You had to be (born) there

[dockhl]

Arriving as an adult in North America I was astonished to have a soft drink foisted on me which smelled and tasted like the cut-salve of childhood. Yech.

What was it? You aren't saying root beer smells like Germolene, are you? (Minty?? )

[DerekW]

What was it? You aren't saying root beer smells like Germolene, are you? (Minty??  )

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That's what I'm saying. Rootbeer smells to me just like the pink ointment of yesteryear, and that certainly wasn't minty. Maybe Germolene smells different now. This was back in the days when Germolene arrived in a round tin, not one of those newfangled tubes.

[fodgycakes]

Balut is also a Vietnamese food so that's one more group that eats it. (: I love it boiled with some salt, pepper, and Vietnamese coriander leaves.

[Dorine]

Vernor's ginger ale. As a kid in Michigan I loved this stuff, but after moving to Seattle I was shocked that none of my friends would drink it. I guess it does have a very unique taste, but I can't think of a better and more nostalgic lunch than Vernor's and pizza. Mmmm.

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Vernor's I can handle.

But you gotta have a lot of moxie to down Moxie.

AFAIK, the beverage is confined to New England these days. I hope it doesn't break loose and contaminate the rest of the country again.

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I've never heard of Vernor's ginger ale. How is it different from any other ginger ale, such as Schweppes?

As for root beer, you have to drink the right kind. Some are vile. But then there is Stewart's, really good root beer!

[Dorine]

umeboshi! I love it, but I'm from Kyoto. I also like natto, because my father was from Tokyo and I grew up eating it. Still, I haven't met many people who will eat umeboshi. On a trivia show, a Swedish couple was given a traditional Japanese breakfast, and they said the tamagoyaki, misoshiru, aji, was fine, but they couldn't eat the natto and umeboshi.

I can't eat cilantro.

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Umeboshi--yum! I have a jar in the fridge now. Cook some sushi rice and pat it into a patty with an umeboshi plum tucked inside. Lovely snack. :-)~~~ I discovered this treat when a Japanese family moved into my neighborhood and we became friendly. Her son and my nephew are the same age and they played together. She made these for lunch. I was hooked.

[jkonick]

Vernor's ginger ale. As a kid in Michigan I loved this stuff, but after moving to Seattle I was shocked that none of my friends would drink it. I guess it does have a very unique taste, but I can't think of a better and more nostalgic lunch than Vernor's and pizza. Mmmm.

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Vernor's I can handle.

But you gotta have a lot of moxie to down Moxie.

AFAIK, the beverage is confined to New England these days. I hope it doesn't break loose and contaminate the rest of the country again.

←

I've never heard of Vernor's ginger ale. How is it different from any other ginger ale, such as Schweppes?

As for root beer, you have to drink the right kind. Some are vile. But then there is Stewart's, really good root beer!

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I can't really describe the taste of Vernor's... it's more "intense" than something like Schweppes, but not in a super-spicy ginger beer way. It just tastes "different." I've never had another ginger ale that tastes like it.

As for Moxie, I had it for the first time a couple weeks ago (in Seattle, so watch out!) and I'd say it wasn't too bad. It tasted like a more medicinal version of root beer to me. I'd try it again but I don't know if I'd make a habit of it.

Also, I must chime in as a Jew who absolutely detests gefilte fish and kishke (and almost every other traditional Ashkenazi food.) It all tastes like cardboard to me

[MarketStEl]

As for Moxie, I had it for the first time a couple weeks ago (in Seattle, so watch out!) and I'd say it wasn't too bad. It tasted like a more medicinal version of root beer to me. I'd try it again but I don't know if I'd make a habit of it.

The medicinal part I agree with, but the root beer part? Overwhelmed by the medicine, it seemed to me.

Also, I must chime in as a Jew who absolutely detests gefilte fish and kishke (and almost every other traditional Ashkenazi food.) It all tastes like cardboard to me 

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Self-Hating Jew? I'm Oreo. Pleased to meet you.

[Sneakeater]

You have to live in Rochester to get a garbage plate

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I submit to you that this dish sounds worse than it tastes.

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But . . . but . . . it sounds GREAT!!!!!

[Sneakeater]

There's a White Castle on 8th Avenue at 36th Street. 

I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed or not to admit it, but I've never eaten at one.  Are they considered a New York thing?  I'd always thought they were midwestern.

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I guess we consider them ethnic.

[Dorine]

You have to live in Rochester to get a garbage plate

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I submit to you that this dish sounds worse than it tastes.

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But . . . but . . . it sounds GREAT!!!!!

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OK, I finally have to ask. What is a garbage plate?

[Sneakeater]

If you click on the words "garbage plate" in Gordon Cooks's post, it'll link you to an illustrated explanation.

Edited July 13, 2006 by Sneakeater (log)

[jkonick]

As for Moxie, I had it for the first time a couple weeks ago (in Seattle, so watch out!) and I'd say it wasn't too bad. It tasted like a more medicinal version of root beer to me. I'd try it again but I don't know if I'd make a habit of it.

The medicinal part I agree with, but the root beer part? Overwhelmed by the medicine, it seemed to me.

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Hmmm. I tried another Moxie today, and I think I've pinpointed the flavor (and go figure, it's another Jewish thing): really bad Kosher wine, only carbonated. I guess I got the root beer thing because it has a slight herbal taste similar to rootbeer, but it's not that close.

[H. du Bois]

There's a White Castle on 8th Avenue at 36th Street. 

I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed or not to admit it, but I've never eaten at one.  Are they considered a New York thing?  I'd always thought they were midwestern.

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I guess we consider them ethnic.

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Exotic, too.

[Petrissage]

umeboshi! I love it, but I'm from Kyoto. I also like natto, because my father was from Tokyo and I grew up eating it. Still, I haven't met many people who will eat umeboshi.

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I have never been within 2,000 miles of Kyoto and I love umeboshi, too. I have a jar in my refrigerator and often ask sushi chefs for umeboshi rolls when in sushi bars. Yum! I love shiso, too, even grow the green Japanese and the Korean.

Now don't get me started on why I don't like a Native American food usually served at public festivals in the southwestern U.S.: fry bread, complete with greasy wrapping paper. I do, however, like mutton soft tacos...

What do you like to do with umeboshi?

[Pan]

I don't remember whether tempoyak (a fermented durian dipping sauce from Kelantan, the northernmost state on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia) has been mentioned yet. I wonder how many non-Malaysians would like that. It's one of the dipping sauces used with ulam (a traditional East Coast dish of raw or/and slightly steamed or parboiled wild or/and cultivated leaves and such, real kampung [village] nostalgia for me). Another of the dipping sauces, sambal belacan, is also very strong: A combination of a hefty amount of shrimp paste and a hefty amount of hot pepper, essentially. I consider it indispensible for ulam.

[MaxH]

Some modern experiences of root beer are regrettable and depart from the drink's roots (pardon me), when the stuff is simplistic and wintergreeny.

Arriving as an adult in North America I was astonished to have a soft drink foisted on me which smelled and tasted like the cut-salve of childhood.

Some root beers I grew up with were very different from what you get now from nationally dominant commodity soft-drink producers.

The stuff was a big deal 100 years ago, the de-facto national soft drink. Different people used different herbal recipes. A popular formula book from the 1920s gives a few of them, typically founded on sassafras bark or its oil, licorice or anise, and wintergreen oil. (The most complex includes five other flavoring roots and two other barks.) Circa 1970 I remember we would get a decent extract that was sold in the supermarket. You'd then add water, sugar, and yeast, and ferment it. This gave a very gentle soft carbonation along the lines of a classic ale, and a slight viscosity like an ale; an insignificant trace of alcohol (as in fresh bread or ripe fruit juice -- bubbles being the object of the ferment), and a subtle, slightly tart flavor, very satisfying.

Today I occasionally try root beer and all I taste is gross carbonation, lots of sugar, and wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate), presumably synthetic. That's a flavoring and classic herbal liniment long used also in skin medications and "medicated" cough drops.

(Edited to add: It was commonly called Sarsaparilla in its heyday, rather than root beer. The long recipe I cited is from the Ayer company and was used in its advertising, according to the formula book.)

Edited July 15, 2006 by MaxH (log)

[Dorine]

Some modern experiences of root beer are regrettable and depart from the drink's roots (pardon me), when the stuff is simplistic and wintergreeny.

Arriving as an adult in North America I was astonished to have a soft drink foisted on me which smelled and tasted like the cut-salve of childhood.

Some root beers I grew up with were very different from what you get now from nationally dominant commodity soft-drink producers.

The stuff was a big deal 100 years ago, the de-facto national soft drink. Different people used different herbal recipes. A popular formula book from the 1920s gives a few of them, typically founded on sassafras bark or its oil, licorice or anise, and wintergreen oil. (The most complex includes five other flavoring roots and two other barks.) Circa 1970 I remember we would get a decent extract that was sold in the supermarket. You'd then add water, sugar, and yeast, and ferment it. This gave a very gentle soft carbonation along the lines of a classic ale, and a slight viscosity like an ale; an insignificant trace of alcohol (as in fresh bread or ripe fruit juice -- bubbles being the object of the ferment), and a subtle, slightly tart flavor, very satisfying.

Today I occasionally try root beer and all I taste is gross carbonation, lots of sugar, and wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate), presumably synthetic. That's a flavoring and classic herbal liniment long used also in skin medications and "medicated" cough drops.

(Edited to add: It was commonly called Sarsaparilla in its heyday, rather than root beer. The long recipe I cited is from the Ayer company and was used in its advertising, according to the formula book.)

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Yes! I used to enjoy sarsparilla at my grandparents' in NYC.

Is it possible to make old-fashioned root beer at home? Does anybody have a recipe?

[MarketStEl]

Some root beers I grew up with were very different from what you get now from nationally dominant commodity soft-drink producers.

The stuff was a big deal 100 years ago, the de-facto national soft drink.  Different people used different herbal recipes.  A popular formula book from the 1920s gives a few of them, typically founded on sassafras bark or its oil, licorice or anise, and wintergreen oil.  (The most complex includes five other flavoring roots and two other barks.)  Circa 1970 I remember we would get a decent extract that was sold in the supermarket.  You'd then add water, sugar, and yeast, and ferment it.  This gave a very gentle soft carbonation along the lines of a classic ale, and a slight viscosity like an ale; an insignificant trace of alcohol (as in fresh bread or ripe fruit juice -- bubbles being the object of the ferment), and a subtle, slightly tart flavor, very satisfying.

Today I occasionally try root beer and all I taste is gross carbonation, lots of sugar, and wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate), presumably synthetic.  That's a flavoring and classic herbal liniment long used also in skin medications and "medicated" cough drops.

(Edited to add: It was commonly called Sarsaparilla in its heyday, rather than root beer.  The long recipe I cited is from the Ayer company and was used in its advertising, according to the formula book.)

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Ayer as in N.W. Ayer, the Philadelphia ad agency that was the largest in the world in the 1920s, or some other Ayer?

I remember sometime in the 1970s, a small soft drink manufacturer tried to revive old-fashioned sarsaparilla, selling it--in cans!--under the name Olde Tyme Sarsaparilla. I remember buying a can and thinking it was a good bit snappier than root beer, with a slightly peppery flavor (maybe that was the anise or licorice I was tasting).

I don't think the product lasted all that long.

[MaxH]

Sarsaparilla root itself was an original flavoring for root beer although most of the recipes in my source use other roots and barks.

(I wouldn't be surprised if the drink started as a mild medicinal or tonic. So many drinks did, liqueurs especially, when herbs provided most available medicines. Many familiar flavoring herbs have mild specific benefits, such as carminatives or gas reducers, and are listed thus in older technical reference books. Kola-nut extract recipes are listed as medicines in the book I quoted above; today kola, or "cola," syrup still is used against mild nausea, effectively I gather.)

The "Ayer" recipe above refers to "Ayer's sarsaparilla," no details on the firm. The proportions FYI are Sarsaparilla root 10 parts, yellow dock root 8, licorice root 8, buckthorn bark 4, burdock root 3, senna leaves 2 [for coloring?], black cohosh root 2, stillingia root 4, poke root 1, cinchona red bark 2 [a quinine source, both flavorful and medicinal], potassium iodide 4 [? suggesting inland location, iodide being used instead of plain salt sometimes against iodine deficiency -- I'm only guessing. That's unnecessary in coastal areas of course because it's in the soil and plants]. Made up with a little alcohol and glycerin, syrup, and water.

Other recipes included the components I cited earlier and/or cassia, clove, etc.

[gini]

Has anyone mentioned Spam yet?

[Dorine]

Has anyone mentioned Spam yet?

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Repulsive over-salted stuff, isn't it?

[Sneakeater]

Where exactly would you have to have been born to appreciate Spam?

[JennotJenn]

BBQ Slaw. You kinda have to be raised in or around Lexington, NC to get it. There's nothing nasty in it, just shredded cabbage, cider vinegar, sugar, ketchup, cayenne and black pepper. But most non-natives won't even try it based on looks alone. It's sort of pink. And delicious. I hate mayonaise based slaw.

Here's a link to Guilford Mill : http://www.oldmillofguilford.com/products.htm

It dosen't look like they take orders on their site, but you could call them. Be a whole hell of a lot cheaper than ordering from Zingerman's. Sure, they're not organic or nothin', but they are good grits (I HATE Quaker grits). I still don't think you'll like them, though.

Edited July 18, 2006 by JennotJenn (log)

[carpetbagger, esq.]

Where exactly would you have to have been born to appreciate Spam?

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a couple options:

(1) the aloha state.

(2) ww2 england

(3) wherever the spam restaurant from the monty python skit was located!

(4) manila - home to spamjam, a spam-dominated menu similar to (3)

[MaxH]

Has anyone mentioned Spam yet?

Even beyond Spam itself (which does ironic or tongue-in-cheek advertising in recent years, credit where due), the larger product genre that it belongs to gets some play online.

The following is old news from a couple years ago, I apologize if you saw it already, and I may have posted it before to eGullet:

--

Subject: Horribile dictu! The Potted Meat Food Products Corpus

A milestone in my gastronomic education. A co-worker handed me ("YOU will like this") a sheaf printed from the following Web site and subordinate links: http://www.pk.org/pottedmeat.html

Initial photo of current canned products is eloquent enough (Armour Pork Brains in Milk Gravy, said to have 1200% the US RDA cholesterol limit, crowds a can of Bronte Lamb Tongues) but it gets better. Flint River Ranch definition of "Meat by-products," the exact industry meaning and regulatory history of Mechanically Separated Poultry. Very well written. One of the links (the Potted Meat Food Product Tribute Page) describes a dialog with Armour Star Products, contacted for the purpose.

I'm reminded of H. P. Lovecraft's stories of knowledge better undiscovered; or of that documentary on the bagpipe, with accounts of initial horrified English reactions to the instrument ("... It is a Thing from Hell -- a Thing That Should Not Be ...")

Bon appétit. -- Max