Clearly OT (but what the hell...) (was: food

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Wed Nov 7 15:40:30 2001

> > >> > > Americans have always been somewhat "strange" about their diet,
>
> Yea, as in -> real food has to be "americani[sz]ed" and preprocessed thru
> Burger King et. al. before they'll eat it... Shame.
>
> We have 2 chinese restaurants in town, which both suck... (americani[sz]ed) and
> 1 greek restaurant, which is extremely good but don't serve enough (IMHO)
> choices in the way of greek food... They have gyros, kalamari, and a few other
> dishes & the rest - american. (damn good american, but american nonetheless...)
> :-( I'm continually begging them for new greek stuff - you can get a burger
> anywhere, after all - and I was *finally* greeted with something new this
> Saturday (don't recall the name, some type of lamb & beef dish with a baked
> pancake-like topping - started with an "M") and it was fantastic!
>
> [[ And my kids *love* kalamari & most everything else I make them try... ]]
>
> I am *not* a normal american... ;^>
>
> > >> > How? I've never seen anything that I thought was strange.
> > >>
> > >> Gravy. Gravy is pretty strange when you consider what goes into it.
>
> Gravy is *not* strange if you've ever had pickled pigs feet... after that, you
> know that gravy can be made with many things other than flour or corn starch...
> ;-)
>
> > hmmm.... Poutine anyone? ;-)
>
> >POUTINE! POUTINE! POUTINE!
>
> Awrighty -- educate this idiotic american... what's Poutine? (Oh, and as an
> aside, what's Haggis?)
>
> Thanks,
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger
>

 I would be surprised if there wasn't a place on the Can side that had Poutine.
Cheese curds and gravy. Even out here in Manitoba it can be found in many
of the old "french-canadian" districts.
 One of the spots I liked in the Canadian "Soo" was a greasy spoon called
Mary's (IIRC) ,which had many slavic foods. Obviously I'm more into the
quality of the food than the presentation. Had enough of form without
substance in the fancier restaurants of Toronto, altho TO does also have
more good "ethnic" restaurants than most US cities.
 Sadly where I'm now living has little in the way of choice, so I have to cook
my own. The Americanization is such that even tho it's an old commercial
fishing village, has extensive farming, and good hunting, it's very difficult to
get local product. Most is the over-packaged crap that comes from the big
centres with all the distributive agencies taking a chunk of the pie. Pickerel
(which is caught locally) costs $9 a lb while the local commercial fishermen
get less than $2. Due to marketing boards and agricultural specialization
even things like milk and beef (this area is now a heavy cattle producer) are
shipped from the centres. And because of advertising hype McDonalds,
Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut predominate, and the locals ignore the food in their
own backyard. How Sad.
 Fortunately because of strong local ethnic tradition, good Ukranian food is
still available here. But for how long, when the kids are innundated by TV
hype and want to emulate their urban counterparts ?

  Lawrence

 I have looked into the future and it's homogenized and BLAND, BLAND,
BLAND.

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Received on Wed Nov 07 2001 - 15:40:30 GMT