{"id":250,"date":"2011-08-30T22:31:51","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T02:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/?p=250"},"modified":"2011-09-01T18:12:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T22:12:53","slug":"storm-food-or-why-beefaroni-will-feed-the-pharaohs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2011\/08\/storm-food-or-why-beefaroni-will-feed-the-pharaohs.html","title":{"rendered":"Storm Food, or Why Beefaroni Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Well, on the Friday before Irene was to devastate Wrong Island (friends, that’s Long Island to you), I realized that we hadn’t prepared for disaster. \u00a0So I exhumed our limp flashlight and menorah emergency candles, tested the 1985 Sony shortwave (“skies are clear in Pacific Samoa”) and drove to the drugstore for a life-saving flat of water-filled plastic.<\/p>\n

But what if we lose power for days on end? Bulbs flicker when even the shadow of a smile clouds WIPA, the Wrong Island Power Authority; our Costco meat-bounty would be fly-encrusted in no time. So I drove to Stop and Shop to stock up on storm food.<\/p>\n

Yes, lovers of culture, I am aware that true storm food is rum and lime, with a spritz of Edward G. Robinson spittle. But that’s the movies, and we won’t be able to watch and be reminded because DVD players don’t have hamster wheels attached. So I get behind my wire chariot and gladiate the supermarket aisles.<\/p>\n

“I look at what they others are buying and buy that,” I read on Twitter (hashtag #Irene) before I left, so I watched carefully. The ladies — almost all were ladies — spent careful time deciding between concentrated and evaporated milk; desirable boxed was gone. \u00a0Only sluggish pea remained among soups, and straggling cans of tuna were badly dented; the store’s few dutiful dads didn’t notice and scooped ’em up.<\/p>\n

Hashtag. I bought a can of corned beef hash, on sale. No, don’t ask why.<\/p>\n

Why was that crowd on Aisle 13 making such a ruckus? A pale, cowering stocker was attempting to unpack a single carton of Beefaroni, not the big cans, but the small, microwavable portions with Budweiser flip-tops.<\/p>\n

It was like nylons in 1945 London. Move it, slowpoke, get out of my way!<\/p>\n

I scored three.<\/p>\n

Then, away from the scrim, I thought, Beefaroni. Chef Boyardee was never nominated for a James Beard award. Copy editor that I am remembers his name with hyphens, Boy-Ar-Dee, but he was a real chef, from Cleveland, home of world-famous Italian food: Ettore Boiardi. I bet you didn’t know that, and with a hurricane approaching, wouldn’t care.<\/p>\n

Boiardi marketed himself not through palate appeal in taste, but palate appeal in pronunciation (check the hat). Gosh, I just noticed, he looks a lot like my father.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wonder if Dad opened cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee for our lunch. Probably not. He was at work selling Packards and made much better food than that when he cared to lift a pan. My mom may have wielded the opener, but, now that I think about it, I never, ever had Beefaroni before. Our household bought only Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli, because Beefaroni was for the masses. I had asked what ravioli was, but was corrected to inquire what ravioli were and never received an answer I understood. I ate the sweet lumps with preliminary Continental pleasure, even if they were slightly chilly inside.<\/p>\n

Not completely cold, as they would be during a Wrong Island hurricane.<\/p>\n

So, we made out OK and never lost power — just cable and Internet, which, as I have learned these past few days, is lost power squared. No flooding in our basement or backyard, no murderous wooden limbs, nothing but voyeuristic, unsettling apprehension.<\/p>\n

Relieved at shining sun and azure sky, I took stock of my stash of storm food. In cans: chili and beans. Southern seasoned mixed greens. That hash. An embarrassing amount of evaporated milk.<\/p>\n

What should I try first? A soy-rice peanut bar that some graphic artist had a field day with, on special for a buck.<\/p>\n

Human caulking, spat it out.<\/p>\n

Then I did what anyone with any sense would assume I had wished to do since I had been thrust on my adult stage: nuke that Beefaroni.<\/p>\n

Let me admit that in all my growing up I have never learned another useful language: no dour German, no Spanish for gay southern visits, no retrograde French. Yet I did master a “language” at age six or seven that has enabled me to communicate effortlessly with the entire United Nations of Things. It’s called Jingle.<\/p>\n

Name a product, even one that was never popular and is long dead, and I speak the jingle: “Co-cil-la, la-la-la-la-na, Cocillana cough nibs.”<\/p>\n

A cartoon Callas sings this.<\/p>\n

“You’ll la-la-la like how they’ll bring, fast relief when your *throat* is sore.”<\/p>\n

Google that if you like. The man who wrote the poetry is waiting in his rocker, ready to spit at the screen when Mad Men<\/em>\u00a0resumes its season.<\/p>\n

“We’re having Beefa-RO-ni, it’s made with maca-RO-ni.” (Somewhere along the line, this was changed to, “it’s beef and maca-RO-ni.”) “Beefaroni’s really neat, Beefaroni’s fun to eat. Hooray! For Beefaroni.”<\/p>\n

The untin can says heat for 45 seconds, but it took two minutes in my old machine to get hot. I’m not an idiot, so should have known that I hadn’t the means to resist what would happen: at the very first, steaming bite, I became babyface Rod Taylor in a pablum time machine, whirled back to a Brooklyn kitchen table and the smell of burnt tomato. \u00a0It all was either too hot or too cold, but I ate almost everything in front of me with an awful measured pleasure, one I couldn’t help but record. Good, bad, made no difference. That stewed, adulterated pap forced me to wake up and sing.<\/p>\n

Purists never understand that when a hungry mind and body are poised, they leap at anything.<\/p>\n

Now, storm over, all we can do is clean up after the wind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lunch after Irene<\/p><\/div>\n

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