EnMasse

[Tehanu]

[Cartman]

Oh, that brought back a bad memory. I was 16 and we were out of booze and money, so we all drank some old feller's moonshine. Damn that shit was bad. :shiver: Now, whenever a friend offers me some home made wine, I fall to the floor into the fetal position and suck my thumb.

[Tehanu]

[Cartman]

[bagkitty]

[Chester]

[Maestro]

[anne cameron]

They sell "instant" tea...now what in hell could be quicker than ordinary tea? You boil water for both...seems odd to me...

[Feral]

[Vundo Draxon]

[Raos]

I always liked eating the frozen peas before they thawed.

Corn, however, is only meant to be eaten one way, and that is directly from the cob.

[lagatta]

Commercial Drive is an Italian neighbourhood? I live in la Petite Italie here, and it is nice to be able to have good coffee (espresso, cappuccino) in an old-fashioned working-class café. Much better, and far, far cheaper tha the pretentious fake-fancy coffee places.

[Chester]

[bagkitty]

[Maestro]

[Chester]

i hadn't realized the specfic team affiliations of the coffee houses, cool.

[lagatta]

Yay Roma! Historically that is the "left" footie side. Right-wingers in the Rome area support Lazio. (Lazio is the name of the province in which the city of Rome is located - Latium). Now, of course both sides (squadre di calcio) are capitalist money-making concerns, but like many other sporting teams have their roots in athletic associations, company or church teams etc.

Some of the Lazio players and not a few of the Lazio fans "tifosi" ("tifare" means to support or root for a side, team or athlete - tifo means typhoid fever) are actual neofascists. A player made the Roman salute not long ago, and anti-immigrant, anti-roma (the people, not the city or opposing side) statements, and there is a "curve" (group of thuggish fans, probably not quite as drunken as Brit hooligans) that is particularly notorious as racists, throwing bananas and making monkey noises to mock Black players, or soap to mock Jewish ones, and a side traditionally stereotyped as "Jewish".

Unfortunately, unlike the espresso bars, most of the Italian restos in my neighbourhood ARE overpriced and pretentious. One is a place-to-be-seen pizzeria named Bottega, which has taken over the premises of the former notorious Ristorante Frank, where paper bags full of money exchanged hands in the days of the Sponsorship scandal.

As is usually the case, the restaurants with the best value are run by newer waves of immigrants exploiting their own labour and that of their relatives...

[sparqui]

For some horrific reason, my family was enamored with all things instant.

Till the day he died, my dad drank copious amounts of instant coffee and that's with retiring in Spain were a decent cafe con leche or espresso could be had for next to nothing. His older cousins thought that instant was more luxurious and wouldn't even bother boiling the water -- just hot water from the tap.

We grew up on Carnation Instant/Minute Breakfast crap in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and mocha. We also had to endure a phase of Tang flavoured crystals before my mom discovered frozen orange juice and deemed it healthier.

We never had real mashed potatoes because my youngest brother preferred those Sheriff instant ones. We also ate tons of McCain's frozen french fries.

As for instant potatoes, they really do make for great fake snow flurries on film. Kubrick used them in The Shining. The only short coming is the mess you make when you try to wash down the set with water.
_________________
“If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a tractor.”

-- Gilles Duceppe

[Rufus Polson]

[m0nkyman]

[fork]

This thread inspired my contribution for last weekend's visit to the in-laws. No Xmas is complete there without Cy's Seafood Casserole, about forty bucks worth of seafood dropped into a "cheese" sauce made with Kraft Singles. Tasty, but I still hesitate in the preparation, as there is something just plain wrong about the pairing of fake cheese with shellfish. I've seen versions with Velveeta* or real cheddar, but I don't know which is the original recipe. No matter - don't mess with other people's traditions, so for me it's Kraft Singles.

There was only real cheese in our house growing up, but there are some things that taste better with fake, IMHO, like homemade egg mcmuffins.

I never really caught onto KD, maybe because the first time I saw it being made, they added ketchup and pickles at the end.

*Cheese food is, apparently, a step up from cheese product

[Cartman]

[Senor Magoo]

Like the Island of Misfit Toys, there's a place for every food.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz!
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Eight cans of Zoodles,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Nine instant Ramen,
Eight cans of Zoodles,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Ten chicken weiners,
Nine instant Ramen,
Eight cans of Zoodles,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Eleven preformed fish sticks,
Ten chicken weiners,
Nine instant Ramen,
Eight cans of Zoodles,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Twelve frozen waffles,
Eleven preformed fish sticks,
Ten chicken weiners,
Nine instant Ramen,
Eight cans of Zoodles,
Seven Kraft Dinners,
Six Ham-burger Helpers,
Five jars of Cheez Whiz,
Four beef jerkys,
Three microwave burritos,
Two Michalena's and
One pre-ee-formed Ham
_________________
ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,

[Tehanu]

Mmmm beef jerky. Almost as good as those dessicated hot sausages you can buy, which still manage to retain an astonishing amount of fat.

Is that your Xmas wish list, Magoo?

(As a quick drifty aside, have you ever brined a turkey? I'm trying that for the first time this year and am a bit apprehensive ...)

[Chester]

[Tehanu]

Yeah, I think I'm thinking of Hotrods. But I have in my head a spicier version.

[Cartman]

Has anyone mentioned spam yet?

[lagatta]

I have actually bought GOOD chicken wieners, at a Central-European deli - more like knackwursts, and actually made of chicken. Obviously more expensive than the Maple Lodge kind...

And I wonder why people spell them "weiners"?

Guess I've become a pedant about German as well. (Wien=Vienna; Wein=wine).

What are "Zoodles"? I know what most of the other things are. Alas I remember pre-formed hams in little tins - something people without much money ate for "special". They were imported from Poland back then.

When Poland was part of the Warsaw Pact, shoppers called pigs' trotters "patriots" because they were about all that were on offer at the butcher's ... everything else was exported for "hard currency".

[Chester]

[Maestro]

[Chester]

[anne cameron]

Magoo, you left out those horrible things-on-sticks..a sort of weiner with a purportedly cornmeal covering...the grrrrrrrrrrls put them in the microwave (we call it the "nuke") then sit on the floor in front of the TV gnawing on this mystery-shite while watching Dora the Explorer...they seem to be able to eat several of these things-on-sticks and still have plenty of room left for spaghetti with meat sauce... and what's with all these "yogurt" treats...several different shapes and sizes of gelatinous glup covered with something whitish which purports to be yogurt... DaughterInLaw gets this stuff for lunchbox treats...I look at it and I feel very much "out of touch"... this is not FOOD... almost as popular as the things-on-sticks are these "goldfish", some kind of supposedly cheese flavoured biscuit, shaped like fish. I think they're probably an adaptation of Ritz crackers... anyway, they love them, especially when they "swim" in the soup...

[Reverend Blair]

[Maestro]

Anne, those things on sticks are corn dogs. I have never eaten one, but I know someone who has. They even profess to like them. Something horribly wrong with that...

And no one has yet mentioned

Swanson TV Dinners (55 years old this year):

[Hephaestion]

[bshmr]

[Maestro]

Note the 'Improved' on the box. Yup, this looks like an improvement over the original turkey dinner...

Yes, it's 'sliced beef with sauerbrauten gravey, German style whipped potatoes (I'm not sure what that means, I was unaware the Germans whipped their potatoes), and Bavarian red cabbage (which looks a lot like chopped entrails).

This particular 'dinner' must have come along a bit later, simply because I doubt the US was ready for a 'German Style Dinner' too soon after the war.
_________________
On the wilds of the Drive

[Rufus Polson]

Presumably, they found a German and got him to whip some potatoes. Documentary proof.

[bshmr]

Maestro, sauerbraten is a treatment to lessen the odds of the meat killing anyone, reading between the lines on wikipedia.

[lagatta]

So sad, that. I love making the red cabbage with onions, apples, a bit of leftover wine, bit of bacon if I'm feeling decadent and not serving it to vegetarians. And caraway seeds, of course.

A lot of foods that seem repulsive were actually means of conserving supplies or making them safer. Sauerbraten is pickled, after all. And Lutefisk, that terrifying Scandinavian food?

I'd be more inclined to think of some plain boiled potatoes, perhaps with some herbs, with that meal, but that is hard to fit into a TV dinner pan.

Sure, too much turkey, but also the recent experience with military rations, the TV being as wonderfully "new" as the internet was, say 10 years ago, mass-marketing.

[Maestro]

[Rufus Polson]

[Tehanu]

Someone tell me why this is so. You're watching some gourmet cooking show on the Food Channel, and the ads are all for instant gravy and suchlike. Huh?

[lagatta]

I don't watch TV, but it is the same when perusing food magazines, especially the American ones (Gourmet, Bon Appétit). The ads are all for commercial glop.

I guess the programmes and reading matter are aspirational, but a vehicle for publicity for glop.

[abnormal]

[Tehanu]

Have to say that canned peas ... disgusting. Grey. Gooey. Gross.

[TS.]

[Tehanu]

[Maestro]

[Tehanu]

KFC in the United States is no longer allowed to use the word "food" in their advertising.