What things do you eat that your snooty foodie or health nut friends would be absolutely apalled by if they knew you sank so low?
I LOVE Minute Rice, which I know is a total anathema to serious cooks. I’m not sayin’ it’s like real rice. It’s Minute Rice. I grew up with it, and many a morning I have nuked a big ol’ bowl and eaten it with butter and salt for breakfast. YUM! (I got my son hooked on rice for breakfast, and, interestingly, now at age 11, he’s become a total rice snob and will only eat basmati!)
I took the ultimate white trash dessert to a friend’s picnic: Dump cake (i.e., dump cherry pie filling and crushed pineapple in a pan. Top with dry yellow cake mix and pecans. Drizzle as much butter as your arteries can stand over the top and bake till brown.) The very name is revolting. I sure as hell didn’t let anyone in on its name or contents, but lemme tell you, there wasn’t a bite left!
So what is it for you? Vienna sausages? Deep-fried Twinkies?
I like ground beef. Yum. At least, I try to use extra-lean ground sirloin. But still, it’s ground beef…
Even better: hamburger sandwiches.
Cooked ground beef, with onions and garlic, salt and pepper. Toasted bread–white, of course–and slathered with mayo. Ground beef and onions generously spooned on, then a slice of cheese–processed Kraft, of course–all topped with the other mayo’d toast.
This isn’t quite as bad as your examples, but one staple in my kitchen is instant espresso coffee. Not Sanka, mind you. I have a french-press coffee maker and good coffee grounds on hand, but more often than not I’d rather avoid the mess and stir up a cup of instant. It is especially good (and soooo easy) for a big pitcher of iced coffee.
My two-year-old son grew fairly thin after a nasty bout of allergies and respiratory infections. He would eat 40 spears of asparagus and lots of other veggies, but I was having a hard time getting the calories in him. Then I remembered a trashy food from my childhood: Jeno’s and Totino’s pizzas! They are now the number one guilty pleasure in our home.
I also love pork rinds. I am too embarrassed to buy them, though, so I have my husband purchase them for me on occasion.
Kraft mac and cheese is great, but I only like the powdered cheese.
Food threads on the dope are always a not-too-subtle reminder to me of the realities of class warefare; All the foods listed here would , in my food budget, be classified as “uninmaginable luxuries”.
Since Kraft dinner has already been mentioned, I’ll go with good old Rice a Roni. My favorite is the beef flavor. Sometimes (when I’m alone – nobody else in my family will eat it) I make a hamburger-helper version of the San Francisco treat – I scramble up some hamburger and brown the rice stuff in that (instead of butter), then dump in some frozen corn, add the water and the packet of stuff and cook it according to the directions on the box. Dump it into a big bowl and eat it with a spoon while watching TV.
Somebody beat that! Please. Typed out it did sound pretty trashy. I hope I’m not the trashiest one here!
I have never heard this called “dump cake,” but that’s pretty much how I make quick fruit cobblers that people love. Everyone is always impressed when I can bang one of these out at a party in something like 20 minutes – “Oh man, it’s gotta be hard work to make cobbler!”
My secret is that I always use the “Golden Butter Recipe” cake mix (as opposed to just the yellow cake), and to make it slightly less unhealthy, I pour about half a can of Sprite or 7-Up over it, instead of butter. Believe it or not, it browns exactly the same way and you don’t have the added guilt of extra butter on top of all that sugar. I usually use one of those large cans of apple or cherry pie filling, but it’s a pretty good idea to add crushed pineapple in with that!
I will eat the whole box of chicken-flavored Rice a Roni.
Tater Tots also rock.
Funyuns.
I have been known to eat Top Ramen noodles without cooking them. You sprinkle the flavoring over them.
My dad always used to make a “special” as a snack- it’s a corn tortilla with a piece of bologna and a slice of american cheese food, rolled up and microwaved. Held together with a toothpick.
My old band did this when we went on tour. We also got creative with toppings for our dry ramen noodles, like peanut butter and/or honey from communal plastic jars.
My husband and I had Frito Chili Pie for dinner tonight. It consists of Fritos corn chips (no other brand will do), chili, shredded cheese, and chopped onions. The ingredients are put in a bowl in that order, and nuked until the cheese melts. We topped it with a bit of sour cream, which is not traditional, but is much favored in our house. Go ahead and sneer now, but try it, and then you too will be converted.
We have this only rarely, but we do enjoy it. I learned this recipe in Camp Fire Girls.
That’s trash food? I ate this at a friend’s house and thought it was upper crust.
But I’ve always felt that way about cream cheese. Rich people’s food. It’s a hangover from the Philadelphia cream cheese TV commercials of the 50’s, I guess. The dinner table was set with cloth napkins and stemmed glasses, and those people were eating stuff with cream cheese in it. Very classy, I thought.
My trash food is fish sticks. They have to be made with whole chunks though, not mashed up pieces.
I like Underwood deviled ham sandwiches, with sliced dill pickles.
Dracona, I’ll eat Totino’s pizza. The other frozen pizzas are too large for two people. Totino’s is just the right size. The crust tastes like paper, but at least it’s crunchy paper.
I love chili dogs, they are without a doubt my favorite trashy meal. I don’t use canned chili though, only homemade… that’s my only snobbery I think. Three hotdogs in bun, with onions, mustard and hot pepper rings. Then you top that with homemade chili sprinkled with cheese. Heaven.
My trashy food is Hebrew National hotdogs with that spray on cheese that comes in a can, with spicy brown mustard, onions and a little ketchup. I eat them with baked beans and apple sauce with a root beer to drink. It aint pretty.
Frozen hash browns, onions, mushrooms, green bell peppers, some meat (doesn’t matter what kind: Spam, Vienna sausage, whatever), some cheese (again, doesn’t matter), and a few eggs. Cook until done. Eat until cardiac arrest.
Spaghetti-O’s and Meatballs: right out of the can with a spoon.
Speaking of Triscuits–has anyone tried the Rosemary and Olive Oil kind? Good Lord, these are good! I usually use Triscuits as a spoon to eat Dinty Moore Beef Stew, but THESE call for a slice of fresh mozzarella and a slice of cherry tomato and possibly a dollop of balsamic vinegar.
Except for the fact that I despise mustard (I really need to start The Mustard Diet – I’d weigh 110 pounds :D), the rest of this sounds really yummy (OK, as do most of the other recipies in this thread!), but “The Higher Authority” must be shaking their head that the Kosher hot dog is being eaten with CHEESE
To really do it up right, you have to be watching Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, or early Simpsons and when you have finished your applesauce and beans, you use the last quarter of your dog to mop up all the applejuice and bean sauce for one last, disturbing treat.
I like to fry chopped Spam with raisins and bits of a fresh pear. When it’s done cooking I put cinnamon and vanilla on it. Sounds scary but it’s really good.
