By Debbie Moose
The News &Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)
Ah, the changing of the seasons. Green leaves turn to gold and brown. The air goes from wet-dog humid to lip-smacking crisp.
And the scourge of pumpkin spice gives way to the plague of peppermint.
As the orange-colored pretzels of fall vanish, their holiday cousins arrive, shiny white and studded with pink candy shards. Festive peppermint sludge replaces pumpkin spice sludge in the latte-flavoring nozzles at big green coffee shops.
And how I do look forward to the arrival of yet another bastardization of the classic Oreo, with a peppermint-flavored filling the color of a human tongue.
Excuse me while I delicately dab my eyes. I get so choked up at this time of year.
All through the election, people knocked political correctness. Well, how about the flavor police — those who dictate the “official” flavors of a season and decree that they be dumped on us by the truckload?
By the way, if this election season had an official flavor, it would be mud pie.
Even worse, the officially sanctioned flavors often are shoehorned into inappropriate foods and end up making them more repellant than attractive. When I saw that pink stuff inside peppermint Oreos, I thought I’d caught someone in the process of licking out the filling.
At least peppermint flavor isn’t an alien visitor to cookies. No so with other innocent foods.
Take popcorn. Popcorn has a legitimate connection with holiday celebrations. In “Let It Snow,” it’s popped while cuddling by the fire. Country singer Merle Haggard wrote a song called “Santa Claus and Popcorn.” When I was a broke college student, my friends and I strung it to decorate a Christmas tree — what we didn’t eat of it.
We had to pop our popcorn the old-fashioned way, too, using an old electric popper that was a fire hazard. And with no app to time it.
In no instance was any of that popcorn covered in commercially dictated goo. Burned spots, maybe — the popper didn’t have a temperature control — but not goo.
And popcorn is an innocent victim. Over the decades, the popularity of popcorn grew out of its humility as a snack. During the Great Depression, it was an affordable treat for struggling families. Street vendors sold it, au naturel, for five or 10 cents a bag.
But lowly popcorn isn’t safe today.
Just when I thought nothing could get worse than the pumpkin spice kettle corn I spied in a grocery aisle last month, I got a press release touting “dark fudge peppermint drizzlecorn.”
I think I’ll save myself the trouble of tasting it and just drink corn syrup while sniffing a chocolate-covered peppermint stick.
I imagine that a panel of shadowy figures huddled in a fog-shrouded tower is responsible for the insanity, meeting to deem the universal flavor of our collective memories. They don’t consider the unintended consequences, as when The Hub looked at pumpkin spice Oreos and said, “That looks like Play-Doh in the middle.”
Science has shown that scent and taste are two of the most powerful memory triggers, and I’m sure that fact isn’t lost on food companies. If everyone comes to believe that autumn can’t begin until the pumpkin spice Peeps arrive, then fall isn’t really over until the last pumpkin spice latte is foamed.
But what am I supposed to do if I see pumpkin spice dog biscuits next to peppermint-flavored nondairy creamer?
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
