This is a TANG morning; I can taste it and smell it and feel it and think it back from memory. I'm also thinking about home-made bread toast. The bread made from scratch, dough cracking, wholesome warm kitcheny, bread-bakingy scent that reminds me it is something that I haven't had in about 20 years. Now with these thoughts I'm also wishing there was a cure for Celiac too, even for a day, because I'd be lined up by Mary Browns for a center breast and taters, or maybe three or four. But, I digress.
Remember that delicious cocktail of chemicals and
sugar that tasted like orange juice when mixed with the right amount of water. I
don’t mean when times were poorer than most and you were trying to spare it and
had to water it down, but when you could get the full effect of three cups of
water to one package. Then, that was times three because there were two other envelopes
in the Tang bag.
When I watch the Tropicana and Minute Made
commercials and see all the oranges jammed inside each bottle, I wonder was
there ever even an orange considered for Tang beyond the artificial flavour. Now
at the time we knew very little about oranges, being only fortunate enough to get
a half an orange for Christmas. But that little was enough to know I really
liked the taste, artificial or real.
Freshie was also another less popular treat, not
because of the taste, but because you had to add your own sugar. So, although
the tiny chemically filled pack of Freshie cost much less, the sugar needed at
home was a deciding factor. And if you didn't add the 8 cups of sugar to the 2-pint
jug, it was awful. Like really awful. Green Freshie was my favourite, I never
knew if it was because of the lime per se because we had never seen, let alone
eaten a lime. Freshie, no matter the flavour, was also something that needed
great care in the mixing, because one bit of the contents would stay on your
fingers for days if you were unlucky enough to touch the powder, especially
with wet or damp hands. It also made a great colorant for home grown playdough
which, for some reason, I can't remember how to make.
In the summer especially, we’d get the green (a
lime would be insulted to call it lime) Freshie and fill the jug from the well
house. Mom would be baking raisin buns, the name stuck even though they could
be with or without the raisins, and when they were pulled out of the oven, I’d
put aside a few and pour a cap of watery icing sugar on a couple, and streel
them to the top of the hill behind the house. There in the tall grass with the
bees minding their own business but keeping us on edge, we’d break out the
plastic glasses and fill them to the brim with the cold green liquid and picnic
on the warm buns and cool lime taste. A breeze in the trees and sure it was
paradise. It was essentially, a summertime ade.
At Christmas, Nanny would have the Purity Syrup,
and on occasion there may have been a bottle at the house. That was hands down
my favourite because I knew what a raspberry was, had picked them numerous
times on the ridge where Dad had cut wood, and they were my favourite berry.
You could never duplicate or replace Purity Syrup for the taste. Delicious.
Though there wasn’t one raspberry harmed in its making. Hello artificial
flavour.
However, getting back to the Tang, not only did it
taste great, cold with hot toast dipped in and an oil slick skim of butter
forming on the top, it could also clean the inside of your kettle. So, with all
the talk of cleanses these days, I bet you that the TANG did the trick. Now I suppose
I'll have a slice of warmed cardboard (non-artificial but the look and feel and
taste would make you believe it) with a hint of butter and a drop of water for
my breakfast and dream of a cure of Celiac. If I think hard enough about it, it
will happen. But there are worse things than Celiac to torment a person, I can
wait.
