Tonight for dinner I’m having sweet corn, carrots, and turkey. Sounds decent, right? Except there’s a catch.
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Tonight for dinner I’m having sweet corn, carrots, and turkey. Sounds decent, right? Except there’s a catch. The food is all smashed up and mixed together, so it looks like a paste, and I suck it out of a little pouch. I know this sounds a bit, well, unusual. But I’m here to make a culinary confession, that pouches such as these, made for the picky palates of toddlers and tykes, are a staple of my diet.
In case you’re wondering, I’m 40. Are you familiar with pouches? Walk in the supermarket, go down the baby aisle, and not far from the diapers and wipes, you’ll see them all lined up, scores of them, these little pouches full of pureed fruits and vegetables.
Yes, I realize that sucking food out of a pouch is no way for a grown man to eat.
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How does a mix of pumpkin, cranberry, and apple sound?
Yummy?
Would sweet potato, apple, carrot, and cinnamon strike your fancy? Mmm. Yes, I realize that sucking food out of a pouch is no way for a grown man to eat.
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I blame everything on my daughter, she’s 4. Raising her has thrown me for a loop. There I was living my life, minding my own business, and then this smiling, laughing, dancing little person popped into my world. Our condo has since descended into chaos and noise, with cartoons on the TV, toys on the floor, and kiddie food at the dinner table. My wife and I still try to cook grownup food.
OK, scratch that. My wife cooks. I’ve thrown in the towel on cooking. I make toast, and I’m not shy about munching on chicken nuggets or mac and cheese left uneaten on my daughter’s plate. Initially, though, I didn’t touch her pouches. They seemed odd, like something NASA would develop for astronauts to eat in a rocket to Mars. Then one fateful day, perhaps out of curiosity or hunger, or maybe a loss of logic and common sense, I ate one. Shortly after that, I ate another. And another.
I wonder what kind of evil, sadistic food scientist dreamed up that pairing.
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Now I’m chowing down on green bean, pear, and pea. Sound scrumptious? How about broccoli and apple? Can you handle that combo? It’s actually not bad, assuming you can stomach the strange thought of broccoli and apple being blended in the first place. I wonder what kind of evil, sadistic food scientist dreamed up that pairing. How about blueberry, pear, and beet? Hmmm…I’m not sure what to make of that one. Beet? Here’s another head-scratcher: sweet potato, white beans, and cinnamon. The ingredients seem so random. It sounds like folks got drunk one night in the food lab, threw some stuff in a vat and said, what the hell?
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As I eat all these weird concoctions, I try to remember that I’m an adult. Cling to what remains of your maturity, I think to myself. Don’t completely fall off the deep end. That means eating no pouches with Elmo on them. That’s important. Cookie Monster. Big Bird. Grover. They all appear on one pouch or another. Avoid them. You can’t be taken seriously as a cultured adult if your food has a Muppet on it. If I need to feel sophisticated while I eat my pouch, I drink wine. Or I’ll brew tea. Yes, I may be sucking vegetables out of a pouch, but as I sip my tea and glance at a New Yorker, I can still feel cosmopolitan.
Civilization still reigns here, even if I’m eating a spinach-and-pumpkin pouch and wondering why we’re torturing our children with this stuff. Indeed, that’s the sad truth about pouches. Some are awful, so one must be cautious when picking them out in the supermarket. I peruse the selection as if I’m buying a bottle of wine.
I take my time, checking out the labels, looking for the right mixtures of taste and texture.
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I take my time, checking out the labels, looking for the right mixtures of taste and texture. The choices are dizzying, and I can make horrible mistakes. Once I ate a pouch made up of barley, kale, spinach, and basil. What was I thinking? On a scale of 1 to 10, if 10 is a steak dinner and 1 is food so bad you puke, it was a 2. OK, maybe a 2.5. I could feel my gag reflex debating whether it should kick in as I forced the food down my throat.
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As I mentioned, tonight’s dinner is special. I’m having turkey, sweet corn, and carrot. It’s Thanksgiving without all the work. The package reads, “Meet the culinary-inspired, cornucopia-in-a-pouch.” I make my first tentative nibble. It’s plain, like eating toothpaste, but not as flavorful. I can’t taste the turkey or much of anything. They should have thrown some stuffing in there.
Oh well, such is the life of a pouch foodie. Sometimes you hit on something edible, sometimes not so much. All you can do is pick out another pouch, open it up, and say bon appétit.
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Photo: Flickr/Stephanie McCratic