More old food and drink I miss

As you may have seen on the World Of Crap facebook page, we have recently been enjoying a box of Kellogs Start at breakfast time.

I haven't had Start since I was about three, and even then I probably wouldn't have been able to eat it, since the best way to describe it is a very, very manly version of Cheerios. You have to leave it in the milk for roughly an hour before you start to nom.

Having said that, we're determined to finish the box for nostalgia purposes, because we're insane.

I'm not sure if they recently brought Start back, or if I just haven't noticed it around for twenty five years. Either way, it counts as blast from the past food.

And now, because that bit was so interesting to read, here are four more things I miss stuffing my face with -

Burger King BK Flamer

I was the kind of kid who hated any kind of weird food with weird stuff in, so whenever I had fast food I always had to have it specially done with no sauce or manky pickles or anything. My best ever plain burger was a BK flamer – I think it was probably meant to come with lettuce and mayo or something, but the small me was in seventh heaven eating a piece of reformed chicken breast between two slices of bread. It was called a Flamer because they cooked it by setting it on fire, or something. Nowadays you can get something very similar in the form of a Rustlers chicken burger, which is actually very nice to say you do it in the microwave.

Tab Clear

I only really remember having this once, when I went to see the poet Mike Harding doing a show at our school. I never really found out why he did this. I also don't remember how I came to have the can of Tab Clear – it wasn't the kind of drink my parents would have bought on a whim, so I must have asked for it. It was lovely – not quite a syrupy as normal Coke or Diet Coke. This year I've started drinking Tab regular, which I buy whenever I come across an American shop that sells it, and that's pretty similar. I've just realised how boring this bit is – it's essentially me droning on about not liking full fat Coke. Well done you if you're still reading this.

Gino Ginelli ice cream

This is more one for the mister, because although I remember the brilliant advert, I don't really remember what the ice cream tasted like. But he loved their toffee fudge flavour, which he is bound by law to always pronounce “toffee FAUDGE!” for reasons known only to him.

Some liquid coffee concentrate that I can't remember the name of, and that I can't find any bloody record of ever -

NOT Camp Coffee. This stuff was launched sometime in the early to mid 90s in the UK, and its main USP was that 'you find it in the chiller aisle!' Imagine! Buying coffee from next to the milk! The unusualness! Whatever next, marrying goats?

I vaguely remember the bottle; it was dark brown and shaped something like this -

And I'm sure the name ended in O, like Senseo or Tassimo, only not.

In my neverending quest to find out what this bloody coffee is called, I went to the Bramah museum of tea and coffee's website, only to find that the museum had shut down four years ago. It's got so bad that I'm seriously considering emailing Nescafe, Kenco and Douwe Egberts to ask them if they were responsible. But I'd look like a mad lady. They might ask why I want to know, and then I'd have to say something like “because it haunts my dreams at night, please help me!”

We've only got about eight bits of Start left in the box now, which is good because when it's finished I can use the box to make a pretend tank or something.

Um Bongo!

Look what's back!

I just bought this triple pack of bad boys from Asda, and they're delicious. They also still contain all the fruit mentioned in the Um Bongo song -

I just thought this was important and that I should share it with the world. Maybe next week they'll bring back Gino Ginelli ice cream!

Your lunch box - childhood currency and cool points

I really miss packed lunches. If I try to make a packed lunch for myself these days, it tastes rubbish. I suppose that's why Greggs does such goes business. It definitely isn't because people like the food there.

These days my lunch tends to be coffee and cigarettes, and doesn't require a lunch box. That's good, because lunch boxes too have begun to un-evolve. Now kids have 'lunch bags' – a terrible American invention that's absolutely no use in a fight. Or to stand on to reach stuff.

Nit picking aside, I guess I should be saying that it's what's on the inside that counts. And I guess it is. I don't really recall any lunchbox related bullying going on in our school, although I'm sure it must have gone on in some places.

There was, all in all, a lovely feeling of equality at our school. Packed lunch-ers and school dinner-ers would mix quite happily, breaking bread together around those gold metal water jugs.

So this won't be a dos and don'ts list for packing a lunch box (although my obvious judgemental nature might claw its way out of my soul).

Lunch box

Obviously, only if you were a packed lunch-er. This goes without saying, although I still feel the need to say it, in case you guys are stupid.

The cartoon or heartthrob of the day was the best thing to have on your lunch box, although there was a tomboyish attitude prevalent in our school which meant having a Take That lunch box might get you branded a 'girl'. Even if you were a girl, this was unacceptable.

For a good few years at primary school I had an ace Rainbow lunch box, and then I don't remember what I had so it must have been rubbish.

Sandwich

No exceptions. The main meal of the day for packed lunch-ers everywhere. Cut into halves or quarters, and wrapped in a food bag. Sometimes your sandwiches were wrapped in tin foil, but that was always gross for some reason.

My sandwich – peanut butter or Dairylea

What kids have today – pastrami on rye, with a side of lobster

Crisps

Big area for debate here, but generally crisps were the norm at our school. Nowadays, of course, kids are forced to have carrot sticks as a “treat”. The parents that pack carrot sticks in the “treat” area of the lunchbox are the same parents who take their kids to McDonalds and then make them have a fruit bag, when all they really want is a Super fun happy choco e-number sundae. These parents will, in later years, force their children to become self righteous busybodies, and ultimately to become Gillian McKeith, and no one wants that.

My crisps – Walkers, or Square crisps, or Frisps, or “Fish n Chips”

What kids have today – fucking carrot sticks.

Pudding

The hard line parents described above might actually give some leeway here – if you count leeway as 'allowing your child to have a strawberry yoghurt when all the other kids have Penguins and Blue Ribands'.

However, yoghurt of any kind will never come in for the same abuse as carrot sticks, on account of not being EVIL.

My pudding – a chocolate biscuit or a Munch Bunch 'Charlie Chocolate' yoghurt

What kids have today – a diet grapefruit or something

A brief aside – I realise something is missing from this post so far – the subject of 'swaps'. Swaps never really took place in our school, and certainly never with me. Personally, I always found the idea of eating food other children had handled repulsive, with their snot and their wee and their sticking their fingers where they didn't belong. Eew. I suspect all the other kids had the same form of OCD, and that's why no one really swapped at our school. It didn't occur to us that A) sandwiches were wrapped and only touched by parents, B) crisps were in bags, and C) puddings were (mostly) wrapped. We still didn't risk it – germs are everywhere.

Drink

In a Thermos flask that matched your lunchbox. Generally squash. Not pop, because the gas would make the top of your flask fly off/explode. A few exceptions -

Bringing a carton of juice or a Capri Sun

Getting water from the gold jug

That's it.

My drink – squash

What kids have today – vodka and coke (probably)

Some weirdos used to bring soup in their flasks. This is not acceptable but I will say this – have you ever tried messing with a kid holding a flask full of hot soup? Nope, because you don't.

6 defunct foods I miss

Good evening. I recently lost a bit of weight, but am in grave danger of putting it all back on again thanks to my unrelenting love for food. I would have been a famous TV chef, if I could cook.

My ineptitude as a chef doesn't stop me appreciating the culinary delights on offer. My current favourite thing to eat is prawn cocktail. Seriously. I would marry a prawn cocktail if I could.

That might not make me a connoisseur, but it makes me a greedy pig who knows what they like to eat. And as such, the following foodstuffs broke my heart when they went out of circulation. This is a tribute to food I have known and loved -

1. Batchelors garlic butter rice -

Easily the queen of packet rices. And yes, I do think of rice as female. What of it?

Garlic butter rice was the only accompaniment to chicken kievs. We have tried many times in our house to find an at least palatable alternative, but they always fell short of the mark. Then we tried making our own garlic butter rice, but it just ended up a sloppy mess of plain boiled rice and garlic butter, which burned your mouth. I beg of you Batchelors, if by some slim chance you're reading this, please bring it back! No one even knows why you took it off the market, apart from you're a bunch of fun and taste hating wazzocks.

2. McDonalds chicken korma burger

No one I've asked ever remembers this, but it was definitely a real thing; I am not mental. McDonalds brought out a chicken korma burger for a week or two some time around 1990, and I'm guessing it was part of an Indian food range. The burger itself was simple - a chicken korma flavoured patty inbetween two naan breads. There may have been the option to add other things like pickles, but my childish stomach was very much of the 'no icky stuff' persuasion. Nevertheless, they were to die for, and if anyone else remembers them I would dearly love to hear about it, if only to know that I am not actually mad.

3. Nest Noodles -

I know they still make egg noddles in nests, but that's not what I'm talking about here. When I was very small, our family lived in Northumberland/East Yorkshire, and that's where I remember eating these, so maybe they were only sold locally, I don't know. 'Nest Noodles' was the actual name, and they tasted kind of like plain spaghetti, but not quite. I used to eat these by the skipful as a child.

4. Neapolitans -

These were amazing, and I always remember getting them for being good. They were little rectangles of chocolate, all wrapped individually. One of the flavours was definitely 'oil of orange'. I think the blue one was milk chocolate, the red one was dark chocolate, and the green one was maybe mint. I don't remember what the yellow one was, answers on a postcard please.

5. McDonalds blueberry pies -

The pudding to end all puddings. They might still do these in other countries, but here in the UK we haven't had so much as a sniff of them since around the mid 90s. I know McDonalds still do fruit pies, but they're just trying to placate us with things like apple. The only similarities are the pastry, and the fact that the pies are served hotter than fire. Ok, so they're quite similar, but not similar enough. My parents haven't eaten a McDonalds fruit pie since they learned that they don't do blueberry any more. I do not blame them.

6. Fish N Chips -

I must have eaten 763,976 bags of these throughout my childhood. They weren't really crisps, more little savoury biscuits, sprinkled with fish n chips flavouring. But oh my god they were brilliant. Lord knows why Burtons ever took these off the market. If it's because Burtons closed down then sort of fair enough, but I'm too angry and upset to check whether this is the case or not.

7 ice creams from my childhood

I love ice cream. When I am eating an ice cream, it makes me feel like someone really important, like John Major or someone.

These days I indulge my ice cream obsession with entire tubs of Ben and Jerry's, Haagen Dazs and Baskin Robbins (when I can find it here in the UK). Grown up ice cream. The kind of ice cream you eat when you have PMS and a mortgage. However, the other day me and the mister found ourselves in bed, singing the Gino Ginelli advert jingle (really, don't ask). This led me to thinking about the other frozen treats that used to rattle round my belly on a regular basis.

Some of these are still available now, but we don't really have an ice cream man round here anymore. There was an ice cream man in the local park when I was at university, but I think he mainly sold drugs.

1. Fab -

I think this was originally just made from whatever the people at Lyons had lying around, but it worked. Vanilla with chocolate sprinkles, then plain vanilla, then a strawberry ice lolly bit at the end. I don't know about anyone else, but I was always vaguely disappointed when I'd finished the first part, and was only left with plain old ice lolly bits. They should have covered the whole thing in sprinkles. Speaking of which -

2. Nobbly Bobbly -

This was more like it! And with a chocolate middle! My friends and I first bought this from the ice cream man because, to our eight year old ears, the name sounded rude and hilarious. But it soon became the lolly of choice for a long time. I saw a box of these in Morrisons the other day, and it put a song in my heart.

3. Mini Milk -

These were very kind of 'meh' back in the day, but that didn't stop us eating them by the dozen. I think they really were just frozen milk, and they made your teeth go a bit funny to eat them. I think they were popular with parents, because they only cost 20p or something. I still feel like Mini Milks are mediocre at best, even though this wrapper has pictures of cows on it.

4. Twister -

Tangy with a twist! I don't know if that was their slogan or not, but it should have been.The vanilla ice cream part was delicious, and was offset by the weird green fruit tasting stripes. Again, I was always disappointed when all the ice cream was gone, and i was only left with the strawberry bit in the middle. Why did I never just buy vanilla ice cream? Because you're not the boss of me, that's why.

5. Screwball -

Raspberry ripple in a plastic cone, and when you got down to the bottom there was a bubblegum waiting for you! For some reason, I always harboured a vague hope that one day, the bottom of the cone would contain a prize rather than a bubblegum. I realise it would have to have been a really small prize, like a Micro Machines car, but in my head that was feasible. However, most kids would have probably tried to eat whatever was at the bottom of the cone, so that's why it was always a bubblegum. Stupid kids, ruining my fun.

6. Funny Feet -

A simple but genius idea - strawberry ice cream shaped like a foot. The ice cream itself was lovely if I remember correctly. The fact that it was shaped like one of the most unappetising parts of the human body never put us kids off, although it probably should have done. Sadly, Walls' follow up products, Wacky Windpipes and Barmy Bile Ducts, never really took off.

7. Feast -

One of my personal favourites; I still occasionally eat them. A chocolate lover's heaven - a chocolate coating embedded with nuts, then chocolate ice cream, and finally, a solid chocolate middle! In the war between chocolate and strawberry for supremacy in the freezer, I think it's clear which side I come down on. Especially when there are nuts involved.

Honourable mention - ice pops -

I LOVE ice pops - I always have a couple of dozen in my freezer at any one time. Sometimes you are so thirsty and hot that a normal drink just will not cut it. That's when I break out the frozen sticks of joy, but I have to watch myself with them - I can easily eat ten at a time. In fact, I once ate a whole bag of ice cubes, and ended up with a terrible stomach ache afterwards. My favourite flavours were definitely cola, turquoise and blue. 

And finally - here is the song that me and the mister found ourselves singing in bed. We are so rock and roll.

100th post! Also - On the trail of the mythical Brown Derby

Have you ever thought to yourself "there just aren't enough restaurant franchises named after minor characters in Popeye"? Me too, which is why I was so thrilled to recently discover that Wimpy is still in business!

The Wimpy bar in my town closed down well over a decade ago and, although I'd heard rumours of Express Wimpys haunting various service stations and bowling alleys, I'd given up on my dream of ever finding another proper sit down Wimpy bar.

Until last week! After some careful research (typing 'wimpy' into Google), I was amazed to discover a Wimpy restaurant in Newark, a mere 15 miles from me! Now, I've been led on Wimpy related wild goose chases before, so I checked with people I knew from the area that the internet wasn't lying to me. They confirmed that the Wimpy was real, so me and the mister set off to find this mythical Shangri-La.

Let me backtrack. For those of you who aren't familiar with Wimpy, here is its entire life story. For those of you who don't have time to fanny about on Wikipedia, think McDonalds, but with cutlery and waitress service. And chips, proper chips, not fries. Wimpy is what McDonalds in Britain would have been if everyone still had elevenses and wore bowler hats to work.

Their signature dish was the sausage based 'Bender in a Bun' (jokes too obvious for human consumption). Also on the menu were fish n chips, burgers, hot puddings, and the donut and ice cream combo known as a Brown Derby (which my boyfriend swears is a euphemism).

So, we drove to Newark, and shuffled our way past various pound shops looking vaguely lost.

AND THEN -

I don't mind admitting that I did a little dance in the street at this point. Finally, I was going to succeed where so many brave explorers before me had failed. This is what Howard Carter must have felt like, only he couldn't even have a Brown Derby.

The decor inside was pretty much the same as I remembered it from the 1990s, which was a nice bonus. We would have taken a picture of the 'flavor burst' posters on the walls, which featured retro looking ice creams in various neon colours (and which I'm pretty sure weren't even on the menu), but I was scared one of the staff would rat me out for industrial espionage, even though I was up to nothing of the sort.

We ordered -

Milk

Coke

Bacon and egg in a bun

Original half pounder and chips (with free onion rings!)

Rocky road sundae

BROWN DERBY!

Our food arrived, and oh my god, it was every bit as fantastic as I remembered. I didn't take a picture of my food, because this isn't fucking Instagram. Mind you, since this is essentially a food based post, that was a bit of a silly decision.

To be honest, that's kind of the end of my Wimpy story. I missed it, I went back after a lot of years, and I still loved the food. And I made sure to leave a tip.

So here we are at the end, and just so I don't leave you with a terrible feeling of anticlimax, here is a picture of a mega circus!