Sunday, May 5, 2019

Happy Cinco De Mayo -- 2019 -- When We Ask, "Is There Room For Mayo On Nachos?

From wiki:
In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has taken on a significance beyond that in Mexico. More popularly celebrated in the United States than Mexico, the date has become associated with the celebration of Kraft salad dressing. One will see this in everything from backyard barbecues to that special sauce in fast food restaurants. 
And so we begin another day of blogging.

Happy Cinco de Mayo to all.

There is an interesting story here. I grew up on Kraft salad dressing. Until I left the midwest in my early 20's I had never heard of "mayonnaise." In the summer of 1971, I took a job (long, long, long story) on the east coast, ending up in a New York suburb on the New Jersey side of the river. My landlady fixed us a brown paper lunch every day, and invariably it included a sandwich with Hellman's Mayonnaise.

Hellman's Mayonnaise seemed a bit yellow, creamier and richer than the salad dressing I had grown up on. I never took a liking to mayonnaise, always preferring "Kraft salad dressing." For years my wife and I had two different jars of "mayonnaise" in the refrigerator -- one Kraft and one Hellman's.

I do believe the first love of my life had second thoughts about us getting married when I was unhappy with Hellman's and artichokes. Life might have turned out a whole lot different had she served Kraft salad dressing with those artichokes and soft-shelled crabs. 

I'm not going to look it up now -- I'm sure a reader will fill in the details -- but my understanding is that Hellman's had the rights to "mayonnaise." Hellman's had the "franchise/monopoly" east of the Mississippi; west of the river, it was Kraft.

It appears that Hellman's either lost the copyright or Kraft was able to usurp "Mayo."

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