us to the real Mission Control at NASA near Houston, Texas. What did we find there? Huge rockets, space capsules, space suits, a rocket sled and a moon buggy, to name a few. What else? More astronaut food, of course!

Freeze-dried veggies and meat, a meal in a bag with a slurping tube, and my favorite—freeze-dried ice cream! We got Neapolitan so everyone could have their favorite flavor. Boy that was good!

Some of the freeze-dried foods from NASA are still available today, but the Space Food Sticks went the way of the Dodo Bird. My favorite was peanut butter flavor. A pocket full of those an a Thermos of Tang and I was all set for my next adventure.

King Vitamin and Quisp cereal

By Kathryn (Katie) George

These were more or less Cap’n Crunch knock-offs, but easily the best cereal anyone ever made anywhere, at anytime.

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1960s, and my brothers and sisters and I took turns visiting Grandma and Nana in Clinton, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River. Grandma would pick us up and we would drive down country roads (no interstate then!), and when we got to Clinton, we stopped at the grocery store. Grandma always was willing to buy one of these two cereals (and maybe both!).

Of course this was way before “sugar” was a four-letter word. We ate Super Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops, and Sugar Crisp. But the best was Quisp and King Vitamin.

And no one poured it into the bowl like Grandma!

Tangerine Kool-Aid

By Karen Hamilton

My father was a working man.  A hard-working man.  He was a carpenter who built custom homes in rural Texas.  That meant he needed DINNER at noon, not lunch, and the evening meal was SUPPER.  In the 1960s, when all four of us kids were out of school for summer break, Daddy would drive up in his old green Chevy station wagon just as the noon fire whistle blew and Mama would be putting dinner on the table. It was always a big meal. Maybe fried chicken or steak, perhaps meat loaf or fresh fish, accompanied by two sides and bread. Although we weren’t encouraged to have drinks with our meals (my mother always said, “You kids are not raccoons and don’t need to wash your food down. CHEW!”), we often had the summertime treat of Kool-Aid. The family’s favorite flavor above all others was Tangerine  We just loved it and were so unhappy when it was no longer available. Through the years we’ve tried other brands and variations, but they never quite lived up to the memory of those long-ago meals when we were all together at the table.

7-Up cake, courtesy of Flickr user henryalva

A few years back a friend and I went to see Watts Towers, a fantastic example of folk or outsider art. Unfortunately, because the towers are far from major tourist attractions, in a neighborhood that many people still associate with race riots that happened decades ago, few visitors to (or residents of, for that matter) Los Angeles ever see them. It took me nearly 30 years of living in the city to get there.

Once I went, I was blown away by the obsessive creation of Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant who spent 34 years crafting the intricate towers and other sculptural pieces of metal and concrete embedded with shards of pottery, tiles, shells and colored glass soda bottles—some of them still showing their brand names.

Which brings me to today’s subject: baking with soft drinks. Aside from the art itself, the strongest memory I have of that day is of the unusual pound cake I bought from a bake sale being held on the grounds to benefit the local youth center. It was called 7-Up cake, but even without the name, as soon as I took a bite I would have recognized the distinctive flavor of the soda from my youth. Although 7-Up is still around (unlike the “lost foods” of our latest Inviting Writing series), it now seems less widely available than other lemon-lime sodas, like Sprite and Slice, so I rarely drink it anymore.

In fact, I rarely drink soda at all anymore, since I try to avoid its empty calories. Such sugary beverages should really be considered dessert—so putting them in dessert makes sense. Aside from flavor, the carbonation is supposed to make cakes lighter, and the 7-Up cake certainly was fluffy and moist. I must have been imagining it because of the strong association with the flavor, but I felt as if I could still feel the bubbles popping on my tongue as I ate the cake.

Since the bake sale was in a predominately black neighborhood (and I had never heard of 7-Up cake before), I originally thought the recipe might have African-American origins, but it appears to be part of a more generally Southern tendency to add soda to cakes and other recipes. The blog Southern Plate gives a recipe for 7-Up Pound Cake that comes from the southern comedian Jeanne Robertson, who does a funny bit about sending her husband to the supermarket for the ingredients.

The possibilities for soda-flavored cakes are nearly endless. Last year for my husband’s birthday, I made the root beer bundt cake from the cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, which has root beer in both the cake and the frosting. It was a hit.

The Coca-Cola recipe for cola cake includes cocoa and marshmallows. Then there’s the Dr. Pepper Texas Chocolate Cake recipe from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

Finally, the blogger at Scarletta Bakes came up with the brilliant idea to use Mexican aguas sodas—the brand Jarritos has flavors like hibiscus, pineapple and tamarind, which can sometimes be found in the international foods aisle—for a cake with a different flavor in each layer, separated by frosting and topped with toasted coconut. Must. Try. Now.

Idaho Potato Museum. Image courtesy of Flickr user jimmywayne.

With summer on the horizon, many people are making plans to go on vacation, relax a little and see some new sights. Of course, befitting our connection to the Smithsonian Institution, we’re a bit partial to hitting up museums as a means of having fun while traveling. This month Smithsonian presents wonderfully offbeat museums to see here in the United States (and there are plenty abroad). But what if you’re a vacationing bon vivant looking to take in a little food culture? Here’s a quick look at five funky food museums you can visit. (This list is by no means comprehensive—you can search this online directory of over 1,400 food museums from around the world.) Coincidentally, today is also International Museums Day

1. The SPAM Museum

Designed by Hormel to make use of unused bits of pork shoulder, SPAM debuted in 1937. It gained in popularity during World War II, although this precooked tinned meat had its share of detractors. Some G.I.s dubbed it “meat that failed the physical, while former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher recalled the product as a “wartime delicacy” in the midst of severe food shortages. Love it or hate it, SPAM is something of a cultural icon. (In 1997, examples of SPAM packaging were donated to the Smithsonian.) The SPAM Museum, located in Austin, Minnesota, is free to the public and packs its 16,500 square feet of space with vintage advertising, memorabilia and activities. Ever want to try your hand at canning meat? The SPAM Museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed on New Year’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day.

2. Moxie Museum (there are two to choose from!)

If you’re itching to visit a soda-themed museum, the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta is pretty big blip on the radar. For those of you wanting to get familiar with a regional soft drink, try the Moxie Museum in Union, Maine, which houses an extensive collection of artifacts such as vintage advertisements and soda stands. Patented in 1876 and initially marketed as a medicinal drink, Moxie outsold Coca Cola until the 1920s and is Maine’s state drink. Made with gentian root, some people can’t get past the strong flavor—some bloggers have compared it to chugging a fig newton—but it remains a New England favorite even though Moxie is now manufactured in Atlanta. In Lisbon Falls, Maine, you will find another Moxie Museum, this one with some memorabilia and lots of Moxie merchandise. If you’re in the area the weekend of July 8, 2011, you can enjoy the Moxie Festival, an annual event that features fireworks, recipe contests and Moxie-chugging contests.

3. National Mustard Museum

After a late-night trip to the grocery store, Barry Levinson (no, not that one) felt compelled to start amassing prepared mustards. He came home with a dozen jars of the stuff on that initial store run and now has a collection of more than 5,300 jars along with an assortment of mustard memorabilia. If you visit the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin, you can enjoy exhibits about mustard pots, mustard-themed musicals and saddle up to a tasting bar. The National Mustard Museum is open 7 days a week—except New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas—from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

4. Idaho Potato Museum

This loving ode to Idaho’s finest is housed in a stone building that formerly functioned as a railway depot. With its giant statue of a buttered baked potato out front, who could resist going in? In addition to learning about the history of spuds and how they became to be synonymous with this particular state, you can see the world’s largest potato chip—a whopping 24 by 14 inches—as well as potato-sack clothing and a potato signed by former vice President Dan Quayle. (He had a potato-related mishap at a spelling bee some years back.) Located in Blackfoot, Idaho, the museum is open from October to March, Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; and from April to September, Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The museum is closed Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, 4th of July and between Christmas Eve and New Year’s.

5. The Pez Museum

So this one may be debatable for inclusion. Are you coming because: a) you enjoy the tiny chalky-sweet bars whose flavors bear little resemblance to anything that occurs in nature, or b) you enjoy the plastic novelty dispensers? Whatever your reason, Pez, which was initially marketed to people who were trying to stop smoking, is one of those hallmarks of childhood candy consumption. And it’s a great place to see dispensers that you probably won’t find at your local grocery store. And who wouldn’t want to get their sugar fix from a plastic bust of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Located in Burlingame, California, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Apple, pumpkin and elderberry wine from Will o' Wisp Wines. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

The first thing that comes to mind at the mention of wine is “yes, please.” The second is “grapes.” And the last thing might have been pumpkins—until this week, when I tasted pumpkin wine.

Shelle Bailey, who lives near me in the Adirondacks, makes wine out of carrots, elderberries, apples and, yes, pumpkins—pretty much everything other than grapes. She recently got her federal permit to start a community-supported winery. Like a CSA (community-supported agriculture), a membership in the Will o’ Wisp Wines CSW gives Bailey the money up front to buy produce and supplies, which she will use to make unusual grapeless wines that will be distributed to members when they’re ready. Aside from the above, the varieties she plans to make include tomato, lemon-ginger, gooseberry, dandelion, beet, rose hips and maple.

The CSW model is novel, but it turns out that the kinds of wines she’s making have a history. Long before grapes cornered the fermented juice market, wine was made from all manner of fruits, vegetables and especially honey; mead, or honey wine, is “one of mankind’s most ancient alcoholic drinks,” according to The Glutton’s Glossary, by John Ayto.

Mead was also Bailey’s entrée into non-grape wines, both for drinking and for home fermenting. She stopped drinking most regular wine because of a bad reaction to sulfites, which are frequently added as a preservative so a wine can age without turning to vinegar. (All wines, including Bailey’s, also contain a certain amount of naturally occurring sulfites.) The wines she makes are meant to be drunk within a year.

Bailey learned to make wine through a combination of family history (she uses her father’s dandelion wine recipe) research (both online and by asking other hobbyists), and “a lot of trial and error,” she says. She is a proponent of “natural” wines—in contrast with commercial wineries, she doesn’t filter them, chemically “kill off” the yeast, blend batches or otherwise tinker with the flavor, for example by adding tannins. “I don’t want it to taste like a grape wine,” she says. “It’s kind of an ‘unwine.’ ”

My co-workers and I had a little tasting at my office this week. We tried Bailey’s apple, elderberry and pumpkin wines. They definitely would not be confused with a grape wine, although they didn’t taste how I expected. Bailey had told me she prefers dry wines, but I had been prepared for them to be a little sweet. They really weren’t; they tasted strongly of alcohol (this may have been partly because they had just been bottled; I suppose they may mellow with a few month’s age). Bailey says her wines average from 10 to 14 percent alcohol, which is comparable with grape wines. The apple, which I expected to taste like cider, was more like apple brandy—but, then again, not really like anything else. The pumpkin, the biggest surprise, was my favorite—slightly vegetal and almost imperceptibly sweet. The best description of her wine is probably Bailey’s own: she calls it “a light, dry, country-style/table wine with a fresh and uncomplicated taste.”

Pulp wood (but not the kind that may appear in your cheese or bread). Image courtesy of Flickr user rbglasson.

Ardent label readers out there know to scan nutritional labels for ingredients that they don’t want in their diet. But most people probably don’t keep an eye out for “wood pulp.” Well, chances are you won’t see that in print. Phrases you are more likely to encounter are innocuous-sounding terms such as “cellulose,” “cellulose gel,” or “dietary fiber.” The Wall Street Journal came out recently with a story on cellulose as a food additive, and some bloggers have been contributing their concerns about what’s being dumped into our food.

So, what exactly is cellulose? On the molecular level, it’s a string of sugar molecules. It’s the stuff that makes up the cell walls of plant matter. Cotton is an excellent source of cellulose in its purest form. Cellulose is a major component of wood, giving that material its signature strength. In the food industry, cellulose is used as a filler. Since humans don’t have enzymes that allow us to digest the stuff, it just passes through our digestive system, making it a go-to additive for diet products because it provides bulk without the caloric content. Cellulose is also used to make ice cream and cheeses smoother in consistency, and to keep strands of shredded cheese from sticking together. There are no known health risks and the FDA has limits on how much cellulose can be used in food products. It’s a natural additive, but the cellulose source might just gross out consumers.

The use of cellulose in food products is nothing new. Experiments in finding nutritionally neutral food sources date back to the early 20th century and the experiments of Frederick Hoelzel. An adventurous eater, he found that chopped surgical cotton doused with fruit juice could satisfy his appetite for a few days and in 1919, he developed cellulose-based flour. These early ventures didn’t fly with the American public. It wasn’t until 1955 that chemist Dr. O.A. Battista accidentally discovered edible cellulose by leaving a solution of cellulose and water in the blender a little too long. Expecting a gritty, sandy substance to end up at the bottom of the blender, he got a “noncaloric custard.” He used the flavorless gel to make a batch of cookies and, under the name Avicel, the product was quickly marketed to the food industry.

With the rising costs of raw materials like flour, oil and sugar, cellulose is going to be more attractive to manufacturers as a way to extend foodstuffs. For some people, this is cause to pinpoint the products that use the stuff. Personally, while I too prefer food that has been adulterated as little as possible, I think I might be more concerned about melatonin in my prefab brownies.