# What are you a "snob" about? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 29, 2024, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962 "2024-07-29T16:47:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2024, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/261 "2024-08-11T21:18:01Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Even potted indoors didn’t work. Were you growing varieties advertised as good for container culture? What kind of potting soil? What sort of nutrients added later? What sort of lighting? (It occurs to me, however, that you may not want advice on this subject; you may just be done with it. And if you do want to discuss it, maybe we should take it to the gardening thread. Let me know if you want to do that.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2024, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/262 "2024-08-11T21:26:26Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > But I brought back bags and bags of composted horse manure from the barn my daughter rode at, and it made the soil wonderful. Great stuff- but be sure to get your tetanus shots updated. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/263 "2024-08-12T00:25:26Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Were you growing varieties advertised as good for container culture? Beats me. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > What kind of potting soil? What sort of nutrients added later? What sort of lighting? Stuff that comes in a bag. LOTS of natural light. Skylights, and floor to ceiling windows facing south. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > (It occurs to me, however, that you may not want advice on this subject; you may just be done with it. And if you do want to discuss it, maybe we should take it to the gardening thread. Let me know if you want to do that.) Eh, this is a second entry way. And a great place for guests to drop their gear (ski country) It’s an all purpose room if you will. Easily transformed to a bedroom or office in about an hour. I slept there for 3 weeks when I had my hip replaced (less stairs to deal with). Was my Wife’s office at the height of COVID. Not gonna be a green house again. Totally rebuilt, starting from the foundation. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/264 "2024-08-12T12:07:42Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > I’m not sure if it counts as snobbery… but the runner beans we planted earlier in the year are starting to produce now… and fresh beans straight from the garden to the kitchen are much better than any store-bought ones, I think… Absolutely counts. I’m harvesting my Fortex variety pole beans right now. Not only do I scorn store bought, I won’t even eat bush beans, as my Fortex are so superior. Try 'em. They are very long, like 8", and extremely prolific. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/265 "2024-08-12T12:16:32Z")
> [@peccavi](#): > > I concur. To become a true pizza snob, one must study in Italy, learning true food snobbery from the Italian masters. Alas, I cannot afford this privileged level of higher culinary education. 😐 Are there scholarships available? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/266 "2024-08-12T14:24:10Z")
I guess I’m a spaghetti snob. My Italian grandma (dad’s mom) showed my mom how to make spaghetti. We had spaghetti A LOT when I was a kid. Growing up I only had my grandma’s or my mom’s. Now I would never order spaghetti at a restaurant. I’m sure it’s delicious but to me it’s not what I’m used to. My husband and I were at a fundraiser at an Italian restaurant. They served spaghetti. Everyone around us was saying how amazing the spaghetti was. Most were in line for seconds. I took a taste. To me, it tasted just like the sauce in a can of Spaghettios. Blech ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2024, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/267 "2024-08-12T18:23:34Z")
> [@Die\_Capacitrix](#): > > Oh. About salty licorice? I can’t have it in the house. I‘ll eat it until I‘m bouncing off the walls due to the sugar. :::shudder::: My experiments with this “treat” are chronicled [here.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/underwhelming-weird-foods/416198/54) You can’t say I didn’t give it a fair try. Rereading that, though, I’m sort of sorry I didn’t have a chance to try it when I was dealing with my (fortunately brief) bout of Covid-sponsored anosmia. ---
**Author:** ![Sandra\_Battye](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sandra_battye/32/552_2.png) [@Sandra\_Battye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandra_Battye)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/268 "2024-08-13T04:22:32Z")
Cowboy boots. Actually, any specialty shoes, like ballroom dance shoes, but my current focus is cowboy boots. They must be made of leather, from the vamp to the shaft to the lining and the sole. All leather. They can be fancy or plain, cow hide or exotic leather. And they must be made by a respected manufacturer that has been around for decades, like Justin. I don’t care if _you_ want to wear fashion boots in the cowboy style that cost $39.99 and are constructed of man-made materials, but give me a solid leather boot that can be worn from the stable to the to the dance floor. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/269 "2024-08-13T11:33:00Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > I guess I’m a spaghetti snob. Home made noodles, right? Eggs and flour. It pisses me off when I go to an Italian restaurant and ask if the noodles are home made, they say yes, and they are clearly not. I have a pasta machine, but I find it just as easy to roll out the dough, the roll it up and cut slices. You have to unwind them, and they are not uniform, but that is part of the joy of true home made pasta. My wife doesn’t really care if it’s just the dried stuff or home made. So I guess that makes me a bit of a snob. Oh I mostly make the dry/boil it stuff. If my wife is away visiting a friend, I’ll make the real stuff. When I lived in Denver, there was a store close by that made real pasta that you could pick up and take home. The pepper pasta was great as was the lemon pasta. ---
**Author:** ![Orville\_mogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/aeb1de/32.png) [@Orville\_mogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orville_mogul)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/270 "2024-08-13T13:49:02Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > pour cream of mushroom soup over them I’m afraid I am a snob about using canned soups as an ingredient. 😅 It was cool in the 1950s, but not so much now. I can get a much better result with fresh mushrooms, flour, onion, and milk. But for the most part, I am like **Mangetout**. I consider myself to be a gourmand, rather than a gourmet. Unless something is complete crap, I will usually find something to enjoy about it. I pity gourmets who are seldom satisfied with anything. ---
**Author:** ![Orville\_mogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/aeb1de/32.png) [@Orville\_mogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orville_mogul)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/271 "2024-08-13T13:55:39Z")
> [@Die\_Capacitrix](#): > > I can recognize good pizza (I have to - I’m too close to Italy), I agree that Switzerland has some very good pizza. I would say I like Swiss pizzas as much if not more than pizza I have had in Italy. We tend to make our crusts a tiny bit thicker than the traditional Neopolitan crusts, and we do great things with toppings (I love a runny egg on top). Speaking of Italy, as much as I love Italian culture (which is part of my family), I am an anti-snob when I comes to all the Italian rules for food and drink. Anyone who doesn’t like pineapple on pizza has never tried it. And spaghetti (cut if necessary) with a mouthful of meatball is delicious. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/272 "2024-08-13T14:49:35Z")
To the extent that there’s snobbery involved with Italian “rules”, it has nothing really to do with taste - I’ve never seen anyone say that spaghetti and meatballs don’t taste good together. Only that it’s not eaten as a single dish in Italy, not in the amounts seen in the US ( the meatballs are smaller ) and it’s not the whole meal. In other words , don’t be one of those people who gets annoyed when an Italian restaurant does not have spaghetti and meatballs on the menu. What those people want is an Italian-American restaurant. ---
**Author:** ![Orville\_mogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/aeb1de/32.png) [@Orville\_mogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orville_mogul)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/273 "2024-08-13T16:19:13Z")
I am definitely not one of those people. I agree that the rules in themselves are not snobbery, but I would argue that my Italian friends who tell me that my homemade spaghetti and meatballs is wrong are snobs. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/274 "2024-08-13T16:22:25Z")
> [@Orville\_mogul](#): > > I agree that the rules in themselves are not snobbery, but my Italian friends who tell me that my homemade spaghetti and meatballs is wrong are snobs. People like this are not only snobs, but purists. Purists are even worse than mere snobs, for instance I hate musical purists. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/275 "2024-08-13T17:43:19Z")
> [@Sandra\_Battye](#): > > give me a solid leather boot that can be worn from the stable to the to the dance floor And will last you for DECADES, with a little care and maybe the occasional repair / resoling (but please wipe them off between the stable and the dance floor, LOL). In the long run, this will SAVE you money versus a cheap 40 dollar pair that must be replaced every year. Which reminds me, I’m inadvertently (and unwillingly) a pricy-shoe snob. Not Manolos or anything like that, but I literally can NOT go into a cheap shoe store and find anything that fits - with my huge feet, even Nordstrom usually has nothing for me. SAS / Munro are two of my go-to brands, and they START at 150 bucks a pair. The only store that I know carries my size is in New Jersey; when we are up there visiting family, I will go there and come out with 3-6 pairs. About 8 years back, my credit card company got alarmed at this large, unusual purchase and flagged it as fraudulent. I bought what is quite literally a lifetime supply of dressier shoes on one such jaunt (since I now wear them at most once a year). ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/276 "2024-08-13T17:49:47Z")
> [@Orville\_mogul](#): > > I agree that the rules in themselves are not snobbery, but I would argue that my Italian friends who tell me that my homemade spaghetti and meatballs is wrong are snobs. That’s another kind of snobbery: authentic versus Americanized food. What we call “Italian”, “Mexican”, “Chinese” etc may well bear little resemblance to what someone in one of those countries would eat on a day to day basis, but if you lump it all into the -American category, it’s perfectly valid and correct. Most of us Westerners would NOT like truly traditional Chinese food. We hosted students from China several times and took them to our local very good “Chinese” restaurant; there was little on the menu that the students recognized. All that rambling aside: Sbarro, Panda Express and Taco Bell are not even good -American food. We eat at those places when we need to refuel, not dine. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/277 "2024-08-13T19:29:24Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > All that rambling aside: Sbarro, Panda Express and Taco Bell are not even good -American food. We eat at those places when we need to refuel, not dine. Interesting. I did not notice that it replaced `-` with just the dash. So “-American” should be `-`American - basically I meant it as a placeholder for “some kind of foreign-inspired food”. But the board decided to try to parse it! ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/278 "2024-08-13T19:37:47Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Home made noodles, right? Eggs and flour. It pisses me off when I go to an Italian restaurant Spaghetti is not a pasta made with eggs. And dried pastas are not inferior to fresh. They are different. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/279 "2024-08-13T19:56:12Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Spaghetti is not a pasta made with eggs. The home made noodles for spaghetti is. Or any pasta. Noodles are key here. I’m talking about making them from scratch. Not pouring out some American Beauty out of a plastic bag. It can be made _without_ egg. I wouldn’t recommend. > [@pulykamell](#): > > And dried pastas are not inferior to fresh. Pistols at dawn. Have you ever had real, fresh pasta? It takes perhaps 2 minutes to cook. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2024, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962/280 "2024-08-13T20:02:24Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > The home made noodles for spaghetti is. > [@enipla](#): > > Have you ever had real, fresh pasta? It’s not real pasta if it has egg in it. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-you-a-snob-about/1004962.md?page=15)