I hate to complain about the taste and quality of food with all the poor people in Haiti and many other places in the world who are starving. Nevertheless, many foods just don’t taste as good as they did when I was younger. One of my granddaughters recently said,” if food taste good it has to be bad for you.” So, I should probably just be quiet and put up with the bad tasting food if it is healthier.

My spouse and I have recently been in search of a good tasting ham. Hams that we once bought in a smokehouse are not readily available and the anemic ones you purchase in the supermarkets, that are suppose to be the real smoked thing, just don’t have the taste. When I was a kid I remember hams from a couple of fellows who had smokehouses in the piney woods of East Texas. I can still smell the heavenly aroma of those smokehouses and the rich flavor of the hams they produced. A slice of that ham heated in a skillet and accompanied by biscuits with ribbon cane syrup and a baked sweet potato was food fit for a king on a cold winter evening.

It’s not just ham. Even chickens are tasteless. The spectrum of taste from steaks is as broad as the rear end of a hippo with a flavor to match. Even ground beef is pretty bad. The healthy kind that is 99% lean is like cardboard on a hamburger. Unfortunately, the tasty fat associated with these meats is a killer and coats your arteries.

Even today’s eggs are anemic pale yellow, thin shelled tasteless things that lack the rich flavor of those from yard chickens who have had a diet of worms and other enriching creatures. Most of our vegetables come from south of the border and after they are disinfected for E Coli and other deadly pathogens they have little taste and don’t resemble those from the local farmers. The heat of summer is worth it to go to the local farmers market for homegrown tomatoes, peas, okra and watermelon.
When I was a kid the frozen food section in the grocery store was a small box containing English Peas and corn. All the vegetables were fresh and things like frozen pizza, waffles and the many things we see today didn’t exist. We had a lot less choices in my younger days but they were all much more flavorful.

Enough reminiscing. Guess I will have some yogurt for supper on the porch. I was going to have a banana with a cup of this low fat slime but the ones we bought at the store are completely green so I will have to wait a few days to catch it when it becomes yellow and rotten over night.