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"Ethnic Foods", White-bread Version 8P
Oct. 1st, 2006 08:39 amI grew up in eastern PA surrounded by weird food.
Some people like French Food.
More people like Italian food.
Almost everybody likes some kind of Chinese food.
Pennsylvania Dutch food is what people dare each other to eat--
*Lettuce with hot bacon dressing: It's Iceberg lettuce--anything else will be too nutritious, and bright colors are scary. You were going to use dandelion greens, but now it's too late and the leaves are too big and tough.
You don't make the dressing yourself. You buy it in a jar, heat it up, eat it and don't ask questions.
*Chow chow: It's pickled vegetables, veggies which no one else pickles--like lima beans (see above).
*Potato filling: It's mashed potatoes, with a few bread stuffing ingredients mixed in. Not too many--too much flavor might make your stomach "all ferhoodled". You buy a frozen brick of it, packaged in a foil pan.
*Pepper-pot: It's tripe soup--do you really WANT to know more?
There are some good things, like apple butter, pot pie (soup, but again, more bland = more authentic) and funnel cake, but I'm not sure how unique they are to Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.
I saved the most dire item for last --scrapple-- because...well, actually, I eat it. In Pennsylvania Dutch diners, it's a fourth choice of breakfast meat--"two eggs, any style with ham, sausage, bacon or scrapple". It tastes sort of like a smooth combination of sausage and polenta, fried on both sides until it's crunchy. I don't THINK about it, I just eat it 8)
Some people like French Food.
More people like Italian food.
Almost everybody likes some kind of Chinese food.
Pennsylvania Dutch food is what people dare each other to eat--
*Lettuce with hot bacon dressing: It's Iceberg lettuce--anything else will be too nutritious, and bright colors are scary. You were going to use dandelion greens, but now it's too late and the leaves are too big and tough.
You don't make the dressing yourself. You buy it in a jar, heat it up, eat it and don't ask questions.
*Chow chow: It's pickled vegetables, veggies which no one else pickles--like lima beans (see above).
*Potato filling: It's mashed potatoes, with a few bread stuffing ingredients mixed in. Not too many--too much flavor might make your stomach "all ferhoodled". You buy a frozen brick of it, packaged in a foil pan.
*Pepper-pot: It's tripe soup--do you really WANT to know more?
There are some good things, like apple butter, pot pie (soup, but again, more bland = more authentic) and funnel cake, but I'm not sure how unique they are to Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.
I saved the most dire item for last --scrapple-- because...well, actually, I eat it. In Pennsylvania Dutch diners, it's a fourth choice of breakfast meat--"two eggs, any style with ham, sausage, bacon or scrapple". It tastes sort of like a smooth combination of sausage and polenta, fried on both sides until it's crunchy. I don't THINK about it, I just eat it 8)
