lunch. I ate at Quiznos today and got really annoyed by the line on my credit card slip for a tip. It's a fast food deli! It's not even a locally owned deli. (Keep Austin Weird!) I am with the author on this one. Why the hell are we tipping for services we already paid for?!? And if these people are asking for tips for reasons other than supporting the business or supplementing the lower than minimum-wage income of the employees, it's not a tip. It's charity! Let's call it what it is and if you're brave enough to ask for charity money, be brave enough to explain where my hard-earned money is going.

Okay - I'm through with my rant.

Amy

I'm sayin'! Whut tha?

Green you might have tried the survival guidebook to living in the wilderness by eating the nutritional little critters. Catching them would have kept you busy and they might have been better than the conventional food presented. What did they serve, anyway?

Well, I was presented with enough meat, meat that came in scary forms like hotdogs and pork sausages, that it would have constipated a lesser woman than moi. There was a noticeable lack of fresh vegetables except for those which had been overcooked before reaching my plate. (And I had brought with me some drop dead gorgeous field tomatoes! *bitter sigh*) Fortunately the ma-in-law serves meager portions of this stuff. I ended up dosing my nosh with soya sauce/hot sauce in order to provoke some excitement.

And there was an utter absence of eggs. I like eggs and believe that they are much healthier than a skinny pink weiner in a white bun or a clutch of sausages of dubious content. An egg or two with a couple of slices of tomato would have been nice, I found myself thinking from time to time while I was clawing at my mosquito bites.

This is how I made my second discovery: it might actually be impossible to eat a good meal once you leave the city. Certainly out of town restaurant dining is risky business. The second morning that I was there I murmured to the mate that we should go out for breakfast. We did go to a place which used to be good but now it has new owners. They offered Eggs Benedict on the menu and it was written that the Hollandaise was home-made. :hungry: I was awful excited for I love eggs Benny! :whoo: What I got was a couple of eggs that had been poached until they were hard sitting on slabs of meat that were so thick they masked the taste of the egg. And an enormous mound of fries which were merely shaped like home fries. Those spuds had come directly out of the deep fryer and onto my plate. There was a light spattering of raw cooking onion bits here and there. Oh, ugh! :car:

During our long and boring drive home we stopped off at a restaurant. I ordered a caesar salad. This arrived with commercially made croutons and the leaves were clotted with some sort of off-white goo. Dead f***ing nasty, it was! :car:

I haven't eaten well for days now. I believe that after I have a bath we are going out to the local Mexican restaurant for huevos rancheros. :biggrin1:

Your description of the MIL's fare left me in stitches. But also reminded me of how I prepare green Beans (not to be confused in any way with haircourt verts.)

I come from a long line of Oklahoma canned green bean eaters.

Recipe: Open the can and dump out most of the Water that the beans are packed in (to make the can heavier.) I must interject here that the green beans must be specifically Del Monte Whole green beans and no other brand will do, nor are cut green beans acceptabe. You dump the beans in a pan with about a quarter inch of the liquid they were packed in. Give them a serious shaking of garlic salt and turn up the flame. You allow them to simmer for as long as it takes to heat the beans through and through and for all of the liquid to be cooked off. Hopefully you will not wind up scorching them because you're busy tending to the chicken fried steak. You add about 1.5 tbs. (yes, tablespoons) of butter to the pan, cover the beans with a generous dose of pepper and once the butter has melted and the beans are coated, they're done! People from other parts of the world are never quite sure what this dish is supposed to be.

Are you absolutely certain that your MIL doesn't have some roots in Oklahoma?

P.S. eggs Benedict is one of my favorite dishes. I do not order it often though, and only at upscale restaurants. It's a dish that can be sublime or it is one that can gag a maggot (if you'll pardon the expression.) The dish you described is all too commonly passed off as Eggs Benedict in these parts. :faint: I love poached eggs, but too many cooks just have no idea how they should be served. Fortunately I do have a restuarant that we frequent where I can depend on the quality of both their eggs benedict and their plain poached eggs.

Nothing is worse when you're sporting a band, than to have decided you're going to splurge on a favorite dish and then have some incompetent clown ruin it for you. I truly feel your pain, dear.

Oh, BJean, that green bean recipe sounds profoundly awful!!! :car: Thanks for sharing this with me. Now I know to avoid any restaurant which advertises home cooking or country style cooking when travelling through Oklahoma. LOL :heh:

As for the ma-in-law, she is German and is a Fan of Meat and Cold Cuts but at the same time she is thrifty and so often the stuff which she presents is meat which only a true Fan of Meat can eat. :phanvan As for me, my sensibilities lie more in the Italian, Indian, or Asiatic line of nosh when eating cooked food, and I love salads. When I do eat meat I want the expensive stuff and when it comes to beef I like it very, very rare. This means that I am usually on the wrong page when it comes to dining with the in-laws. :rolleyes I am also a fan of sauces. It was eating cheese, pasta, food in sauces, and bread that made me a fatty grrl. :tired

My own ma was born and raised in England and she had a nasty way with meat. She bought the good stuff and then carefully cooked it until it was grey all the way through. :omg: She would squeal in horror if she saw any sign of pink. It took an hour to chew your way through a slab of her roast beef. :help: She turned lamb chops into lamb chips. I actually thought that I was a vegetarian until I lived in France. My ma had a lovely way with a sauce or a gravy, though. :car:

Ahhh, gravy! Want to hear how to make Oklahoma gravy? No, of course you don't!

Reminds me of when I dated a young lad in college, a vet-med student. He was from New Orleans and his mother was French. When he came to Oklahoma (for our outstanding verternarian program at the university), he was appalled at what Okies called gravy. He thought gravy was a "reduction" where you might add a little wine and a pat of butter to the meat juices and create a nice little sous for the entree.

The first time he said yes to the gravy at a restaurant and got his meat and potatoes topped with a thick glob of gelatinous white glop, he almost fainted.

Reminds me of the time I, out of curiosity, ordered "poutine" in Montreal!

Wow! White glop! Now you've got me all interested again. Tell me more, grrl, tell me more. :ranger:

As for poutine, I have to confess that I have never tried it. It is a Quebecois treat and not available in Toronto. I suspect that it is rather nasty as well as a recipe for a coronary event or a stroke. :omg: Within that line of cuisine I do confess that I am fond of pierogis. I like 'em fried in butter along with onions and then eaten with globs of sour cream. :hungry:

White gravy that belongs on chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes is simple. You use some of the pan drippings and make a thick roux (although we never used that term years ago) with flour. Then you use milk for the liquid and lots and lots of pepper. There is a fine line between too thin and too thick. When you wind up with the glob of glop, you've made it too thick. It should be the consistency of... letsee... hmmm, I can't think of a thing like it. Thicker than cream Soup. The stuff definitely goes straight to your arteries. Our chicken fried steak dinner is preferably accompanied by the mashed potatoes (Yukon Gold) and fried okra. A perfect ending is Apple Cobbler (top and bottom crust - lots of cinnamon) and Caramel Ice Cream. The whole meal is death on a platter. But it is quite addictive and I was force fed it as a small child, therefore it is not my fault. :hungry:

Nowadays we have gone healthy by substituting chicken for the steak.:heh:

Except that since the band, I can't eat chicken. And I do not give in to the addiction more often than about once a year (maybe twice) on my DH's and DD's birthdays.

When my DS came to visit in Montreal, he was curious and ordered Poutine. We giggled and laughed and shared a cupful. It was very strange but as the cheese curds melted it became quite tasty. It feels just as lethal as the Okie meal mentioned above.

I know what Perogies are, but I've never eaten them. They must have that same addictive quality because a friend of mine from Ohio spoke of them with reverence.

Ah, pierogis are seriously deadly being as they are a combo of carbs and saturated fats with a whole bunch of sodium in order to make yer dining experience extra divine. They are part of my father's awful dining heritage what with him being a Polish Jew who was born within short kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Most of the cuisine which comes from this part of the world is strong on carbs and sat fats. We used to eat potato pancakes (latkes) and chopped liver. The first was grated potato which, once wrung dry of all juice and added to beaten egg whites, was fried until crisp in butter or lard. As for the second, this was a mash of hard boiled egg, cooked chicken livers, onion, and some kind of fat. Because my father was an atheist Jew I believe that we used butter. The old man was a real fan of butter.

When the mate and I were in Moscow we were treated to cheese blintzes (crepes stuffed with a cheese, lemon zest, and sugar mixture) for Breakfast. All other meals featured fatty meats, potatoes, bread, and cabbage in various forms. The cabbage thing was interesting; you would see this pickled and boiled. Sometimes borscht (beet soup) would be on the menu. (I didn't poop for a week, something which concerned moi quite a bit at the time.)

I hadn't been exposed to this kind of cuisine for many years and I had been happy about this. However, a couple of years ago my husband and I were invited to a saint's day party for one of his good friends, a Polish guy. It was a good thing that we decided to go there by public transit and to cab it home. The food consisted of devilled eggs, cheese, bread, and meats. Not a fresh veggie to be seen. The drinks consisted of, well, serious drinking. We were the only folks there who were not Polish. We left at 4 AM. I had a hangover that lasted for 2 days. I also had an appt for a root canal short hours after I got home. The drill jockey and his assistant laughed at me but they were very kind.

As fer chicken-fried stuff, I have always assumed that this means meat done KFC style and I am hoping that I am right. While you can find chicken, fish, and seafood which have been dipped into batter and then deep-fried up here it is impossible to obtain chicken-fried steak; this is steak en croute, I assume. Please tell me if I am wrong for we Canadians hear a lot about chicken-fried steak and yet most of us have never, ever seen it.

Food is so fascinating, isn't it? I am so enjoying our discussions. And hasn't this thread wandered off course?

Green...

Because my father was an atheist Jew

Pardon my ignorance, but what is an atheist Jew?

Green...

Because my father was an atheist Jew

Pardon my ignorance, but what is an atheist Jew?

My father was born Jewish but didn't believe in God. There are two main branches of Jews, the Sephardim and the Ashkhenazim who are the Eastern European Jews. The Ashkhenazim have a bit of genetic material which identifies them as such and so being a Jew is also a matter of birth as well as religion and culture. A great number of famous Jews were/are atheists: Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky are the only names which spring to my mind at the moment.

(It is very early for me and I am usually asleep at this hour but today I have an appointment at 9 AM. ugh! This is why I find myself being blonder than usual. )

Bloodlines are very important to the Jewish people and this is why it is only those people whose mothers are Jews who can truly call themselves Jews. The logic behind this is that one knows who the mother is, the father is questionable. This is an ancient law designed long before modern genetic research. My own mother was Scottish and French and this is why I am only considered Jewish to a racist and, sadly enough, I had encountered quite a number of those through my work when I was building aircraft. :phanvan

As you may be aware, the Jews have one of the few religions that is not out there seeking new followers and perhaps my explanation may have helped you understand why. You may be interested to know that many devout Jews are very concerned that so many Jews are now marrying outside of the blood. They feel that it is possible that one day the Jews will disappear. Certainly this has happened in my own family. The few survivors of the Holocaust have mostly married gentiles.

Well chicken fried steak is something you just have to experience. Kentucky Fried Rat (as we call it) is probably the closest thing you have to it. But there is a big difference between commercially prepared fried chicken and home made chicken fried steak. As for those who have grown up on chicken fried steak, many refuse to touch commercially made ones. You can count me in that bunch. I know I'm beating a dead horse here so I'll drop it, especially since the facinating story about your Jewish lineage has become the topic.

I thoroughly enjoy hopping around to different subjects on the same thread. I figure soon though we'll be getting back to food... probably a discussion of CHEESE!

I used to think it would be unbelievably cool to be a Jew and to be able to know so much about your roots. Naive I know, and growing up I did not know of any Jewish families in our town and only knew of one Synagogue in the neighboring big city.

I did not go to school with any African Americans either. I was completely ignorant of the social bias against people of either background, except for what we learned in school. Can you imagine?

I grew up thinking that just about everyone in America had Indian blood. Until I lived in one of the Eastern/Southern states, I had no idea that there were people who thought all American Indians lived on reservations and were dirt poor.

Ah, where I live Indian blood is exotic unless the person is from India. In fact when I was a little kid my family was the exotic family in the neighbourhood because my parents had accents - unlike the Canadians who had none! My parents were also ten years older than the parents of all my little school yard buddies. When I was in grade one I was quite embarassed by my mum because she was in her 30s and all the other mums were in their 20s. She was not only foreign, she was old! :grouphug: Toronto was ultra Canadian whitebread in the 1950s. :phanvan

As for meeting a Canadian Aboriginal/Indian, well, I don't think I met one until I was in my mid-20s. Even now it is rare to see a native person on the streets of Toronto. By the way, up here they and the Inuit - formerly known as Eskimos - are now officially known as Canada's First Peoples. We are politically correct even though we have sacrificed grammar. :grouphug: LOL

As for chicken fried steak, can you get it rare? I likes my steak still mooing. :grouphug: And is it deep fried or pan fried? :confused:

Nope. No rare chicken fried steak. It is pan fried. Unless you get it in a restaurant. They usually deep fry theirs. Yuk.

That's another thing I was shocked about when I lived in Montreal, everyone has a deep fryer in their kitchen. The natives are pretty obsessed with weight and fashion yet they have more donut places and deep fryers than I knew existed.