Who here remembers Chun King?

[Coventina]

(I thought of this because of the "ethnic food" thread).

Remember how, I think in the 70s, it was promoted as "healthy"?

I sure would like to see the modern nutritional labels on that stuff!

[thegoose]

1. MSG and 50% salt

To be sure. Even the frozen Chinese food today has enough salt to give your blood pressure a workout.

[Walleye]

2. Remember it well. Was a staple in my household

[Coventina]

3. Yep, my mom served it pretty regularly.

[Walleye]

4. Mine too. It reminded me of my mom. I still miss her.

[Coventina]

6. Lost my mom in 2003

She was a genius at feeding a family of 5 on a tiny budget.

I'll always admire her for that.

[CentralMass]

7. We ate it quite a bit.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. That was my introduction to "Chinese" food. Some kind of chow me in over crunchy noodles.

[RobinA]

22. We Had That

I didn’t like it, but I loved the crunch noodles.

[empedocles]

29. I still like the crunchy noodles. Deep fried, cornstarch, and all.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I remember it. It was pretty terrible.

Mostly sodium and soggy bean sprouts, IIRC.

[Coventina]

10. You do.

Not to mention it was no more Chinese than Lawrence Welk.

[klook]

30. LOL - but here's LW and some friends showing their love for international culture!

[wishstar]

9. My least favorite family meal esp. since my Italian mom was such a great cook

but my mother had an inexplicable yearning for anything remotely resembling or labeled Chinese food and we lived in rural area far from the city where Mom grew up. She would take us once or twice a year to the city to visit relatives and the Chinese restaurant of her younger days.

[Coventina]

11. I hope, at least, that the restaurant was better than the King.

[Ohiogal]

12. I remember seeing it advertised on TV

My father would have a cow if my mother ever served him that. He was a meat and potatoes person, didn’t even like chicken or spaghetti. And of course we ate what Dad liked.

[Fiendish Thingy]

13. That was the only "Chinese" food I'd ever had until the late 60's/early 70's

When my parents were willing to give the local Chinese restaurant a try.

[yellerpup]

14. I loved it when I was a teen,

especially those crunchy chow mein noodles. Last stuffed myself with it the night before we shot a short film for a nursing school class (Columbia U) in the '80s. I had to act the part of the mother of a drug addict who was dying of AIDS. It worked as expected, my face and body were swollen with water retention and my skin color was ghastly.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. Of course-- the Italian w who gave us Jeno's Pizza Rolls and hiredaa Jew to make the commercials...

In New York as far from Chinatown as he could get.

Boy, did that stuff suck.

[Brother Buzz]

16. I thought it was slick marketing genius, the two cans taped together

I believe we had it exactly once, and it was just so-so. The Chinese take-out/delivery kitchen in town town had NOTHING to worry about.

[Midnight Writer]

17. La Choy makes Chinese food Swing American!

[Wolf Frankula]

35. I Don't Want My Chinese Food to Swing American.

I want it to swing Chinese.

Wolf

[calimary]

18. I think it was Chung King. And yes I remember it.

My mom would give us Chinese food occasionally, when it wasn’t roast and another roast and then another roast. On the random night there’d be fried chicken. But mostly Kansas City beef. With an occasional break for canned Chung King Chinese food.

[Coventina]

19. Our staple was something my mom called "hamburger stew".

She'd cook ground beef, potatoes, and vegetables in a pressure cooker.

Voila! Dinner!

My dad loved it, because it was a dish my mom had obtained from his mom, who cooked it up in a stew pot.
The pressure cooker was my mom's time-saving innovation.

I'm now vegetarian, and I shudder over how much of that disgusting, bottom of the barrel ground beef I consumed as a kid.
(My parents were really, really poor. In fact, I spent a good portion of my childhood homeless).

[calimary]

23. My dad loved beef. And mashed potatoes and gravy with lots of butter.

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2020, 12:22 PM - Edit history (2)

BUTTER, he insisted. He would not have margarine in the house. One time Mom served low-calorie margarine and he was indignant! He roared “is that Oleo??? Is that Oleo????!!!”

I think that’s what you spread on bread during the Great Depression if you couldn’t afford butter. “Oleomagarine.” And back then, evidently, stores sold yellow coloring with the Oleo so you could mix it in and it’d look like butter. He was outraged. Didn’t want any reminders of those just-scraping-by days.

on edit - changed the spelling from "Olio" to "Oleo."

[hunter]

50. Dairy industry lobbyists were the reason margarine couldn't be sold colored.

Dairy firms, especially in Wisconsin, became alarmed and succeeded in getting legislation passed to prohibit the coloring of the stark white product. In response, the margarine companies distributed the margarine together with a packet of yellow food coloring. The product was placed in a bowl and the coloring mixed in manually. This took some time and effort, and it was not unusual for the final product to be served as a light and dark yellow, or even white, striped product. During World War II, there was a shortage of butter in the United States, and "oleomargarine" became popular. In 1951, the W.E. Dennison Company received U.S. Patent 2,553,513 for a method to place a capsule of yellow dye inside a plastic package of margarine. After purchase, the capsule was broken inside the package, and then the package was kneaded to distribute the dye. Around 1955, the artificial coloring laws were repealed, and margarine could once again be sold colored like butter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine

It's ironic how that all turned out. Butter really was healthier than trans-fats.

My dad remembers as a kid during World War II going to a friend's house whose mom was serving margarine and toast and tomato soup for lunch. My dad was charged with mixing the color into the margarine and he was quite amazed.

My dad's mom came from a family of dairy farmers and he knew no rationing of meat and dairy products during the war.

When I was a kid my grandma and her sister would still wink conspiratorially at one another reminiscing about some of the meals they served during the war.

[RobinA]

24. I Have A Friend

who was in the similar situation. To this day she won’t eat ground beef in any way, shape or form.

[Coventina]

25. Tell her she's not alone!!

[Aquaria]

33. For my mother, it's peanut butter.

For one of my neighbors, it’s ramen.

[ShazzieB]

20. My parents made the chow mein all the time

I refused to eat it, except for the crunchy noodles! I was the queen of the picky eaters anyway, and I didn't like the way that stuff looked (like a plate full of slimy worms) OR smelled. No thank you, very much!

That was my only experience with "Chinese food" until I was in college. Then I met a guy who talked me into going to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. What an eye opener! I found there was a whole world of Chinese food that was nothing like those slimy worms and learned to love it.

[Aquaria]

34. I was a picky eater of sorts.

I drove everyone crazy with some of my nitpicks, because they were inexplicable or even downright weird to my mom. Like how I couldn’t eat a pickle that touched a paper towel. Or how I couldn’t eat some canned vegetables or fruits, but could eat them fresh or frozen. I couldn’t eat things stored or cooked in certain containers or pans, but could eat them in others. Wouldn’t eat many cooked fruits, but loved them fresh. Won’t eat waffles, but can tolerate pancakes. And so on.

I was an adult before I realized I wasn’t picky, really. I was a super taster and thus more sensitive to flavors from containers, pans, wraps, cooking techniques and ingredients or combinations of them that other people don’t pick up on.

Many supposed picky eaters are super tasters in disguise. You might be one as well. The test: get a thyroid patient to let you taste their Propylthiouracil (PTU) medication. Normal people don’t taste it, or not much. But if you want to kill yourself after your tongue comes into contact with PTU, you’re a super taster. The flavor is that vile.

I seriously wanted to risk thyroid storm rather than take it. I hated it that much.

[customerserviceguy]

21. I do remember that one!

Mom used to make it about once a month, had to put up with Dad's teasing about "foreign food". I actually kind of liked the crunchy noodles that the canned chow mein was dumped on.

[FelineOverlord]

26. Who here remembers Chun King?

It was definitely promoted as "healthy"

|

[Freddie]

27. I believe they had an egg fu yung "kit"

Can’t remember which brand but Mom liked it and it was actually pretty good. You’d add the Chinese vegetables (canned) to scrambled eggs and top it with some kind of sauce (also canned).

[intrepidity]

48. Yes! I remember that one too.

Now I make it from scratch, but that's where I first got a taste for it. And even from scratch, I still use some canned veg, like water chestnuts and bamboo shoots

There was also a Pepper Steak one that my mom really liked.

[JDC]

28. I sure do. Put those crunchy crisp things on it and it was glorious

To an 8 y.o. me.

[LakeArenal]

31. La Chou makes Chinese Food swing American

https://m.

[Aquaria]

32. I remember that crap.

My grandmother wasn’t the type to go for most canned meals like that.

Then my mom moved out of the parents’ place. Right after that, we went to our first non-family dinner party, that had a neat twist: all the women got together and made dishes under the tutelage of the new Taiwanese nurse at the hospital where my mom worked. It was my first time at a dinner party and having Asian food of any kind. The party part was a drag, but I was in love at first bite with the food.

We tried the ChunKing crap some time after that. Once, and never again. After getting authentic as the introduction, you can’t eat the processed crap.

My mom still makes the pork belly appetizer she learned to make at that first dinner party. Total hit!

[jmowreader]

36. Now you're stuck with La Choy fake "Chinese" food

The company that owned Chun King sold the brand to the company that owns La Choy, and the new owners shut it down.

[OriginalGeek]

49. i wondered if that's what happened

I distinctly remember mom making chow mein pretty regularly but don't remember seeing Chun King around in modern times. I do see La Choy and we even made it ourselves a couple times but then my late best friend, whose mother is Chinese (and he was "Made in Taiwan" as he liked to say), taught me how to cook in a wok and where to shop in the many Asian markets here in Orlando so we never needed those cans again.

I don't cook a lot but I can work that wok into a pretty good meal.

[Codeine]

37. I loved that shit as kid.

We didn’t get it often (we were always broke and mom was weird about canned food anyway) but the rare occasion we did I was over the moon.

In retrospect I cannot fathom why.

[The Magistrate]

38. And Here Is Why People Bought It, Ma'am

[Coventina]

39. I love you!

I *heart* Stan Freberg! I LOVE that he did a commercial for Chun King! That is amazing!!!

[The Magistrate]

40. He Did Several, Ma'am

When young, I had his 'Christmas' routine, and his 'History of the United States' down by heart, and lines from both remain etched in my sense of humor.

[Coventina]

41. Christmas Dragnet is like our "It's a Wonderful Life" in my family.

"Most folks call 'em green onions, but they're really scallions!"

[The Magistrate]

42. 'Of Course You've Got The Traditional Santa....

With cartons of your cigarettes peeking out of his sack?'

'That's right. We've made Santa a little more rugged this year. Both sleeves rolled up and a tattoo on each arm.'

'What do they say?'

'One says 'Merry Christmas'. The other one says 'Less tars'.'

'Great stuff!'

[Coventina]

43. Hahaha!

That man was a genius!

[The Magistrate]

44. That He Was, Ma'am

'You put our national bird in the oven? When we all had our mouths set for roast eagle with all the trimmings.'

'Well the two birds was lying there, side by side, they looked so much alike....'

'Turkey was for the centerpiece, Charlie....'

[Coventina]

45. .

[The Magistrate]

46. Lost The Thread Of Memory There, Ma'am

It is the 'First Thanksgiving' track, and there is lots more to it, but it's a point of honor not to look anything up regarding the routines in a thing like this.

Happy to have made you laugh.

[The Magistrate]

47. The Name Itself, Ma'am

Probably derives from Chungking.

The brand got underway after the Second World War, and as Chungking was the capital of Nationalist China during that conflict, the sound of 'Chun King' would have struck on ears familiar from the war news with the name of Chang Kai-shek's war-time capital.

[hunter]

51. Young and wild I was traveling with a friend from Europe in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.

We were living rough in my car sleeping wherever. We didn't have money for proper motels or campgrounds.

My friend was astonished that cheap beer was so cheap, so we bought and drank a lot of it.

We were scheduled to visit some relatives of mine in Phoenix and we were pretty rank, so we decided to stay at a KOA campground to take a hot shower in the morning before we drove a few hours to meet them.

We bought Chun King in the camp store and that's the Chun King I remember most. Washed down with plenty of cheap beer it wasn't bad.

We didn't have a tent so my friend and I slept on the ground under the open sky until he woke up in the middle of the night and yelped when he noticed the little kangaroo rats hopping across his sleeping bag and maybe his face. He didn't like that so he moved to the higher ground of the picnic table.



In the morning we both looked perfectly awful. The hot showers we'd been promised and paid for were merely lukewarm.

[bottomofthehill]

52. My mother's idea of Chinese food

It was awful, she would add stuff to it making it only worse. She would get the 2 can kind and then peel carrots, add diced celery and onion, peppers and whatever else was in the fridge to stretch it for a family of 6. I don’t miss that crap at all.

[llmart]

53. Oh, yes. I remember it well.

It looked as bad as it tasted. The only thing that was palatable was the crunchy noodles. Without those it would have been awful We had it once in awhile and I believe my mother made two cans at a time. I was thinking a lot about that recently and about how my poor mother must have gotten so tired of cooking all the time for our family of nine. Back in the 50's people didn't have access to the varieties of food they have now. My mother had several standard meals that she made with a few differences from summer months to winter months. I also remember in the 60's when Jeno's pizza in a box came out and I loved those.

I don't remember us ever going out to eat at a restaurant because we were poor and there were so many of us. I do believe that when I was a late teen and some of the older kids were out of the house and on their own, we then would go out for breakfast occasionally where my oldest sister was a waitress and she would pay for it (or maybe she didn't). My life as an adult was so much different from my mother's and I think of her often and wonder how on earth she managed to stay sane.

[Laffy Kat]

54. I wonder if they were bought-out by La Choy? nt