Tuesday, July 11, 2023

American Food - Random Thoughts

A commercial for Stouffers' lasagna brought me right back to raising and educating my kids.  

There were very few occasions where heating up one or two or three of those 9x11 aluminum foil pans was inappropriate.  With a Farmer's Market salad and loaves of garlic bread on the counter, lacrosse players and soccer players and PTA moms and classrooms and teachers all were feted and none went away unhappy.

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We have a new favorite burger place.  I cruise the menu, but TBG is faithful to the Classic Burger.  It is adorned with American cheese.  

I do not understand American cheese.  It impresses me as being a conglomeration of chemicals pressed flat and wrapped in more chemicals sealed together with more chemicals.  

It doesn't feel like food to me.  
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My ultimate American food moment came in the kitchen of our Chicago house.  

The Cuters were 5 and 3, sitting at the table, waiting for lunch, before he went to afternoon kindergarten and she took a nap. 

They were snacking on little American cheese and Cheerios sandwiches.  I was heating up Spaghetti-O's.

I felt like a commercial.
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If the docents at Tucson's birthplace garden are to be believed, real American foods are squash and beans and corn - the Three Sisters.  

Planted together, the beans grow up and through the corn which shields the squash below whose vround hugging vines keep the soil cool and moisture from evaporating into the hot desert sun.  .

I eat those foods, too.

5 comments:

  1. Squash, beans, and corn. We have those, but squash only occasionally. Summer squash is not a favorite around here. Winter squash, though, oh we love those roasted with butter and brown sugar! Beans, cheese, tortillas...staples in this house for Terry. He will never go hungry if he has those.

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    1. I plan to craft the perfect butternut squash soup in my next life.
      a/b

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  2. I have never heated up frozen lasagna, but then I didn't host those hordes of people either. I also never opened cans of canned pasta. Ugh. But then I did, and still do, heat up and eat canned soup. Campbells.
    I don't get American cheese either. Recently I have seen articles about best burgers, and they all use American cheese. Why? It must be because that's what people were raised with - cheep fake cheese. I remember eating Velveeta. Now it's only Tillamook cheddar for me, or maybe pepper jack, on my burgers.

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    1. I buy Kraft singles of American cheese for my quesadillas or grilled cheese sandwiches or when I make what I call Mexican eggs, scrambled eggs with picante sauce and melted cheese rolled up in fried tortillas. I can't eat dairy so this works for me. My husband gets real cheese on his food, though.

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    2. I didn't eat it - Big Cuter did. Velveeta is another food I've avoided. But I heard Martha Stewart on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me extolling the virtues of American Cheese and Velveeta and Spam so what do I know?
      a/b

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