•Bell’s Seasoning (for poultry----was it an ingredient that was removed because of health concerns?) in the grocery stores. I can only find the McCormick brand that just doesn’t seem to be the same. I started making my own after I couldn’t find Bell’s.
•The roomate really likes The House of Prime Rib’s seasoning, which cannot be bought in stores or mail ordered. Our connection to the BA is no longer able to pick up a few jars and send them to us. Lawrey’s seasoned salt doesn’t come close in that catagory.
•Where I live it is hard to find dried Mexican oregano and I can’t find that variety in a plant to grow. I hate having to mail order so much that I used to just pull off the shelf at the super market. The pandemic and ‘supply chain issues’ (even before the pandemic) didn’t help.
•California Laurel Bay Leaves. I had to mail order those. I bought enough to fill a half gallon mason jar. The last batch I had hand picked and they lasted about 20 years— they do not ‘expire’!
I’ve been splurging on slightly better quality bay leaves lately, and they have a much stronger fragrance.
The imported bay leaves at the Polish store, various brands, which are not expensive, also seem to have a better fragrance than the typical grocery store cello pack of bay leaves.
Certs were classified as mints, but they actually contained no oils of any mint plant. Instead, as has long been advertised, the mints contain “Retsyn,” a trademarked name for a mixture of copper gluconate, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and flavoring. It is the copper gluconate in Retsyn which gives Certs its signature green flecks.
They have been discontinued since 2018 since partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil (i.e. the dreaded ‘trans fat’) is no longer an allowed ingredient.
I grew up on Spice Islands brand spices and I liked their curry powder because it was a good all around mild flavor, to me. Badia is a cheap brand here, with more depth. Spice Islands reformulated recently and is now over the top for me, so I use less.
I guess today’s meal will be a Waldorf salad and bbq chicken I make with bottled bbq sause that I put curry powder in it.
I LOVE buttermints. When my grandparents were alive in the 70’s and early 80’s, dinner out with them would often be at some step-and-a-half-above-Denny’s level ‘family restaurant’. Inevitably, a bowl of these sat next to the cash register up front. My grandmother, depression-era lady that she was, always managed to stuff a handful into her purse and plunk them into the obligatory cut-glass candy dish on the coffee table.
Maybe the mints are still there, and I just don’t go to those restaurants anymore…
Their regular gin tastes ok to me, but it’s not a favorite. They’ve had the occasional limited edition that was really quite good - the Summer Solstice (i think - it’s been a while) comes to mind, and then real snore fests like the Neptune, and the horribly, perfume-y, absolutely undrinkable Flora Adora. Barf-o-rama.
One aspect to this question is regional (for me, USA regional). Coming from Indiana, I was shocked, shocked, to find that a meat-section worker at a good supermarket in the State of Washington said they had no smoked ham hocks–until another floor-person directed me to an obscure freezer aisle where they had some seriously frost-burned hocks. That would cause a scandal in the much of the USA.
I love real buttermints, like the Vernell’s brand we used to buy in the sixties. No longer around, alas. There are so-called buttermints, usually found at trade shows, with the packet “personalized” to the company giving them out. I’ve looked those up though, and they seem to mostly have “butter flavoring” with some other fat standing in for mouthfeel. However, recipes are available online for real old-timey buttermints made with fresh butter. I haven’t made them, because I figure I’d probably go nuts and eat the whole recipe amount in one sitting. Not good for a borderline diabetic with already-clogged arteries and self-control issues.
When I was a much younger lad, I worked at a NASA center in Cleveland, OH. (right next to, and marginally part of, John Hopkins Airport). I worked with a MUCH older crowd of literal rocket scientists. One of them imparted this bit of wisdom:
“Anything over 70 is a bonus round. If I want a cookie, I’m having the damned cookie.”
