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I'm glad to see other foodies like Alton Brown, too! I always use his turkey recipe for holidays (it always comes out great)- and many other recipes of his all year round! The hubby got me some of his DVD's as a present!
Miaiam - one of my favorite parts of planning a trip to anywhere is scouting out the local cuisine and deciding where and what to eat! No chain restaurants for me! I about cried when I was forced to eat at a Chinese restaurant in Italy!!!
I'm snobby about some things, and very proletarian about others. Examples: I'm very picky about coffee, buying expensive beans in small quantities and grinding them when I need to make a pot. I buy only premium butter and cheese, especially when it comes to the hard cheeses. When I want Parmesan or Romano, it has to be freshly grated off a hunk of quality imported Italian cheese. Don't you DARE expect me to use that garbage from the green can, that Kraft product. My mozzarella has to be either imported buffalo or artisan cheese from a small dairy in Northern California. Tomatoes? They'd better be homegrown or hothouse types. Can't stomach grocery store tomatoes that were picked early and artificially ripened with ethylene gas infusion. My maple syrup has to be the dark amber real stuff from back east. For orange marmalade, nothing but imported Dundee brand will do.
Picky, picky, picky.
On the other hand, my cupboard is well-stocked with canned chili. I can and do on a regular basis destroy a bowl of chili, cheddar, onions and saltines. And I'm happy to wash it down with a Budweiser instead of some overpriced imported beer or craft brew. A loaf of store label white bread is good enough for my toast requirements. Tap water made into sweet tea (regular old Lipton or Luzianne) or plain, flavored with lemons from my trees satisfies my H2O requirements. Certainly don't need expensive bottled water or fancy teas.
I'm like this, too. Certain things, I'm very picky about, others, no way. In some ways, the reverse of you. I LOVE imported cheese as a special treat, but my everyday pasta dish will get Kraft's grated parm, and house-brand shredded mozz is a staple. However, don't come near me with a beer that's not craft-brewed...I'd rather just have plain tap water than Bud.
I grind whole bean coffee and make a carafe of French press at a time at home, but I will also gladly drink convenience store automatic drip (so long as it's not been sitting there all day or scorched) on the road.
While I do have some discerning tastes, I'm not really a food snob. I can wine and dine with the best of them, but the next night, if I'm craving a can of Hormel Chili dumped over a bag of Fritos with shredded cheddar melted on top in the microwave, eaten out of a soup mug, while standing over the sink, I'm damned well eating it.
Mostly, I just like food. High-quality food, crap food, you name it. There's very little I don't like.
Anyway, are there other burgeoning food snobs out there??
I think real food snobbery is as someone insists on precise spellings of exotic or just plain crazy named dishes. Also letting you know they are an encyclopedia of food terms, items, ingredients, dish names, finest restaurants in each country and just what dish is best at each. This constitutes true snobbishness in my book. If you had a great experience in a fine restaurant in an exotic local that's great. Many though don't care..if they can't get it locally they'll probably never see it! We've all, I'm quite sure have been to fast food places. Telling of experiences there we can all relate. If you must tell us about "Fine Dining" experiences try to sound less than pompous.
Thank You!!
I am most definitely a food snob relative to the average American, but it's not my fault (in my opinion); it's theirs!
I strongly believe that most Americans have been brainwashed by the corporate food industry into eating artificially processed "food"-like substances that really have no business in the human body - and at the expense of their own health. And so I insist on local / organic / whole food whenever and wherever possible, even at a premium. So naturally...I am a food snob by way of comparison. I hardly even step into the regular supermarkets anymore as they stopped selling actual food decades ago.
I must be a food snob. I insist on my food being fresh, in season, simply prepared, and simply served. I enjoy just about anything, prepared just about any way......except over cooked, over seasoned, or made with ingredients that I cannot pronounce.
I'm bad about washing my hands to excess. I don't even want to get paranoid about food. I think most Americans know what they're getting in grocery stores. It's not all healthy food but we all can't or don't grow our own. We don't all have access to farmers markets. I have no more faith in so-called organic fruits/vegetables than standard market issue! We'd like to see less pesticides used. Realistically farmers are trying to feed the world. Mass scale operations require certain things to achieve optimum yield. If we all had a farm just for our own needs we could get by without pesticides maybe. Food is already at a premium $$ so a added cost for specialty food is not affordable to many. I would like to refuse produce from Mexico for instance. But, even that won't be possible some day most likely. No, I wouldn't consider fear or complete dismissal of regular grocery stores as a food source as snobbery. Overly cautious, ill advised or just plain paranoid for lack of a better term maybe.
Wow. The things you learn reading through this thread. I am embarassed to admit this but I always thought a foodie was a term for an overweight person who ate all the time. Boy is my face red. Can ya tell I have never watched the Food Channel?
Thanks for the education. I could have slipped up and really made an arse out of myself by speaking my stupid theory out loud. Although it sure wouldn't be the first time.
I must be a food snob because 1) I like to eat 'healthy' non-fast food unless it's Boston Market, for example, even Mexican can be healthy, say Qdoba 2) I like to eat a meal with REAL vegetables like broccoli, carrots, squash, real lettuce not iceberg, salad, asparagus...it's difficult to manage my weight when a meal has a lot of starchy dishes - macaroni and cheese, pasta salad for example - sans veggies and salad. Besides, I LIKE veggies. Also, food needs to be cooked and prepared properly by a cook who knows their stuff. Sometimes this is difficult to find. This also means that many times fast food places are 'out'.
Hope this doesn't sound too snobbish. When it comes to food, I just cannot compromise or I'd weigh 300 pounds.
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have been to fast food places. Telling of experiences there we can all relate. If you must tell us about "Fine Dining" experiences try to sound less than pompous.
