It’s a sickly sweet, usually carbonated drink made from a mixture of white wine, fruit juice, and soft drink/soda. In terms of alcohol, they tend to come in at, or a bit below, beer strength. They’re marketed at women, usually.
A “wine cooler” is a generic term for a drink made with wine of some sort and some type of sweet mixer, often carbonated and citrus based. For example, the early types of wine coolers were usually mixed by hand and involved some combination of red or blush wine and a lemon-lime soda such as 7-Up or Sprite. Like all good ideas (they are fairly tasty, if not terribly exciting), they have been pre-empted by the drink makers and the market is loaded with many types of pre-made coolers. However, I’d say that the biggest days of the wine cooler were mid 80’s - early 90’s
And this has been touched on, but I figure that I’ll lay it out a bit more. In the U.S. :
Jelly - Clear, made primarily from fruit juice and sugar
Jam - Made with fruit (not just juice) and sugar - the fruit has been cooked to the point where it is like a puree
Preserves - Like jam, but differs in that it has chunks of fruit that are medium to large
All three also often have pectin in them, which helps thicken them.
I confirmed my definitions at the food network website:
Click here for the Food Network Encyclopedia
American cuisine is a mishmash of the cuisines of the world, mostly. The most “American” foods are probably Southern, which, ironically, fairly closely resembles English cuisine in origin (with African influence), if not ingredients. The differences most people notice are in the marketing or packaging of foods and the proliferation of “convenience” foods. Hey, we have to work more hours than all you Euro slackers, so we don’t have time for home cooked food or piddling around in sit-down restaurants.
Anyway, your criticism of American cuisine is really of the more visible undesireable elements. The reality is, our best food comes from ethnic restaurants, just like yours!
My mother was English, and made steak and kidney pie once.
Once.
It stunk up the house and my dad, an Iowa farm boy, forbade her from making it again.
I mean, kidneys? EWWWWWW.
Why do some English insist on cooking roast beef until every last drop of blood is sucked from it? I never even knew what medium rare tasted like until I was in college. My MIL, who is also English, cooks her roasts to death as well.
Sugar in peanut butter is banned by law in England? Can I assume most English are trim, slender, healthy people now that the gov’t has taken such a concern about their well-being? :rolleyes:
Oh, and what you call “chips,” we call French fries, and “crisps” are potato chips.
Forbin stereotyping someone’s food hardly registers on the bigotry scale. I heard some people eat grubs…that grosses me out, not because of their skin color, but that they would chow down on a nice fat wriggly worm.
Please, invite me for the black pudding! English cuisine has some redeeming dishes, and black pudding is definitely one of those…
(I would add something I should probably be ashamed of : lemon custard, which is pretty much impossible to find in France…and of course the magnificent Stilton (with porto, optionnally)…similarily impossible to find here…But I’m a cheese lover…I think by the way that anybody who invented cheese product or cheese in a can should be hanged ASAP)
Hmmm…sorry…I’m hijacking…this thread was about american cuisine…
That’s weird, since here, heart is extremely cheap, which probably proves it’s not exactly popular (and IME, it isn’t at all). I bought heart on some instances. It tastes perfectly fine, but it usually doesn’t cross my mind to buy it.
I don’t know about the UK, of course, but usually, something which is popular is costly, and something unpopular is cheap. So, I see some contradiction with the idea of heart being rarely bought and on the other hand bought only by rich people…
Blood pudding? And how many of us English have eaten these puddings? I certainly haven’t!
One thing I have to ask is about Coke, how come in other coutries like the U.S and Australia, they have very large bottles of coke when ours are 500ml, yours are 750ml why is this??? (Head explodes)
I don’t think this thread necessarily has to be confrontational (easy on the defensiveness there, Forbin), and I’m sure Lobsang didn’t intend it to be so.
I’ve lived in both countries, and have affection for the cuisines of both too. So here’s my take: both countries sport great food, but most of it is crap, but the food is differently crap. Personally I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spread thick on spongy white bread with proper Welch’s grape jelly and Jif peanut butter, as much as I love Tootsie Rolls, as much as I love Payday bars, as much as I love black pudding, Hobnob biscuits, Marmite and of course, the English national dish, chicken tikka masala.
Lots of love, jjimm, who’s off to Dublin’s finest American steak-house tonight.
Höööb-Nööööbs hahaha
Report back this second, please tell me what it was like, I read the menu, I am booking my tickets, the food sounds excellent. Can you give me a rough idea of the prices too? Ominously enough they were not mentioned 
Actually, here in the U.S., there are a large number of sizes for soft drinks. They come in as small as 6 oz. (about 180 ml) and as large as 2 liters. The most common sizes seem to be 12 oz (about 350ml) cans, 16 oz (about 475ml) bottles, and 2 liter bottles. You also see 20 oz (about 590 ml) and 1 liter bottles fairly often.
What I find interesting is the fact that all of the sizes up through 20 oz are measured in fluid ounces (1 fluid ounce is just under 30 ml), then measurements are always metric - 1 or 2 liters. I don’t know why that is. One could say that it makes it easier to bottle for sale in other countries, but why only the 1 and 2 liter sizes and not the others?
Violet
I’ll take a PBJ over a banger, whatever that is. I look at those big sausages and can’t get myself to try them. What’s in a banger?
Bangers are only mentioned in two places: 1. Comics read by small children; 2. The dish “bangers and mash”, which is just sausages and mashed potato. If you go into a butcher’s shop and ask for a pound of bangers they’ll look at you as if you’re mad. As to what’s in them, it depends where you buy them and how much they cost (they’re just sausages).
JohnT, ivylass
The British don’t boil beef or roast it to death. What your mother does and what my mother does are likely to be pretty different.
YappingPoodle
The ingredients of Branston pickle are on the label. Here’s a Scottish recipe for making your own if you care enough. Apologies for the musical accompanyiment ;).
Doghouse Reilly
White pudding isn’t made of white corpuscles. The colouring mainly comes from the other ingredients, which include barley, onions, suet, and spices.
Marlitharn
Here’s a link for Twiglets. Probably explains why they’re treated as a joke in WLIIA.
Forbin
Not everybody lives out the stereotypes in your head Lobsang.
When (if) you figure that out, you’ll be a better person.
I couldn’t agree more, but the same thing could be said in either direction across the Atlantic.
BlackKnight; ivylass
The main brand of peanut butter sold here is SunPat, crunchy or smooth, made by Nestlé. I don’t have any of that brand , but what I have tastes the same and brown cane sugar is listed on the label. According to his/her Location, manx is in New Zealand.
An Arky
Hey, we have to work more hours than all you Euro slackers, so we don’t have time for home cooked food or piddling around in sit-down restaurants.
Nor do we. Most British people eat shop-bought sandwiches at lunch, unlike the French who really know how to lunch in my experience.
clairobscur
Heart is very rarely sold or served here, but I agree with you that it isn’t a delicacy for the rich, it’s cheap here too. Maybe when Lobsang said rich people he meant eccentric people?
British people do not routinely eat internal organs. It’s just a stereotype, like the idea that all Americans wear cowboy hats. We don’t see much fog here either. Hope this helps.
Oh Iteki, you are in for a treat. I ate there last about 2 years ago. It is one of the finest restaurants at which I have ever dined. Oh. My. God. It is so good. When I say steakhouse, I really mean nothing like a diner.
The setting is incredibly opulent. The cosy Oval Office bar in the basement where you can wait before being seated has JFK’s original chair in it. They serve really nice free peanuts but go easy on them, because the portions are really large. Upstairs, the restaurant is neo-classical contemporary with huge chairs and huge round tables that seat 10.
The staff are superbly diligent yet unobtrusive; while I was ordering, the sommelier stepped in and asked whether we’d mind if he recommended a bottle, but he did it with such charm that nobody felt in the least patronised. They were recruited 6 months before the restaurant opened, for training, and according to sources I know in the catering trade, there is nearly zero turnover, which is almost unheard of.
I had a truffle risotto to start, the taste of which I can still conjure up in my mind. The steaks are a speciality, though they do other stuff extremely well too. You can order them done practically to the nearest degree: “medium-medium-rare but not bloody” will arrive exactly as you wanted it it, and the locally-sourced organic beef just melts in your mouth. Second-finest steak I’ve ever had (the best was in San Francisco). Great accompanying dishes, all prepared with great care.
You were right to be dubious about the prices: quality like this doesn’t come cheap. We’re talking about €80 - €100 per head sans vin. And apparently the cheapest bottle is €70. So it’s an expensive night out, but one you will remember for a long time. I’m foregoing getting the car serviced to go (it’s mrs jjimm’s bithday, so how could I refuse?). Enjoy!
As a teenager, I worked in a butcher’s shop in England. Heart was sold very cheaply as dog-food. I’ve never heard of a person eating it. However, Brits do eat liver (as do Americans), kidneys (mostly in Steak and Kidney Pie or Pudding), pancreas (rarely) and brains (very rarely, and possibly not at all since BSE).
My mother used to cook heart for us when I was little, cos it was cheap and we were poor! It’s really good actually, the texture is like very lean and tender meat. I don’t remember exactly what she had to do to cook it, I think it’s one of those things that need long slow cooking.
We had all the other cheap cuts too, liver (good as long as you don’t make the mistake of cooking it too long), and kidneys.
Something else she DID buy just for dog food - lights (or lites, not sure of the spelling) it was the animal’s lungs. The dog liked it!
I forgot to include lights (I don’t know how to spell it either). One of my jobs was to take the internal organs, delivered in one mass (but no intestines) and separate them - remove the heart, liver, kidneys and sweetbread (pancreas) and bag the lungs for dog-food.
Don’t forget tongue too. When I was very young, my mother used to give me tongue sandwiches in my packed lunch. I thought it was some kind of meat called “tung”. Until the day I accompanied her to the butcher’s shop and saw what they were carving it from. ack
I like Soylent Green. But Soylent Blue will do in a pinch.
Tongue? I’m not eating anything that came out of a cow’s mouth. Give me some eggs!
Tongue is yummy!
But then again, I work at Rutgers, the university that (as quoted by a Rutgers reference librarian’s email sig) “brought Velveeta from the bottom of a barrel of parafin into the light of day.”
Heart, kidneys, liver, lights, sweetbreads, brain, tongue. Doing a good job with this stereotype aren’t we? In case anyone still needs convincing, these foods are noteworthy because they are unusual, not because everybody in Britain eats them. Of course, cheese itself (the real stuff, not crap out of a can) is pretty disgusting if you bother to analyse what it’s made of.