Monday, February 05, 2007

Oooooo look, Ryvita with pumpkin seeds and oats.

The other day I was browsing the aisles in Tescos. I'm terrible in the supermarket*; I tend to buy a selection of interesting things rather than anything that might conceivably be combined to produce a meal. I digress, I was looking at the cracker section and noticed that ryvita have produced an number of interesting new varieties.

This took me back to the days when I was young and the signal that my mum was on a diet was the presence of ryvita in the house along with this stuff.

All tasty titbits were banned when mum was on a diet, not that they were much in evidence anyway, so when I arrived home from school ravenous I was reduced to eating what was available. Now a meal of ryvita and PLJ tasted like house bricks washed down with battery acid but I still remember thinking it was exotic, somehow, to be eating it.

The, admittedly somewhat lame, point of this story is that food must have got a hell of a lot more interesting since the 70s.**

*For example it takes me an age to choose bananas, too many difficult dilemmas you see:

green vs yellow

organic vs non-organic

free trade vs ?nasty capitalistic

big vs small

**Not interesting enough for me not to buy the new ryvita though.***

***Although I will never buy that acid stuff, oh no!

16 comments:

Betty said...

Oh heck, PLJ! I can remember my mother forcing herself to drink that in the mornings and screwing her face up. Another diet favourite was something called AYDS, unfortunately enough. They were not particularly tasty fudge-like sweets that were supposed to curb your appetite. She seemed to be on a permanent diet, so I don't think either were successful.

Spinsterella said...

A friend of mine memorably described Ryvita as tasting 'like a dusty shelf'.

Anything that you've got to smother in half a pound of cream cheese to make it edible can't quite be right.

rockmother said...

Ha ha ha! You just took me right back to my childhood - PLJ and Ryvita - you are SO right. Oh and Camp Coffee mixture as it made my mum lose water - she was reed thin anyway - probably why.

rockmother said...

We had really uptight posh family friends that used to eat really horrid biscuits with some sort of disgusting sandwich cheese and onion filling inside for lunch. They were also appetite suppressant food like the AYDS fudge sludge Betty was talking about. We were only 8 at the time and I remember we were allowed to eat proper food because we were kids but my mum as adult guest was expected to sample the suppressant delights on offer - sooo Mike Leigh - just like Abigail's Party. Hilarious. I remember her stuffing her face with the entire contents of the fridge when we got home.

Mangonel said...

Our University Singers did a bit of local touring - guesting at evensongs around Devon, that sort of thing. If they were lucky, they got fed and watered by their hosts. Except for one memorable occasion when the refreshments on offer consisted of fish fingers on ryvita.

llewtrah said...

Tesco here did a clearance on Ryvita. For about 10p per pack I have a cupboard ful of these seeded bits of corrugated cardboard. I break them in half and put cottage cheese and grapes on them.

Billy said...

Rice cakes are worse, they are like eating bubble wrap (without the satisfaction of popping)

rockmother said...

And rice-cakes make your wee smell - see Geoffstellyblog for more on that!

Geoff said...

The only way to enjoy either ryvita or rice cakes is to toast cheese on them.

I used to live off cheese toasted rice cakes covered in baked beans. I think it's that that screwed up my digestion.

Rice cakes make your wee smell fresh and nice.

Mangonel said...

Bananas

Sugar

Coffee etc

realdoc said...

betty: ayds eh I wonder if they've had a name change.
spins; topping on holey side only.
romo:exlax chocolate that was another one.
mango; yeuch
lewtrah: you could put them all in a food mixer and turn them into breakfast cereal.
billy: bubble wrap yummers
geoff: are rice cakes the solution to the asparagus problem?
mango; aaarrrgghh now it'll take me hours to buy anything

rockmother said...

And Fynnons Salts - lurking mysteriously in my grandparents bathroom cabinet alongside the cheap bathsalt blocks and denture grip.

FirstNations said...

yup, same here! 'cept here they call the things 'Ry-Krisp'. tale to follow: mom hoarded food. which eventually attracted mice. which ate everything they could chew through the packaging to get at, including birthday candles.
everything except the Ry-Krisps.

..so bad that even vermin avoid them.

dinahmow said...

What about those diabetics' rolls;energen, or something.They looked like fibreglass and quite possibly tasted like it.And in the 70s there were crystals which swelled in your stomach when you drank water,giving you the "I'm full" feeling.Hard to believe ,but some "clinics" endorsed that crap!

violet said...

Ryvita. Eurgh. When I was about 10 a girl in the waiting room at my dietician recommended Ryvita to me to kill off my appetite. It works to this day as even the horrid corrugated-cardboard-dust smell of them makes me intensely dislike the idea of putting any foodstuff near my mouth in case it tastes like that.

Love pumpkin seeds though. Stirred into houmous and eaten with a spoon. I may go and do that now.

Anonymous said...

I actually like Ryvita. Very strange. Even dry. Dinahmow, yes Energen rolls. Brings back memories of the 60s and my Grandma's diets. They were made here in Ashford, too in the factory that became Tenstar and then RHM. They used to make the most appalling dried curries, too and a friend who worked there used to get them in purple catering sized packs. It's flooding back.