• frezik@midwest.social
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    6 hours ago

    I’ve had a little theory that post war American food is universally terrible due to everyone smoking and destroying their taste buds. Stuff starts getting better in the mid 90s when smoking rates start noticeably dropping.

    Especially with coffee. People used percolators for years. You know how bad percolator coffee is? So bad that when Mr Coffee came out, it sold for about the same inflation adjusted price as a modern entry level espresso machine. It went into high end restaurants and people thought it was amazing.

    I don’t know if this fully works, though. Much of Western Europe had higher smoking rates for longer, and the food isn’t so shit.

    • USSMojave
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      4 hours ago

      My guess is a combination of this and all of the lead everywhere

  • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I feel like a lot of postwar US cooking could be explained by the following facts:

    • A Americans lived through the great depression
    • All Americans lived through world war rationing
    • A huge portion of Americans grew up in a world where things like refrigeration, grocery stores, etc didn’t exist.

    The end result was the food equivalent of giving a thirteen year old from the 1990s a smartphone for the first time. Just pure disgusting excess with no real rhyme or reason.

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    “Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he’s created? …here on Earth?”

  • gid@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I love how fast and loose this plays with the definition of “salad”.

    • Canadian_anarchist@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      It used to mean any meal served cold. Later versions were encased in gelatin for better preservation, which contributed to the later post-war jelly salad recipes.

      • kalpol@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Ah no. A salad was anything combined with anything else but not cooked (again). This led to some true abominations at the table. Too often, mayonnaise (and not even mayonnaise but Miracle Whip) served as the binder.

    • sneekee_snek_17@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      My wife’s grandma makes “pretzel salad”, which is crushed pretzel sticks that are tossed with a mixture of margarine and cream cheese, I think, then baked until crispy then crumbled.

      In the meantime, cream cheese, maybe whipped cream?, sugar, a few other onesies and twosies, and canned shredded pineapple are mixed into an unholy slop.

      Then, when is time to serve, the crumbles are mixed in with the slop and there you go. Salad.

      • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Mmm, interesting. Pretzel salad for me is the layer of crushed pretzel and melted butter (no cream cheese here) baked, like you said, then a layer of a cream cheese frosting, then a layer of strawberries in strawberry jello. All separate layers, no unholy slop, and it’s sooooo good. But no, it’s not salad.

    • scrion@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Right? Cover a fucking donut with mayonnaise, serve it on a single leaf of lettuce - boom, salad.

  • ladicius@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Serve with mayonnaise.

    😂 There’s a kind of innocent madness in this “recipe” that makes me happy.

      • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        Keep in mind, some dude in the 50’s probably came home to this expecting meat and potatoes. Say what you will about “traditional marriage”, but I’d only wish this travesty on the worst of the worst.

    • gid@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      This absolutely screams “I was zooted on lithium when I came up with this” 🫤

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      This is how I wish we served Brevik, considering we’ve resolved to “take the high road” and keep him around.

  • Chris@feddit.uk
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    17 hours ago

    This is just an episode of Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook Ready Steady Cook, where one of the contestants has brought in some prunes, cottage cheese, donuts and a lettuce.

    I can already hear Ainsley Harriott getting unnecessarily excited.

    (Edit: sorry, got my Ainsley Harriott cooking shows muddled up!)

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The recipe actually started off halfway decent until the donuts and mayonnaise lol

    It definitely sounds like some classic 1950s cooking… The only things missing are maraschino cherries and cut up hot dog weiners

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Well I think I can confidently speak for all “meat and potatoes” men when I say that not only would this not change my mind, I think I’d never be able to look at a prune in the same way again after eating this