411–420 of 530 posts
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Well said. It's about priorities. My wife and I have found we are more culturally aligned with France and Italy. Focusing in enjoying the simple things in life, like a meal made from a few simple, delicious high quality ingredients.
That is also how California style cuisine is described.
Comparing grocery stores in USA and Europe (let’s say Italy), one big difference is that USA has a much larger variability in quality of products. In usa, You can buy the cheapest meats to the most expensive. While in italy the lower bound of meat quality is capped: a low end meat in Italy is medium to high end in USA. It makes grocery shopping in Italy much more pleasant than in USA. You go into any grocery store in…
IMHO, US supermarkets have very little on e.g. French supermarkets. I'm originally from the Netherlands, which has a pretty competitive range of supermarkets. But there's nothing like the French ones. They are huge and well stocked. The French obviously love food and don't really tolerate bad food. So their supermarkets are well stocked with amazingly good quality fish, meat, bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, etc. I'm less familiar with Italian supermarkets but I'd expect they are even more fanatical about good quality food. I've been to supermarkets in Spain and Portugal as well; same deal.
I currently live in Germany, home of Aldi and Lidl, which are big here obviously. My local supermarket is a Rewe. They are alright. 300 meters from my front door, I treat it like my walk in fridge. Convenience is key for me.
I think Walmart actually tried to expand to Europe and more or less failed. It seems like European supermarkets are doing better in the US.
I grew up in Montana so I am probably one of the few millennial Americans that probably recalls what life is like before supermarkets. They were just becoming a thing there as I was growing up. (Very, What's Eating Gilbert Grape.) We had an IGA in the small town I grew up in. The fresh food options there were borderline Soviet. We went to a butcher to get our meat when we didn't have meat from hunting. We got produce…
Why fuck raisins? Earnest question, I always just assumed taking a lot of the moisture out of a grape was bad enough for flavor
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I'm going to hang my comment here! Your corn starch statement made a perfect hook, but there are a lot of gravy comments I don't understand in this thread. I don't get why people would use flavour packets when making gravy, or why people would use corn starch. Not saying it's wrong, but that it seems unneeded. For example, let's say I fry up a pork chop. I may put 1/2 a spanish onion in the pan, and I'd definitely ad…
Corn starch in American sauces was probably introduced by Chinese immigrants, where starched based sauces are extremely common instead of flour-based ones, since wheat is historically less common in southern China (where most early Chinese immigrants came from) Starch also has the nice property of tenderizing meat and locking in juices when used in a marinade, in a process called “velveting.” https://www.bonappetit.c…
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"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…
There are some who are specialised in finding any possible excuse to bring up global warming in every thread. Can't you see that the majority of people don't care? Leave us alone already.
I grew up in Montana so I am probably one of the few millennial Americans that probably recalls what life is like before supermarkets. They were just becoming a thing there as I was growing up. (Very, What's Eating Gilbert Grape.) We had an IGA in the small town I grew up in. The fresh food options there were borderline Soviet. We went to a butcher to get our meat when we didn't have meat from hunting. We got produce…
Instead we had fruit stands selling produce, a bakery, a butcher, fishmonger selling seafood. And this isn't mentioning all the ethnic food stores. All of this was on two or three short blocks. The first time I saw a supermarket was when we went to New Jersey. It was a Wegmans and I think what was amazing to me was just how much stuff a single place could have.
I think ultimately it does come down to convenience. I think it's easier than ever to have decent meal at home. You don't even have to peel your own carrots or tear your own lettuce anymore. Sure something with more complexity might take time, but that's better for a weekend.
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You're right, I forgot about the cheese shops, because in France I wouldn't have to go out of my way to find good cheese. But, "Bread is indistinguishable"? WAT? Really? I guess we have different tastes. Other than some sourdough there is no bread I've had that I like in SF. That definitely varies by country in Europe. Hard to find good bread in Germany and some of those northern countries have their interesting brea…
> Hard to find good bread in Germany Must be a different Germany in a different Universe.. Back in Germany anybody who (realy) cares about bread wouldn't even think about buying those mass-baked chemicals from the stores. For bread you go to a craft bakery which you can find everywhere - if you don't just look for around the neighborhood of the big Supermarkets. And in those magical craft bakeries you'll find it hard…
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I regularly grind up a pile of vegetables in the vitamix and drink the result. Prep time is 5 minutes. Cleanup is 1 minute. I'm not really buying the "no time to eat healthy" thing.
The time involved in living healthy is not in the time it actually takes to make a meal (which is trivial, and can easily take less time than the round-trip to a fast food outlet.) The real time it takes is in the time you need to learn a bunch of skills that make that possible. In an ideal world you learnt those skills at your mother's knee, but we are now 3 generations into "fast food" so it's probable that was mis…
This is anecdotal data but I think our grocery stores are amazing wonders of the modern age and fulfill every need I could dream of.
I love our grocery stores too. But you need bigger dreams.
In all seriousness, having the massive variety of choice at reasonable (I grew up eating mainly plain grains) prices is a wonder.