Are there peole that defend red delicious apples? Really? Mealy crap. Almost any other variety of apple is more palatable, and granny smiths are the only kind of apple for baking. Seriously, what are you doing with the apples (other than perhaps using them as ornaments) that red delicious apples are superior?
I agree with iceberg, which is basically just crunchy water, but not American cheese. There is no better cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich or a cheeseburger.
Do ingredients count? HFCS may not be as horrible for you as rumored, but it’s definitely the most ass-tasting of possible sweeteners. Cane sugar is much tastier. And really, any added sweetener is redundant in anything which is already sweet (things made from fruit).
Shallots are just underachieving onions. We can do without 'em.
Interesting idea. Using your parameters, there would be nothing to eat but sushi, lobster and Tri-tip.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, we would all drive Ferraris, live in Tahoe and sleep with my wife.
Me first.
In the world of snack foods, there’s always these also-ran alternatives like Hydrox cookies (vs. Oreos), Lays “Stax” (vs. Pringles), the Little Debbie version of just about anything. They can be done away with.
Except for Little Debbie Zebra Cakes.
I’m OK with all the other stuff, because without it, most kids in the U.S. would go hungry. (You try feeding a Gruyere sandwich on 7-grain bread to a kindergartner. No, really, try it. :)) What I would ban is high-fructose corn syrup. I’m sure most soft drink manufacturers would still turn a profit if they made their products with sugar.
You’ll take my juicy crispy iceberg lettuces when you pry them from my cold, dead hands (grrrrr). What else am I going to use to wrap and dip my spring rolls with? Vile, bitter Rocket? (shudder)
I guess I could make do with Cos if I had to
You can kill off American Cheese (whatever it is) and Red Dels any time you care to though. Fair?
So what gets used in sushi? Accompanying teriyaki or tonkatsu? In Spam musubi?
Thanks for telling a billion Asians their main staple is worthless!
I have, but when you need a comfort food fix, it is wonder bread, kraft sliced american cheese and campbells cream of tomato soup.
I agree, there are very few real applications for HFCS other than perhaps candy making [it changes the hygroscopic properties of sugar so you get a much better textured product]
I notice a difference in freaking BREAD of all damned things between european made and american made, american bread is almost sweet from the added sugars.
How about boston butter lettuce? has a mild flavor, good sized leaves and an interesting slightly resiliant bite to it similar to spinach. And for that matter, how about trying to wrap in a large leaf of spinach?
Spinach is floury. I enjoy it, in its place (cooked, with plenty of fetta cheese … mmmm) but it’s not a proper lettuce substitute. It’s not crispy or juicy.
How do you make Sang Choy Bow without Iceberg lettuce? And in Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection his perfect steak and salad features a salad made with Iceberg lettuce. If it’s good enough for one of the world’s great chef’s…
For me it’s stuff like brains. Who cares if they are any good? They seem disgusting and there is already a heap of good, meaty stuff to eat from any animal so why bother?
I’m another iceberg defender, but only heads of iceberg. The standard salad mix with iceberg and shredded purple cabbage and carrots is an abomination. For the classic wedge salad or the aforementioned uses on burgers or as wrappers, iceberg is without peer.
Liquid eggs in a carton. First time I saw this was in a Marriott breakfast room in Chicago and I was like 'Wha? How hard is it to crack an egg?!!"
Hot peppers.
Indeed, The Wedge has been back for some time. From Reef (run by Bryan Caswell, who will not be The Next Iron Chef, alas):
Beaver’s Ice House makes do with Bibb Lettuce:
**Warning: The links lead to menus that are (1) PDF files and (2) hunger inducing. **
You’ll have to pull the parsnips outta my cold, dead hands. Parsnips share only a shape with carrots; they have a much more complex flavor and do many, many things that carrots do not.
Another one I’ll never let go. Sometimes you just don’t want everything to scream of onion, and shallots are a nice alternative.
What I’d give up are all the fruits and vegetables bred for ease of shipping instead of taste. Hard, tasteless tomatoes. Peaches that are mealy and bland. Apples - not just Red Delicious! - that taste like slightly sweetened water.
It’s no wonder people turned to canned and processed everything, when the real stuff became tasteless.
Canned peas. There’s absolutely no reason for canned peas. They’re mushy, they’re disgusting, they’re in every way inferior to fresh or frozen. Just say no to canned peas!
Another snack food item: “Funyuns” or any other fake baked onion ring thingies. Real O-rings are battered (preferrably with a beer-based coating) and deep fried.
I love parsnips. They’re quite expensive here, only a handful laid out in the produce section.
I say carrots. I like shaved carrot on salads, but cooked carrots are vomitous. They take up space in frozen vegetable mixes and I tend to pick them out and push them to the side.
Those awful, no-name, cheap, gluey pies sold for a couple bucks at holiday time. Convenient for filling up stomaches of 12 year olds at dessert time, I suppose, and making a real pie is a lot of work. But still, there’s always a sad blueberry pie left over with one slice out of it, sits there on the counter until trash day…
Let me add generic hot dogs. A proper hot dog in a snappy casing is good eats, but no one over the age of 10 should have to eat turkey/chicken/no-name weiners. They’re OK in corn dogs, though, a nice low-rent nosh.