Chicago: Beef, Love and Understanding

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Even though my childhood food was bland it was relatively health-conscious, I think. Memories of melba toast and trips to Brownberry Ovens (breadmakers + health food store) are coming back to me.

I rarely got fast food, so I have fond memories of the occasional McDonald's fish sandwich (I wasn't allowed burgers as a kid, I don't think) or Pizza Hut cheese personal pan pizza (thanks to Book It!!). Pepperoni pizza wz the holy grail, only obtainable at friend's houses or the roller rink.

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I like tartares and ceviches and stuff, but I keep thinking of that tapeworm link that was posted a few months ago.

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I dunno about the numbers, Amanda, but clearly there's SOME demand which is more than there was 20 years ago! Even if it's just the usual slow aspirational build, where non-Kraft romano cheese gets into one store, and then the other, and then is perceived as normal and people want a nice baked brie to really "class" things up, etc etc. Because stores continue to carry masala spices, hummus, there are bagel shops in lots of towns now (even though they're not all GOOD), there's Droste's cocoa powder at the regular grocery and not only at the specialty import store in Grand Rapids...things like that. I wonder what the tipping point was, if there was one; I should ask my mom about it.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Now I want raw oysters. My biggest treat when I was a kid was seafood. Especially fresh seafood that we pulled out of the Gulf ourselves. Fried shrimp never fails. Crawfish. Stuff like that. This was all my dad's doing, and my gramma on that side of the family.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link

there are bagel shops in lots of towns now (even though they're not all GOOD)

so sadly true. Even in Chicago. Or LA. Neither of which have any shortage of Jews.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:18 (seventeen years ago) link

thanks to Book It!!

OMG awesome!

Laurel, I went back and reread your original post in which you said that the stuff your family made was homemade and healthy and not necessarily Cheez-Whiz and fluffernutters and Jello molds with maraschino cherries -- and so yeah, we did have similar diets growing up. I guess I'm just averse to calling this "bland, Midwestern" since I think it's a lot better than what a lot of people eat even today and since using "Midwestern" as a derogative kinda bugs me.

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I guess ultimately I know you're all right but it makes me feel like a jackass to think that I'm sitting here on the internet making proclamations about how different things are when I was a child at the time and my body was probably made of mac and cheese, tacos and roast beef sandwiches.

― La Lechera, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:19 (seventeen years ago) link

No one can fade that shit. I barely even had to wash the pan because it was scraped so clean.

I'm glad to have done my part in saving you labor. :) I ate the shit out of that.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:25 (seventeen years ago) link

During winter break of my sophomore year of college, I went down to St. Louis to visit my friend Chris, who was a freshman at Webster University, and he and his dormmates had a little potluck. Someone made hummus, and this girl from somewhere like Carbondale was all "OMG this is so weird, what is it?" and I derisively snorted and was like, "Uh, hello, it's hummus" -- even though I had probably only had it for the first time a year or two prior. This was 1997. I don't know if Middle Eastern food became more widely available in the late 90s than in the earlier part of the decade, or if I had just found it in Kalamazoo more easily than in Bolingbrook. (And obv. this girl was from a much more rural part of the state.)

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Wow, I can't believe Book It is still going on.

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Haha, the Book It! site has a 1980s nostalgia-kitsch section.

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Austin totally spoiled me for eating more diverse foods. Even if it was simple. I had no idea what a black bean was before I moved to Austin -- suddenly, I was eating them 4 times a week. And schwarma, and thai food... all really close to campus, all at rock-bottom student prices. Oh, and really good coffee.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:30 (seventeen years ago) link

lol @ "alumni pizza deals"

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:33 (seventeen years ago) link

i.e., let's see if we can capitalize on generational nostalgia in order to lure people to Pizza Hut that otherwise forsook us long ago

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:36 (seventeen years ago) link

I think it's working. :(

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:38 (seventeen years ago) link

My mom wouldn't let me take part in Book-it because of the product tie-ins to Pizza Hut. Naturally I thought she was insane at the time, but now it makes me love her even more.

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Jay, it IS bland!! The tastes are simple, there usually aren't too many flavors competing in any given dish/meal, we didn't eat garlic or onions or anything spicy or too game-y or strong. My house might have been more extreme than most in blandness but it's not just an unkind stereotype, dude: stir fry would have freaked me out as a kid.

You're also taking the Midwestern label too much to heart as it's usually applied, I think, because if your parents were academics and lived in or near Chicago that's really not the same experience as being blue collar in a town of fewer than 6000 people that's mainly either agricultural or industrial shift-work and not much influenced by any metro area.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:41 (seventeen years ago) link

when i was little my mom had a close friend who was indian, and would cook big crazy multicourse dinners for us sometimes....i didn't like all of it (i was a picky eater), but it exposed me to a variety of food at a very young age. i had my own names for some of the snacky things, and i have no idea what they were now. i haven't been able to find out, either through internet searches or grilling an indian friend. some sort of regional stuff, probably.

i was looking for easy veggie casserole recipes online yesterday, and recipes involving ritz crackers, cheez whiz, and cream of mushroom soup are alive and well.

we made ours sans cheez whiz, with whole foods mushroom soup and extra veggies of various sorts, and it is now abundantly clear that whole foods sells incredibly bland soup. it doesn't have to taste like shit to be natural and healthy and such, grrrr. i think it would be possible to make such a thing with homemade mushroom gravy in the place of soup, and then it would be good. next time.

speaking of which, bad 80s food fad: rice cakes.

― JuliaA, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Also LOL at the idea of my mother allowing "Cheez-Whiz and fluffernutters and Jello molds with maraschino cherries" through the front door. What kind of pioneer daughter do you TAKE her for, that woman made all our jelly and jam from scratch and baked her own bread.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:47 (seventeen years ago) link

i have the opposite problem with those rice crackers you have as with rice cakes: they have *too much* flavor. Kinda burn my mouth, but not in a hot way.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:47 (seventeen years ago) link

stir fry would have freaked me out as a kid

Whereas I had it all the time and didn't think of it as unusual, and yet you're saying we had a virtually identical diet. Or am I misunderstanding?

You're also taking the Midwestern label too much to heart as it's usually applied, I think, because if your parents were academics and lived in or near Chicago that's really not the same experience as being blue collar in a town of fewer than 6000 people that's mainly either agricultural or industrial shift-work and not much influenced by any metro area.

Totally agree. I think sometimes when I bristle is when I feel like you're applying the label too monolithically. Maybe not in this instance, but in others.

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Julia, the Indian family friend thing is exactly the kind of anecdote I was thinking of! We were friends with a Mexican couple and Patty cooked for us now and then, but I think our tastes were already pretty boring and set so I'm not sure how much we benefitted. We did start eating quesadillas regularly about a decade before they hit restaurants, and I'm sure that was purely Patty's influence.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:50 (seventeen years ago) link

they're kind of odd, those rice crackers (from trader joe's). they seem to be a sort of food that's really hit and miss--the TJ's ones aren't quite right, but they're ok.

― JuliaA, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:50 (seventeen years ago) link

2x on the Indian neighbors. That's how I found out about tandoori chicken and the aforementioned chana masala.

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:51 (seventeen years ago) link

I used to love going over to friend's houses in high school, because my friends were such a diverse bunch, so I got homemade Vietnamese, homemade Mexican, homemade southern cookin', homemade Korean (which I could barely stomach, truth be told), etc etc.

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:53 (seventeen years ago) link

My palate wasn't ready for spicy Indian food as a kid and it put me off for years. Once at an Indian restaurant, once at my friend's dad's bachelor pad (it was a converted Sherwin-Williams warehouse and he had all kinds of paintings and homemade canoes hanging up. He made some super spicy curry, lit some candles, and put on a William Burroughs cd, all throwing down ex-hippie style.).

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:55 (seventeen years ago) link

(My favorite was the Mexican breakfasts, but I wonder now if that didn't have something to do with the fact that the mom in question was impossibly hot.)

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:55 (seventeen years ago) link

pics plz

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:56 (seventeen years ago) link

I am totally not arguing about Midwesternism on the internets with someone who grew up with access to a major city. :)

I am saying that everything else you mentioned was pretty much like our dinners, particularly the tacos (which, see asterisk below), except out of the items you listed, stir-fry was way too AUTHENTICALLY Asian and not Americanized enough to be in the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook of the day, so it wouldn't have been "normal" in my experience.

*TACOS. MIDWESTERN TACOS ARE FUCKING INSANE. It's like the only possible meaning of "taco" is a rigid yellow corn shell and ground beef with the seasoning packets from Old El Paso. Add chopped tomatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, and iceberg lettuce and maybe hot sauce and you are DONE. I actually don't mind tacos this way, but I don't mistake them for, like, Mexican food? I didn't learn to eat beans, black or refried, until I moved to NYC, ditto sour cream, ditto guacamole or avocado!

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:57 (seventeen years ago) link

after we moved away, i went years without indian food. boston didn't have much in the way of indian food in the 80s. then my family moved here and a friend would bring me her mom's samosas, and we discovered indian restaurants, and YAY.

― JuliaA, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:57 (seventeen years ago) link

To clarify, not that sour cream and monterey jack cheese are authentically Mexican, either! Sorry, that was unclear. It's just that the Midwestern taco is like the most sanitized version possible in this branch of the space-time continuum.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:58 (seventeen years ago) link

pics plz

http://www.askmen.com/specials/2005_top_99/celebs/58_penelope_cruz.jpg

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:58 (seventeen years ago) link

Right, we used flour tortillas and refried pinto beans. I think the only time I ever had a hard taco shell was at school.

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 22:59 (seventeen years ago) link

"Penelope Cruz is not from Mexico, she's from Spain, and I know that, and everybody knows it."

― jaymc, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:01 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, you beautiful bastards, i'll see you tomorrow.

I'll be back
When the day is new
And I'll have more overstated opinions for you
You'll have things you want to talk about
I will too

― kenan, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:01 (seventeen years ago) link

I did More > preferences > Show Images > Submit Response > Boards > I Love Everything > Chicago for that pic.

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:02 (seventeen years ago) link

See? So you are feeling implicated in a perceived criticism of the Midwest when actually your experience was considerably more cosmopolitan than mine (not to mention the difference in social/intellectual climate implied by having two academic parents).

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Let's not fight, midwesterners, let's talk about fish frys.

― Jordan, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:05 (seventeen years ago) link

The difference (in my experience) between U.S. "sour cream" and Mexican "crema" is that the s.c. is generally a thicker consistency.

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:06 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm not a Midwesterner, I'm a Northerner. And I look down UPON YOU ALLLL

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:07 (seventeen years ago) link

AUTHENTICITY BEEF TACOS, COMING RIGHT UP

― La Lechera, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Yes, Dan is showing remarkable forbearance in not calling me a troll all the time.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:20 (seventeen years ago) link

One of my favorite childhood dishes when we weren't having ewwy stir fry or that nasty spicy stew was TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE. WITH BREAD CRUMBS ON TOP.

NOW WHO'S FUCKING MIDWESTERN, SON

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Do you have any idea how long it took me to post that? Stupid nu-poxy-fule...

― dan m, Monday, 26 February 2007 23:27 (seventeen years ago) link

And what a stunning impact that post had!

― kenan, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 02:36 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry. I am able to log in from home now, and I got overexcited.

― kenan, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 02:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Ugh. "Authentic food" is probably one of my least favorite Internet discussion topics.

― n/a, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Mine is the weather!

― Jeff, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 12:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Followed closely by grammar.

― Jeff, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link

It sure looks like an authentic Chicago winter morning out there, snowy and cold! Say, I think I will have an authentic Chicago hot dog for lunch, with NO KETCHUP! LOL!

― dan m, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 13:22 (seventeen years ago) link

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