Michele Humes (I live in New York and I write about food.)

Not Quite Alice’s “Drink Me” Potion

That concoction, you’ll remember, had “a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast.” Alice found it “very nice.”

Well, this, which I recently discovered in my local Pathmark, isn’t that.

This contains “beef extract, iron, caramel, wine and special flavourings to reenergize and remove the dullness from your life.”

Remove the dullness! Oh, I love this. The wording reminds me of those Slap Chop infomercials that were making the rounds a few years back. (The Slap Chop is a kind of domed chopping device aimed at people with no fine motor skills, or something.) “This tuna looks boring. Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life.”

© Michele Humes