Do you have any nicknames, derogatory or otherwise, for foods?
In my (Italian) family, my brother and I routinely concocted nicknames for foods that were regularly served in our home, regardless of whether we liked them or not.
Rigatoni=“sewer pipes”
Lasagna=“Lagagme”
Beef Stroganoff=“Beef Strokinoff” (my brother and I would snigger endlessly over that one).
Those are all I can think of off the top of my head. I remember my Dad telling me about SOS (“Shit On A Shingle”) from his West Point days, but our favorite was always “Donkey Dorks” (Get it? The USMA mascot is a donkey?) to describe beef wrapped in cabbage leaves in a, um, quasi-cylindrical fashion.
My mother used to make some concoction with roast beef chunks, potatoes and who-knows-what-else in thick gravy; we called it “Who Hash.” It wasn’t quite as thick as corned beef hash.
I make a jelled dessert, with lime jello. My kids hated it. They called it ‘green slime’. When they were young I made veggie/beef soup for them, they called it ‘Zoop’.
When I was growing up, my mom would periodically announce that we were having “mustgo” for dinner. When she said it, it sounded like “mussko”. These are the leftovers that “must go” tonight or they’ll be thrown out. Nowadays, when I’m doing the meal planning for the week, I always build in a “mustgo” night. I love mustgo now because it means I don’t have to cook and the cleanup is super easy.
She should have chopped those chunks smaller. I LOVED roast beef hash when I was a kid…my dear Mama minced the leftover meat and onions and potatoes FINE and fried ‘em down in dat gravy. I didn’t learn about corned beef hash until I moved for college and started going out to diner breakfasts.
Mr.Wrekker calls any hamburger and pasta dish, Hamburger Helpless! It doesn’t matter if it’s homemade or from a box, all the same to him. He hates them all equally.
HA! My Italian family also called rigatoni “sewer pipes”. Who knows how old I was when I finally realized that sewer pipes weren’t the actual name of the pasta. I probably noticed what it said on the box one day and was amazed.
I also remember my dad calling linguine “worms”. After that, all I could think of was tapeworms when I ate it.
We call rotisserie chicken rat chicken because quite awhile ago I abbreviated it on a shopping list and my husband, unable to decipher my not so gorgeous handwriting said, “what the hell is rat chicken?” It stuck.
