Websnark

Comment from: Sempiternity posted at November 8, 2005 10:16 PM

I do not trust the cat's opinion, angelic or otherwise, - whatever it is, cheese that stuff is not.

Comment from: Padre posted at November 8, 2005 10:17 PM

http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=242

You've missed one, Eric :).

Comment from: Danalog posted at November 8, 2005 10:17 PM

My cat apparently doesn't think American Cheese is food

I'm in total agreement with him

Comment from: J.(Channing)Wells posted at November 8, 2005 10:17 PM

Next time you're fishing around for a slogan to use on your title bar, I think you should try "Exhausted, but Eating Cheese."

Comment from: Chris "Slarti" Pinard posted at November 8, 2005 10:33 PM

Mmmmm... faux-cheese...

Even better, though, is Easy Cheese (y'know, the spray-from-a-can stuff) -- my preference is Sharp Cheddar, but YMMV -- and Chicken In A Biskit. Yum.

Comment from: Abby L. posted at November 8, 2005 10:43 PM

You guys lead an exciting life.

Of course, I should talk. Asking me what I'm doing any given evening, and the answer is likeliest to be "Finishing a comic but also watching Law and Order."

Comment from: Tangent posted at November 8, 2005 10:52 PM

[Posted without comment.]

[Except that, you know, the implied comments by posting without comment.]

[Because posting without comment is in itself an artform just as much as posting with comment.]

[Not to mention posting without comment is insane. 'Nuff said. Except, not said because it's, you know, without comment.]

Comment from: kirabug posted at November 8, 2005 11:02 PM

so wait, was it "cheese food" or was it cheese made out of soybeans?

Comment from: lucastds posted at November 8, 2005 11:13 PM

that joke was just cheesy.

*groan*

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 8, 2005 11:36 PM

Faux American cheese is made of people!!

*double groan*

I think I may have to flame myself for that. Wait, I just did. Hope this doesn't lock another thread. :-)

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 8, 2005 11:42 PM

You know what the worst part is?

Another fifteen packets of Kraft Dinner cheese showed up here today, and I have no macaroni.

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 8, 2005 11:44 PM

You can get Kraft Dinner cheese without the macaroni? That's...that's un-Canadian!

Comment from: Plaid Phantom posted at November 9, 2005 12:10 AM

Am I the only one who read the title and went "Ew!"?

I tend to feel that any foodstuff that has to identify itself as "food" is not something that should be eaten. "American processed cheese food" is a pretty funny phrase nonetheless.

Comment from: TheSporkWithin posted at November 9, 2005 12:38 AM

White people cant resist Fancy Cheese.

...

Yeah...

Comment from: cthulhu-maccabi posted at November 9, 2005 12:42 AM

This, of course, forces one to ask exactly what other sorts of "American processed cheese" there might be. Perhaps one with medicinal qualities but no nutritional value, or a variety made for purely decorative purposes.

The market for the latter would be limited, no doubt, but likely not nonexistent.

Comment from: unliz posted at November 9, 2005 12:49 AM

Wow, aren't you two living the high life. That sounds almost as bad as my weekend, but I'm in college so that automatically means my not doing anything is lamer than you not doing anything.

FYI: I once had a cat refuse to eat Turkey Jerky. Now THAT is not food.

Comment from: Meander posted at November 9, 2005 1:00 AM

Apropo of nothing else:
http://www.ernestcline.com/spokenword/

Comment from: Ray Radlein posted at November 9, 2005 1:33 AM

You know what the worst part is?

Another fifteen packets of Kraft Dinner cheese showed up here today, and I have no macaroni.

"I Have No Macaroni, and I Must Cheese" — hmmm. No, not quite. I still prefer "I Have No Nose, and I Must Sneeze" as a faux-Ellison title. My search continues.

Comment from: siwangmu posted at November 9, 2005 1:37 AM

Padre: aah! That is so awesomely awesome!
tangent: uh... what are you not-posting, anyway? When Eric not-snarked, he generally posted, you know, a link or something, and then the not-commentary. Please clue me in! I enjoyed the commentary but didn't get your actual reference, I think.

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 9, 2005 1:41 AM

First there is a post,
Then there is no post,
Then there is.

-- With apologies to Donovan, after Quingyuan

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 9, 2005 7:46 AM

You cannot tame the white man with cheese, TheSporkWithin!

As I recall, American cheese isn't even legally allowed to be called cheese in the United States... I believe the legally-mandated name is "American procesed cheese food." Personally, I don't trust anything with a name like that.

I also assume Eric's cat is not very picky... I could only get the non-picky cat to eat that stuff when I was growing up. The dogs, they were a different story entirely.

Comment from: xbishop posted at November 9, 2005 8:50 AM

Spork/32,

Glad to know I'm not the only person who watched that.

Comment from: Kail Panille posted at November 9, 2005 8:51 AM

Faux American cheese is made of people!!

Canadians, I assume.

32: The fact that the little individually wrapped slices of petroleum byproducts aren't legally cheese is unrelated to the kind of cheese they're not. Um, or something.

Point is, it's possible to get American cheese that's legally defined as "Pasteurized Process Cheese" without the added, and ironic, "Food."

I have thought about this too much.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 9, 2005 9:59 AM

I thought the unintentionally hilarious addition of "food" wasn't because of the ingredients but because of the process making it. I thought American cheese, whether or not milk was involved, was cultured like most cheese and thus couldn't be strictly called "cheese" by American labelling laws.

Of course, this might partly be because I've never seen it labelled other than how I mentioned before. Anyone with a link that can show otherwise is welcome to elucidate me.

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 9, 2005 10:27 AM

Well now. I never thought, when I checked the 'snark at work this morning, that it would fill me with such an urge to go home and check the labels on the cheese in the 'fridge.

"American cheese" does have its uses. The "welfare cheese" kind melts really nicely on a grilled cheese sandwich, and isn't as oily as cheddar. My 3-year-old is a grilled cheese sandwich junkie, and since it's one of the few sources of protein I can get down him, we keep "American cheese" in the house specifically for that.

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at November 9, 2005 11:22 AM

American Cheese is essentially the sherry of cheeses. You take another cheese (usually cheddar) and then process it into a smoother, more homogeneous sort of thing, often adding vegetable oil to stretch out the cheese.

It's when they omit the cheese part that it gets nasty. Then you just have something orange that melts, but doesn't trigger lactose reactions (although if you use a sufficiently aged cheddar to make the American, there's no lactose left to speak of).

Comment from: gothfru posted at November 9, 2005 12:19 PM

thank you all. now I have been forced to go read the FDA regulations on pasteurized cheese food.

from this site

a)(1) A pasteurized process cheese food is the food prepared by comminuting and mixing, with the aid of heat, one or more of the optional cheese ingredients prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section, with one or more of the optional dairy ingredients prescribed in paragraph (d) of this section, into a homogeneous plastic mass. One or more of the optional ingredients specified in paragraph (e) of this section may be used.

Paragraphs C, D, and E:

(c) The optional cheese ingredients referred to in paragraph (a) of this section are one or more cheeses of the same or two or more varieties, except cream cheese, neufchatel cheese, cottage cheese, creamed cottage cheese, cook cheese, and skim-milk cheese for manufacturing, and except that hard grating cheese, semisoft part skim cheese, and part-skim spiced cheese are not used alone or in combination with each other as the cheese ingredient.

(d) The optional dairy ingredients referred to in paragraph (a) of this section are cream, milk, skim milk, buttermilk, cheese whey, any of the foregoing from which part of the water has been removed, anhydrous milkfat, dehydrated cream, albumin from cheese whey, and skim milk cheese for manufacturing.

(e) The other optional ingredients referred to in paragraph (a) of this section are:

(1) An emulsifying agent consisting of one or any mixture of two or more of the following: Monosodium phosphate, disodium phosphate, dipotassium phosphate, trisodium phosphate, sodium metaphosphate (sodium hexametaphosphate), sodium acid pyrophosphate, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium citrate, potassium citrate, calcium citrate, sodium tartrate, and sodium potassium tartrate, in such quantity that the weight of the solids of such emulsifying agent is not more than 3 percent of the weight of the pasteurized process cheese food.

I never want Kraft slices again!

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 9, 2005 1:11 PM

meh. at least it's not blood pudding.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 9, 2005 1:40 PM

You know, the secret ingredient is blood.

Comment from: Darth Paradox posted at November 9, 2005 1:44 PM

Homogeneous plastic mass.

Mmmmmm.

And 32, I don't think it gets to be called a "secret ingredient" if it's in the name.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at November 9, 2005 1:48 PM

Darth -- it's a Simpsons quote.

I think.

Something like that. ;)

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 9, 2005 2:09 PM

Yeah, that's a Simpsons quote. It's from the Sherri Bobbins episode. The complete exchange goes like this:

Homer: Ooh, I can't get enough of this blood pudding.

Bart: The secret ingredient is blood.

Homer: Blood? Ugh! I'll just stick to the brain and kidney pie, thank you.

Comment from: gwalla posted at November 9, 2005 3:35 PM

Cheese food?

So that's why my cheese keeps turning green in the fridge! I haven't been feeding it!

(Does anyone else remember that ad for some brand of singles that compared the ingredients of the "leading brand"Ûa glass of oil and one of waterÛwith its own ingredientsÛoil, water, and ONE WHOLE OUNCE of milk per slice? I think it was back in the '80s. It impressed me in a way I believe the ad agency did not intend)

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 9, 2005 3:43 PM

The guy I share an apartment with eats blood pudding. Loves it. Thinks Kraft Dinner is gross.

The standards over here are really wack.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 9, 2005 3:58 PM

Gwalla, I remember those ads clearly. That was Kraft, who originated another Simpsons staple, a package of 64 slices of American cheese.

To be fair, I don't like either Kraft dinner or blood pudding. Of course, I do get a kick out of really spicy peppers, so nearly everyone is liable to think I'm as crazy as, well, you probably gathered from my other comments.

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 9, 2005 4:46 PM

I remember those ads too. Quite disturbing really.

****

"Homer, did you stay up all night eating cheese?"

"I think I'm blind."

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 9, 2005 5:57 PM

Wednesday: Everything I see of "Traditional English food" convinces me I would starve to death if I moved there. There's a show on the cooking channel of "Two Fat Ladies" or somesuch, and the stuff they cook... well, it's scary, or so greasy as to be life-threatening, or both. I remember one dish that involved a pan lined with bacon, and each individual slice of .. ham, I think it was, also wrapped in bacon. And then, there was some creamy substance (cheese, maybe?), and more bacon atop it. I had heart palpitations just looking at it. Eating it would probably have killed me outright.

It's a wonder ye olde Englishmen didn't all die off at puberty, what with their personal hygiene.. er.. issues, and their eating habits.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at November 9, 2005 7:43 PM

There's a passage in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish in which Douglas Adams delineates which English foods Englishmen eat to atone for which types of sins.

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 9, 2005 8:52 PM

Evaluating British food on the basis of its popular reputation, or that of Two Fat Ladies (which is a far better show, granted, than the Food Network presentation would suggest), is not a desperately fair thing to do. (Although I suppose it's perfectly fair, considering how many British people evaluate American food on the basis of an average trip to TGI Tacky Shit on the Wall.)

The Fat Ladies responded to the asceticism which had come to pervade British eating (and British cooking shows!), and you can see their influence in the shinier food porn that's since come out of the UK. Unfortunately, people would rather get the message about the benefits of stigmatized foundation ingredients from someone like Nigella Lawson. You'd think that Dickson-Wright and Paterson's extensive experience and comparatively mindblowing expertise would make a difference, but you'd also think that people would find Jamie Oliver creepy rather than fellatable. (Do we touch Ainsley? Not if we can help it.)

For every OMGBACON dish, incidentally, there was plenty of perfectly non-fattish stuff going on. The tie-in cookbooks were quite useful to the lipiphobe on their own, as were Paterson's own two food anthologies and Dickson-Wright's Food.

I shan't get into the hygiene arguments; suffice it to say that those who haven't learned to prioritize the daily shower are very much in the minority over here these days. You might as well apply the same stereotype to gamers.

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 9, 2005 9:15 PM

Nigella is sexy but the Two Fat Ladies were deuced funny. I remember an episode which opened with them picking mushrooms in the woods. One said to the other that this reminded her of when she was a little girl and would go looking for mushrooms with which to poison her father. Only on British television could you get away with that!

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 9, 2005 10:42 PM

Sandalphon: Do you remember which episode that was at all? I need to see now if I've got it.

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 9, 2005 11:01 PM

I think it was "Food in the Wild," where they join a scout troop and make shooter's sandwiches (I'm drooling just thinking about that hot beef and gravy rolled up in the French bread.)

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 10, 2005 7:07 AM

Oh, I'm certain that the reputation for horrible eating is at least somewhat inflated. Still... the country has some particularly gross food-type-substances that it has to live down, such as the aforementioned blood pudding.

However.. at least they're not responsible for haggis.

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 10, 2005 10:57 AM

You know Scotland is part of Great Britain, right? :)

(The problems of using "English" interchangeably with "British" become clear after a month or so over here. :) )

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at November 10, 2005 11:03 AM

Ahhh, Scotland. Land of my forebears. Land where they deep fry everything. Including pizza.

Scotland, the only land that has a race of people who travel to England for the food.

Comment from: Wednesday White posted at November 10, 2005 11:21 AM

. . . of course, they deep fry things for the tourist-humour value . . .

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 10, 2005 11:54 AM

heh, of course I know that Scotland is part of Great Britain. But haggis is unique to those crazy Scots, I think.

Now, we in the South, we know from deep-frying. Have you ever had fried baked potatoes? Or a fried turkey? That's right, giant fryer with gallons of oil, drop that bad-boy in, and it's actually quite tender and not greasy at all.

Texans, we know from deep-frying. Scary, ain't it?

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 10, 2005 2:00 PM

Wait, so you bake the potatoes, and then you fry them? Sounds like you're wasting time on a step there.

Seems like the whole of the British Isles are terrible at cuisine. I'm of Irish descent, and I personally can't stand most of my ancestry's cooking (except bangers and mash, but that's pretty hard to foul up). I distinctly remember in my high school cooking class being asked to make something from my family's traditional ethnic background. I did my best to weasel out of it.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at November 10, 2005 2:17 PM

32 -- if I'd have been given that assignment, I would have brought in Scotch Eggs dripping with sausage and hard boiled eggs adorning them, and all the scotch and beer the class could drink.

I'd be expelled, but popular. And any who would testify against me would be too busy dealing with the massive heart attacks the meal gave them.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 10, 2005 2:23 PM

Well, I did have one friend who suggested just getting the teacher smashed on Guinness. I debated it, but ultimately decided to dupe her by claiming that German chocolate cake was actually a recipe from Germany, and dusting off some really ancient German roots.

Though if I had gone your route, Eric, the teacher did have a history of heart problems. I might have actually taken her out if I did something like that.

Comment from: bartles69 posted at November 10, 2005 2:24 PM

Mmmmmm. Deep-fried homogeneous plastic mass.


Is that more or less scary that the English "shall I boil it for you again?" school of cooking?

Comment from: Sandalphon posted at November 10, 2005 2:52 PM

Mean ol' cooking teacher! In eighth grade Family Studies class, we each had to cook our family/friends a complete meal, but we could choose any cuisine we wanted. I made a Caesar salad, rigatone bolognese, and chocolate mousse.

And I'm glad I'm typing this on a full stomach, or I'd be forced to sign off and pig out after having typed the above.

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 10, 2005 3:04 PM

32: "Wait, so you bake the potatoes, and then you fry them? Sounds like you're wasting time on a step there."

Please understand that I do not do this thing, this abomination. But I have seen it, and indeed the end product is ... different ... from french fries. It is hard to explain how, unless one has tasted this strange fruit.

Comment from: Aerin posted at November 10, 2005 3:32 PM

I will never understand the Deep Fried Twinkie. I just had to throw that out there.

Comment from: gwalla posted at November 10, 2005 4:41 PM

All of the sins of British cooking are redeemed by Yorkshire pudding. God damn that's good! (And an xmastime tradition in my family)

Comment from: kirabug posted at November 11, 2005 2:11 AM

Gwalla, amen. And if the last of the relatives I had that could cook a decent pudding hadn't died this past year, I might actually eat one again.

I'm afraid I have to opt out of the "whose food is grosser" category, seeing as I'm from just outside Philadelphia, home of Philly cheesesteak (panfried chipsteak on long rolls "wit" or "witout" onions, choice of American Cheese or Cheese Wiz (pourable homogeneous plastic mass), and potentially mushrooms and marinara sauce), hoagies (all the Italian-flavored processed lunch meat you can fit on a two foot long roll, with more cheese, oil, spices, lettuce, tomato, and more onions), soft pretzels, hard pretzels, beer pretzels, potato chips of all shapes, sizes, and flavors, funnel cake (fried dough swirled in nifty designs and covered with powdered sugar), Tastykakes, Breyers ice cream (though they've since left, which means the flavor's changed, no more Schuylkill Punch in the ice cream) and I'm sure a dozen or more other fattening, fried, or salted creations I'm forgetting because it's 2 am.

As a result, I'll eat pretty damn close to anything.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at November 11, 2005 2:26 AM

...tastykakes....

I can no longer eat sugared foods. This has saved my life.

But death might be worth it, if it means I can have another packet of Butterscotch Krimpets.

Frank did this to me. I knew not Tastykakes before he brought his Philadelphia ways to me.

Comment from: kirabug posted at November 11, 2005 2:37 AM

The more I hear about Frank, the more I like him.

I prefer the jelly krimpets out of the fridge so the jelly's good and solid, but any krimpet is better than no krimpet. And they're all better than that little debbie crap the rest of the country gets.

Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at November 11, 2005 9:58 AM

I'm originlly from South Jersey. Any mention of Tastykakes brings me back to my youth, filled with those chocolate cupcakes, miniature pies, and fudge bars. Oh, how I miss Tastykake fudge bars...

What pisses me off is that I didn't discover until I moved away from Jersey that over half of Tastykake's product line is exclusive to the Delaware Valley. I miss those sugar bombs so much.

And to be fair, a hoagie really isn't all that different from the long sandwiches you get in many places. Except that the tomatoes are juicier, the meat is more plentiful, and they know better than to put vinegar on it.

Just worth noting, "hoagie" is one of the three words I say that my wife (a Bostonian) makes fun of me for saying (the other two, with my accent, are "bury" and "water").

Comment from: larksilver posted at November 11, 2005 11:15 AM

I buy Little Debbie snacks for my son's lunches because I know for a fact that my fella and I won't touch them. Thus, they actually make it through the week. Occasionally, in the throes of sugar cravings, I'll try one before I remember why I don't eat them. They call this shit chocolate? blech.

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