In many cheap mass market restaurants, bleu cheese dressing is little more than ranch dressing with a smidgen of bleu cheese added. There’s a lot of overlap there once you notice it.
But yeah, for sure ranch with (very cheap not very blue) bleu cheese crumbles is a very ersatz bleu cheese dressing. But one I suspect a lot of folks recognize as familiar.
As a kid in the 1960s they were decent to good. I last tried them maybe 10 years ago, so 2015 = ~50 years later and indeed they sucked greatly.
My own bet is about 10% of that decline is the undiscerning tastes of a 8yo in a hurry, and 90% of it is Kellogg’s’ repeated encheapening of the recipe over the decades.
Aside: I just now learned that Kellogg’s spun off Pop Tarts into a new company: Kellanova. I wonder what dark corporate shenanigans drove that? I don’t care enough to look it up.
Depends on the era and to some extent the make / model. Modern ones are only slightly noisier than the corresponding hard top, no hotter with the top up, and not leaky.
For me convertible weather is a temp from about 70 to 95 and not raining at the moment. Which describes most of about 350 days a year here.
I do read in the trade press that true convertibles are dying out because they sell in California and Florida and that’s it. Damned shame.
Yep, we went First Class from DC to Portland on a train.
The romanticized view of train travel from old movies has a few issues: first, that was the heyday of train travel, so it was surely nicer; second, they didn’t capture all of the herky-jerky bumps and rattles on film; finally, they didn’t show all of the details of using a tiny bathroom that you have to duck to enter, or eating what is essentially airplane food, but with more suck.
It wasn’t terrible, but there was so much that was part of the experience that I hadn’t expected, ranging from the assigned meal time with random strangers to the very bumpy night going over a rough section of track in Minnesota.
I’ve never had poutine. But I have had french fries with gravy. When I worked at a restaurant many many years ago, that was a pretty common meal hack among us employees. And yes, french fries and gravy are an outstanding combo. Savory, salt and grease-- can’t really go wrong.
And I’ve had fresh, squeaky Wisconsin cheese curds. They were good, though I prefer aged cheddar.
But I can’t imagine that cheese curds would elevate the experience over just the fries and gravy. Does it? Do the curds melt and mix with the gravy, or do you have to awkwardly pick up chunks of cheese curd along with the other stuff?
Crossing a country that has a quality rail system by sleeper car is one thing.
Crossing the country when one is American and Amtrak is the railroad is quite another. As you so unhappily discovered. I hear India’s railways are worse, but that’s very faint praise for Amtrak’s offerings.
I’m certain that crossing Europe by first class rail would be an amazing experience. I probably won’t have that opportunity since the list of “cool stuff to do in life” is pretty long.
Yet one more of countless perfectly good reasons for people to sneer at America.
This is a shame to hear-- I’ve been wanting to do a cross-country trip by train for awhile now. I watched a couple YouTube videos of people traveling cross-country by Amtrak and it looked surprisingly non-sucky. The food served even looked better than I had expected. My wife and I almost planned a cross-country train trip last Summer, deciding on a road trip instead. My only experience traveling by Amtrak was a round trip from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Chicago, and I found it was a pleasant, low stress way to travel, though obviously much shorter than a cross country journey in a sleeper car.
Were the views along the way at least a redeeming factor?
One of my ex-girlfriends crossed the US by Amtrak, and the car she was in looked fine – a modern sleeper.
My own experience with dining cars on Amtrak have been pretty abysmal, from the Snack Bar on the Bos-Wash corridor to the dining car on the upstate NY run that served gray – GRAY! – French toast. Nothing like the dining car you saw on the NY-Chicago run in North by Northwest. Times had definitely changed. But I suspect that the dining car my ex got to sample was orders of magnitude better than what I’d seen. And this was in the late 1980s.
By the way – back in 1980 I wanted to travel the US on an American Railpass like the Eurailpass they had in Europe, and I found they didn’t exist. There was, however, a 30-day Greyhound bus pass, so I used that. Unlimited travel on the Greyhound buses anywhere in the US. I toured the country, mooching off and staying with friends and relatives. I eked out two extra days on it, too.
The hitch was that you had to travel on Greyhound buses. An acquired taste, with no dining car and one tiny temperamental lavatory.
Just to clarify: the trip was absolutely worth it, for a one-time experience. I recommend doing it. The thing is, there are a ton of weird details that intrude on your journey, things like you can have a burger but it comes with microwaved fries because they can’t have an open fryer on a moving train (obvious, but never thought about that), and taking a shower in our private bathroom was an absolute chore, like taking a shower in an RV.
I think the food was probably better than I remember, but my wife has special dietary constraints so any meal is often less than optimal. The “eating with a couple of strangers” part was weird, but acceptable.
Once I accepted the quirkiness it was an amazing journey. We did it in December, so the vast white plains of the Dakotas were beautiful, as were the mountains.
Thanks, I appreciate the further feedback! I realize it would be…
…or nothing like taking the Orient Express in the 30s (even minus any murders).
But I still would like to try it. Maybe not all the way across country, say a train trip to Glacier National Park and a flight home, or something similar.
Right, whatever flavor Tootsie Rolls are, it ain’t chocolate. I was surprised to see cocoa in the ingredients list, because I assumed it was all artificial flavor.
I totally agree with this comment. The last time I was in a convertible was 20+ years ago when I borrowed a Mazda Miata from my stepmother. In Texas. In August.
I am instantly suspicious whenever I see the traditional main product line is considered the spinoff and the new growth stuff is the “survivor”. Sure sign the traditional line is to be quietly killed while blaming somebody else for it.
My contribution: eating in a Michelin-starred restaurant. There was one in the ski resort town in Italy we went to last March.
The food was good and the atmosphere and service were top-notch, but there were a lot of negatives:
First off, the food was good, but not amazing, IMHO. You could tell a ridiculous amount of work went into it, but the result was somewhat underwhelming for me. And far too much raw seafood.
The food came out very slowly. After three hours we had to ask them to pick up the pace, because after skiing all day, we were exhausted. We were too tired to eat dessert.
It was outrageously expensive.
There were only three parties in the small dining room, but one was a loud group of 20 that ruined the ambience.
Yea, that’s the low ceiling. I enjoy the components but I think the combining only benefits lousy versions. If the components improve too much, I want them all separate. Top tier fries aren’t made better with gravy though lesser ones might be. I’m still thinking about the gas station dill pickle curds from central Wisc a month ago, a magnificent local treat yet also great behind-the-wheel, saucefree popable snack. Outstanding gravy isn’t begging for cheese or fries, biscuits tho …
I’m 58. I have always driven old, used, clunker cars. I think the most I paid for one is $3K.
About three years ago I decided to buy my first “nice” car: a 2006 BMW Z-4. Was in mint condition. Fun car! And then the serpentine belt got sucked into the engine and clogged up the oil intake. Lost oil pressure while driving. I now need to drop the oil pan and clean it all out. Even then, I suspect it damaged the engine. What a stupid failure mode. Ever heard that one before? Nope, neither had I. Stupid BMW engineers. After I get it running again, I’ll sell it cheap and will never buy another BMW.
