New Year’s Eve we went to a party hosted by our friend who is a pastry chef. He and his wife went all-out. They had a bar set up with specialty New Year’s drinks, handmade fancy chocolates labeled and displayed in multi-tiered serving dishes, pulled pork mole sliders, expensive stinky cheeses, pastries and cookies, and shot glasses filled with tapioca topped with apricot sauce and an elaborate decorative chocolate swirl. But the most popular item on the table was hands-down the cheese dip on the corner next to the Lay’s potato chips. The chef’s wife kept disclaiming it; she was embarrassed: “It’s not real cheese! It was popular in Hawaii when we were there last week, so I wanted to try it…” But to a child of the 60’s and 70’s such as myself, I instantly recognized the shiny melted goodness of Velveeta. It was something my brother, sister or I would have snuck out of our bedrooms for during one of our parents' parties, competing with the French onion dip. I was thinking of taking a picture of the entire lavish table, but my hand was busy dipping chips into that pot of glistening golden goo. All labels of being a Foodie were left at the door that night as we warmed our hands by the pool of nostalgia that was the Velveeta Ro Tel dip. I felt no shame.
While I was growing up our fridge shelf was never empty of that infamous yellow box of Velveeta (though I’ve since learned it is shelf-stable – you don’t need to refrigerate until opened; part of that “cheese product” feature; preservatives, preservatives and more preservatives), and we were taught a very specific way to treat the loaf. My OCD Daddy instructed us to cut the protective foil about two-inches from the end to form a T, with a thin, sharp bladed knife, so one could fold down the two sides neatly. Then, using the special cheese cutter with the roller and thin wire, that lives in my 83-year-old mother's kitchen drawer to this day, we would slice straight down, applying even pressure all the way. The orange color was so sunny, the jiggly-but-firm slice so melty and satisfying the way it stuck to your teeth like peanut butter. We ate it with sandwiches of all kinds; one of my dad’s specialties being fried Spam on white bread with Velveeta and ketchup. (I also remember being very young and my dad feeding me a white bread, margarine and sugar sandwich as a snack before my mom got home from work…I think even at 5 I inherently knew it was a bad thing to eat, the sugar crunching between my baby teeth like sand. Years later I saw a Peanuts cartoon where Linus eats a bowl of cereal but realizes it’s just sugar, and his face is priceless, with circles around his eyes and his mouth a jagged EKG line of shocked disgust).
One of my favorite things about Velveeta, however, was the box it came in. The top fit so nicely over the bottom, whooshing out a gentle farting puff of air as it settled down. When I was about 9 and my parakeet, Pete, died, the box was the perfect coffin. I was no doubt disproportionately excited to see how nicely my bird fit, but then, you may recall the OCD Daddy and not be surprised. To this day whenever I see any form of Velveeta I fondly recall Pete.
While I was growing up our fridge shelf was never empty of that infamous yellow box of Velveeta (though I’ve since learned it is shelf-stable – you don’t need to refrigerate until opened; part of that “cheese product” feature; preservatives, preservatives and more preservatives), and we were taught a very specific way to treat the loaf. My OCD Daddy instructed us to cut the protective foil about two-inches from the end to form a T, with a thin, sharp bladed knife, so one could fold down the two sides neatly. Then, using the special cheese cutter with the roller and thin wire, that lives in my 83-year-old mother's kitchen drawer to this day, we would slice straight down, applying even pressure all the way. The orange color was so sunny, the jiggly-but-firm slice so melty and satisfying the way it stuck to your teeth like peanut butter. We ate it with sandwiches of all kinds; one of my dad’s specialties being fried Spam on white bread with Velveeta and ketchup. (I also remember being very young and my dad feeding me a white bread, margarine and sugar sandwich as a snack before my mom got home from work…I think even at 5 I inherently knew it was a bad thing to eat, the sugar crunching between my baby teeth like sand. Years later I saw a Peanuts cartoon where Linus eats a bowl of cereal but realizes it’s just sugar, and his face is priceless, with circles around his eyes and his mouth a jagged EKG line of shocked disgust).
One of my favorite things about Velveeta, however, was the box it came in. The top fit so nicely over the bottom, whooshing out a gentle farting puff of air as it settled down. When I was about 9 and my parakeet, Pete, died, the box was the perfect coffin. I was no doubt disproportionately excited to see how nicely my bird fit, but then, you may recall the OCD Daddy and not be surprised. To this day whenever I see any form of Velveeta I fondly recall Pete.
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