Downsized by Corporate America; Frustrations of a Recipe Cook
by Julia Sneden
For those of us whose parents struggled through the Great Depression, today’s hard times are a matter of déjas vu. We grew up hearing tales of those difficult days, and were proud and happy that our families had survived and even prospered. We felt smugly that nothing like those bad times could possibly come around again in our lifetimes.
Surprise!
Today’s cross-generational difficulties are a reprise of the ’30’s, eighty years later: job losses, salary cuts, depleted savings accounts, tanking investments, and devastated property values are an echo of the stories we heard when we were young.
Considering all that, it seems petty to gripe about the small stuff, but I have a bone to pick with producers of packaged goods. Perhaps companies in those Depression days cut salaries, or let employees go, or even went out of business altogether, but I don’t recall hearing that they quietly shaved their standard product sizes without lowering cost, hiding their “adjustments” by clever packaging.
· For at least a month, our Sunday paper has carried coupons for a dishwashing liquid that said: “Buy one, get one free”. Oddly enough, when I looked for the product in the store, the shelves were empty. This went on for a couple of weeks, and I finally tossed my coupons out in disgust. Shortly thereafter, the shelves were filled with “redesigned” bottles which, no surprise here, held 5 ounces less than the old ones. The price, of course, was the same.
Was that “buy-one-get-one” bit designed to empty the shelves so that the new bottles wouldn’t look small when compared to the old? Or was the ploy to make us so grateful that the product was again available that we wouldn’t scream about the change in size? Both strategies were probably effective, but I hope the manufacturers don’t think they fooled many of us.
· Preparing to can some pickles, I picked up what I thought was a 5 lb. bag of sugar this morning, and was halfway to the checkout when I realized that the bag said just 4 lbs. I went back to the shelf, and searched until I found the only brand that still put its sugar into a 5 lb. bag. All the others had been lined up so that the bottom edge of the bag aligned with the shelf edge, making them all look like 5 lb bags, on first glance.
· Even my son’s favorite brand of string cheese is trying to put one over on the consumer. The outer bag is the same size, and the individual pieces of cheese come in the same plastic, peel-apart cylinder – but that cylinder is only about 2/3 full, and the total weight is now three-fourths of what it was a year ago.
The problem that these downsizings cause for anyone trying to make a tried-and-true and well-loved recipe is infuriating. The other day, I decided to make a favorite cold soup. It requires a 16 oz. can of pumpkin, along with a quart of chicken stock and various flavorings and fresh vegetables. The vegetables, although more expensive than they used to be, at least come in discernible amounts. The quart of stock, hooray, was in a carton clearly marked “one quart.” But somehow, when I mixed everything together, it didn’t taste right. It was not pumpkin-y enough. I checked the can. It said “14 oz. pumpkin puree,” but it cost what I used to spend for 16 oz, and it didn’t, at a casual glance, look smaller. I have since discovered that the same pertains to many other canned products, most notably tomatoes
Those sneaky downsizings would be a lot easier to take if I weren’t a recipe cook. My mother, and for that matter my daughter- in-law, qualify as true cooks: i.e. they can take a few ingredients, toss them together, taste to make subtle adjustments, and serve up a delicious meal. Not I. I’ve never been able to decide if my problem is a lack of imagination, or a lack of time, or just intimidation from having been reared by so clever a parent. Mother never worried about recipes or schedules or prompt suppertimes. She was laid-back in her approach to the kitchen, but whenever dinner happened, it was a good meal.
When I grew up and had a job, followed soon by marriage and a growing family, I discovered that my mother’s talents were quite different from my own. Time management became essential as I tried to fit culinary duties in and around the edges of my husband’s job (which often required returning to work in the evenings) and our boys’ activities, never mind my own job. That’s where my trusty recipe file came in. On a Saturday morning, I could make up a week’s menus and do the entire week’s shopping, so that I could do some advance cooking on the weekends. I then knew just how much prep time would be needed for each weekday’s supper, and I also knew that I had all the necessary ingredients on hand. Creativity and impulse may have been stifled, but we ate well and economically.
Those are habits that are hard to break. In retirement, my happy pursuit of a more relaxed life keeps bumping up against my old imperatives. It’s not that I use a recipe for every meal these days, nor do I shop all at once on a Saturday: I’m no longer that hidebound. But when I do cook from a recipe, I expect it to work, and when corporate America downsizes a standard canned or bottled or boxed product without calling attention to the change, it really throws me. I doubt that I am alone.
Alas, there seems to be no fix for the problem. Even if the government intervened and insisted that packages bear prominent labels to announce that less is more (as in less product, more price), facts are facts: we don’t have a choice in this matter.
What we really need is a handy, slide-rule-like device that will help us to re-calibrate our recipes quickly. I can downsize my pumpkin soup recipe to the 7/8th of each ingredient that the new pumpkin can mandates, decreasing each ingredient by the same 1/8th amount, but it takes time and possibly new and smaller measuring spoons. Seven eighths of a quart of broth or of a cube of butter is easy, but 7/8ths of a “large, white onion”? Well, I guess I could weigh it, chop it, and take out 1/8th by weight. 7/8ths of a teaspoon of curry powder? That would call for removing half of a quarter teaspoon from the original teaspoon measure, a messy procedure, no doubt having to wash off curry powder spilled on the counter. 7/8ths of a quarter teaspoon of salt? Oh, just toss in a bit and hope. A bay leaf can, I suppose, be cut roughly into 8ths, but just try to corral the 7/8ths left floating in the soup before you put it into the blender after the simmer is done. And believe me, the voice of experience assures that you DO need to remove it.
Downsizing any recipe that calls for more than a few ingredients is an unwieldy process at best, and if there are any distractions during the process, you’re likely to lose your place or suddenly flip back to the original amounts for ingredients that weren’t downsized. You’d think the popular cooking magazines would have twigged to this, and raised what-for about it, or at the very least, re-mastered their recipes to include a warning that not all cans or boxes that appear to be 16 oz really are 16 oz.
A tried-and-true recipe produces a dish with the right balance of flavors, and when you have grown sons who come home and want favorites from childhood, that matters.
Having worked hard for many years so that I could spend my retirement with a less-stressed lifestyle, I don’t need to find myself stressing over 5th grade math as I try to downsize and re-calibrate a recipe for a family supper of old favorites.
Anyone for a take-out pizza?
©2010 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomenWeb