LETTING GO OF GOOD THINGS

I know very few people who don't like flan.  Unless we come from a Hispanic family, our first taste of it probably comes from a restaurant, and once we've taken a bite we're hooked.

I've come to love it.  I've recently been buying some each week at our grocery shop outing, but as it's a bit pricey, I thought I'd see about making my own.  How difficult could a custard be?  I figured the caramel topping might take a little work, but again, how hard could it be?

So all it took was a look at one "simple" recipe online and I changed my mind.  It required 6 ramekins to hold the finished product, lots of sugar, lots of eggs, all kinds of canned milk --- and then I hit words like "In a mixer" and "blend smooth after each ingredient."  "Constantly stir sugar," "reheat if it hardens," "water bath  in a ceramic baking dish" -- and total time was said to be "one hour 20 minutes."  Well, I'm finished with that kind of cooking, so I decided I'd just continue to buy flan in little individual containers at the grocery store.

I had bought 6 little containers last Thursday, making sure that they had a good, and not expired, date on it.

Last night I was ready for container #3, having used the first two earlier in the week.  I had my mouth set on that tasty dessert, but when I opened it, I had the shock of my life.  Of the four left, three were inedible!

Talk about gross!  If they looked like this on 05-02-12, imagine what they would have looked like on 08-29-12!  Needless to say, they will go back to the grocery store tomorrow when we make our next food foray, and you can bet the manager will be more than willing to return my money. 

And of course, I will certainly never buy Margarita Authentic Baked Flan again.  After pulling the lid off the first one without paying particular attention to it, I looked at the rest of them.  There did not appear to be any area where the lid had become unsealed, nor did there appear to be a pinhole or something of the sort in the lid.  Of course it is not up to me to figure out how this happened; if Ralph's were my store, I certainly wouldn't carry this brand anymore.

Be that as it may, I now will have to figure out something else that I can substitute in for the flan.  Gosh, it was good while it lasted. 

What a revoltin' development!