These by-gone food products tug at my heartstrings whenever I think about
them. I can practically hear the theme from Brian's Song echoing
in my head just by looking at this list. O, how I miss thee!
But it's not all a bleak and desolate wasteland. Some food products which
I had thought had vanished from the Earth forever have come back from the
grave. Such as:
*) Noodles Romanoff:
As of early 2003, even the vaunted, seemingly-invincible Golden Grain
corporation decided to pull out of the Noodles Romanoff business. I could
no longer find Pasta Roni® Romanoff anywhere. They were the last of
the last; when they shuffled off this mortal coil, the once magnificent species
Noodlus Romanoffus In-a-boxus followed the mastodon and the dodo bird
into extinction.
The ultimate loss of all forms of pre-packaged Noodles Romanoff was too
much of an unbearable tragedy for me to bear. The only way I could go on,
the only way I could drag myself out of bed in the morning to face the next
day, was to figure out how to make Noodles Romanoff without being at the
mercy of some nameless soulless food-producing megacorporation's marketing
whims. I had to figure out how to make Noodles Romanoff without access to
an actual box of Noodles Romanoff.
I poked around the Web for Noodles Romanoff recipies, and found one that
sounded promising because it required neither onions nor cottage cheese, both
of which I detest. It tasted all right, but it wasn't the same. I
needed to capture the same flavor as the Betty Crocker® 2-step
preparation Noodles Romanoff, or they would have won. Armed with
a few boxes of Pasta Roni® Romanoff I'd purchased before it was
discontinued, I read the ingredients, and got an idea: don't use parmesan
cheese, use the same kind of "cheddar cheese" powder they probably used in
the sauce packet in the box.
I tried it, and it worked wonderfully! The concoction tasted every
bit like the Noodles Romanoff I remember from Betty Crocker growing up.
And not just any Betty Crocker Noodles Romanoff, either — the
old-fashioned, traditional two-step preparation Noodles Romanoff!
The pure, unadulterated Original, before the Betty Crocker corporation had
bowed to the pressures of convenience-mongering and sacrificed their product's
hallowed flavor just so their customers could make it without having to drain
the noodles. (Pah! Kraft® Macaroni & Cheese never had to
stoop to a one-step preparation method, and their product is still the flagship
brand of macaroni-&-cheese-in-a-box worldwide. Betty Crocker should
have followed their example, not the misguided example set by Golden
Grain's Noodle Roni® (later renamed Pasta Roni®) line of tepid
noodle-based bachelor chow.)
And so, now, as a service to all those other wayward souls out there who miss
the flavor of Noodles-Romanoff-in-a-box as much as I do, I present my
infallable recipe for
Noodles Romanoff that tastes like the old Betty Crocker® two-step
preparation Noodles Romanoff in the box
- 1 pot of boiling, salted water
- 6 ounces (170 grams) of dry uncooked egg noodles. It's best if you
use medium egg noodles (a.k.a. what Golden Grain calls "fettucine"), not wide
or extra-wide, because these best approximate the size and thinness of the
noodles Betty Crocker used to use. 6 ounces of these kinds of noodles
works out to about 3 cups if you go by volume
- 1/3 cup (80 ml) of sour cream (I use lowfat or fat-free sour cream so that
I don't go over the U.S. R.D.A. of fat in one meal, but a purist has informed
me that anything but the regular old high-fat variety of sour cream has a
strange aftertaste)
- 1/6 cup of milk (or more, if you liked your noodles romanoff sauce extra
runny)
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) Kraft® day-glow-orange Macaroni & Cheese cheese
powder. (You used to be able to buy it in tubes that looked like those green
tubes of Kraft® grated parmesan cheese except they were blue. 60 ml worked
out to a little over 1/3 of an 85-gram tube full). Since this item has also
joined the Choir Invisible of the discontinued food list, you can also use one
full packet of the cheese powder from a box of Kraft® Macaroni & Cheese
Dinner, or get a container of that Cheddar Cheese or Cheddar "Cheez" powder
online.
- 1/8 teaspoon (½ ml) garlic powder. I suppose you could crush a clove
of actual garlic and use this instead, but it wouldn't have that authentic
"manufactured and put in a box a few months ago" flavor.
- 1/8-1/4 teaspoon (1 ml) of onion powder —OR— 1 tablespoon (15
ml) of freshly-chopped chives —OR— 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of those
freeze-dried chives you can get in the spice aisle
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of butter or margarine (you can reduce it to 1
tablespoon if you're worried about your saturated/trans fat intake, but
don't omit it entirely)
Boil the noodles in the boiling, salted water until they're the same
consistency you used to like when making Noodles Romanoff in a box.
Drain the noodles, keeping them in the same pot you cooked them in (that way
you'll only have to wash one pot when you're done). While the noodles
are still hot, rub the butter or margarine around on them until all (or most)
of it melts, then stir in the Kraft® day-glow-orange cheese powder, then
dump all the other ingredients into the pot with the noodles and stir until the
mixture is homogeneous. (Except the chives won't be homogeneous, of
course, because they don't dissolve.)
Add ground black pepper to taste. I recommend super-finely-ground black
pepper, not those coarse crunchy pepper chunks that seem to be so trendy
nowadays. If there's any left over when you're done eating, put the pot
in the 'fridge; when you re-heat it later, add a dash of milk and put the pot
on the stove over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.
If you don't want to do all that work, you could add some Kraft® Macaroni
& Cheese cheese powder to Lipton® Sour Cream & Chives flavored
noodles & sauce — except that this too has been
discontinued! Back when you could still get it, this combination tasted
pretty much like the 1-step preparation Noodles Romanoff in a box, but it still
failed to capture the grandeur and majesty of that first-generation
2-step-preparation Betty Crocker® Noodles Romanoff.
And if that isn't enough for you, here's my recipe for
Noodles Romanoff that tastes like the old Stouffer's® frozen Noodles
Romanoff
Into a pot of boiling salted water, add
- 4 ounces (110 grams) of dry uncooked Long Fettucine style egg noodles
(these are typically sold in packages of 12 or 16 ounces in the U.S., so just
use 1/3 or 1/4 of a package, respectively).
Cook the noodles until they are al dente. While they're cooking, get out
the smallest oven-friendly casserole dish you have. (For complete
authenticity, it should be a disposable oven-safe plastic dish, like the one
that came in the old Stouffer's® package, but good luck finding something
like that without a prescription.) Grease up the bottom and inner
side-walls of this casserole dish with
- One pat (around a half a tablespoon or 7 ml) of butter.
When the noodles are done cooking, drain them, and put them in the casserole
dish. Then, set your oven for 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190°C) and put
a cookie sheet or a layer of aluminum foil on the middle oven rack. While
the oven's heating up, to the noodles in the casserole dish add
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) of sour cream (lowfat or fat-free sour cream also works
for me)
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) of nonfat milk
- 1/4 cup (60 ml) of lowfat cottage cheese
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of Kraft® grated parmesan cheese food (from the
tall green container)
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of flour
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of corn oil
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of soybean oil (a.k.a. vegetable oil or salad
oil)
- 1/8 teaspoon (½ ml) of onion powder (I suppose you could use actual
onions instead, but I'm morally opposed to
vegetables).
- 1 drop of red food coloring, and 3 drops of yellow food coloring (the real,
genuine Stouffer's frozen Noodles Romanoff used "sour cream substitute" instead
of sour cream, and this "substitute" included beta carotene for color)
Stir the contents of the casserole dish until it's nice and homogeneous,
breaking up the larger chunks of cottage cheese as needed. When you're
finished, sprinkle some
onto the top of the noodles. Cover the casserole dish in a layer of
aluminum foil. (A see-through mylar cover with a hole slashed in it to
vent would be more authentic, but I think private citizens need a special
license to purchase that stuff or something.) Place the foil-covered
casserole dish onto the cookie sheet or layer of foil in your 375°F
(190°C) oven. Bake for approximately half an hour or until the
contents sizzle.
I haven't experimented with variants of this recipe, but I'll bet it's possible
to cut corners. You might be able to get away with putting the noodles
back into their pot after you drain them, and then adding the rest of the
ingredients into the pot just like you were making Betty Crocker® 2-step
preparation Noodles Romanoff from a box. You could then heat it on the
stove for 3-5 minutes and, theoretically, you'd get the same effect as baking
it for half an hour. Maybe. I haven't tried this variation
yet. In any event, do not replace the onion powder with something
less offensive like freeze-dried chives. It won't taste like Stouffer's
if you do.
Go back to my main page for more wondrous outpourings
of my personal, ahem, creativity.
Send comments regarding this Web page to:
Roger
M. Wilcox.