Lou’s News #3 — The Classic-ness of Dinty Moore
Hello friends!
Food doesn’t play a huge role in my retrospective writing. Even so, you’ll read memories of oatmeal graced with raisins plump thick and juicy, trout fingerlings fire-cooked on green willow whips, Snickers bar hot tub snacks, and walnuts on the verticals of El Capitan.
You’ll also encounter Dinty Moore Beef Stew. More than once.
Dinty Moore beef stew for the wilderness history.
All it took was a trip to the grocery. A half century since my father had sated his tribe of ravenous pre-teen Colorado campers, there again was the classic canister with it’s chunky blue lettering.
Obviously, I needed to go experiential and broach a can. Might this classic concoction be the magic way to enhanced memory? But first … I had this weird thought. What if Andy Warhol had gone with Dinty instead of Campbell?
I fired up the old Pshop and gave it a go. Along the way, I gained a new respect for Mr. Warhol. I’m about as much an artist as our pet cat, so I have no idea how Andy made the one-dimensional label yet kept the elegant curve of the bottom and the tilted top. My version just looks strange, and nobody has offered me eleven million dollars for it. But it was fun.
Dinty, with my late mother’s Swiss knife and hippie lanyard.
The old Pshop-fiddle builds a heck of an appetite. The solution was at hand. In obedience to authenticity, I probably should have warmed the Dinty over a campfire. But I went modern and zapped it. The beef-fat soaked carrot slices dissolved on my tongue with a pleasant sweetness. Somehow the potato cubes kept their shape. And the gravy, yes, the gravy, that addictive balance of fat and salt you only find in cans where there are no rules. The meat tasted fine as well (though one does wonder). I did note that sugar was the second to last ingredient on the Dinty label, while sugar was the second top ingredient of the granola I browsed and rejected during that same shopping spree. Is it possible that Dinty Moore Beef Stew is keto, and healthier than granola? Whatever, at least it’s gluten free!
To build caloric debt via my hand muscles, I opened the can with the beaded Swiss knife my mother carried all through her 1960s hippie era. Sometimes I pocket this knife for the day with the string hanging from my belt, and think about her stringing those beads, picking the colors intentionally, knotting the rawhide thong just so. She’s gone now, buried somewhere in her aged brain. Nice to have something of her glory days.
