Looking back, I haven't done a post about a Canadian food or drink in a while. (Since August 3, 2024, to be precise.) So let's return to our Neighbors to the North. (For Americans like me, anyway.) I tried three kinds of the gourmet baked beans from the Clark brand--their apple bacon mesquite, their peach honey habanero, and their Buffalo style ones.
I'll quote from the label on my cans for some detail about the company's origins. "In 1877 a penniless William Clark muscled his way into the prepared foods industry with nothing but a determined belief that he could make better-tasting, higher-quality food products." Giver the state of canned food safety in the U.S. at the time (and presumably many other countries as well), long before the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act had been passed, hopefully Clark was concerned about food safety as well. Reportedly at the time William had only three employees, and no money in the bank when he rented an old store front in downtown Montreal. (No accounts mentioned where he got the money for the rent, or to pay his employees. Maybe his workers were family, willing to toil for very little or nothing, and maybe someone in his family loaned him some cash.) Anyway, the business prospered, as Clark and his four sones built the business into a food empire. It's billed as being Canada's largest diversified food company. Aside from baked beans, Clark also makes several other canned food products--meat spreads, condensed soups, gravies, and chili sauces. Alternate flavors of the gourmet baked beans include maple chipotle, chili lime, and root beer. (Yes, root beer. Seems like an odd flavor for baked beans, but maybe it's good.) Clark is actually owned by another company called Ouimet-Cordon Bleu Foods, Inc. Although it seems to mostly go by the title Cordon Bleu. OCB, as I'll abbreviate it from now on, acquired the rights to Clark's stews in 1990 and their baked beans in 1991. (I don't see stews on the Clark official website's product list, so apparently they discontinued making them.) OCB started in 1933, by a J.-Rene Ouimet. (Yes, that's how I saw it rendered on their official website.) Ouimet later teamed up with the Cordon Bleu company. Aside from Clark, OCB also owns the Paris Pate, Esta, and Cordon Bleu brands.
Clark gourmet baked beans, apple bacon mesquite flavor: These were beans in a reddish-brown sauce. The smell was like regular baked beans. The taste was both sweet and smoky. Pretty good, overall. They were zestier than most baked beans I've had, which usually have the blander brown sauce. I'm only a moderate fan of baked beans, but these were a good example of the style.
Clark gourmet baked beans, peach honey habanero flavor: Like the previous ones, these had a reddish-brown color, and a normal baked bean-y odor. I could taste the sweet, and peachy flavors, so both the honey and peach were represented. But I didn't really pick up on a spicy habanero flavor. Which I would have liked, I think, as the sweetness was a tad cloying. I enjoyed the apple bacon mesquite ones better. But these were still okay.
Clark gourmet baked beans, Buffalo style: These had an orange color, and a distinct Buffalo sauce odor. (For those who don't know, this refers to the flavor of chicken wings, which started in Buffalo, New York.) The taste was decently potent, markedly spicy like good Buffalo wings. Not overpowering, but enough to make things interesting. Since I like Buffalo wings in general, this was a good flavor pairing. These were really tasty, my favorite of the trio by far. I've already gone back and bought more cans of these.
So, to sum up, I came away pretty impressed by Clark's gourmet baked beans. Even the "worst" kind was still solid. I'll have to try the other flavors, too, especially the strange root beer flavored ones.
Moving on, I recently signed a contract for my short story "Wet Nightmare," to be part of a as yet unnamed horror anthology from RDG Books Press. It should be out in the autumn of this year. Obviously, as I receive more details I'll post them. I'm especially pleased that "Wet Nightmare" was finally chosen. It's one of my oldest stories, as I wrote it back in 1999. And RDG was the 48th time I've submitted it. So maybe something like this can help inspire my fellow writers--never give up on a story. Keep on submitting it, and eventually, even if it takes decades, it may see the light of day, so to speak, and get published.
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