You're an American if..
- Thread starter Himself
- Start date
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/nielsen.htm
Heres a start. Its only top 20 but itll give ya an idea.
Heres a start. Its only top 20 but itll give ya an idea.
add up the news shows and add up the non news shows...
However Im not gonna dig up 1-2-3 year old info I know Ive read... you can google that in your spare time if you like I dont have that much myself. Number of posts I have here pretty much show that hhe... I have a hard time keeping up the few forums I am in...
I look forward to you showing me Im wrong. Id be happy to see a trend thats says us is watching more and better news (Newsmagazines and cable outlets and not the 6 oclock local horror fest mind you).
id put the cultural life of americans as more important than the latest drive bys or rapes reports for now...
However Im not gonna dig up 1-2-3 year old info I know Ive read... you can google that in your spare time if you like I dont have that much myself. Number of posts I have here pretty much show that hhe... I have a hard time keeping up the few forums I am in...
I look forward to you showing me Im wrong. Id be happy to see a trend thats says us is watching more and better news (Newsmagazines and cable outlets and not the 6 oclock local horror fest mind you).
id put the cultural life of americans as more important than the latest drive bys or rapes reports for now...
Having recently lived in Italy for 4 months, and later spent two weeks visiting my girlfriend where she was interning in a restaurant kitchen outside of Naples, I think I'm qualified to answer this question.
The pizza at CPK and other "yuppie-ish" pizza places does not taste all that much like Italian pizza just because it's also made in a brick oven. The CPK crust is thicker and much "breadier", and their toppings are generally dissimilar from what comes on Italian pizza. I like CPK, but it is definitely California pizza as advertised.
Italian pizzeria pizza (as opposed to that sold by-the-slice at lunch counter places) is characterised by a very thin crust (although not at all cracker-y like the pizza from my home town, St. Louis) with an unbleached flour-y taste, and much fresher mozzarella than what Americans are used to. (It is still dried, shredded mozzarella, but it tastes very strongly of milk and indeed often has the unfortunate side effect of getting the middle of the pizza a bit soggy.) The toppings are actually more in the style of American delivery pizza joints than of fancy yuppie brick oven places, in that they commonly consist of shredded mozzarella with bits of one or two cheap meat products and/or vegetables. Of course the actual ingredients are quite different--instead of cardboard mozzarella with pepperoni, hamburger, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, peppers, onions, etc., it's milky mozzarella with spicy salami, speck, prosciutto, bresaola, mushrooms, anchovies, eggplant, etc. And sometimes arugula, which they like to put in everything. Pizzas topped with hunks of fresh mozzarella instead of covered in shredded mozzarella do exist, but without too many topping choices (and, except around Naples, the fresh buffalo mozzarella pizza almost never comes with anything else on it). Also a couple cheeseless pizzas. And you don't get to build your own--you pick from a (long) list. But, as I said, the spirit of the topping choices is very similar to that of low-brow American pizza.
FWIW, the pizza comes uncut, and you are expected to eat it all and not share.
Pizzarie always use brick ovens, but the closest I've found in the US was actually some nondescript pizza from a place in New York (on the ground floor of my friend's building at...93rd and 1st, I think) that came out of a pizza oven. The defining factor was the crust--I think it has something to do with the water in NYC. And the mozz, while not nearly as distinctive as in Italy, was further along towards that extreme than any other pizza I've had in America.
As these things go, it was really close: not close enough that it wouldn't stick out a bit from the usual if it were located in Italy, but close enough that it wouldn't be considered not Italian, either. In fact I'd say that that pizza is probably the prepared food I've had in America that tastes closest to its Italian counterpart.
It, and American pizza overall, are definitely closer to Italian pizza than other American Italian food comes to other Italian food. This isn't just because American Italian food skews toward Southern Italy--I spent most of my time there in Sicily, and the food is nothing like in America.
Part of it is because American Italian food is based on dishes that are not very common (or even nonexistent) in Italy. And part of it is because Italian cuisine generally highlights a couple fresh ingredients, and even though the same ingredients are generally available in the US, they don't taste the same. This is noticeable enough on pizza, where the mozzarella in particular is a different food from what they have in Italy. But it's IMO more noticable with other food, particularly with good Italian food.
The point is, you can get pizza in America which comes just as close to Italian pizza as the closest American Italian food comes to Italian food. And the average American pizza has a lot more in common with Italian pizza than the average American Italian food. If American pizza isn't Italian food, then nothing in America is.
(Short of foods made and packaged in Italy. And even then, it's debatable. Italian cheese imported into America isn't the same as Italian cheese, because it has to be pasteurized for the American market. High-end Italian olive oil imported America isn't the same as high-end Italian olive oil, because the good stuff doesn't make it to America, outside of a few specialty shops. Same with balsamic vinegar; it's almost impossible to find real balsamic (which must be aged a minimum of 18 years) in America. And so on.)
PS - as I mentioned, there's also pizza sold by the slice in Italy, which is an entirely different piece of food from what you get at a sit-down pizzeria. Different, thicker crust, completely different topping selection, less dominated by the cheese, made in an electric oven not a wood-burning brick oven. There's more variation here, but at one end it comes extremely close to the pizza from Pinocchio's in Harvard Square in Boston. More American pizza as Italian food! And moreover, the difference between different types of Italian pizza is much wider than the difference between each type and similar American pizzas.
The pizza at CPK and other "yuppie-ish" pizza places does not taste all that much like Italian pizza just because it's also made in a brick oven. The CPK crust is thicker and much "breadier", and their toppings are generally dissimilar from what comes on Italian pizza. I like CPK, but it is definitely California pizza as advertised.
Italian pizzeria pizza (as opposed to that sold by-the-slice at lunch counter places) is characterised by a very thin crust (although not at all cracker-y like the pizza from my home town, St. Louis) with an unbleached flour-y taste, and much fresher mozzarella than what Americans are used to. (It is still dried, shredded mozzarella, but it tastes very strongly of milk and indeed often has the unfortunate side effect of getting the middle of the pizza a bit soggy.) The toppings are actually more in the style of American delivery pizza joints than of fancy yuppie brick oven places, in that they commonly consist of shredded mozzarella with bits of one or two cheap meat products and/or vegetables. Of course the actual ingredients are quite different--instead of cardboard mozzarella with pepperoni, hamburger, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, peppers, onions, etc., it's milky mozzarella with spicy salami, speck, prosciutto, bresaola, mushrooms, anchovies, eggplant, etc. And sometimes arugula, which they like to put in everything. Pizzas topped with hunks of fresh mozzarella instead of covered in shredded mozzarella do exist, but without too many topping choices (and, except around Naples, the fresh buffalo mozzarella pizza almost never comes with anything else on it). Also a couple cheeseless pizzas. And you don't get to build your own--you pick from a (long) list. But, as I said, the spirit of the topping choices is very similar to that of low-brow American pizza.
FWIW, the pizza comes uncut, and you are expected to eat it all and not share.
Pizzarie always use brick ovens, but the closest I've found in the US was actually some nondescript pizza from a place in New York (on the ground floor of my friend's building at...93rd and 1st, I think) that came out of a pizza oven. The defining factor was the crust--I think it has something to do with the water in NYC. And the mozz, while not nearly as distinctive as in Italy, was further along towards that extreme than any other pizza I've had in America.
As these things go, it was really close: not close enough that it wouldn't stick out a bit from the usual if it were located in Italy, but close enough that it wouldn't be considered not Italian, either. In fact I'd say that that pizza is probably the prepared food I've had in America that tastes closest to its Italian counterpart.
It, and American pizza overall, are definitely closer to Italian pizza than other American Italian food comes to other Italian food. This isn't just because American Italian food skews toward Southern Italy--I spent most of my time there in Sicily, and the food is nothing like in America.
Part of it is because American Italian food is based on dishes that are not very common (or even nonexistent) in Italy. And part of it is because Italian cuisine generally highlights a couple fresh ingredients, and even though the same ingredients are generally available in the US, they don't taste the same. This is noticeable enough on pizza, where the mozzarella in particular is a different food from what they have in Italy. But it's IMO more noticable with other food, particularly with good Italian food.
The point is, you can get pizza in America which comes just as close to Italian pizza as the closest American Italian food comes to Italian food. And the average American pizza has a lot more in common with Italian pizza than the average American Italian food. If American pizza isn't Italian food, then nothing in America is.
(Short of foods made and packaged in Italy. And even then, it's debatable. Italian cheese imported into America isn't the same as Italian cheese, because it has to be pasteurized for the American market. High-end Italian olive oil imported America isn't the same as high-end Italian olive oil, because the good stuff doesn't make it to America, outside of a few specialty shops. Same with balsamic vinegar; it's almost impossible to find real balsamic (which must be aged a minimum of 18 years) in America. And so on.)
PS - as I mentioned, there's also pizza sold by the slice in Italy, which is an entirely different piece of food from what you get at a sit-down pizzeria. Different, thicker crust, completely different topping selection, less dominated by the cheese, made in an electric oven not a wood-burning brick oven. There's more variation here, but at one end it comes extremely close to the pizza from Pinocchio's in Harvard Square in Boston. More American pizza as Italian food! And moreover, the difference between different types of Italian pizza is much wider than the difference between each type and similar American pizzas.
Dave H said:
Oh come on. If the nonsense hysteria and pseudo-elitism around "high end" wine culture wasn't bad enough, now we have high-end "Olive Oil", with Olive Oil "tasting", contests, and all of the surrounding wine culture. I suppose good wine doesn't make it to the US either (as if California or Austrailian wines were inferior to French or Italian wines)
I bet less than 10% of the population could even taste the difference between a $10 olive oil and a $100 olive oil, let alone the difference between a high-end American olive oil and a high-end Italian olive oil. Wine culture has already been embarrassed several times, first, by the inability of French judges to taste the difference between Californian and French wines, and secondly, by the inability of wine critics to detect the difference between a "high end" wine, and two buck chuck.
I really wish someone like consumer reports would conduct a double blind scientific study of this.
I also disagree with pizza issue. I have been to lots of italian restaurants in that serve authentic naples style pizza, not "americanized pizza" Unless I accidently ain't in an American joint in Naples when I was there, or my taste buds suck, I didn't detect too much of a difference. In fact, when I was in Naples, there was a high variation between the pizza I had, some of it awful, some of it good.
However, there is one joint in NY that is "officially certified" to be authentic: La Pizza Fresca.
I am spending 3 weeks in italy coming up in September, so I will have a chance to put this to the test again.
I dislike cultural elitism and the associated puffery. I mean, why are all the "high end" restaurants French? Why is French associated with fine cuisine and Chinese associated with fast food? There is more variety in Chinese food than French and it tastes better IMHO because it's not greased and sauced up. I spent over $120 per person to eat at "The French Laundry" (the best restaurant in the US) in Sonoma, and while the service was great, and there was a certainly creatively in the dishes (pureed raw fish on an icecream cone made out of potato), I was underwhelmed and though I had better tasting food at a local authentic chinese joint.
I recently got back from a business trip from London. As always, I went to recommended joints that some Londoners recommended, since of course, "you can get better food in London than in the US". Well guess what, I was equally underwhelmed. Except for Indian food, everything else was mostly the same I get in CA and NY, except that the Mexican was bad compared to CA.
People who talk about tasting pesticides, GMO, "organic" produce (e.g. can taste the difference between free range and caged), water the plant was grown with, are mostly talking out of their ass.
Food culture really need a CSICOP debunking like it has done to the paranormal.
Actually, I've found I don't like Italian pizza, and much prefer the US versions of it. I dislike the thin crust, and the cheese used there is mighty salty. (Or at least in my experience)DemoCoder said:
DemoCoder said:
Um, did I say that? ...no.
The best California wines are generally accepted to be ahead of the best Italians (and any other regions) and about tied with the best French. They're priced like it, too. I can't comment on whether they deserve it, because I'm not quite able to drop many hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine (nor am I enough of a wine drinker to appreciate it), but as snobby wine connoisseurs appear to agree on this I'll take their word for it.
And yes, olive oil tastings do exist, in Italy at least. While that's a little silly, having had several different, reasonably fresh, boutique olive oils in Italy (two of them made by people I know), I can tell you that there's a very large, very obvious variety in olive oils, and that some of them taste a lot better and more interesting than Bertolli or anything else you can get in a supermarket in America. (Or in a supermarket in Italy, for that matter.)
It's not that snobby, it's just the truth. And they're not hideously expensive, just impossible to find in America. If you want a better analogy than top wines, I'd compare it more to high-end microbrewed beers. There's a bit of snobbishness involved, perhaps, but many of the taste differences would be obvious to anyone, and the prices involved, if you're local, are not more than about twice what you'd pay for mass-brand decent olive oil. The problem is that, like microbrewed beers, you've got next to no chance of buying it much outside the region of production, much less in another continent.
For that matter, I was considering including in my list the mass-market (in Italy) jars of Sicilian anchovies we used to get, which were utterly fabulous (I'd never been able to eat an anchovy before). Apparently they're available through Dean & Deluca or some such for roughly 20 times the price in Sicily. Is that snobby yuppie fare for New Yorkers? Maybe, yeah. But it's 90 Euro cents a small jar in Sicily.
As for real balsamic vinegar, it's simply a different food from the balsamic vinegar you buy in the US, or in an Italian supermarket for that matter. Instead of a thin liquid it's a thick syrup. It's absurdly expensive, but then you can use a drop or two to flavor an entire dish. And the ways you're meant to use it--on Parmagian cheese, on fresh strawberries, in vanilla ice cream, and, get this, straight from a spoon down the hatch--are completely different from how one uses "balsamic vinegar". They're just different foods. And the point is, what we get in America is not at all the authentic article.
Again, there is no such thing as $100 olive oil. I'm sure prices get a bit silly when imported in small quantities to the US to sell to yuppies (and/like me), but nowhere near that large. And the differences can be striking. Mostly in an interesting way, not in a wow, this is the most refined and subtle thing I've ever tasted way.
Also, I don't think there is any American olive oil, at least nothing better than bulk cooking grade. (Or perhaps boutique olive oils, although I haven't heard of it.) Most olive oil comes from Italy, with Spain and Greece the main competition.
As for wine, no one is embarrassed anymore about how good some California wines are, and I sincerely doubt there have been blind tests proving "wine critics" can't tell the difference between good wine and $2 wine, or even $200 wine and $40 wine. There have indeed been blind tests showing that non-experts can't tell the difference between two vintages of the same wine (or identify which one is supposed to be better). And they were somewhat embarrassing in that most American sommeliers ended up in that "non-expert" category, not much ahead of American yuppies (U of Chicago Club members, I believe it was). French sommeliers, on the other hand, could differentiate quite well. In any case, those are the most "embarrassing" results I've heard of.
Ok, although until boutique olive oils are more widely available in the US I don't know where they'll get the samples.
Oh, agreed. There's a pizza restaurant on every corner in Italy, and while most of it is alright, most of it isn't amazing either. All of it is relatively distinctive from American pizza, although as I've been arguing not so distinct that they aren't still very close cousins. I wouldn't even go so far as to say that Italian pizza as a whole is better than American pizza as a whole, although some people certainly feel that way.
Ugh, I'm jealous of you. Well, I'll make it to the French Laundry someday. Meanwhile, I should point out that despite the name it's not exactly "French" (although all the 4 star New York restaurants according to the New York Times are), certainly not in a traditional way.
And in general I agree with you about Chinese food. But hey--lest you forget, we're talking about pizza here. I'm sure you wouldn't argue the fact that most Americanized Chinese food is greasy, overfried and not very good. As you said, authentic ethnic food places can be great.
And that's exactly what I'm talking about--authentic Italian food. But authentic Italian cuisine is simple food that rests on the strength of the ingredients that go in it. Most of the best restaurants in Italy are family-owned places out in the middle of nowhere. Because that's where the food is.
I'm not sure who really thinks London has better high-end (i.e. expensive) food than New York, or even the Bay Area. They have had a couple celebrity chefs of late, but again not really anything to compare to New York. The Indian food's great, though.
Agreed 90%. I absolutely don't agree that "organic" food, much less GM-free food, is inherently any better than food grown with the help of, you know, science. On the other hand, there's a huge and obvious quality difference between cheap mass-produced food and ingredients that are more carefully tended. Unfortunately, oftentimes there is a correlation between modern agricultural techniques and cheap assembly-line ingredients. Plus with produce in particular there's a disconnect between what looks good on a grocery store shelf and what actually tastes good; and the more mass-produced stuff tends to aim for looks (and the ability to keep its looks while in a truck and on a shelf for longer periods of time) while at least some of the "organic" produce is actually bred for taste.
Again, I don't think there's much if any causation there. I'm entirely positive that if higher-end producers would just take advantage of recent breakthroughs in agricultural/food science, they could come up with a better (and cheaper) product. And worst of all, now that "organic" is a mass-market trend, most organic food isn't grown with any more care than normal supermarket food. Certainly the packaged "substituted processed tofu derivatives for all known food items" crap is not only terrible but humorously bad for you as well. (Perhaps the funniest point is that soybeans are the crop most likely to be GM, something like 85% in the US. And even funnier, Europe gets all their soy--which is a lot--from us and Argentina, who also use GM soy. The amount of GM imports that have been kept out of the EU by the moratorium pales in comparison to the amount that have been let in and consumed. (Roundup-ready soy was exempted because it was approved before the moratorium went in place.)
)I'd love to see that. Food, from agriculture to cooking, is a fascinating and extremely non-trivial blend of biology and chemistry, and it could benefit enormously if more of the food industry took that view of it. Unfortunately about the only ones that do are those in the flavor industry--whose job is to mask the fact that the processed dinners you are eating would literally, literally taste like cardboard if it weren't for the few ppm of synthesized chemicals they conjure up (and "natural" flavoring is even worse--it's the exact same stuff, only with impurities from industrial leeching proceses to extract from biomass the same chemical they can produce much better in a lab)--and those in corporate agribusiness, who are concerned only with the cheapest possible way to grow things, not the tastiest or healthiest.
If you mean, though, that ingredient quality doesn't matter to final taste, you're totally and completely wrong. Although many dishes and types of food are much more resistent to mediocre ingredient quality than others. (Unfortunately, mainstream American and bourgeois European dishes tend to be the latter. E.g. a big piece of steak or fish. I'm always so impressed and happy with what Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese etc. food can do with some nice cheap little pieces of pork tossed in with some cheap veggies.)
ZenBearClaw!
Newcomer
balsamic
Yes the Balsamic that your talking about is really nice yet there is a way to make your own. If you buy nice supermarket balsamic and boil it down to 1/3 or 1/5 volume then you will be left with a vinegar with the same consistancy and wonderful sweet sour taste. This is only if you are interested in the taste... if you want to know why the italian balsamic is so dear it is because of its age. They are aged in wooden casks for 50+ years for the expensive stuff so by the time you get it we are talking about something more like an expensive single malt and not a microbrew.
Yes the Balsamic that your talking about is really nice yet there is a way to make your own. If you buy nice supermarket balsamic and boil it down to 1/3 or 1/5 volume then you will be left with a vinegar with the same consistancy and wonderful sweet sour taste. This is only if you are interested in the taste... if you want to know why the italian balsamic is so dear it is because of its age. They are aged in wooden casks for 50+ years for the expensive stuff so by the time you get it we are talking about something more like an expensive single malt and not a microbrew.
Forbidden Donut
Newcomer
Himself said:I don't think I could create a list like that without it sounding like you're a redneck if.. so how about a collaborative effort by all the non americans here.
You're an American if..
1. You think the US is it's own planet and all other countries are just moons orbiting it.
2. When asked why did the chicken cross the road, you immediately think about how much money the chicken would get in a lawsuit if it were hit by a car.
3..When any debate about the mertis of different countries comes up, you inevitably say well my dad can beat up your dad, so there!
4. Owning a gun is a sacred trust, a fundamental exercise in the expression of freedom and a failsafe against tyranny.
5. Phonebooths are for changing into your super hero tights and fighting evil villians using your super powers.
...anyone else..
I think the title of this thread should be changed to "You're a Republican if.."
While I know this was done in good fun, and I can't necessarily argue with the stereotypes especially considering the way our current administration has been handling events on the world stage, it actually bothers me a bit that people view Americans like this. Just remember, a majority of the United States voted against our current president.
Forbidden Donut said:
Uhhh, no they didn't. Unless you count a majority of people not voting at all.
Forbidden Donut
Newcomer
heh, sorry...I didn't say what I meant. Let me change that to "a majority of the United States who voted, voted against our current president."
I keep on forgetting the apathy factor.
I keep on forgetting the apathy factor.
lets not forget that a majority of the electorial college voted for the current president. Which is really the only thing that matters, since we dont live in a democracy but in a republic. Hope you learned something boys and girls.
later,
later,
Forbidden Donut said:
I wasn't actually thinking of Baby Bush at all, but now that you mention it:
6. If the people that get in power have a lower IQ than the difference in the number of "votes" required to get them there.
America is basically a nation of super fans to me.
Instead of a chorus of "Da Bears!" it's "USA!". I think they are a hair away from becoming a nation of soccer fans, which is rather scary.I don't see much difference between Republicans and Democrats really, no more so than say the red sox and the blue jays, they are both out to win (in theory), and they use pretty much the same tactics.
Forbidden Donut
Newcomer
Himself said:I wasn't actually thinking of Baby Bush at all, but now that you mention it:
6. If the people that get in power have a lower IQ than the difference in the number of "votes" required to get them there.
America is basically a nation of super fans to me.
I don't see much difference between Republicans and Democrats really, no more so than say the red sox and the blue jays, they are both out to win (in theory), and they use pretty much the same tactics.
That sounds mostly right to me...and I LOVE soccer