FLUK: "Can't even begin to understand the point of non-alcoholic cider, though. My limited experience in North America is that it's no more than apple juice with gratuitously added sugar (or more likely: pointless and lethal added corn syrup)."

Well, that tells you all you need to know about FLUK's "experience" in the U.S.

I read all the insults to US foods and I was OK until someone said the apple cider is just juice with sweeteners added.

I will never share my fresh apple cider with you uninformed meanies. We wait for cider season, as it is a fresh product, wholly made from apples, and savor every drop during the short time it is available. It is utterly delicious and you can't have any. So there.

I think the confusion is that being a Brit I would call apple cider here in the US "squeezed apple". It's really just apples squeezed to remove the pulp, seeds and skin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_cider

And it is scrummy - No Ann! not Scrumpy :)

I seem to remember that the apple juice was sold in large jars in stalls at the side of the road. It was very good. A friend of ours tried to turn some into cider but it didn't work

...
YOU might, we didn't....

If I'd known you, you could have had a dozen or so.
I'm not joking. That plant was incredible and almost took over the whole garden. It kept putting out shoots, flowering and fruiting for ages.

DId I read that correctly? Someone says British food is barely tolerable, then in the next breath uses the availability of 57 variaties of cola as proof of American culinary sophistication.

This kind of comedy genius is what makes me love Fodors so much.

And I'm with Tarquin on the Liulimin post. Brilliantly irrelevant. For once, I hope the advertising doesn't get canned, sitting there entertainingly pointless in a sea of transatlantic mudslinging.

alya, tuscanlifedit,

I also think the "confusion" is about what constitutes processed food. To me, cellophane wrapped pasta, bottled juice with fructose, yoghurt with artificial fruit flavors, par-cooked rice with flavorings is processed food, not just cola or candy. Wrong as he is about cider, FlannerUK is right to observe that the sheer size of many supermarkets in America means more processed food is on display on longer shelves, and I'm wondering if we aren't just arguing apples and oranges here. The two countries supermarkets sound pretty similar, minus the local preferences in junk and comfort foods based on childhood memories.


More on the expansion of Krispy Kreme donuts into British supermarkets:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...ghnuts-britain


janisj,

Now who needs to live in an alternate universe? I wasn't talking about living in Italy. I was talking about my having a different perspective. Would you now like to switch sides and argue I'm not odd person out on Fodor's?

RM67,

You didn't read it correctly. Annhig -- a resident of the UK and frequent traveler to Italy -- wrote about her experience of seeing 12 different brands of soda in American supermarkets and concluding that America was uniquely mad in its consumerism. I pointed out to Annhig that in Italy, where I live, there are similarly multiple brands of processed foods -- including soda -- on supermarket shelves, so her conclusion that this was unique to America was wrong.

Independent of all that, I wrote that British food has been in the past inedible and only recently became minimally edible. I'm trying to think of where outside of Britain one can find restaurants serving British food, like one sees restaurants in capitals all over the world serving Italian food, or French food. What i do see is a lot of "pubs" all over the world. Somehow, for some reason, British food has never really caught on, despite the empire. Maybe the Olympics will change that. Or the UK will tinker with the basic Krispy Kreme formula and come up with something not only edible, but good for you. Jamie Oliver's food "ministry" may yet prevail.

PS: I also like liulimin's posts.

You'll be delighted to know it's also on the fireworks thread, then...

"Minimally edible?" I think you need to give UK food another try, zeppole.It has been good for a long time now, and it is maybe the most diverse anywhere. Unlike the French and the Italians, the British are open to new foods, the opposite of the campilismo found in the rest of Europe. I love Italian food but it is limited compared to what is available here.

Tarquin, totally agree. I have a second home in Italy and whilst I love the food and the freshness of ingredients, I really do get tired of 4 aisles of pasta, two aisles of risotto rice but i can't find a single packet of basmati or any spices that don't feature in Italian cuisine. The range of local foods is vast, but the reluctance to try anything new is really depressing. After a couple of weeks I find myself pining for the variety we get back in the UK (and the US). I find the food xenophobia found amongst french, Italians and Spanish really irritating.

There is a good reason why certain foods from the US are not available in the UK - people just don't want them - (except American ex pats), there is no demand.

We've all lived quite well in Europe without graham crackers and I wouldn't know what to do with them as a gift.

Bring a bottle of Bourbon.

Bring Knob Creek - they'll appreciate the name.

tarquin,

It has been awhile since I lived in the UK, but I go there just about every year. And when I am there, I eat Indian, Turkish and African foods and indeed the diviersity is terrific and delicious. If you are telling me that Britain now claims these cuisines as British, like Americans think burritos are American cuisine, ok, I agree. British food is tasty.

By the way, I better say LOUDLY for those who keep missing that I do not like American food either, and in many parts of America, it is not even minimally edible -- including much praised foods like barbecue. But if being open to new foods is a plus in this argument, certainly Americans are that. You can get them to eat anything. (And please note I am speaking as an American, and don't try to affect a fake Italian accent when I post.)

So, in sum, if you want to eat British cuisine, Cadbury's or (Krispy Kremes, or tikka or all of it once -- it's all yours! But I think it is beneath you to fault Italy for preserving and guarding their food culture when others lost the battle just because an argument on the internet has become silly.

Kate,

I've been in tourist quarters in Italy and Spain where curries, beers, teas and the Full English are on the menu and in the supermarket aisles. If you chose to buy in a part of Italy where people would rather eat a locally produced meal than eat imported foods, your "irritation" elicits scant sympathy. Don't you think Italians are just as entitled as Brits to turn up their nose at tastes that don't like -- please don't try to tell me now the British are "open" to eating American chocolate (unless its slathered all over a Krispy Kreme donut).

Lawchick,

I think you are right. The same goes the other way. American gin has a long way to go.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-2260069.html

A French friend of ours said that she missed the sandwiches and the white cotton knickers ;-)

You got me wrong, Zeppole, I don't fault Italians at all for campanilismo (got it right this time.) Their respect for tradition has keep their cuisine intact, slow food is the opposite of fusion food. I still cook polenta and rabbit stew as brought to the States by my great-grandmother.

I was talking about the quality and variety of food available in Britain, rather than traditional British dishes. And by the way, those Krispy Kremes may be popular in London but they haven't permeated the country. And I don't know anyone who eats Cadbury's chocolate, or they keep it quiet.

Fine, tarquin -- but let me raise a question about quality in British food --- but before I do, I do not want to be misunderstood as being here to defend Italy. My first post to annhig was just the opposite -- I was pointing out that Italian supermarkets have the same faults as other supermarkets throughout the world.

Regarding quality of British food, isn't it generally accepted that at various times in British history, native British cuisine suffered because the needs of the colonial empire was to sell find uses for tin and sugar? If you tell women that tinned foods are more modern, that soaking dried peas is old fashioned, that peeling potatoes is lower class, and you snatch up all the local produce before it is ripe, gas it, sugar it and shove it in a tin, you not only destroy the local food base, people forget how to cook! They'll lose "the knowledge." Even if they want to keep cooking, understanding food is replaced by "following a recipe."

This is a global problem to be sure, but it has seemed to me that one of the features of recent years is for people in BOTH Britain AND America to ask: "What happened to our food?" and "Why doesn't our food taste good?"

The answer isn't solely putting a chicken coop on your roof. It also means learning to cook. Understanding food. Understanding seasons.

I may sound like I live in an alternate universe to Americans who spend all their time on Fodor's defining England as sugary afternoon tea, but in the newspapers I read -- some of the British -- I read about many of today's British having an appetite for solving a problem with what they seem to regard as a whole lot of bad food in Britain. If you grow up with it -- like Americans grow up with bad food -- it doesn't taste bad to you. It tastes like love and fun because it was given to you with love and fun. But if you taste other cooking, the cooking of people who still know how to grow and cook food, the tastebuds starts to change.

I don't know where you live tarquin (and I'm not asking) but in everything I read about Krispy Kremes in the British press, I fear a outlet is opening near you, soon. Just warning you.

I forgot to add that British dairy products never suffered the fate of other British food products. British milk is unsurpassed (which may account for the preference for milk chocolate), British butters but above all, British cheese, have few equals in the world. Nowhere along they line were the put under the assault that many other uniquely British food products.

tarquin,

And for all that, I also forgot to address your point about "variety".

I dispute that variety and consumer choice is compensation for rendering food tasteless. "Choice" is valued -- even seen as as a necessity -- when flavor disappears. It's like having 333 choices of which TV channel to watch, when we already knew we couldn't stand to watch the original 3. It's all poison. Choice is what got sold to people in lieu of something substantive.

I also think it is a tourist myth (or second-home owner myth) that Italians don't have a lot of variety in what they eat. If you are only here for a limited time during your self-chosen favorite season to be abroad, you may not notice how quickly and often produce changes seasonally in Italy. The seasons for real foods are brief, and change in diet is constant.. One is thrilled to see the strawberries return, but isn't eager to have last longer. It is better to have the fresh peaches, the summer melons, etc. Sure for a few weeks you eat more berries than you will for then entire rest of the year. But you don't crave variety, or hold it up as some great thing. Of course it is nice to live in a land of rain and bounty rather than in stony soil with a hot sun where the yield is poor. But what a pity that the people who live in those bountiful green places settle for shopping in the supermarket and thrilling to the variety of imported goods.

I will take fresh high quality strawberries for a limited time every year versus what we usually get in the US - huge monsters that taste like cardboard - but are available year round.