Limited Edition Foods

It’s hard to get excited about much when it is so hot, but the readers of the Arkansas Times blog have been offering some interesting suggestions for dishes to cook when it feels like you are cooking a bit yourself. Not surprisingly, most of the suggestions center around vegetables and foods that are about as far from the typical processed and preservative laden limited edition food as possible. This comment about flavoring vegetables with meat was particularly interesting:

To beat the heat, we have to retrieve some of the logic of Southern food, as our foreparents cooked it. Our traditional foodways make sense in our climate, given our land, given the ethnic blend that makes us who we are.

The traditional Southern table was vegetable laden, and the vegetables came either fresh from the garden or fresh from vendors or the market — or from country cousins who brought care packages to city ones. It was not only picked fresh: it was cooked fresh.

The tired old cliche of over-cooked fat-laden vegetables misses the point of our traditional cuisine. Those “overcooked” vegetables were hundreds of times fresher than anything we can buy in supermarkets today. They were raised with a minimum of chemicals. Their inbuilt nutritional value was higher than anything we get in our lightly cooked “fresh” vegetables today.

Whether our foreparents knew of Jefferson’s famous dictum that meat should be eaten as a condiment, they practiced it, especially in summertime. With the abundance of fresh things from the garden, meat made its appearance on their tables mostly as a seasoning for the vegetables — the crowders, purple hulls, Kentucky wonders. A little pork sliced into the beans or field peas gave them the taste and mouthfeel of a meaty dish.

The eggplant and summer squash breaded with cornmeal was fried in meat drippings, adding more of a meat flavor to a meal revolving around vegetables. The cornbread and fried corn, the okra and tomatoes served with rice — all were seasoned with enough bacon grease to give them the flavor of bacon, without actually including meat.

When meat is not the main dish around which everything else revolves, it makes sense to add meat or grease as a seasoning. It’s also not as unhealthy as eating huge portions of meat at each meal.

Arkansas, food, vegetables

Pepsi has launched an interactive marketing campaign in India, where limited edition soft drinks are especially popular. The “My Can” campaign allows customers to compete to have their picture on a limited edition packaging of Pepsi through interactive exercises on the Pepsi website. The contestants will be narrowed down to 20 finalists and 10 winners will get their pictures on future “My Can” editions.

The campaign is supported by Pepsi’s Indian ambassadors, Shah Rukh Khan and John Abraham who appear together “for the first time!” in this television ad for the product. The young man in the video calls the pair “uncle” which has gotten a lot of coverage in the Indian press.

The can is slimmer and taller than a regular Pepsi can and aimed at “cool” consumers like college students. Pepsi has been open about the campaign being part of the brand’s efforts to break into a new price point in the Indian market. Pepsi will do a similar campaign for 7-Up as well.

India, Pepsi, 7-Up, soda, India, John Abraham, SHK, Shahrukh Kahn

NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon has teamed up with Pepsi to release this limited edition energy drink, which the press release emphasizes has an “orange tangerine taste.” Gordon’s crew built up awareness for the beverage by drinking it before it was available in stores, and NASCAR fans have been able to purchase it througout this year’s racing season. The taste is apparently tangy with more tangerine than orange.

The drink’s official name is Jeff Gordon 24 Energy, a reference to his NASCAR number. This was a great summer for Pepsi to promote its association with Gordon, a relatively scandal-free figure in a summer that has been tough on sports fans and their idols. Gordon has a new daughter at home and as of Friday he had a solid place as the leader of NASCAR’s Nextel Cup standings.

NASCAR, Jeff Gordon, energy drink, Pepsi, limited edition, Nextel Cup, tangerine, pit crew

It seems like everyone has a favorite limited edition food from years past. I have a good friend who, like the author of Candyfreak, still dreams lustful dreams about the dark chocolate Reese’s cups that came out many years ago. I am luckier in that my all time favorite limited edition food, the Cadbury Mini Egg, is actually a seasonal item that returns each Spring.

How about you? What are your favorites, the limited editions that are gone but not forgotten?

Don’t forget that each time you comment on this blog during the month of August you are entered into a drawing for cash … so commenting about your favorite foods could be sweet in more ways than one.

limited edition, food, favorite, Cadbury, Reese’s

The Mint Hershey’s Kiss is so popular people are clamoring for it to become part of the regular Kiss line. Click here to sign a petition to keep this Kiss, or if you don’t trust the petition you can buy them six pounds at a time over at CandyDirect.com. Or the more patient among you can simply wait until Christmas, because as Cybele at Candyblog observes the mint kisses have been back every December since 2002.

mint, kiss, hershey, limited edition, chocolate, holiday

If you read a lot of blogs but don’t comment much, this month is the time to change all that. 451 Press is offering the chance to win cash each time to comment on a blog during the month of August:

What would you buy with $300? Or even $200 or $100? Now is your chance to find out! Comment on any 451 Press site during the month of August and you could win! Three comments will be chosen at random to win a cash prize of $300, $200 or $100. The more you comment the more chances you have to win. So start reading and let those fingers fly.

Whether you comment here on Limited Edition Foods, or over on the TV Channel on Watching Battlestar Galactica, or over on the Miami blog about which celebrities were out in South Beach this weekend, your comment gives you a chance to win.

Good luck … and if you win post here and let us know!

cash, prize, comment, blog

Sometimes limited editions are not so limited. We recently found some Shiner 96, which to us seemed like a new limited edition product. However the brewer’s website says Shiner 96 was introduced in 2005. Apparently the beer was only supposed to be around from June to December of that year, and yet earlier this week it appeared in our fridge, a gift from a friend who thought it was a new product.

And last week I had a similar experience with limited edition Ice Cream Skittles, which are still available in local stores in my area. According to Candyblog, however, they came out in Spring 2006 and should be long gone by now.

So what happens when limited editions are not so limited? When they are found, months or even years later, overlooked and still able to be enjoyed? Do we ignore them because they are no longer new, or do we savor them as surprise finds and special holdovers of brief food production endeavors? What are your thoughts?

limited edition, Shiner, Skittles, candy, beer

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered ran an interview with British perry maker Tom Oliver last week about his lifelong love for perry. Tom has finally found a U.S. distributor for his Herefordshire pear ciders and a few hundred cases of the drink will hit select stores in the United States this week in a potential limited edition run.

While perries have been around since before Napolean’s time they have gotten more sophisticated over the years. Olivers versions can contain everything from melon to elderberry. More information about the history of these Herefordshire perries and their awards may be found on the Oliver website.

cider, NPR, National Public Radio, All Things Considered, Oliver, U.S., limited edition, cider, pear, Herefordshire

Chocolate brander Hershey’s released bad news last week, reporting profits had fallen 96 percent from where they were last year. Many analysts claimed Hershey’s investment in limited edition foods for part of the decline, even as they cited the brand’s hope that this summer’s limited edition Elvis Reese’s cup would provide a boost in sales.

Most of the issues surround branding costs, which would explain why limited edition products are getting the blame … like any other marketing investment, limited editions must be designed to help the core brand long term. Other woes for Hershey include increased milk costs and a perceived failure to capitalize on the interest in high-end dark chocolate.

Hershey, chocolate, limited edition, Elvis, marketing, branding, profits, sales, milk