# American foodstuffs - a few questions **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 8, 2001, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736 "2001-07-08T21:30:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/141 "2001-07-14T18:23:09Z")
Help an expatriate here – can you get catfish in the UK? I seem to remember passing a catfish farm in the car once, but haven’t been able to find any in the markets or grocery stores; was I hallucinating, or is it only used for cat food? Other than that, there isn’t much that I miss except good, cheap Mexican food, and a lot that I will miss when I go back to the US (rhubarb and ginger jam, curd tarts, Cadbury’s, kebabs, curry paste, and real ale for starters). ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/142 "2001-07-14T19:05:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fretful Porpentine \* > **…and a lot that I will miss when I go back to the US (rhubarb and ginger jam, _curd tarts_** What are curd tarts? My first guess is that perhaps they’re a sweet pie made with lemon curd, but perhaps they’re savory and made with cheese? Rhubarb & ginger jam sounds very nice. Is it something you buy commercially, or is it just from home canners, farmers’ markets and such? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/143 "2001-07-14T21:39:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by deepbluesea \* > \*\*Oooo. One of my UK friends once sent me a Lindt bar - ultra dark chocolate. I think it was called something like 70%, somewhere in there. It was lovely. > > Why do we not have things like that in America?\*\* See if you can get your friend to send you a bar of **Green and Blacks Organic Dark Chocolate** it’s available all over the UK and in my opinion, it’s the very best of the ‘70% cocoa solids’ dark chocolates. The other bars in their range are very good too; the white chocolate has tiny black flecks of real vanilla in it and they make something called ‘Maya Gold’ which is dark chocolate flavoured with ‘rainforest spices’ which I believe is an attempt to recreate the ‘original’ flavour of xocolatl (sp?), I’m not sure how well it achieves that particular aim, but if you like bitter chocolate, you’ll love it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/144 "2001-07-14T21:42:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fretful Porpentine \* > \*\*Help an expatriate here – can you get catfish in the UK? I seem to remember passing a catfish farm in the car once, but haven’t been able to find any in the markets or grocery stores; was I hallucinating, or is it only used for cat food? \*\* Not seen 'em round these parts, not even in the fishmonger’s, by far the most common farmed fish in the UK is rainbow trout (native to the USA I believe), but farmed fish isn’t a patch on wild-caught. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/145 "2001-07-14T21:51:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by OxyMoron \* > \*\*Rhubarb & ginger jam sounds very nice. Is it something you buy commercially, or is it just from home canners, farmers’ markets and such? \*\* I’m sure I’ve seen a commercial brand of this in my local supermarket, but speciality conserves are very popular at markets, fetes and sales. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/146 "2001-07-14T22:02:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TVeblen \* > \*\*Have my eccentric reading habits misled me or has Indian food become sort of part and parcel of British cuisine, rather like Murrikins have adopted pizza, etc.? \*\* Certainly it is very popular, possibly _the_ most popular choice of food when eating out, but I still remain to be convinced that statements to the effect that curry is ‘the most popular food in Britain’ have any sound statistical research in their basis (eating out is only part of the picture). Personally, I don’t mind a curry once in a while, perhaps a Dhansak or a Rogan Josh, for me at least, curry forms only a relatively small part of my diet. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/147 "2001-07-14T22:06:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Odieman \* > \*\*To get back to the Cream of Wheat discussion, what we call Cream of Wheat here is called Semolina in England. (One of the advantages of talking with Fierra is I have learned a lot of word equivalents between England and North America 😉 ) \*\* Of course, I should have worked that out! Semolina isn’t tremendously popular, and would normally be eaten as a dessert, probably accompanied by fruit of some sort, rather than breakfast. I’d rank it lower(in a popularity league table of similar products) than rice pudding, but higher than tapioca. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/148 "2001-07-14T22:20:30Z")
Intersting to see how this thread has evolved. I have another question: On average, what proportion of your dietary intake is made up by: -Restaurant/take-away/drive through/delivered etc food -Pre-prepared meals, i.e. bought from a supermarket, but all you have to do is heat them -include packets and stuff like Ramen noodles in here. -Meals cooked at home from basic ingredients. -Other (please specify) Please also say whether you feel that the figures you give are typical of your area. ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2001, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/149 "2001-07-14T23:34:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mangetout \* > \*\*On average, what proportion of your dietary intake is made up by: > -Restaurant/take-away/drive through/delivered etc food > -Pre-prepared meals, i.e. bought from a supermarket, but all you have to do is heat them -include packets and stuff like Ramen noodles in here. > -Meals cooked at home from basic ingredients. > -Other (please specify) > > Please also say whether you feel that the figures you give are typical of your area. \*\* I’m pretty atypical of NYC in that I like to cook and actually make a point of doing so; to make it easier I make large batches and gnaw on them for the rest of the week. Still, I’d say I eat about 40% of my meals either in restaurants or takeout, with another 20% prepared (fresh soups from the grocery, breakfast cereals, deli meats) and the remaining 40% me (meats, salads, fruits-and-vegetables). At my soon-to-be-former job, people thought I was a bit odd for bringing my own lunch so much of the time, since our subsidized canteen served fairly decent food. But I still liked my own cooking best, even if it didn’t save me any money. A recent article in the NYTimes noted that kitchens are become so small in newer apartments that they’re on the verge of disappearing - just a small fridge, with space for a microwave and a couple of cabinets. And this, in “better” buildings! It’d drive me nuts. At 425 ft[sup]2[/sup] (about 40m[sup]2[/sup]) my apartment’s tiny, but 45 of those square feet (4+ m[sup]2[/sup] are a rather nice, fully-equipped kitchen. I suppose it’s telling that New York real estate listings always tout “EIK” - Eat In Kitchen - rather than “CIK” for Cook In Kitchen. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2001, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/150 "2001-07-15T00:29:04Z")
Mangetout, I think you are going to find that the eating out/eating in ratios vary widely over here, depending on age, marital status, income. Near as I can tell, single people tend to eat out much more than people with families, which makes sense–cooking for one is a challenge, and single people tend to have more disposable income. I used to work in a grocery store, and one thing I noticed was that people eat the damndest things–eating habits are all over the place. So I can just speak for me. I’m not sure how much of a pureist you are when you talk about going back to basic ingredients. I make pizza at home, but I don’t stew the sauce down from fresh tomatos, nor do I make the crust out of actual flour and such (I usually buy a loaf of French bread.). I make French Onion Soup most weeks, but I don’t render my own stock, I buy it canned. I buy flavored rice mixes and combine them with fresh chicken. I think many people cook they way I do: they don’t just microwave things, but they do buy the compnents of a meal sorta “semi-prepared” and then they customize them. Another thing you find quite a bit in American grocery stores are seasoning packets–envelopes full of seasonings that you mix with milk or water or soy sauce to make a topping for pasta or whatever. In my house, we don’t eat out much, but we are really poor. Maybe once a week (twice a month?) we will get cheap fast food, and my husband buys the occasional candy bar at work. Sit down resteraunts are something we do mostly when wealthier (i.e. not student) friends make the suggestion and we can’t come up with any way to decline that dosen’t make us look gauche. We do eat frozen pizza and mac’n’cheese–really quick and easy stuff–maybe a couple times a week. > [@](#): > > HOT Indian curry. Yum! Funny how there are Chinese restauraunts all over the US, even in small towns, but Indian restaurants are only starting to make inroads here, even though it’s the British who have the reputation for bland food. Remember that the US imported Chinese citizens by the boatload to help build railroads, but have never had Indian immigrants make up a signifigant % of the populatrion. Britian governed India for hundreds of years and many influential citizens lived there for long periods of time, while there was much less contact with China (and I assume there was immigration from India to Britian). It is no wonder that the US got the Chinese resteraunts and the UK the Indian ones. ---
**Author:** ![deepbluesea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@deepbluesea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deepbluesea)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2001, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/151 "2001-07-15T01:10:40Z")
We go out to a sit-down restaurant once a week. Typically no more, and rarely less, because it’s usually our ‘date night’ thing. (Eight years living together and we’re still doing dinner-and-a-movie. Are we traditionalists or what?) So that’s, well, consider that we probably eat about 15 meals a week, that’s (roughly) 7% of our food. Fast food (delivery, take-out, drive-through) is reserved for my “I have had a godawful day/I’m about to cut my throat on a deadline” days. It can vary - there have been spectacularly rough weeks where we’ve done fast food 4 nights running. But most weeks we don’t do it all. Probably averages out to something like, mmm, once every other week or so. So call that 3.5% of our food. Prepared from packages, etc. Ummmm. D’you count things like bags of frozen vegetables? I mean, the things I cook are not hand-rendered from our (nonexistant) garden. But if you mean like, oh, pre-mixed just-add-water and nuke for 20 mins, maybe once per week. 7%. Once a week we have a “rough” meal, which in our family means basic ingredients not assembled into anything: broth (stock, really) and (good, maybe homemade) bread and cheese, for example, or a green salad and (good, maybe homemade) rolls. I don’t know where that counts - it isn’t exactly prepared and it isn’t exactly cooking. 7% again. I pack my LO’s lunches, usually (she sometimes eats out with her workmates, when she’s at meetings or what have you - this is totally unpredictable). What I pack is usually leftovers, since I deliberately make extra for this purpose, plus, oh, a pudding cup (you can tell she never had her wisdom teeth out - she can still eat pudding) or something. That’s five meals a week for her - weekends are different. I may not eat lunch, but if I do, I will make it myself or eat leftovers. Do leftovers of cooked meals count as cooked? In any case, about 33%. The rest is me cooking. (But a new adventure has been promised me: the LO is going to start making a meal a month! Yay! I am _really_ looking forward to this.) My level of cooking is: I don’t make my own pasta, but I make my own sauce. That’s 42.5% (unless I’ve added wrong) roughly speaking. So, is this for comparison-to-UK purposes? How’s it work out? I would actually expect more variation along the lines of single/couple/kids than along national lines, but perhaps that’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2001, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/152 "2001-07-15T21:59:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Manda JO \* > **I’m not sure how much of a pureist you are when you talk about going back to basic ingredients.** > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by deepbluesea \* > **Prepared from packages, etc. Ummmm. D’you count things like bags of frozen vegetables?** I’d say that anything sold as a ‘meal’ is convenience food, and probably I’d allow that assembling say, a pizza from a bought base and stuff starts to count as cooking. Frozen vegetables are just ingredients as far as I’m concerned, however frozen pre-mixed stir fry vegetables that include bits of meat and are already coated in sauce (essentially all you have to do is heat them) would be convenience food. There are bound to be some grey areas in the middle. > [@](#): > > **So, is this for comparison-to-UK purposes? How’s it work out? I would actually expect more variation along the lines of single/couple/kids than along national lines, but perhaps that’s just me** I suppose that there’s probably a marked variation in habits over here too, but my _impression_ (which I’m happy to modify as the facts roll in) is that British people/families generally eat out less than their American counterparts. Personally, (I’m middle-income, married with two young kids) I’d say that 75% of our family food intake is ‘pure’ cooking, 20% prepared bought meals and 5% restaurant/take away, but I love cooking, and I may not be typical (if there is such a thing as typical) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2001, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736/153 "2001-07-15T23:43:03Z")
> [@](#): > > my impression (which I’m happy to modify as the facts roll in) is that British people/families generally eat out less than their American counterparts. I suspect that this has more to do with media bias than anything else. For one thing, media in terms of TV and movies tends to focus on Urban 20-somethings–probably the group most likely to eat out on either side of the Atlantic (high disposable income, many resteraunts avalible, and no one at home to eat with). Also, entertainment focuses on people who are dateing, and I have obwerved that people who are dating eat out more than any one else–you need neutral ground and something to do wiht your hands that leaves you free to talk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-foodstuffs-a-few-questions/71736.md?page=7)