American foodstuffs - a few questions

In My Humble Opinion
41

Back when I was a kid – let’s say 35-40 years ago – Twinkies (and Sno-Balls, Hostess Cupcakes, Dolly Madison Zingers and the whole bunch) had banana cream filling. That was less sweet and somewhat more dense than the whipped sugar goop they eventually adopted. I can’t say for sure whether the cake part has gone through any changes, but I wouldn’t doubt that it’s at least been made sweeter over the years.

Back on topic, what I missed most when I was over there was milk. Great gallons of milk served with breakfast. Even tiny little cartons of milk that tore when you tried to open them. Do the English ever drink just plain milk with a meal?

42

Milkshakes: I have a vintage restaurant milkshake machine. It’s my favorite appliance. When I move out of my mom’s house, I’m stealing it.

Although I do enjoy American chocolates, I much prefer Canadian brands, which seem to be more what you have in England. It’s a richer, less oily taste.

Twinkies, like SPAM, seem to me to be one of those things that everyone says is popular, but nobody actually eats…

43

Not usually (speaking for myself of course) - my two kids (ages 2 and 5) drink about three pints a day between them and would drink milk instead of eating, given the choice.

I sometimes have a glass of milk on it’s own, but perhaps strangely, I prefer UHT (long life) milk if I’m just drinking it ‘straight’.

What sort of breakfast cereals do you have over there? - my (perhaps wrong) impression is that they are predominantly sugar-frosted etc - do you have muesli or other ‘healthy’ breakfast cereals (apart from corn flakes)?

On the same note, what would be a typical American daily family breakfast? (If such a thing as typical exists)

44

Only a Philadelphian would call Cheez Wiz a “great product.” But what do you expect from a place that considers a pretzel a meal. :slight_smile:

On the other hand, before I moved here, I never had buffalo wings, and that makes up for a lot.

Ya know, racinchikki Twinkies are very popular in the South Pacific . . . because it tastes like human flesh!!

–
“Crow! We need some kind of dipping sauce!”

45

We have healthy cereals, but what you’ll see on the shelves are predominantly of the “sugar-frosted sugar flakes with sugar” variety. As far as unfrosted cereals go, the only ones I can think of are corn flakes, shredded wheat and Cheerios.

A typical family breakfast at my home in New York consists of scrambled eggs, fried bacon and toast; in the winter, you can add pancakes to that, and sometimes we’ll have diced & fried potatoes. Down South, a breakfast might have grits, ham, maybe even sourdough biscuits, plus eggs, bacon, etc.

46

Mmm…a good breakfast should include toasted English Muffins from Thomas’s…(do you have English Muffins in England?), with scrambled eggs BAKED, not fried, and turkey bacon. And a slice of cheese-real American Land O’ Lakes cheese, not that plastic crap like Kraft Singles, but the kind they handslice in the deli departments. A nice big glass of ice cold milk, and fresh hot sticky rolls

mmmm…

Hey-I dunk MY Oreos in milk…until they turn soggy.

There’s also this awesome old-fashioned soda fountain in the Strip called Klavons. (KLOVE-ons). They make real old fashioned sodas made to order…yummy!

47

Gatorade really is nearly bottled sweetened sweat. An acquired, but acquirable, taste.

As for Twinkie filling, it’s basically suet and sugar. Oreo filling is pretty much lard and sugar. You get the idea.
(If you want a kosher Oreo, Sunshine Biscuits, Inc. makes “Hydrox”. Same thing but with hydrogenated vegetable oil instead. It’s pareve, but even worse for your arteries. ;))

Birch beer is much thinner than syrup.
The gov’t banned the original flavoring for root beer (a possible carcinogen) before I was born. All root beer is now artifically flavored. bleh.
Ginger beer is not real popular, or even known, in my part of the USA (I’m from Missouri, which is sort of in the Midwest). I see a lot more “ginger ale”, which is weak, weak stuff.

[cultural pride’n’prejudice]What the British call “biscuits” are cookies.
Real biscuits can be soft or hard, big or small, but they’re definitely not sweet. And they can’t be store-bought. If you don’t cook 'em yourself, they’re probably just rolls.[/cultural pride’n’prejudice]

What got me is that Brits seem never to have heard of taffy!!! Oh, you poor deprived creatures.
I assumed Turkish Delight must be something similar (after reading The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe) but apparently Turkish Delight is just a much inferior version of Knox Blox. If you had taffy, Edmund Pevensie wouldn’t even consider something so putrid as Turkish Delight!

Seriously, Knox Blox are just flavored cubes of gelatin–think JELL-O, but firm enough to be eaten by hand. I can see the appeal.

But taffy, oh, taffy, taffy is great. The closest thing for consistency is caramel, but that’s just so, so wrong for flavor. mm, mmm, mm!

48

You eat that stuff every day? - that seems like a lot of fat to me.

49

As far as the full cooked English breakfast is concerned, I don’t know anybody who eats this more regularly than, say, once a week. I may eat it if I’m about to embark on a drinking session which starts early in the day (eg the 10 am start for the last Lions match…although I was in bed by 7 pm;)), or if I really need a pick me up, usually after a night out.

50

I think the issue of orange juice needs addressing:

The little bottles of ‘juice’ that are offered in pubs and bars are indeed terrible, they are just about palatable if mixed with twice their own volume of lemonade, but otherwise they are acrid and undrinkable.

Most OJ consumed in the UK is bought in cartons (UHT) and has been made up from frozen concentrate, the flavour is still a little on the dull side, but most brits find it drinkable, even enjoyable.

‘freshly squeezed’ juices have become very popular in the last ten years or so, but some brits find them ‘bitty’ or ‘fizzy’ (I remember the first time I tried freshly squeezed, my lips were tingling for an hour afterward), anyway, There’s absolutely no doubt that the fresh stuff is a superior product and in time, it will certainly dominate the market.

I think it all stems from the fact that our climate does not allow the commercial production of citrus crops (it’s just a little bit too cold and wet for them to survive the average winter outdoors where I live, but they happily spend the summer outdoors if grown in pots (I have a small lemon tree in a pot that I move into the greenhouse for the winter).
So for a long time, imported citrus fruits would have been far too precious to waste them making juice (on a commercial scale at least) - it’s only comparatively recently, with the advent of cheap, fast international freight that it has become possible, but by this time, our tastes for the stuff in cartons (or orange ‘squash’) had been established.

51

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mblackwell *
**

Mmmmmm… good memories of Lori’s diner in SF and my first oreo milkshake.

Luckily we have a good milkshake place here in Bournemouth, with lots of scrummy flavours, except for

PARMA VIOLET :eek:

52

When you said you mix that OJ with lemonade you mean you mix it with soda water or 7-Up type stuff right? What do you call lemon juice mixed with sugar and water, thats what we call lemonade. Lemonade (what us yanks call lemonade) is one of my favorite beverages.

53

Yes, Lemonade in the UK usually refers to something like 7up, although I think 7up has other flavourings/ingredients besides lemon. Certainly Brits expect lemonade to be a carbonated beverage.

As far as I know, Lemonade as you describe is very uncommon over here, the closest popular drink would probably be one of the (fairly new on the market) bottled fruit/spring water drinks, but certainly it’s not available freshly made very much if at all.

54

Lemonade usually isnt freshly made here very much either. Lemonade is usually bought in refrigerateded bottles or jugs, or in frozen concentrate form. There is also powdered lemonade flavoreded stuff. Its ok, but not really good.

55

Lemonade usually isnt freshly made here very much either. Lemonade is usually bought in refrigerateded bottles or jugs, or in frozen concentrate form. There is also powdered lemonade flavoreded stuff. It’s ok, but not really good.

56

Having had both southern biscuits (cooking heavenly biscuits is the only good thing I can say about my sister-in-law most days) and scones, I have to say they are pretty close, especially the “plain scones”

57

Probably the nearest UK equivalent would be lemon squash (concentrated lemon drink that you dilute as required, but it isn’t frozen) -do you have things like that over there?

58

Oreos, Twinkies and etc. - Barf. (I will admit, though, that I’ve never had a Twinkie. Oreos I did eat as a kid, though no more. I can eat Hydrox, but I don’t.) This is a taste that has to be acquired in childhood, from what I can see, and even then I don’t know too many adults who would willingly eat a Twinkie.

Chocolate - American chocolate is a tragedy. You get better chocolate from any vending machine in the UK than you get from some of the ‘chocolate boutique’ type stores here. Cadbury’s, Aero, etc. are marvelous products that don’t even deserve comparison to the revolting Hershey crap. One advantage, though: I can now buy some types of Cadbury’s (not the caramel, unfortunately, which will be discussed at length in a bit) at my local supermarket, and Aero bars are available at several stores near me.

Gatorade - Sports drink; I saw similar things (with different names) on the market in London last time I was there. Gatorade featured heavily in my childhood, since it was what we were given when we were sick; ginger ale and vanilla ice cream came later, when we were on the mend.

Caramel - This is another area where the Brits have us beat, hands down. Over here, caramel is hard to come by and very unreliable in quality. The only time we can get really good caramel is at Easter, in Cadbury’s Caramel Eggs. Over there, caramel appears in everything; I would not have been surprised to see fruits and vegetables with caramel centers. And it’s good caramel, too. This issue came very much to the fore during our last England trip; the LO is, shall we say, fond of caramel (in other words, given a choice between me or my weight in good caramel, she’d have to think about it). She virtually wept tears of gratitude and envy upon finding good caramel chocolate bars available in tube stations. Returning was an emotional wrench for her.

Pizza - Why do the British not understand pizza? What is wrong with you people? The pizzas I’ve seen in the UK - even the ones from American chains - could best be described as pizza-like food products; they bear no relationship to real pizza. And the toppings! I can’t discuss this further because I’ll just break down and weep. Pizza is probably the one reason why I could never live in the UK. Though, come to think of it, I can make pizza.

But, other than the pizza issue, we are always very happy with our foodstuffs while visiting the UK. Though it must be noted that for actual meals we eat almost exclusively at Indian restaurants.

59

Well, I just found a site on the internet that says lemon squash is British for lemonade. Does it contain lemon pulp?

This is a very intersting thread.

60

Hmm. The site also tells me your name means snow peas.