vastderp:

jumpingjacktrash:

dharmagun:

jumpingjacktrash:

diary-of-a-chinese-kid:

The “American” section at an English supermarket

no wonder brits think we’re all junk-food-snarfing morons

not a big enough pop-tarts choice

the only things there i actually buy, btw, are peanut butter cups and arizona iced tea. and even those are very occasional, cuz they’re so sweet.

just in case anyone was wondering what americans actually eat.

answer: not this.

non-snarky answer: i gather brits use something called ‘salad cream’ in tuna salad and egg salad and the like? we use mayonnaise or miracle whip, never seen salad cream for sale. miracle whip is spiced mayo, btw, it’s not a different substance, it’s just got a bit of onion, mustard, and paprika flavoring.

we don’t eat hamburgers at home much, except for cookouts. they’re mostly convenience food or backyard picnic party food. same with hot dogs. cold sandwiches are a lunch staple – deli meat and cheese, or pbj – but hot sandwiches are too much work for a quick lunch and not nutritious enough for a sit-down supper.

one thing i think is particularly american is the amount of ethnic foods we eat. even the whitest of families has some chinese, mexican, and japanese dishes in their menu rotation. italian’s hardly considered ethnic anymore, everyone eats lots of italian. more recent immigrant waves like vietnamese and somali haven’t quite sunk in to the common cuisine yet, but it’s still not at all unusual for random suburbanites to be fond enough of pho or sambusas to learn how to make them.

those huge airplane-hangar grocery stores you see on tv? yes, we really shop at those, and it’s not because we need fifty flavors of pop tarts. it’s because we cook fifty regional cuisines.

although… gotta fess up… everyone likes pop tarts. my favorite are raspberry. un-frosted so i can put butter on them when they’re hot.

one thing i notice is how most of these things are kid treats. i’d never eat them now, but when i was nine? hell yeah.

maybe this is one of those childhood nostalgia things–grown up food you can make on your own, for the most part, or get at a restauraunt. only a foul little twinkie tastes like a twinkie, god save us all.