I can definitely comment on the blandness of American cooking in the past.
Oh, definitely. When I was growing up, the standard way to cook vegetables was, "boil until all the flavor and texture are gone, plus 10 minutes."
Pasta wasn't exotic, as long as you were talking about spaghetti or macaroni. Chinese was exotic, and most everything else that didn't fit your own ethnic background wasn't even on the map.
As late as 1990, my father commented while on the way to a Chinese restaurant, "I hope we get the Chinese waitress."
The prize was for flying from New York to Paris non-stop.
I've never eaten Irish food. My Irish friend arrived in the US completely unable to cook at age 25, but that was due to her mother spoling her as opposed to lack of cuisine in her country.
I have, however, flown nonstop from New York to Paris. As a passenger, not the pilot, and as far as I know nobody walked on the wings.
My friend just emailed to say that their house was the victim of a drive-by shooting on Saturday, and 3 bullets entered the house, including one into the room where she was putting her two year old to bed. They're renters; they're moving. And I'm getting a little tired of my city's apparent determination to be more ghetto than thou (they live on Burch Ave., which isn't ritzy, but I didn't think was drive-by territory either).
I'm a big fan of limpor, semlor, pankakor, dammsugare, kokosnötboller, princesstårta, etc. etc. Swedish sweets and pastries are great. I was just razzin' them about the rotten seafood.
Swedish sweets and pastries are great.
Not IME. Two words: salted licorice.
When I was growing up, the standard way to cook vegetables was, "boil until all the flavor and texture are gone, plus 10 minutes."
Exactly! Except for potatoes and corn. Potatoes got either boiled (red potatoes only) and eaten plain or mashed (no skins included or anything other than salt and pepper, though), or washed, rubbed with Crisco, poked all over with a fork, and baked (the first thing I learned to cook was baked potatoes), unless my dad was feeling ambitious and did his specialty of double-baked potatoes, with cheese (which he still makes for holidays--yummmm!). Corn got boiled on the cob or baked into casseroles or creamed (my aunt has a kick-ass creamed corn recipe that is also of the yum).
I didn't realize until ChiKat told me that outside of the Farm Belt in the Midwest, corn is considered a starch, not a vegetable. You don't dare express that opinion around my farming uncles, whose main crops are soy beans and corn!
I was introduced to lutfisk as a traditional Finnish dish. And Finnish sweet rye bread is a thing of beauty. But that lye-infused fish jello is just awful.
They're renters; they're moving.
God, I hope so! Good to hear that nobody was hurt. Scary!!
Best thing ever to turn up in a work-related mass email: The International Edible Book Festival: [link]
And dammit, flea, that neighborhood has been saying for years that they're pulling themselves out of drive-by-dom, and then the drive-bys come back.
