Dining on Toasty Moakies and Soda Mousse on Kenchicky Avenue

This blog post was inspired by a trip to the convenience store, of all things.  So, bear with me here.  I will get to the point of this post in a minute.

Summer is fast approaching.  Just a few days away now.  And with the summer sun beaming down upon us comes the really hot and humid temperatures.

And honestly, I could do without them. 

Don't get me wrong.  I do love summer.  I just wish that summer temperatures were a little more consistent - like say, 19 degrees Celsius from now until September 20 or whenever the first day of fall happens to be.

Anyway, as a result of the hot weather that comes with summer, you have to come up with creative ways to beat the heat.  Mine just happens to involve ice cream and fruit slushies.

I happen to live near a store that sells Mr. Freeze fruit slushies (Mr. Freeze happens to be a popular brand of freezies that are sold in stores around this time of year), and there were three different colours that were sold.  Red, white, and blue.

Now, I settled on red (cherry), but I also don't mind the blue (raspberry).  I wasn't sure what the white ones tasted like, but having had eaten a thousand Mr. Freeze freezies throughout my whole life, I had an idea that the white slushies were cream soda flavoured.

Only when I was a kid, I NEVER called it cream soda. 

To me, cream soda was always known as "Soda Mousse".  I don't know when I started calling it that, but I do remember why.  Back then, the only kind of cream soda that was available was made by Crush.  It was a red soda in bright pink cans that tasted like absolute heaven on earth - well, at least a four-year-old's idea of heaven, anyway.  I still have a can once in a while.  For old times sake.

The thing is, in Canada, all of our food packaging is written in both English and French.  It has been that way since 1969, when French became Canada's second official language.  And when I was reading the label of the can of cream soda, I think the French side was facing me.

That's probably why I began calling it soda mousse.  That's what it said on the can. 

To this day I still refer to cream soda as soda mousse.  Maybe I'm weird this way, but that's how I roll.

Truth is, when I was a kid, I called a lot of things by completely different names.  And interestingly enough, most of the things happen to be related to food and beverages. 

Now, in the case of the cream soda/soda mousse thing, it was just in how the Crush can was positioned.  But sometimes I pick up the lingo from family members too.

I'm sure that most of you have had at least one piece of French Toast in your lifetimes, right?  It's a delicious piece of egg-dipped bread that is saturated with cinnamon and vanilla extract that you dip in maple syrup for a sweet treat.

Or, at least...that's what it was supposed to be.  My family was never really big on frou-frou cuisine.  We never bothered with fancy spices or culinary arts.  Our version of French Toast was egg-dipped bread without the cinnamon and spices.  Instead, we ate it plain with Heinz ketchup for dipping.

You might think that it's the wrong way to eat French Toast, but take it from an expert in working class cuisine - it makes a great filling meal (and it's economical at that).

But then, my family always did traditional breakfast staples a little less traditionally.  We didn't even call our creation French Toast.

Instead, we coined our own term for the dish.

"Toasty Moakies".

I honestly don't know if that's even how you spell it.  But, you know?  It's our family's term.  We can spell it however the heck we want to!

To this day, I honestly don't know anybody else in the world who calls French Toast "Toasty Moakies"!  I like to consider my family as the one that coined the term.  But if there happens to be anybody else who has used the term "Toasty Moakies" to describe French Toast, I'm interested in knowing!

Let's see.  What other funny names did I give foods and beverages? 

Well, I suppose that the mispronunciation of words was a common theme as well.  I think every kid has called spaghetti "pascetti".  I seem to remember Michelle from "Full House" calling ice cream "owse cream" for an entire season of the show (which really grated on my nerves by the way).  I'm only assuming that Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen have since learned how to say it correctly.  At least, I hope so.

But when it came down to me mispronouncing food items, I was really bad with fast food items when I was a kid.  I'm not talking about trying to order a Big Mac at Burger King either.  I'm talking about completely mixed up things.

For one, I thought Dairy Queen Blizzards were called Buzzards.  Yep, buzzards.  Of course, the Dairy Queen Blizzard came out when I was four years old, and I only learned how to talk when I was three.  I suppose that could explain it a little bit.  Though I wonder what a Dairy Queen Buzzard would look - or even taste like.

And, on a completely unrelated food note, I bungled up a lot of the properties available for sale in the board game "Monopoly".  Would you want to live on Connie-Cut Avenue or Ken-chicky Avenue?

So, let's hear it.  What did you call things when you were little?