I drink coffee for the caffeine jolt, and I like instant just fine. I like craft beer, but if someone offers me a Bud or Miller High Life I’m not turning it down.
My version has sour cream as well – I didn’t list all the ingredients, just the ones that might make it “inferior” to the proper version in some people’s eyes. The entire ingredient list, for those interested, is ground beef, onion, flour, salt, pepper, garlic, mushrooms (canned, of course), cream of chicken soup, sour cream.
We don’t get that complex (BIL came up with this as a student). 
Ground beef, cream-of, sour cream, maybe add canned mushrooms. Pretty thick substance, but I like that.
I love my tiny little car, except that it’s an automatic. So, even though I don’t exactly need a car, I’m still spending some time every night researching for fun. By finding “used cars $2k-12k, Midwest, MANUAL”.
I miss the feel of connection to the car and the road…
…though at this time of year, I love losing the connection to the road, and drifting on turns.
Searching for a used car with a manual transmission is almost like looking for a needle in a haystack nowadays. When I was shopping for a used car circa 2014 I was searching dealers’ inventory on one of those search sites. A search for compact cars, < $15k, within 50 miles returned hundreds of results. Add manual transmission to the search filters and the number of options was reduced to around ten. Increasing the price limit and adding sporty cars to the mix increased the number somewhat, but not by all that much.
When I went to test drive some of them the salesman said cars with manual transmissions typically sell for about $2000 less than their automatic counterparts, because few people want them.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve acquired more of a taste for “real” mashed potatoes, but, yeah, the instant ones are a comfort food for me.
That’s another topic I’ve often thought about. “Improvements” in making something that actually, kinda, makes it worse.
My example is the snack food “Bits and Bites”, a snack mix thing. They have what are essentially Shreddies cereal bits coated with a spicy-salty mixture. It used to be every now and then you’d get one that had like, 10 times the amount of flavor coating it was supposed to have, and they were fantastic. Little flavor bombs going off in your mouth.
Now, they’ve improved the coating process so that you essentially never get one with “too much” coating, and it’s noticeably decreased the fun in eating Bits and Bites.
I definitely prefer the Kraft macaroni and cheese to the “real” version, but I don’t really think of one of them as being a lesser version of the other. I think of them as two entirely separate foods. Sometimes, I’m in the mood for Kraft m&c, and sometimes for “real” m&c. Pulling out the Kraft box isn’t going to help if I’m craving “real” m&c, even if I prefer the Kraft version.
Chinese food is like that for me as well. Sometimes, I want “real” Chinese food, and sometimes, I want Panda Express-type Chinese-American food. Although there are some items at Panda Express that are similar to “real” Chinese food, I generally wouldn’t get them at Panda Express. I’m at Panda Express because I want the inauthentic stuff like orange chicken.
My family loves authentic Asian food… and Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken.
…
Wow, that’s great news for finding my “dream beater”! But bad news when I decide to sell it…
The nice thing about spending years “researching” (it’s wishful window shopping, to be honest), is that I can look online at thousands of cars. So when I see a great deal on a sporty/low upkeep/fun car, I can pounce on it.
I guess the “older manual beater” is a case of preferring the lesser quality version. I’d rather drive a rusty '99 Miata than a new SUV.
The original Budweiser is Czech ,and yes its very dark like stout beer .
No it’s not. It’s a Czech Pilsner just like Pilsner Urquell and Staropramen.
It’s called Budějovický Budvar, and it is most assuredly not “dark”. Maybe it’s more golden than Budweiser, but that’s not saying much. And it’s not significanly higher in alcohol either. It’s even sold here in the US as “Czechvar”, as Anheuser-Busch owns the US rights to “Budweiser” and “Bud”, and would probably harass them if they tried to market “Budvar” in the US.
That said, most Czech breweries make a “dark” beer that’s loosely based on the German dunkel style. Maybe that’s what he had?
It sure is weird how the Czech pilsners taste different with time and distance, isn’t it? I had Pilsner Urquell in Prague (very close to Pilsen), and then in Vienna, Budapest, London and Dallas over the next few weeks, and at every hop, it lost maltiness and got more sharply bitter.
As for the OP, I think my coffee consumption qualifies. While I’m not an instant coffee person, I have no problem with Maxwell House, Folgers or other inexpensive brands, even though I’ve had my share of artisanal-roasted single-source beans, and the like. If anything, I prefer the cheaper stuff for daily coffee drinking.
I wasn’t aware that Bartlett pears were considered less prestigious. I agree, at perfect ripeness they are the best. I think Bosc maybe bruise less easily and stay at good ripeness for longer without going bad, but they don’t taste any better.
I had heard that. So I’m aware that though I do kind of like the sharp bitterness of a Pilsner Urquell, I’m aware that I’ve never tasted it as it’s meant to taste, having only ever had it in the U.S.
A lot of US-brewed beers are fresh enough that we don’t necessarily see the effects of shipping and storage. And in the case of foreign beers, some are universally old and we never get them near their prime either.
For example Corona in Mexico was something of a revelation. When I was in Puerto Vallarta for a wedding, the resort had draft Corona, and there’s a Grupo Modelo brewery in town. While Corona’s never going to be lauded as a fantastic beer, it was remarkably better fresh like that than it is in the US. It was a solid version of a Mexican light lager, not skunked and still had some maltiness/graininess that the US versions typically lose.
And I can’t say that I’ve ever had a Budweiser or Miller product that wasn’t exactly like the others of the same brand that I’ve had over the past 25-30 years. Which takes some nearly superhuman brewing skill and process control as far as I can tell.
I see what you did there!
I know that Kraft probably won’t believe it when I say this, but their “new” cheese sauce powder that they introduced a few years ago doesn’t taste nearly as good as the old Day-Glo orange stuff that they used to have. Something just isn’t quite right about the new stuff. Luckily, I have found an even cheaper boxed mac-n-cheese that appears to taste like the stuff I remember as a kid. Oddly enough, I buy it from the food section at our local Menard’s hardware store. It costs less than a buck, and I always grab a couple of boxes when I have to pick up something at the store.
Can you let me know the name? I grew up on Mission brand and I miss the day-glo orange chemicals.
Menards.com offers Premier and Parade brands of Mac and cheese dinner.
I just can’t imagine coming home and proudly announcing “Hope you don’t have plans, Hon; I got dinner from the hardware store!”
…
(Though the best shwarma in our town is from the gas station…)