Weird American foods!

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tiny

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The recent thread discussing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches reminded me of a magazine article I saw that mentioned other weird culinary concoctions that are popular in America. :biggrin:

Okay, so peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't my thing. When I was younger I remember hearing them mentioned on TV and just thinking that it was a joke. But apparently they are very popular in the US. Fair enough. I'm sure haggis seems like a barely-believable joke to Americans! :laugh:

But... I read this article, and... I simply cannot believe that anyone would ever eat these monstrosities. Apparently these are traditional Thanksgiving dishes. I've no problem with anyone eating what they like... but... this has to be a joke. Tell me none of these are real!

http://metro.co.uk/2016/11/24/10-weird-american-thanksgiving-foods-explained-6278423/

Ham and banana casserole?! No waaaaaay! Sweet potato and marshmallow bake?! What?! Frog eye salad?! I... just... don't... believe... it... :eek!:

Is this just complete nonsense? Are these really rare dishes that only crazy people make? Or... does everyone in America feast on this stuff once a year? How were these creations popularised? Just... why....?
 
A lot of people do like corn and Jello in the US, but I haven't even heard about any of the other foods before now. Maybe they do exist but certainly are not "alternate" Thanksgiving traditions. And this is coming from a person who has Tofurky as the main meal. :p
 
It depends on where you are at!

I have had Raccoon, possum, snake, turtle and sea cucumber.

I do have recipes for things like prairie dog, but will not eat it! Any recipe that starts out with after you kill the prairie dog scorch the body in a fire to remove the hair and KILL THE FLEAS is not touching my plate. Besides they are to cute.
 
I might be one of the few people who actually doesn't find most cultures food besides my own weird. I love trying new things, and most things I can easily imagine what it would taste like simply by the ingredients involved.

Peanut butter and Jelly for example, if you take apart the components, all it is really is fruit and nuts which often go together in various different ways.

Sweet potato and marshmallow bake
Sweet potatoes as their name suggests are somewhat sweet on their own. Adding marshmallows to the top is pretty much just like adding sugar to increase sweetness, but while at the same time adding a bit more flavor. It says it's baked into carmalized sugar as well, although I think it can also be done by jsut addings some butter and brown sugar instead, which I think tastes pretty good.
So basically, all this is doing is heightening the natural flavors. Adding some kind of nuts I could imagine be pretty good as well, maybe pecans. I don't know if anyone actually does that, but it sounds like a good idea to me.

Frog eye salad
I have never had this before. However, the ingredients doesn't seem too unusual to me considering I have had Noodle Pudding before. Honestly, the only odd ingredient would be the pasta, but whne you consider pasta is pretty much just flower and egg, not very unsusual as it's found in many sweets in general.

Ambrosia salad
I have had this before, I think. I actually never knew how it was made, but it sounds fine till you get to the part with mayo or sour cream. I think sour cream probably would taste better than mayo when I think about the flavor. But let's be honest here, cheesecake is often made with creamcheese ... XD, can't say that is anymore unusual ... right?

lol I am not going to go over all of them, but I think the point here is, rather than thinking about how something sounds weird together, it's actually better to think of the taste of each ingredient and make comparisons to food that have similar ingredients. You can typically figure out what would and wouldn't taste good together by doing this.
 
Being hispanic raised in a hispanic household in America, I haven't heard of any of these things XD

Except for PB&J. Not a fan of those myself though.
 
Yep, that's real food.
 
Along the lines of PB&J, there is the Fluffernutter which always struck me as an odd combination. Especially with things like bananas or bacon. o_O
 
Sapphyre said:
Along the lines of PB&J, there is the Fluffernutter which always struck me as an odd combination. Especially with things like bananas or bacon. o_O

I love peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, as well as peanut butter and Nutella. Or even all 3. Or minus the peanut butter.
 
MarchinBunny said:
I love peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, as well as peanut butter and Nutella. Or even all 3. Or minus the peanut butter.

You weird American. :p Actually it is a surprisingly tasty concoction, but not something I would ever have thought of. And I still don't get why it should taste good with bananas or bacon on it. o_O


MarchinBunny said:
I might be one of the few people who actually doesn't find most cultures food besides my own weird. I love trying new things, and most things I can easily imagine what it would taste like simply by the ingredients involved.

I've been a bit adventurous with food myself, but encountered plenty of popular foreign foods that I just don't enjoy. Japanese nattō springs to mind. It tastes worse than it looks. >.< And the flavor is rather difficult to imagine or describe -- to me it was somewhere in between black coffee and sweaty socks, with a vaguely cheesy undertone.

Getting back to weird American foods though... one I've never tried is the Rocky Mountain oyster, though it is apparently not a uniquely American dish.
 
I think everyplace has its odd foods and concoctions. I've only had ambrosia salad off that list and I think my mom's recipe called for whipped cream over mayo/sour cream but she hasn't made it since I was a little kid, so I could be mistaken. I've heard of the marshmallow sweet potato dish but although my mom makes sweet potatoes with brown sugar for Thanksgiving, I never really took to them and marshmallows seem an unnecessary addition.

I don't recall coming across or even hearing a first person account of any of those other dishes. I don't doubt they exist or might even be popular with some but I don't think they're common around the Pacific Northwest.
 
tiny said:
The recent thread discussing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches reminded me of a magazine article I saw that mentioned other weird culinary concoctions that are popular in America. :biggrin:

Okay, so peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't my thing. When I was younger I remember hearing them mentioned on TV and just thinking that it was a joke. But apparently they are very popular in the US. Fair enough. I'm sure haggis seems like a barely-believable joke to Americans! :laugh:

But... I read this article, and... I simply cannot believe that anyone would ever eat these monstrosities. Apparently these are traditional Thanksgiving dishes. I've no problem with anyone eating what they like... but... this has to be a joke. Tell me none of these are real!

http://metro.co.uk/2016/11/24/10-weird-american-thanksgiving-foods-explained-6278423/

Ham and banana casserole?! No waaaaaay! Sweet potato and marshmallow bake?! What?! Frog eye salad?! I... just... don't... believe... it... :eek!:

Is this just complete nonsense? Are these really rare dishes that only crazy people make? Or... does everyone in America feast on this stuff once a year? How were these creations popularised? Just... why....?

Yeah, that grossed me out too, but then they had me at vodka.

But it is always....
Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time.
Where he at, where he at.... where he at, where he at.
There he go, There he go.... There he go, There he go.

Do the peanut butter jelly, peanut butter jelly,
Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat, Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat.....



Sorry, I have the Walking Dead on my mind and this just crossed it all together......
 
the ham and bananas is the one that sounds a bit strange, the anchovy turkey sounds awesome
 
We have too many of them. The fast-food restaurants are coming out with things like the Burger King Whopperito (a hybrid Whopper burger/burrito), Taco Bell's Dorito Shell Taco, and the infamous KFC Double Down which has chicken patties for buns. The entire rest of the world points and laughs at us. And the worst part is many of my fellow Americans love those items.
 
I remember a Malcolm in the Middle episode where they ate a turduckin stuffed with a monk fish. That sounded pretty weird. Personally, I like my Thanksgiving dinner more traditional. My mom was German and she would make mashed potatoes with a turnip blended in and that tastes really good. My wife has made it for our Thanksgiving dinners. The kids were never the wiser as we didn't tell them.
 
tiny said:
Okay, so peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't my thing. When I was younger I remember hearing them mentioned on TV and just thinking that it was a joke.
like, yeah, man!

i'm still struggling with the whole american 'bacon' thing: more like peelings than owt, as if the farmer's wife has been chasing the pig with a potato-peeler; and are they usually bought ready cooked?
our bacon:
DSCF0118 Standard e-mail view.jpg

those are from the butcher's, btw. i avoid the supermarkets on this issue as they follow the line of 'thin and crispy' which was introduced by some turd in the late 70s or early 80s (i forget the specifics), probably as a softener, with some irony, for the introduction of american-style 'bacon' (see, Little Chef). i never took to such burnt shards, seeing them as less and worse for the same price. give me british bacon any day.

of course, we can point out the flaws, but the Yanks did give us the food of kings: Spam!
 
I looooooove peanut butter ..... but the real stuff that is not half sugar - 100% ground peanuts. I prefer raw honey with mine and not jelly or jam.

You want weird food come to the Calgary stampede for fair food .... they have deep fried oreos, pizza on a stick, deep fried banana and a whole bunch of disgusting things I cant think of. I have been gluten free for the last 5 years (until recently) so I stayed faaaaaar away from them.

I remember when I went to Australia it was a little weird - all there food wasn't as sweet and sugary as up here in Canada. no grahman crackers, weird tasting marshmallows etc. And in cuba and Dominican - no one eats sandwich really at all, everyone we talked to hated them or never had them. Weird quirks from different places.

our typical holiday dinner
turkey with wild rice stuffing (craisins, rice, celery, green onion, wild rice, orange juice - its really good)
sweet potato casserole - sweet potatoes, canned peaches, cashews (or any crushed nut), ginger and nutmeg .... suppose to add butter and brown sugar but I never do and it is still really sweet and delicious!
corn, peas, carrots or a combination
mashed potatoes and gravy
cranberry jelly sauce - yummmmmmmmmmmy :)

and of course pumpkin pie and cool whip for desert. That's how the Canadians do it eh?
 
Well my mom taught me to be an adventurous eater, at the holidays mom always made sweet potato pie ( I like this more than pumpkin , I have a friend who is black from down south and he swears there is black in my family tree because he always brings me sweet potato pie and collard greens back when he goes home for the holidays ) never heard of a lot of the other stuff , the 100 proof sounds like a waste ,although I have had beer can chicken and turkey, just pop the tab on your favorite beer and shove it in the bird and cook it upright with whatever herbs and seasonings you like and put bacon on the top, it bastes the breast as it cooks and the beer steams the inside.

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We eat beer can chickens quite often, but we usually end up using some flavor of soda.


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AAO said:
We eat beer can chickens quite often, but we usually end up using some flavor of soda.

Beer can chicken?! That sounds a bit crunchy! How do you fit a chicken in a beer/soda can...? Doesn't the soda make it taste... wrong...? lol
 
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