“Ladies from the church were visiting”, my husband remembers, “my Mom came out of the kitchen with a tray. It held a plate of crackers and two cans of aerosol cheese; one was bacon flavored and the other regular. It was fascinating watching them chat away while spraying cheese onto those crackers.”
I have to say that more than one can of spray cheese crossed the threshold of my folk’s home as I grew up. Those cans with the plastic tube on top were a novelty--fun; my Mom saw that. My husband’s Mom and her friends probably saw that too. Oh, I’m sure there were ladies (alas, mostly ladies back then) who pulled off some beautiful cracker creations to impress and no one knew it was spray cheese.
My husband’s memories did pull up another time when his mother had carefully sprayed the cheese onto crackers and then topped each with either an olive, a pimento, a pickle slice or a slice of hard boiled egg. It looked pretty exotic to him and, he remembers, very tasty. What really stood out in that memory were some little cherry tomatoes on which she had made a criss cross with a knife and topped with a dab of Miracle Whip. Strange, he thinks he doesn’t really care for fresh tomatoes, yet, if they are served as hors d oeuvres they are some of his best food memories. I think the reason Miracle Whip sticks out in both our minds is that it was a “different taste”. Folks with chefs had the pleasure of tasty sauces and spreads made form scratch. Middle class folks loved the different tastes like Miracle Whip when they emerged. Today, we often have a small jar of Miracle Whip in the refrigerator but it seems only used on bologna sandwiches made with white bread and dill pickles. Yes, white bread. We were both raised intimately entwining our memories of bread with red and blue balloons.
Another different taste was those small juice glasses filled with a cheese pimento spread. My husband and I looked at ourselves, neither of us likes pimentos, but we have fond memories of that spread. Though not a favorite food, it was different tasting-interesting. I can say for certain that my mother never bought or cooked with one pimento in her life. I never had a bell pepper, fresh or roasted.
Our Moms wanted to have fancy looking tasty treats at times and they didn’t have a chef who would whip up a cheese spread and pipe it out of a pasty bag or whip out the double boiler to endlessly stir a creamy Hollandaise sauce. Plus, they realized how fun those cans of cheese were for their kids and they weren't so health conscious to deny that fun. So, any spray cheese snobs out there, my husband is an amazing gourmet cook, who’s written food columns for two print magazines. His exposure to spray cheese did not stunt his culinary maturing. We both retain an appreciation for the emergence of creative, easy to use and fun food items in the 50’s and 60’s.
