(Nearly) Open Thread, June 15 2012

In an earlier thread, a discussion came up about the way that Cheetos are sometimes referenced in America as a shorthand for 'socially inadequate person'. What food and drinks are a shorthand where you come from, and what do they suggest?

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Comments

[Firedrake]

England, south, here.

Ready-meals often seem to be associated with lazy irresponsible poor people who can't be bothered to... well, you know the stereotype by now. Pre-made sauces are a step up. They're better than takeaway, but neither is anything like the real thing.

Takeaway/delivery pizza seems to be regarded as worse than takeaway/delivery Indian or Chinese food (which is slightly less likely to be delivered, though on the edge of this town of about 100,000 I have several options for each). Often associated with having the empty (cardboard) containers lying around one's house.

Fish and chips is rare, and hardly ever delivered; if it's available it's with the the other takeaways in social implications, perhaps a cut above because it is at least English in origin. Modulo the potatoes.

Curry is a special case in that it's a traditional thing to eat when you've had eleventeen pints with your mates on a Friday night.

Hobnobs (a biscuit, often seen with a chocolate coating) are associated with student life.

If you go out for "fancy" food, it probably won't be in an English style, unless it's seafood. Japanese almost always means painfully expensive.

[Dan Audy]

I haven't been around much lately so I was wondering if I missed the Atheist roundtable or whether it is still pending?

[Mmy]

@Dan: The last time we discussed the Atheist roundtable a number of very serious threats were made to members of our community (not just to members of TBAT.) At the moment we are still receiving (although usually no one in the general community sees them) threatening comments from the same sources.

The roundtable will go up at some point but not when I have just had to flush a passel of threatening comments from our filter trap.

[cjmr]

Is 'Pot Noodle' a type-shorthand in England, as it seems to be from watching 80s and 90s British science fiction?

[hapax, who will happily eat and drink all of the above, except chitlins, except in menudo]

Well, lattes and arugula are well known in the USA to signify "upper middle-class limousine liberal who probably listens to NPR." Merlot and Chardonnay carry some of the same freight.

Beer, in contrast, indicates "salt of the earth Regular Joe" (think Joe Sixpack).

Grits, chitlins, to some extent barbecue (especially pulled pork) tend to signify "low class uneducated Southerner."

Ice cream -- particularly when eaten directly from the carton -- is often used as a shorthand signifier of "woman recovering from emotional stress, particularly a bad breakup."

[MercuryBlue]

Ramen noodles: 'broke as fuck'. Which is all I've got, other than 'champagne tastes, beer pocketbook'.

[cjmr]

re: beer

Well, unless it is a local micro brew. That's a different indication.

[Mmy]

In my part of Canada eating "Krap Dinner" or "KD" is associated with being working class or hard up for funds. Do Americans talk about "Timbits"?

[Coleslaw]

Grits, chitlins, to some extent barbecue (especially pulled pork) tend to signify "low class uneducated Southerner."

Like the ones who eat Grits and Grillades* at Brennan's, Restaurant August, and Antoine's?

Which reminds me of the first day or so that I was in Zimbabwe on an Earthwatch expedition. A bunch of us volunteers were having dinner at the restaurant in the Hilton and, wanting to eat some local cuisine, I ordered sadza ne nyema. When my dinner was served, I looked at the plate and exclaimed, "That's grits and grillades!"

Back on the subject, when I read the question, I thought more along the lines of calling someone (especially an athlete) who is showing off a "hot dog".

*pronounced "gree ahds"

[hapax]

Oh, in the USA, a reference to watermelon and fried chicken is still very alive as a racist dogwhistle.

[hapax]

Mmy -- is "Krap Dinner" the same as "Kraft Macaroni-and-Cheese"?

Because if so, it has the same associations here. Either that, or one is trying to get small children to eat.

[Mmy]

is "Krap Dinner" the same as "Kraft Macaroni-and-Cheese"?

Yup. Apparently Canadians are one of the great consumers of said delicacy.

We also like to put gravy on our french fries. And we are very, very fond of Ketchup flavoured potato chips.

[TRiG, who has lost his login details]

Which is interesting, because I'd associate watermelon with my Cypriot relatives. (Ever tried watermelon and halloumi? It's a wonderful combination.)

I discovered the American racist connotations of watermelon quite recently, somewhere in the feminist bloggosphere.

TRiG.

[Kirala]

Pickles and ice cream I've heard associated with pregnancy. Which gets amusing with my sister, who has always favored the combination (I don't even know) and is tired of people asking when she and her husband intend to start a family (answer: not any time soon).

[Coleslaw]

And we are very, very fond of Ketchup flavoured potato chips.

My husband eats his with barbecue sauce.

"Boudin" is the quintessential Cajun food ( a seven course Cajun dinner is boudin and a six pack) so any reference to boudin is going to indicate some aspect of Cajun life.

Arkansas fans call LSU fans "corndogs", supposedly due to the popularity of corndogs in Baton Rouge, although I don't think they are really all that popular. Some of Texas Tech's opponents refer to it as Taco Tech.

Come to think of it, aren't food names like "taco" sometimes a racist dogwhistle aimed at Hispanics?

[MercuryBlue]

What's boudin?

[Coleslaw]

Boudin is a spicy sausage made in Louisiana. The name comes from a French blood sausage, but it isn't made with blood anymore, just pork, rice and seasonings. "It's like a spicy pork and rice casserole stuffed into a sausage casing." It's pronounced "boo-dan." Sometimes instead of being put into a casing, it's rolled into boudin balls and fried.

[MercuryBlue]

That sounds really good. Provided it's not too spicy, anyway.

Other thing sounds really good right now? Jambalaya.

[truth is life]

Grits, chitlins, to some extent barbecue (especially pulled pork) tend to signify "low class uneducated Southerner."

Hm, barbecue is pretty status-neutral around here...then again, here is Texas.

Oh, in the USA, a reference to watermelon and fried chicken is still very alive as a racist dogwhistle.

And yet at the same time those are popular generally, at least here (I think).

Some of Texas Tech's opponents refer to it as Taco Tech.

Weird, because Texas Tech is a heck of a long way from the "taco-eating" areas of Texas, at least historically (the deep inland plains didn't see as much Hispanic settlement as Central and coastal Texas).

Come to think of it, aren't food names like "taco" sometimes a racist dogwhistle aimed at Hispanics?

Around here, it would probably be more "taco truck," or "taqueria," that is to say a food-service truck serving tacos and other types of Mexican food, sterotypically serving primarily manual (thus, Hispanic, sterotypically) laborers.

But one of the great joys of Houston is that you're on the border between Mexican, Southern, and Plains cuisine, so it's a bit harder to sterotype the particular foods of any one of those groups. Oh, and lately Vietnamese, courtesy of Saigon, but that's more of an infusion than a natural development (a very welcome one, though!)

[Coleslaw]

re: beer

Well, unless it is a local micro brew. That's a different indication.

Nowadays, maybe, but I don't think it always was. What we call microbreweries aren't a new thing. When I was growing up New York City produced a local beer called Rheingold. New Orleans had three of what we would now call microbrews when I moved there: Jax, Dixie, and Falstaff. "Ordinary Joes" drank all four. I think it was only after the giant breweries gobbled up the original smaller ones that micro brews became associated with the upper middle class instead of the working class.

Truth is life, I think the "Taco Tech" nickname comes from other teams that are far enough away not to know that "Texas Tech is a heck of a long way from the "taco-eating" areas of Texas" or to care. "Taco" starts with a T and has the right number of syllables. It's like calling LSU fans "corndogs": you ask the locals to think of a food that typifies Baton Rouge and the last thing you are going to hear is "corndogs".

[Froborr]

USian,here.

I like arugula AND grits (not together, mind you, but) so what does that make me?

French fries with gravy and cheese are *delicious.*

Knishes, bagels, and other Eastern European baked goods are associated with Jews and New Yorkers.

Mountain Dew, Jolt, and other high-caffeine, disgustingly oversweetened sodas are associated with geeks, especially computer geeks.

[MercuryBlue]

Bagels are Eastern European? The things you learn.

[Froborr]

Yep, MB. Polish-Jewish, to be precise.

[Coleslaw]

I think an arugula salad would make great side to cheese grits, myself.

[MercuryBlue]

And now I'm going to have to rewatch that Community episode where they're making fun of Britta's pronunciation of 'bagel', aren't I. If I can figure out which episode it is.

On another subject. One of my coworkers is pregnant, and today we had her a baby shower. I got her a few things for the baby, plus a book and a bottle of bubble bath. And now three separate people have told me how thoughtful I am for thinking of my coworker as well as of her baby. And all I can think is, why is thinking of the mother as well as the baby not standard procedure?

[Mike Timonin]

In my part of Canada eating "Krap Dinner" or "KD" is associated with being working class or hard up for funds. Do Americans talk about "Timbits"?

Kraft Dinner is also associated with college students, or it was when I was at Ottawa U - a delegation of students went and threw boxes at the Education Minister when he removed the cap on tuition. (Perhaps if we'd marched in the streets then, they wouldn't need to march in the streets in Quebec now...)

Timbits - Tim Horton's are slowly moving south through New York state - we're on the southern border with Pennsylvania, and one of the local gas station chains has started adding Tim Horton's Express counters to all of their stores. So, Timbits might become a thing. But I suspect that Dunkin Donut's donut holes will remain dominant.

Also, damn, I want poutine now. And a schwarma. Possibly together. :(

[Brin]

Mmy: We also like to put gravy on our french fries.

Yeah, but at least with that you warn people well in advance so they're not surprised. The thing that really weirded me out was how the chicken fingers came with plum sauce. What even is plum sauce? (I guess I should try it at some point, but I generally order chicken fingers when I'm not in an adventurous mood.)

(This isn't really about food stereotypes, is it. *shrug* Nothing springs to mind that hasn't already been said.)

[Froborr]

Oh wow, poutine and schwarma would be an AMAZING combination. Sadly, I know of only one place in this area that provides poutine, and it is nowhere near anywhere that has schwarma.

Dunkin Donuts has terrible doughnuts. I cannot wait to get a Tim Horton's around here--Krispy Kreme is better than Dunkins, but Hortons is better than either. (Except for the plain glazed doughnut, Krispy Kreme wins on that one.)

Now I want a doughnut.

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Related are the Four Food Groups of D&D: Fat, salt, sugar, and caffeine. These are pretty much required at any game session, and usually found in pairs--something that is just salty and not fatty, or sugary without being also caffeinated or fatty, is rare. So chips yes, pretzels no. Mountain Dew yes, grape soda no.

[Steve Morrison]

@Brin: Plum sauce? It's a Chinese sauce with plums, vinegar etc., often eaten with poultry.

@TRiG: ISTR we discussed the racist watermelon stereotype on pre-split Slacktivist, a couple of years ago, but I can't seem to find the reference.

Speaking of doughnuts, there's the stereotype of police as enthusiastic doughnut eaters.

[Froborr]

I am familiar with plum sauce mostly as something you dip dumplings in. It's pretty good. But with fried, battered chicken fingers? I dunno, that sounds... odd.

[storiteller]

Hobnobs (a biscuit, often seen with a chocolate coating) are associated with student life.

I love Hobnobs with tea! Especially the chocolate-coated ones. I remember the tea breaks in grad school fondly, where we'd all take a 15 minute break in the middle of a three hour class to drink tea and eat biscuits. I had no idea they were associated with student life specifically - I thought they were just British.

Grits, chitlins, to some extent barbecue (especially pulled pork) tend to signify "low class uneducated Southerner."

Pulled pork is especially unfortunate as a stereotype, as it is quite delicious. (Grits are good in some contexts, but not as consistent.) There are very, very few types of meat I enjoy, but pulled pork is one of them.

And all I can think is, why is thinking of the mother as well as the baby not standard procedure?

At a baby shower I recently attended, the couple put "vegetable delivery from Whole Foods" on their gift list and I thought that was brilliant for the same reason you bought the bubble bath. The baby can survive off of milk, but the parents have to eat! I picked it and she was absolutely thrilled.

As for stereotypes, I always associated pickled pigs feet with Eastern Europe. My mom always told me about how my great-grandfather, who came over from Czechoslovakia, had them in the basement fridge and they would gross her out. But then I just found out that my neighbor from across the street, who is African-American, loves pigs feet (although perhaps not pickled). So I'm not really sure anymore.

[Ross]

@TBAT: technical note - Looks like the rss comment feed isn't working on this post for some reason.

[Froborr]

@storiteller: I was telling my fiancee about this thread, and she suggested pigs' feet and chitterlings as African-American stereotypes.

Another one: White bread, especially Wonderbread, is associated with the unsophisticated, especially conservative suburban whites.

[Dan Audy]

@mmy Bleh thats horrid. Some days I really loathe humanity. Well I'm looking forward to seeing it when it does arrive as someone who waffles between atheism, agnosticism, and faith on a regular basis.

[Kit Whitfield]

Is 'Pot Noodle' a type-shorthand in England, as it seems to be from watching 80s and 90s British science fiction?

Yep. It's a brand of instant noodle that you 'cook' in its plastic cup by adding boiling water to a block of dried noodles, a few dried peas and bits of something and a lot of flavouring powder. It's associated with broke students, because it's the closest you can get to a hot meal when you have nothing but a kettle.

It's also remarkably unhealthy, which the ads got clever about and started using slogans like 'They're no good for you, but really gorgeous.' And they're ... well, they kind of hit that horrible/great spot you get with really synthetic food.

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Another one: White Star, White Lightning and Diamond White. These are all cheap, high-alcohol ciders that are shorthand for 'rock-bottom alcoholic.'

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On the other hand, beer in the UK really has no particular 'Joe Sixpack' connotations. It's the drink that most men and some women drink whenever they're in a pub, so it's somewhat associated with maleness, but it doesn't have class connotations: if anything, it's a social leveller. This may be because, if I have this right, American beer is not particularly good (or it may have improved since all those 'Don't take the piss out of American beer, it needs all the flavour it can get' jokes were written), whereas there are quite a range of decent-quality beers available in any British pub, and some pubs specialise in different varieties of really high-quality stuff without being seen as obscure.

I don't think UK beer is quite as sophisticated as, say, German or Belgian beer, but the baseline is fairly high, so pretty much everyone drinks it. (Well, I don't, because I don't like it, and my husband is one of those men who prefers wine - but because the beer is decent, it isn't seen as snobbish not to drink it - at least in middle-class circles - and nobody cares.)

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Curry is sort of associated with friendship; 'going for a curry' is a traditional evening out for students, and the sort of thing old friends who've know each other since youth would do. The main reason, I think, is that there are a lot of curry houses, and while they obviously vary in quality, they're usually pretty good and they tend to be reasonably priced. Going for a curry is a way of getting reliably better food than you could get elsewhere for the same amount of money, and it's also a fairly safe bet that curry will be accessible wherever you are, so it's kind of a traditional treat for students on a budget. Plus curry just seems to appeal to the English palate; our national dish is chicken tikka massala, which apparently was invented in this country.

And on that note, vindaloo is associated with slightly stupid machismo, because it's often the hottest dish in a curry house and so likely to be ordered by some guy more interested in showing off than having a nice meal. (Though it's not necessary aggressive machismo; it can be amiable, hanging-out-with-the-lads machismo.) There's even a football song whose main words are 'Vindaloo, vindaloo, vindaloo vindaloo na na...'

[Firedrake]

cjmr: pot noodles still exist, but aren't very usual; you'll see them in supermarkets, but it's rare to see people buying them. In the hierarchy of bad/cheapskate/student food, they're probably somewhere near the bottom... except that you have to be organised enough to go out and get them, so they're less on the lazy side and more on the no-money side. (But this may have changed now that supermarkets deliver.)

I guess in the USA you don't get the cheap French wine that to my palate is often better than the expensive stuff - there's no point wasting trans-Atlantic container space on something that has a low profit margin. So, like European cars, European wine gets tied to "expensive"...

Coleslaw, there's a Chinese restaurant in London where they serve "fried intestines" - which are basically Chinese-style chitlins. (They've taken them off the English-language menu now, and I don't read Chinese, but I asked wistfully and they were still prepared to make me a plate.)

Mayonnaise on chips/French Fries is generally a Belgian thing, but I think it should be more widely known.

Barbecue in the UK generally just means "cooked out of doors"; it's not a specific sort of food, and we tend not to have slow-cookers or smokers. (I have never seen the point of a gas barbecue, but then I have a gas stove in the kitchen.) No particular class markers; all you need is a bit of outdoor space, and even if you don't have a garden you can still use a bit of a park or something.

Froborr. now you've reminded me of the Brick Lane Beigel [sic] Bake, which never closes; it's a great place to stop off for a snack while bicycling across London in the middle of the night...

[Firedrake]

Kit, I think I can expand a bit on British beer drinking, and it's a bit more segmented than your summary would indicate. The primary split is lager vs (real) ale; lager, generally of a European brand, is what most people will assume when one talks about going out for beer, and any pub will serve it. It's brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast and needs a cold environment; although the yeast has been killed by the time it's shipped, it's traditionally served slightly chilled. Almost all the draught lager sold in the UK is the product of mass production, and much of it is pretty nasty - down with mass-market American beers. German and Belgian beers are almost exclusively lagers; those range in quality from nasty muck to very nice indeed. Generally speaking the more interesting ones will be in bottles because they last longer while waiting for someone to buy them.

Ale uses top-fermenting yeast and no chilling. It's shipped live, meaning that it continues to mature in the barrel; this makes it logistically trickier for the pub, because if a barrel (typically 72 pints) isn't drunk within a few days of being opened it'll go off and have to be thrown away - whereas an unpopular lager can stay on for weeks. It also needs to be looked after a bit more carefully, and cellarmanship is a skill that many pub staff don't have any more. It's best served at cellar temperature, somewhere around 10C (hence the legends about "warm beer" in the UK). There are a few fake ales still about, which are killed before being shipped (Watney's Red Barrel was one such; John Smith's and Guinness are still available)... and it's worth remembering that the reason they became popular in the 1960s and 1970s was that they were consistent and nationally available, so if you were travelling you didn't constantly risk a stomach upset because you didn't know the local beers.

As a rough guide, if the pump isn't pulled by hand, it's not a real ale. Ale in a bottle is usually killed before bottling, but "bottle-conditioned" beer has live yeast in it and will continue to improve while on the shelf.

Getting back to the nominal topic, real ale (derogatorily, "beer with twigs in it") is often thought of as the preserve of beardy old men, but has become much more popular over the last twenty or so years. It's still not something that most pubs offer, though - I'd guess somewhere around one in three to one in five, very variable by region. It's more likely to have a distinctive flavour than is a mass-market lager, which means that people are more likely to dis-like it, so it has less generic appeal. On the other side, the 1980s saw "lager louts" who were known for drinking strong continental lager (usually from tins) when that was a relatively new thing here.

Now, of course, there are also alcopops - pre-mixed blends of spirits and mixers, about the same strength as beer and served in smaller containers, but usually very sweet and packaged to appeal to young and undiscriminating drinkers. (This may, as the industry claims, be a coincidence.)

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

This thread is making me hungry.

It is also making me want to cook something, which is a trick, since I am still too sick to stand in the kitchen for more than 30 minutes or so. I need to get a counter stool...

[truth is life]

Yep. It's a brand of instant noodle that you 'cook' in its plastic cup by adding boiling water to a block of dried noodles, a few dried peas and bits of something and a lot of flavouring powder. It's associated with broke students, because it's the closest you can get to a hot meal when you have nothing but a kettle.

Oh, Raman noodles! Well, probably not really exactly the same thing, but the same general idea, clearly (they even have some brands that are pretty much spot-on to your description). Same associations here, for broke college/grad students. More because Raman noodles are extremely cheap, ISTR ~$1 for a cup, so you can buy a weeks worth of "groceries" for very little money.

Our kind originated in Japan and somehow migrated over here after World War II, I wonder where pot noodles started off. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it was either a repackaging of Raman to appeal to a European market or a totally independent invention in the wake of the war.

[Firedrake]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_Noodle has things to say about instant noodles - first developed in 1958 in Japan, put on sale in current form in 1971, introduced in the UK in 1978 (I think Pot Noodle was the first brand here). Don't know when it got to the USA, probably soon after 1971...

I usually keep some in the cupboard for when I'm feeling profoundly lazy - I have a reasonably local Chinese supermarket, so I get dubious Vietnamese flavours or whatever they have lots of that day.

[Kit Whitfield]

cjmr: pot noodles still exist, but aren't very usual; you'll see them in supermarkets, but it's rare to see people buying them.

I'd dispute that; at least in the areas of London where I've lived, you often see small 'corner shops' - not necessarily shops on corners, it means one-room shops that sell basics and snacks - you see plenty of them.

So, 'ramen noodles' aren't just plain white noodles with nothing added? That's what I'd always pictured...

I've had instant noodles in Japan, too: they were clearly instant, but not as grotty as a Pot Noodle.

[Beroli]

So, 'ramen noodles' aren't just plain white noodles with nothing added?

No, you add a flavor packet to the noodles. There are different flavors.

[Literata]

Timbits! A family pseudo-heirloom is a Tim Horton's to-go mug with the little timbit with ears and feet as mascot with text in French on one side and English on the other. Many fond childhood memories are associated with this, such as mint chocolate doughnuts.

On the complete other end of the scale: kim chee. LitSpouse's military career has included some years in Korea, and he still gets significant cravings for kim chee and bibimbap from time to time. I think this is more common than realized: if you have a Korean restaurant in your area, and there's a handful of devoted Anglo-looking kim chee fans, I'd bet good money some of them acquired the taste in the service.

Military supermarkets (the commissary) stock a fair range of international food both for foreign-born spouses and servicemembers' tastes. The lady who was helping us with our groceries one time saw the kim chee and was discussing it with LitSpouse, who said he just had to have some. She immediately turned to me and gave me a five-minute lesson on making one's own kim chee in a large clay pot buried in the back yard.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

When we lived in married student housing in college, the Korean family down the row from us was making kimchee (and 'pickled vegetable') in huge jars on their patio. One night we had a flash-freeze and the jars exploded (normally they took them inside if there was a freeze warning). Partially-fermented kimchee and 'pickled vegetable' are not AT ALL pleasant smelling.

[Beroli]

French fries with gravy and chicken fingers with plum sauce both sound...interesting. Could be good, could be awful.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

They are both pretty good, IMO. As long as it is good gravy on the fries and not-too-greasy chicken fingers with the plum sauce.

[Literata]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I have no interest in making my own.

[Mike Timonin]

Froborr - I should stress that I'm craving a street schwarma (specifically, from Maroush International Schwarma, but I'm flexible), not the sort you would get at a restaurant with a table. Which is also excellent, but different.

[Brin]

No, you add a flavor packet to the noodles. There are different flavors.

Or you throw out the seasoning, drain the noodles, and coat them in olive oil. Much tastier. (Except when the seasoning packet leaks a bit, then it's merely okay.)

Does it really cost a whole dollar for one of those little cups? I'll have to check next time I'm in the grocery store to see if it's the same here. (I never buy them because you can't easily get rid of the seasoning.) I think it's somewhere around sixty or seventy cents for two packets of non-cup ramen. Two packets being what you need when the ramen is the main food of the meal. For a side dish it's...well, I still make two packets, but I only eat some and have the rest of it cold the following day.

(I don't really get the "only to be eaten if you can't afford something better" thing. I eat ramen because I like the taste. The cheapness is just a bonus.)

[Rowen]

REAL ramen (etymology uncertain. there's a few mandarin words it could have come from) is served as a soup, various kinds of broth, with veggies floating in, and often some kind of tofu or fish cake, and sliced hard boiled egg. Here's a pic.

http://www.rasamalaysia.com/uploaded_images/miso_ramen/ramen3_s.jpg

I'm not sure what the cups cost (The main brand in the states is called Cup'o'Noodles. I miss their sign in Times Square.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4A28MeZFjiU/T66BhObXJhI/AAAAAAAABns/SB369mU4v3g/s1600/Cup%2BNoodle.jpg

The packets, you can usually buy 2 for a dollar or something. What I do is mix the packet with Worchestershire sauce and soy sauce and a touch of the noodle water. Drain the noodles and coat them. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll throw in some scrambled egg.

[Rowen]

Truth is Life,

Do you live in Houston? I grew up there and went to school at UH!

As for foods, I tend to associate the South with deviled eggs and iced tea. I also miss kolaches, since no one up in NYC has ever heard of them.

Tamales sometimes have associations with poor hispanics, though that might be because of the REALLY AWFUL and off color joke my friend tells.

What I find funny is that I feel like mayo has associations with soooo many cultures, without really recognizing the overlap.

[storiteller]

REAL ramen (etymology uncertain. there's a few mandarin words it could have come from) is served as a soup, various kinds of broth, with veggies floating in, and often some kind of tofu or fish cake, and sliced hard boiled egg. Here's a pic.

I had no idea that "real ramen" existed until recently, but it's gotten big here in the D.C. area. There are a couple of genuine ramen places run by Asian immigrants that are closer to an Asian diner than anything else. There's also one in a hopelessly trendy/gentrifying area that's self-declared gussied up ramen and always has a 2 hour wait.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Ramen used to be my go-to for when my body was screaming 'omigod, I need salt NOW!'

Unfortunately, there isn't a gluten-free version of them.

[Mmy]

@cjmr: Unfortunately, there isn't a gluten-free version of them

Isn't it amazing what you find is in food when you start reading labels? As a celiac I am an inveterate label reader. And I don't just read the label once and then put the food into the "safe" category since manufacturers have been known to change stuff in the "fine print" on the back of the label.

[Reynard61]

@cjmr: I think rice is gluten-free. Have you tried pho? It's like Vietnamese ramen, and it usually uses rice noodles. Also, I know that you can buy rice noodles that are very similar to ramen in terms of cooking time- maybe some of those with the flavor packets from the real ramen? (Or as "real" as any 65 cent item in a grocery store can be.)

[Mmy]

@Reyhard61: I think rice is gluten-free

Yup. The main problem with foods like pho is that unless you make them at home there is a concern with cross contamination in processing.

BTW, reminder to all the gluten-intolerant out there -- regular soy sauce is not gluten free. And so lots of surfaces in places where rices dishes are made are contaminated with gluten.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

If the flavoring packets contain soy sauce, there may be hidden gluten, as wheat is used in most cheap soy sauces.

[Froborr]

@Mike Timonin: Well, of course. Real schwarma comes from a street stall that has an array of pickled assorted objects, tahini, several different hot sauces, multiple salads, and then when you put in your choices you hand it back to them and they stuff french fries in the top.

There's a local restaurant that comes close, but it's still not the same as a street stall.

[Coleslaw]

So is there some sort of food shorthand to refer to people who finally catch onto a food fad five or ten years after it is actually a fad? I ask because today I made a roasted tomato soup to use up some tomatoes bought in bulk before they went bad. It was an easy recipe. All the vegetables - tomatoes, bell pepper, jalepeño, and onion - roasted together on a big sheet pan, then got tossed into a blender with vegetable broth and seasonings. So as I was thinking, "This is the easiest recipe EVAR" it dimly occurred to me I had seen Ina Gartner and friends making roasted vegetables and roasted vegetable soup on the food network for years now.

The funny thing is, the recipe called for garlic powder as one of the seasonings. Since I was roasting all those veggies anyway, I just added a few cloves of garlic to roast along with them instead.

[Sixwing, who is sleepy like whoa]

Ohhhh how I love ramen. (USan, no-longer-a-broke-college-student.) Both the real and 65-cent varieties. Though in my opinion, the key to making a really good store-bought ramen is to take the flavoring packet, throw it out, and cook the noodles in a decent broth. Add whatever frozen veggies you like, and by the time the veggies are warm, the noodles are cooked, and everything is glorious and tasty.

Grilled cheese sandwiches have a reputation for being childlike or "kid's food." Apparently adults aren't supposed to like the gooey-crunchy goodness that is a properly done grilled cheese. That hasn't stopped me yet.

[truth is life]

Do you live in Houston? I grew up there and went to school at UH!

Yes, OMG, that's my alma mater too!

Also, Wikipedia has more to say about instant noodles. Apparently, they were introduced to the US and UK roughly simultaneously and probably independently. Personally, I go for the canned soups; I had one thing of Raman once when I was a kid, and thought they were okay but the packages were oversized (that is, I was full before I ran out of Raman).

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

"Real schwarma comes from a street stall that has an array of pickled assorted objects, tahini, several different hot sauces, multiple salads, and then when you put in your choices you hand it back to them and they stuff french fries in the top.

There's a local restaurant that comes close, but it's still not the same as a street stall."

Froborr, next time I'm in DC, this is where I want to go eat.

[Froborr]

@cjmr: Understood. Keep in mind, where a good stall has about 30 toppings they have about dozen... but the meat is good. Especially Sunday, when they have lamb instead of beef.

[storiteller]

There's a local restaurant that comes close, but it's still not the same as a street stall.

Since I continue to be in D.C., Froborr, where is that stall?

[Froborr]

There is no stall, alas. However, Shawarma King is the restaurant I was talking about that's *nearly* as good as a stall. They're at 1654 Columbia Rd NW, fairly close to Columbia Heights Metro.

[Mike Timonin]

Going for a curry is a way of getting reliably better food than you could get elsewhere for the same amount of money, and it's also a fairly safe bet that curry will be accessible wherever you are, so it's kind of a traditional treat for students on a budget. Plus curry just seems to appeal to the English palate; our national dish is chicken tikka massala, which apparently was invented in this country.

And on that note, vindaloo is associated with slightly stupid machismo, because it's often the hottest dish in a curry house and so likely to be ordered by some guy more interested in showing off than having a nice meal. (Though it's not necessary aggressive machismo; it can be amiable, hanging-out-with-the-lads machismo.)

Thinking about it today, some Americans treat chicken wings like this - relatively cheap night out with the boys (or girls), plus the machismo thing with the gradiations of painful sauce.

re: schwarmas - my wife and I finally saw the Avengers today - the last scene (post credits) is almost what I'm talking about. I've never had them stuffed with fries as Froborr describes, but in my mind, you should be able to just about walk and eat a schwarma at the same time - they should be tightly rolled in foil so that you can peel them and eat them slowly without loosing too much of the contents. And, come to think of it, the guy who introduced me to them did the whole machismo thing with those, too - hot peppers were totally and option, and gradiated.

[Rowen]

"Yes, OMG, that's my alma mater too!"

All hail to thee, our Houston University!!!

Very cool! I actually was one of the few people to stay on campus and lived in Taub Hall. I ended up majoring in Art History.

[Edward the Bonobo]

Something I was thinking about only yesterday. My background is Liverpool working class - although I was sent to an Independent school, partly with Tory money. It was Class Warfare all the way, I can tell you. My brother and I still have dreams of firebombing it, some 30 years later.

My favourite school lunch was big, metal dishes of Irish stew, made by Scouse women, piping hot with spuds and turnips and lamb, served with pickled beetroot. Very few boys liked it, which meant that I and another lad could go up for seconds and thirds and fourths (having eaten a bowl meant to do a table of eight.)

A class difference in food preferences? Damn right.

The stereotype of the working class may be pot noodles, cheetos, pizzas. But where I am (Glasgow) we also eat mince and tattie, stovies, lentil soup. And tarkadhal with chappatis, and lovely, properly made kebabs with salad, homemade chilli sauce, yoghurt, etc. etc. When we fancy a fish supper (and who doesn't) we'll know which shops do it best.

It's a triumph of working class ingenuity and improvisation that poverty foot is good food. Is there nothing we can't do?

[Edward the Bonobo]

Another thing.

I was in 'Staden' (Christiania, Copenhagen. You must go!) a couple of weeks ago. I was talking to some young, upper-class American guys and a wealthy Brazilian. They knew way too much about the intricacies of weed to be interesting. (just smoke it and shut up!)

We got taking vaguely on the idea of multiculturalism, and by way of analogy I started talking about how one of the significant things that has happened in my lifestyle was is that all are food is being shared out, following the tides of migration. (No surprise at all that traditional African food is also traditional African-American).

They started to look bemused. Maybe they just weren't foodies, but they seemed to find it weird that I was so knowledgeable about this stuff. But what really threw me was...they'd never even heard of Felafel! In Copenhagen where there's a felafel place on practically every street! In fact, there's a Felafel cart in Christiania! (the dealers have to eat somewhere!). And I'd just been talking to an Egyptian guy who definitely knows felafel. I told him that the best thing about Egypt is ful. (cooked mush of dried broad beans topped with tomatoes, onion, chillies, long-boiled eggs, olive oil...however you like it)

And following the weed connection...last year I had great Felafel from a wee place on Warmoestraat - The 'Dam's main coffeeshop tourist drag. I said to the guys 'Palestine's Greatest Gift to the World' - which pleased them because they actually were Palestinian and proud of their felafel. Their secret was lots of parsley and a little dried lemon peel, which is damned right.

So here we are. Our lives enriched by a wave of poverty food brought by lowly immigrants. Who's lowlier than a Palestinian running a fast food joint?

You know what kicked off The Arab Spring? North African workers have their only meal of the day at breakfast. Some ful or felafel, both dirt cheap, will sit nicely in their stomach so they don't feel hungry and will give them a slow release of energy so that you can labour all day. Then food prices went up and they couldn't afford to work. The rest is (ongoing) history.

Nice economic parallel. The upfront costs of enterprise (food, credit) increase and suddenly nobody can produce any wealth.

[Mmy]

@Edward the Bonobo: (No surprise at all that traditional African food is also traditional African-American).

Well many American you said that to would be surprised because they would know that it was at best an oversimplication and at worst wrong.

There isn't really one set of foods traditional to African-Americans which means that dinners traditional to one may not be to another. For example, within some African-American subcultures macaroni and cheese is a traditional holiday treat (Condoleezza Rice mentioned last year that she associates it with Thanksgiving and special occasions.)

Some of the most "traditional" of African-American foods are based on foods that originated in the Americans and did not spread back to Europe and Africa until the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries (CE) at the earliest. This includes anything made with maize (corn outside the Americas meant any cereal crop but in the America corn is maize and nothing else.)

Sweet potatoes are also a food of the Americas and Polynesia and not part of "traditional" African cooking until comparatively recently.

Some regional African-American dishes are created around tomatoes, another food not available in the "old world" until recent centuries.

[Izzy]

At least among my crowd (Bostonish, twenty-to-thirty-something), donuts are not so much a police thing these days as a corporate thing. You have donuts at meetings; donuts are frequently the only redeeming feature *about* meetings.

Denny's or IHOP or other pancake-type chains are the places you go when you're drunk at 3 AM.

Wine coolers--fruity-flavored wine in individual bottles--are associated with teenage girls. Which is sad, because I like them. "Malternative" beverages, like Smirnoff Ice or Mike's Hard Lemonade, not so much.

Casseroles are a Midwest thing. Also Jello with fruit in it, and a lack of spice in food.

[Mmy]

One of my first culture shocks when I moved to the US was going to an event that was listed as "including a meal" and finding that the entire meal consisted of pizza.

This was the opening orientation event for the incoming PhD students at a major American university. Historically at least 25% of the incoming students were not Americans. Since I was a celiac I expected when invited to "food included" events to make do by eating the vegetables and the salads. When I pointed out to the organizers that serving two types of pizza (cheese and cheese & pepperoni) not an acceptable meal for many people they countered by telling me that that my circumstance was really rare and just about (say that in your head with a really snarky tone) everybody else would be able to eat them. So why was I making such a big deal about it?

I remember standing there and beginning to list off the number of people who would not/could not eat either or both of those pizzas for a meal. Even I was surprised at how long that list was.

Just to start:
• if the cheese on the pizza is not rennet free the food isn't vegetarian.
• of course nothing was vegan
• of course nothing was kosher
• couldn't be eaten by anyone who was lactose intolerant
• tomato sauce on both pizza--bad news for people who can't eat tomatoes
• rather difficult meal for anyone on a salt or cholesterol restricted diet.

and so forth. And all they had to do was have a bowl of fresh fruit and, if they were feeling generous, a salad.

[Froborr]

Pizza can be kosher. It depends on how it's prepared and what toppings it has, and also whether the cheese is kosher. (Which is a complicated question and may depend on whether the eater is Orthodox or Conservative.) In general, though, anything a lactovegetarian can eat is automatically kosher.

But otherwise... yeah, pizza is not a restricted-diet-friendly food AT ALL. But it is the default dinner-provided food for meetings, because... something? It's not even tradition, it's a phenomenon of the last 30 years or so.

[Mmy]

@Froborr: Pizza can be kosher

I actually asked them if they had checked if the cheese was kosher. No, they had not. And since the pizzas were not made in kosher kitchens--well that becomes another issue.

One of the strange things to me was that this was a university town where stores had kosher sections, you could buy kosher cheese and some stores advertised that their meat was halal. All they had to do was look around them.

To me, one of the most frustrating things was that there were cheap and easy ways of making sure that there was always something that most people could eat. Why not have a basket full of apples and pears and bananas? Why not have a plate of radishes and carrots and cucumbers and celery?

It's not even tradition, it's a phenomenon of the last 30 years or so.

Exactly. If it had been something that people had been serving for a long time it would not have set me back so much.

And if it had not been an event designed to help people from cultures all over the world orient themselves to their new university.

To go off at a slightly different angle--does anyone else think that kosher cottage cheese tastes better? Perhaps the companies that make it just use techniques/practices closer to those used by the people who lived around my grandparents when I grew up but I swear I can taste the difference.

[Izzy]

Yeah, I tend to associate pizza with any corporate/university promises to provide a meal, as well as being the default dinner-at-games-night-with-friends option. It's generally cheap, it comes pre-portioned, and it doesn't require anything much in the way of utensils or plates. Also, you can get it delivered, whereas getting fresh fruit in bulk could involve a fair-sized trek, depending on where you live.*

Doesn't make it a good choice, of course--see also donuts at meetings, which tend to leave out people with gluten or sugar issues--but such is the corporate world, basically.

*Although a university would presumably have a catering service, thus making that last point inapplicable in this situation.

[cjmr, who will probably figure out her typepad logon eventually]

Kosher cottage cheese and Amish cottage cheese both taste closer to what I think of as being cottage cheese than most of what is in the grocery store. More whey, I think.

[cjmr]

WTF? Typepad was simultaneously showing me as signed in, but posting stuff from me as being signed out.

I wonder if that has something to do with using son's netbook all last week.

[storiteller]

But what really threw me was...they'd never even heard of Felafel! In Copenhagen where there's a felafel place on practically every street!

Not Denmark, but I had some of the best falafal I've ever had in Amsterdam. There's even a place called Amsterdam Falafal in D.C., because it uses that style of "pile as much on as possible."

However, I wouldn't be surprised if I met Americans who had never eaten falafal. A shocking number of Americans have never had any food that's vaguely "ethnic," excepting Americanized Chinese food. Big cities and their suburbs have a variety of food, but even the large upstate NY suburb I'm from only has one Indian restaurant. In contrast, the D.C. suburb I live in now has two Pho restaurants, another Vietnamese place, an upscale Peruvian restaurant, an upscale sushi restaurant, a Thai restaurant, several Chinese bakeries, a Venezuelan restaurant, and an Indian restaurant within a mile of my house.

Denny's or IHOP or other pancake-type chains are the places you go when you're drunk at 3 AM.

Or when there's absolutely nothing to do in your town after midnight. I spent a lot of my nights in H.S. and on break from college at our local Dennys.

[Mmy]

@storiteller: Lots of Americans (and Canadians and people from other countries) are unfamiliar with cooking from outside their native culture. I doubt that many people in warmer climates have either cooked or tasted fiddlehead greens (and boy, are they a quintessential food of the poor/underclass) and most people in North America I have spoken too have never even heard of Finnan haddie. Nor would they have ever had real johnny/journey cake served with blackstrap molasses.

When my dad was in England right after WWII there was still heavy food rationing and he and other troops were more than willing to share some of their rations--what they found was that the food that most of the people from England or Scotland who they met didn't even know how to cook much of the food these Canadian troops grew up with.

[Froborr]

D.C. and the Maryland suburbs are awesome for trying food from different cultures.

...Great Ghu. Have I actually developed local pride? What's happening to me!?

[Ross]

Fiddleheads are an underclass food? Cool. Just once, I was lucky enough to find them in a supermarket, and they were danged tasty. I always think of them as imported luxury exotics and keep hoping they'll turn up again.

(Incidentally, turnip greens are pretty tasty too. But after trying a few things with them, I am giving up trying to find a use for swiss chard, as being largely uninteresting in flavor.)

[Mmy]

@Ross: Fiddleheads are an underclass food?

They certainly were in parts of Canada since they weren't formally planted and harvested--people just found them on the edges of swamps and marshes.

[Mmy]

Oh, and another thing that people ate around where my mother grew up was dulse--which is a red alga. The tides would bring it in and leave piles of it stranded on the rocks. Locals would simply pick up the sun dried dulse and it eat then and there without doing anything to it. You can also bring it home and grind it up or you can pan fry it.

Maritimers do love their dulse. Grand Manan island prides itself on having the best dulse in the world

[truth is life]

Some of the most "traditional" of African-American foods are based on foods that originated in the Americans and did not spread back to Europe and Africa until the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries (CE) at the earliest. This includes anything made with maize (corn outside the Americas meant any cereal crop but in the America corn is maize and nothing else.)

But...there weren't any African-Americans until the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries CE, at the earliest (leaving out the very brief part of the fifteenth centuries when Europeans even knew that the Americas existed, and allowing for African persons in Spanish and Portugese dominated areas to be counted as "African-Americans"), so I don't see how this argues against any notion that African-American foods would not have often been basically "traditional" African foods modified to suit new circumstances. Especially since, as noted previously in the thread (with pizza in instutional settings in the US, for example) foods can go from being new or marginal to "traditional," in some contexts, very quickly. Decades or less. Compound this with the fact that African slaves were being imported to the Americas until the 19th century, by which point foods based on American crops might have been around for centuries, and

Of course, that continued migration also makes complete hash of any efforts to say what is "traditional African-American". An African-American from Chicago and an African-American from, say, Louisiana are going to have *very* different ideas of what is "traditional" (same with anyone else from Chicago and Louisiana, really. Except maybe recent migrants)

[Mmy]

@truth is life: so I don't see how this argues against any notion that African-American foods would not have often been basically "traditional" African foods modified to suit new circumstances.

I was pointing out that many of the foods that became traditional among African-Americans literally could not have been traditional foods among the African cultures from which the original slaves were ripped because those foods were unknown in Africa at the time.

So to conflate "traditional African" (which is also meaningless given the vast varieties of cultures in Africa) with "traditional African-American" (which is also an oversimplification of diverse cultures) is logically incorrect.

[hapax]

But after trying a few things with them, I am giving up trying to find a use for swiss chard, as being largely uninteresting in flavor.

Holy cow; just last night I was bemoaning that the deer had eaten all our chard. If you have some left over, send it to me.

Chard is fantastic chopped into fried rice, or steamed and added to an omelet. Or you can substitute layers of the leaves for the pasta in a very tasty fake lasagna.

Chop onion and garlic into a a little olive oil in a frying pan, saute until it gets clear, then add chopped chard for just a few minutes, saute / steaming it in its own juices. (Kale is tasty for this recipe, too)

Lentil, chard, and lemon soup. Good hot, good cold, freezes beautifully, so nutricious that you can *feel* the vitamins thrumming in your blood, the only vegetarian soup that I have had both small children and dogs beg for. God's own soup, that is.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

I would love the recipe for the lentil, chard, and lemon soup.

[Froborr]

Likewise on the recipe--that sounds delicious! Although I will have to figure out how to persuade my fiancee to try it. Also I'll need to figure out what chard is.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Froborr, unless the groceries in your suburb/section of DC are very different to the ones in PG County, MD I used to shop in, chard should be there now and in the late summer/early fall. In the 'greens' section.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Okay, this is weird, on the netbook I get all kinds of different icons for posts made seconds apart--when I'm not logged in but on my 'wired to the network' computer, I always get the same one...

[hapax]

I've made that soup so often I have the recipe memorized. It's pretty forgiving.

Warning: this soup looks NASTY. Don't be surprised by dubious looks the first time you serve it. They'll be won over once they taste it.

Soak overnight 2 cups (1 pound) lentils. Rinse, cover with water, and simmer for half an hour. (If someone is really sensitive to gassy legumes, you can rinse again and start over with fresh water, but you'll be losing some nutrition value every time you rinse.)

Chop loosely 2 bunches chard (~ 2 pounds). I de-stem it, but it isn't necessary. Add to lentils, along with a few cups more water. Simmer until soft.

Put one half cup good olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Saute 1 finely chopped onion, 1 or two finely chopped celery stalks. Crush 2 or 3 garlic cloves (or more, if you really really like garlic) with kosher or sea salt, and add to the pan. Saute until translucent, then add to the lentils and chard.

Simmer anywhere from fifteen minutes to all day, checking occasionally to see if you need more water.

Half an hour or so before dinner, stir a couple of tablespoons of flour into 1/2 - 3/4 cup FRESH lemon juice (I usually squeeze a half dozen lemons). Stir into soup and simmer until slightly thickened.

Top with fresh chives if you have 'em. Serve hot or cold with crusty bread (I like sourdough with this soup.)

[Froborr]

@cjmr: Wouldn't surprise me. I usually skip most greens on the grounds that they're not spinach, so why bother with them? =P

@hapax: That sounds lovely.

Warning: this soup looks NASTY.

Right. You said it was lentil soup, so I assumed.

My brother makes an EXCELLENT red lentil soup that comes out a runny gray-green glop. We call it camel shit soup.

[Mike Timonin]

This is my go-to chard recipe - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-and-Spicy-Swiss-Chard/Detail.aspx

It's yummy!

Collard greens - still trying to figure those out.

And, when drunk late at night, I tend to gravitate to a Waffle House (if South of the Mason Dixon). Mmmmm, greasy hash browns.

[Izzy]

Hash browns are kind of the Platonic Ideal Drunk Food, I think. Greasy and salty enough to appeal, starchy enough not to actually kill your stomach.

Although waffles aren't bad either.

[Mike Timonin]

slippery enough that they come back out easily...

[storiteller]

@Ross: Fiddleheads are an underclass food? @mmy: They certainly were in parts of Canada since they weren't formally planted and harvested--people just found them on the edges of swamps and marshes.

I know the only time I've had fiddleheads were both in high-end restaurants. I just had them on top of a tart recently, and they didn't list them on the menu, I suspect because people wouldn't know what they were. As for "just finding them," foraged foods are generally far more expensive these days than food you can farm. That's why mushrooms that you can only forage and not farm are obscenely expensive. The labor costs on foraging to the output are very high. I'm not sure if you can farm fiddleheads or not.

[Mmy]

@storiteller: Foods, like neighbourhoods, can be gentrified. When my mom was growing up fiddleheads were something that only people who lived out in the back of beyond ate. And they found them on their own land or public land that they had access to. "City folks" didn't even think of them as food--if they saw them at all it was as ornamental ferns.

And in the part of the country my mom came from anyone with marchy land or a stream that runs through their land can find fiddleheads quite easily.

[Mike Timonin]

Foods, like neighbourhoods, can be gentrified.

Lobster and oysters, for instance

[chris the cynic]

Indeed, the stories say that there was a time when people insisted that their contract specifically state that they would not be fed lobster. If food was part of their payment they wanted it to be good food not... lobster.

No idea if the stories are true, but that's what I've heard.

Which is the basis for my plan to make a business in which things with little value at one point in history are bought on the cheap and then transported through time to an era when they are expensive.

But, you ask, wouldn't this end up completely screwing up the commodities markets across history, as well as have unintended consequences on the population of several species and thus the ecosystem of the entire world? To which I can only respond, "I don't actually have a time machine."

[Froborr]

Foods, like neighbourhoods, can be gentrified.

Lobster and oysters, for instance

Speaking as someone who detests both, I'm morbidly curious as to how they got gentrified. "Hey rich folks, this looks like a giant bug and tastes like rubber unless you dip in butter, in which case it tastes like buttered rubber. Wanna spend $50 on it?" Or "Hey rich folks, this looks and tastes like snot but takes a lot of effort to get at, wanna buy a bucket?"