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Ridiculous substitutions


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I grew up eating Lasagne that was made with cottage cheese. I never knew that I liked lasagne until I had it made W/O the cottage cheese. As a side note - I hate cottage cheese.

My sister made chili and instead tomatos she used tomato soup. ICK!

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Worst sub ever? Cool Whip mascarading as real whipped cream. Er, make that fat-free Cool Whip.

Second worst is definitely evaporated fat-free milk as a sub for heavy cream in recipes. I sometimes think WW recipe swaps are the worst things that ever happened to American food.

Thou Shalt Not Eat Food By DuPont. - Barb
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IMO, using carob for chocolate is the worst ever. Who thought of this? The only resemblance between carob and chocolate is the color. And yet people still insist that carob flavored things "taste just like chocolate." :blink: I like carob in and of itself, but it tastes nothing like chocolate.

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I don't think I've ever had soy-meat substitutes that ever tasted real. I will eat soyburgers, tvp, etc. as what it is, but don't expect me to agree that it tastes "just like meat". Not in my reality.

Tofu can and does taste like meat, or mushrooms, or whatever it's substituting for though, so I guess I just nulified my other post. Nevermind.

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I sometimes think WW recipe swaps are the worst things that ever happened to American food.

When I was a teenager, my mother inveigled me to endure Weight Watchers with her. There was this recipe for a "legal mock cheesecake" concoction that my mother and I used to make--mostly whipped cottage cheese sweetened with canned crushed pineapple, topped with powdered cinnamon and baked. The only thing more wretched than that dish was the pathetic way in which both my mother and I wound up craving it as the only relief from the rest of the food plan. Needless to say, we didn't last long in the program.

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I have never understood why people use substitutes for fresh garlic and onions. These items are inexpensive and universally available.

I have been served some nasty concoctions with overdoses of jarred garlic, or worse, copious amounts of garlic powder, onion powder, or the worst of all, garlic salt.

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Worcestershire sauce for soy sauce. Makes me mad, every time.

Big ol' kidney beans for small red beans.

Garlic Powder. Onion Powder. Dried Parsley.

Three substitions, if not ingredients, that I have immense problems with.

True, they aren't good subs for the real thing, but they do have their place. You can't have onion dip without onion powder, and Pizza just isn't the same to me without garlic powder on top.

He don't mix meat and dairy,

He don't eat humble pie,

So sing a miserere

And hang the bastard high!

- Richard Wilbur and John LaTouche from Candide

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I was once cooking at another's house, and was asked to make a Waldorf salad. But there was no mayo, nothing remotely close, and no way to make mayo (it's tough to make without eggs). I used Cool Whip, doused with lots of vinegar to cut the sweetness. It seemed to have worked, although I'll never cook in that house again (it was out-of-town, I got in the night before, and was informed that I was supervising Thanksgiving dinner for 24. "We have all the ingredients" they said). I'm not a pro chef by any means.

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Actual recipe I was given for "Creme Anglaise"...50% vanilla yogurt. 50% sour cream. Sugar to taste.

Kid you not.

“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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Actual recipe I was given for "Creme Anglaise"...50% vanilla yogurt.  50% sour cream.  Sugar to taste.

Kid you not.

Ugh!!!

I have one in my files for a substitute condensed cream-of-mushroom soup (isn't real condensed cream-of-mushroom soup bad enough?) that calls for flour, evaporated skim milk, and nonfat yogurt. :hmmm:

SuzySushi

"She sells shiso by the seashore."

My eGullet Foodblog: A Tropical Christmas in the Suburbs

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Here's a substitution my mother-in-law made in a recipe I had given her for Fassolakia Iadera, a Greek stew of green beans, zucchini, potato and tomato:

Instead of canned whole tomato, she used tomato sauce. As in Prego pasta sauce. Needless to say, the dish didn't come out so good. Now she wonders why we rave about it.

Some people just don't understand that if you deviate from a recipe, and it fails, it may not be the recipe's fault.

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Caramel sauce for caramel.

I once, and only once, used a recipe that called for brown sugar, gran. sugar, flour, water, margarine and vanilla. Boiled until thickened.

What a nasty recipe.

Real caramel is so easy to make, I was ashamed of myself. :sad:

-------------------------

Water Boils Roughly

Cold Eggs Coagulating

Egg Salad On Rye

-------------------------

Gregg Robinson

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I sometimes think WW recipe swaps are the worst things that ever happened to American food.

When I was a teenager, my mother inveigled me to endure Weight Watchers with her. There was this recipe for a "legal mock cheesecake" concoction that my mother and I used to make--mostly whipped cottage cheese sweetened with canned crushed pineapple, topped with powdered cinnamon and baked. The only thing more wretched than that dish was the pathetic way in which both my mother and I wound up craving it as the only relief from the rest of the food plan. Needless to say, we didn't last long in the program.

Is that where that came from??!!??!! grandma even had special pyrex to make them in the toaster oven ...that and apple sauce and white bread pie :wacko:

The great thing about barbeque is that when you get hungry 3 hours later....you can lick your fingers

Maxine

Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.

"It is the government's fault, they've eaten everything."

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Isn't there a recipe on the back of the Ritz cracker box for "mock apple pie?" I could never for the life of me understand how you'd mistake Ritz crackers, even with a lot of sugar and cinnamon, for apples.

"I just hate health food"--Julia Child

Jennifer Garner

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You'd have to try it . . . I've never made it, but I had it once at a potluck. It really does sort of taste like apple pie, but the texture is . . . different - think grated apple. If you think about it, cinnamon and butter flavors sort of overpower the apple-ness of apple pie anyway. At any rate, consider that the sort of folks who make this and rave over it aren't really apple pie experts anyway.

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Worcestershire sauce for soy sauce. Makes me mad, every time.

Big ol' kidney beans for small red beans.

Garlic Powder. Onion Powder. Dried Parsley.

Three substitions, if not ingredients, that I have immense problems with.

I regard them as flavoring agents not substitutes. They have limited but legitimate use such as part of a fry coating or popcorn seasoning.

Living hard will take its toll...
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Wow... I really like cottage cheese in my lasagna. I guess I suck.

I'm inclined to say that my least favorite sub would be Miracle Whip for mayo, but the 'Whip freaks around here are telling me that Miracle Whip is NOT a mayo sub... :biggrin: All I know is, that stuff tastes like ass with sugar and I don't want it on my sandwich or my chicken/tuna salad!

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