What other countries are told is "American" (food) - funny!

[LeftInTX]

[brush]

1. Humorous and entertaining. Thanks for posting.

[Alliepoo]

2. Interesting!

But I should tell JJ that my grandkids love Oreo’s cereal and it’s a staple in my pantry!

[hunter]

3. Hah. Spaghetti Westerns.

My family is Wild West. My great grandparents were ranchers and miners and dairy people.

One of my grandfathers didn't want to be a miner or a rancher so he ran off at age sixteen to what was in his young mind the "Big City" of Cheyenne, Wyoming. (The population of Cheyenne at the time was about 12,000.)

He was severely disappointed by city life so he joined the Army Air Corp to see the world, which is how he eventually ended up as an aerospace engineer in Southern California.

Even though he'd fled his Wild West heritage, alienating his family and burning all his bridges behind him, as the Wild West movie mythology became more entrenched he became more of a cowboy representing a Wild West that never existed.

[LeftInTX]

4. Spaghetti Westerns came as a challenge to unrealistic, wholesome Hollywood westerns.

At the time, US westerns were a family oriented affair. Hollywood Westerns appealed to kiddos who played cowboys and Indians.

Sergio Leone changed that.

Fistful of Dollars was at first intended by Leone to reinvent the western genre in Italy. In his opinion, the American westerns of the mid- to late-1950s had become stagnant, overly preachy and not believable. Despite the fact that even Hollywood began to gear down production of such films, Leone knew that there was still a significant market in Europe for westerns. He observed that Italian audiences laughed at the stock conventions of both American westerns and the pastiche work of Italian directors working behind pseudonyms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars

The Spaghetti Western killed the John Wayne western...LOL

[hunter]

5. My Wild West great grandmothers were fierce women who generally controlled the family finances...

... property, and everything else. Their husbands were dreamers.

In this matriarchy civilized behavior was insisted upon and fools and their guns were soon parted.

Not like the movies at all.

It was a very similar sort of matriarchy in my wife's family who lived along what is now the Mexican border. Her dad's ancestors had been forced across the border by the U.S. Army. They later returned as "immigrant" farm workers. My wife's grandma, who was largely Native American, had a Green Card but refused to become a U.S. citizen. Her people held grudges. The first time I met my wife's grandma she stripped me naked with her eyes and stared into my soul. I'd probably have been incinerated on the spot if she hadn't judged me worthy of her granddaughter.

My own last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride from Scandinavia to Salt Lake City. She didn't like sharing a husband so she ran off with a monogamous Army surveyor who was passing through town. In those days the Federal government was trying to dilute the influence of the Mormon Church so they quickly granted a homestead to her and her new husband.

The common religion of my family is "Not Mormon!" which led to some rather unconventional pairings of frontier Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Pacifists. Christmas was a time of religious warfare in my childhood home much resembling the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Maybe that's the real Wild West.

[Wounded Bear]

6. In 1972, deep into our Med cruise we anchored in Athens, Greece...

We actually stopped there numerous times over the course of the cruise and one of our favorite hangouts had a huge sign bragging they had "real American style pizza."

I always found that amusing.

[Maraya1969]

7. What I find interesting while watching the Great British baking show is they use

fruits like raisins, sultanas (which is a raisin made from a green grape) in so much of their breads. I just remember how fruitcake, while I'm sure a lot of people love it, was always a joke around Christmas because no one wanted to eat it. The joke was to hold on to it until the next Christmas and send it on to someone else.

But on that show they are always chopping up raisins and putting them in breads. Personally - YUK

Also, that guy sounds just like my relatives from Canada. Notice how he says aboot ? (rather than about?)

[wnylib]

8. Glad to see that someone else noticed

that the expert on authentic American food and culture in this video is apparently Canadian.

[wnylib]

9. I made several Latin American friends

when I was tutoring English to adult English language learners. Many of them were from Mexico. One student had recently arrived after marrying an American that she met when he vacationed in Mexico. During November that year, when I explained the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, she was appalled to hear that we make pies out of pumpkin. She said that pumpkins were fed to farm animals in Mexico.

So I made a pumpkin pie to give her on our next meeting. She looked at it as if it were poison and asked, "What if I don't like it?" I said to give it to her husband. She reported later that she only tried a small bite, but her husband ate the whole thing and wanted to thank me.

She returned the favor by inviting me to an authentic Mexican dinner at the home of a new Mexican American friend that she had made. The student was from Guadalajara and complained that the food we call Mexican is not "real" or typical Mexican food because it's a bastardized version of foods from the Tex-Mex border area.

So her friend made mole (pronounced molay), a chicken dish with a tangy chocolate (not sweet) sauce and refried beans because I had said that I like them. Her friend also had married an American and was a naturalized citizen for 25 years at that time. She served an American desert, angel food cake.

The student loved the cake but thought we were teasing when we said it was called angel food. Her friend said that Americans have devil's food cake, too, but the student refused to believe us until her friend showed her a devil's food cake mix in her cupboard.

[LeftInTX]

11. Very interesting about the pumpkin pie??

They don't have pumpkin empanadas in Guadalajara?
Empanadas are turnovers. So they are basically a type of pumpkin pie.


Here is a recipe, but the author mentions that they were available at the border toll bridges, so maybe pumpkin empanadas are Tex-Mex?

https://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/empanadas-de-calabaza-pumpkin-turnover/

There is also a candied pumpkin, but I don't know where it originates.
https://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/calabaza-en-tacha-candied-pumpkin/


Pumpkins are native to Mexico.

You can buy pumpkin empanadas year round at Mexican bakeries here in South Texas.

Yes, I've had mole. It's available in many places here. (Not crazy about it myself)

The food here tends to be heavy and starchy. Beans, enchiladas, tamales etc...Tex-Mex food is regional and is probably based on what was available and evolved over the last 300 years. South Texas and Northern Mexico do not have the best climate for farming hence much of the cultivated food is bean and corn based. Meat is traditionally cheap cuts. There are also gourds that are native to Texas and Mexico and they are used in stews with corn and pork.




My MIL grew up on beans. They had beans every single day. She grew up in South Texas.

I assume a better variety of foods are available in Guadalajara due to it being a better climate.

[wnylib]

13. The woman who made the dinner was

from the Tex-Mex border area, across from El Paso. That's how she met her American husband. He was in the Army and went to a cantina on leave.

The student who was from Guadalajara said that Tex-Mex spicy foods are regional and not typical of all of Mexico. According to her, the food is different In places like Puebla and Guadalajara. Calling Tex-Mex typical of Mexico would be like saying Southern grits are typical American food. You can get grits outside of the South, but it's not a common food everywhere in the US.

Yes, I know what empanadas are. I have had Mexican and Puerto Rican style empanadas. The ones made by my Guadalajara friend were filled with meat, often pork, or sometimes shrimp. For holidays, she made them with sweet fillings. She also makes excellent flan. She rarely uses hot spices in cooking. She makes saffron rice, deep fried shrimp (in olive oil) and foods that are a bit more European style (Spanish) than you would find in northern Mexico near the border. She also uses fruits a lot for snacks or as part of a meal - mangos, papaya, bananas, and lemon and lime juices as seasonings and in salad dressings. She uses tortillas for all kinds of sandwiches.

The other friend, though, from the border area, could never get foods hot (spicy) enough to suit her. When we went out together, she ordered the hottest salsa on the menu and wanted more jalopenas for it. She offered it to me and I declined by saying, "Tengo una lengua gringa."

As for the Mexican calabasas, I know that they are native to Mexico, but my Guadalajara friend was totally unfamiliar with using them in foods made for people. That was in the mid 1990s. Perhaps it is different in Guadalajara now. Food uses and popularity are changeable. I can remember a time when yogurt was not nearly as common in the US as it is now.

[GoneOffShore]

10. Wow, his delivery is super annoying. Couldn't watch more than 90 seconds.

[Aristus]

12. I joined some Irish friends for lunch once in a pub in Belfast with an 'American' theme.

Paper American flags everywhere, but the food was unmistakably Irish, including 'mushy peas' which I had never in my life had before here in the States.

[Ron Obvious]

14. Ha, the Dutch "American Style" Fry sauce was the first thing I thought of

And then I saw it on the static picture of the video. It's pretty good, but entirely unknown here.