EDIT: Okay, it was a bit silly of me to drag my heels in, I don’t strictly hate it and there are good things about British cooking (mostly veggies), but I find the meme’s meat obsession super silly. I am having stomach pains and cramped arteries just looking at this stuff.

Highly underrated

I love how it’s superimposed on the diapers lmao, I hope the meme was ironic

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    As a non-USian, I don’t think Mac and cheese is the slam dunk proof the meme maker thinks it is…

    I’ve probably seen Americans excitedly introduce foreigners to Mac and Cheese about 10 times in my life and nobody has ever responded with more than “yeah, that’s not bad I guess” or “huh, that’s interesting”.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The general rule of thumb is if the European country doesn’t touch the Mediterranean, their food is complete trash. British, German, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian food. All complete trash. How many people will stand in line to taste that delectable Irish cuisine or Latvian cuisine or Dutch cuisine? Notice how all the European countries with actually existing cuisine like French or Italian or Greek all touch the Mediterranean. This extends to the settler colonies. Canadian food? Garbage. USian food? Garbage. Mexican food? Now we’re fucking talking.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        i think they’re trying to do like a ‘cracker cuisine’ bit, USian being just the WASP midwest shit? i’m sensitive enough about cultural ‘ownership’ of food though i kind of reject a premise like that, even if its kind of jocular

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        All of those cuisine are food from the diaspora with actual existing cuisine:

        • Tex-mex (Mexican)

        • Creole/Cajun (French/West African)

        • New Yorkican (Puerto Rican?)

        • Italian-american (Italian)

        • Chinese-american (Chinese)

        As far as food is concerned, the only food that counts is the food of the original settlers as well as the earliest Europeans who were incorporated into whiteness. So basically, Anglo Americans, Scot Americans, Dutch Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans. In other words, WASPs.

        At a basic level, you don’t get to enslave Black people for centuries only to count soul food or Black-influenced food as “American” food. You don’t get to pass a law blocking Chinese immigration for a century only to pretend the bastardization of Cantonese food called Chinese American food counts as American food. This has the same exact energy as Brits trying to claim curry as British cuisine after starving millions of Indians to death or Zionists trying to pretend the food Palestinians have been eating for centuries is “Israeli.”

        • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          All of these are fusion cuisines. A Tex-Mex taco is essentially a completely different thing than a Norteno Mexican taco. Chinese American food has only the most the most distant relationship to Cantonese food. This food exists and, guess what, is often enjoyed by white people as well as people in the diaspora as well as everyone else. This food objectively exists and is what people actually eat. Whether it’s good that it exists and how we should put it in it’s historical context in the legacy of racism, colonialism, etc. is important but it’s fucked up to say that this stuff essentially doesn’t exist

          This has the same basic prejudices as saying a creole language is just a bastardized version of a European one

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            The food 100% exist, but they are food of their respective diaspora, not their host countries. To use the Chinese diaspora as an example, Chinese American food is lumped in with Chinese Korean food, Chinese Peruvian food, Chinese Japanese food, and so. They are unified by the fact that the origin cuisine is ultimately Chinese even if they’ll obviously be differences from each other and from their origin cuisine.

            Now, the reasonable question is whether Chinese American food is Chinese food with American characteristics or American food with Chinese characteristics, so this is where my comment on the Chinese Exclusion Act comes in. Given that there’s the legacy of racism, colonialism, etc as you said, then Chinese American food ought to be considered Chinese food (or Chinese diasporic food if you think they diverge too much from “pure” Chinese food) to reflect on the Chinese diaspora’s continued estrangement from being considered “true” Americans due to Sinophobia and general white supremacy. It goes back to my earlier comment. By what grounds can white Americans spit on the collective faces of Chinese Americans while claiming Chinese American food as their own?

            • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              It was a a cuisine developed in America that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It was developed by Americans (Chinese immigrants and their descendents) and eaten by Americans, and not only white people lol. There is a Chinese takeout place in virtually every poor urban neighborhood in the country. What should we call it, if not American? Do you not count as American if you’re of Chinese origin? If you want to insist on it being specifically Chinese American, I agree! Chinese-American is a subset of Americans

              Of all the things to go off on, it’s bizarre to choose a cheap, tasty cuisine primarily beloved by the proletariat.

              • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                Do you not count as American if you’re of Chinese origin? If you want to insist on it being specifically Chinese American, I agree! Chinese-American is a subset of Americans

                This is the fundamental disagreement we have. Chinese Americans are a subset of the Chinese diaspora. They really aren’t Americans outside of legal status and citizenry. They certainly aren’t treated like Americans, especially right now with the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and various Chinese American scientists being investigated by the FBI for perceived “CCP” and “ethnic” loyalty. Really, most diasporic Americans (or at least most nonwhite diasporic Americans) aren’t actually Americans if we understand Americans to be the inheritors and heirs of the settler colonial project known as the United States of America. This is true even for Black people whose ancestors have existed in this country for centuries. A Chinese American has far more in common with a Chinese Canadian than a white American, so it makes more sense to lump your average Chinese American together with your average Chinese Canadian. The things that unifies them both is that both are members of the Chinese diaspora, in particular the English-speaking members of the Chinese diaspora.

                • They really aren’t Americans outside of legal status and citizenry

                  Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

                  aren’t actually Americans if we understand Americans to be the inheritors and heirs of the settler colonial project known as the United States of America.

                  Why would we define Americans in that very specific and idiosyncratic way?

                  Please go around talking to people of color in the United States and explain this to them and see what they think I guess.

                  It just seems like you’re accepting all of the premises about the intrinsic alieness and foreignness of people of color in the US that your standard white nationalist would have but woke

        • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          As far as food is concerned, the only food that counts is the food of the original settlers as well as the earliest Europeans who were incorporated into whiteness. So basically, Anglo Americans, Scot Americans, Dutch Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans. In other words, WASPs.

          That’s not how foodways work.

          You don’t get to pass a law blocking Chinese immigration for a century only to pretend the bastardization of Cantonese food called Chinese American food counts as American food. This has the same exact energy as Brits trying to claim curry as British cuisine after starving millions of Indians to death or Zionists trying to pretend the food Palestinians have been eating for centuries is “Israeli.”

          This is an extremely weird thing to say. Italian-American, and Chinese-American foods are distinct from their origins, enough that they are recognized as unique. You can acknowledge the material conditions leading to a diaspora and ethnically segregated communities in the first place as well as the nature of foodways and still understand that slavery, racism, and oppression is bad. Black Americans are still Americans and “soul food” is a uniquely American foodway.

          • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            There are still large portions of the population who can’t hold chopsticks. You can’t claim cuisine belongs to a country if like half the population can’t even eat it properly, let alone cook it. Compare that to Italian food. Everyone knows how to make pasta, everyone knows how to eat pasta.

            • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              Are you claiming that Chinese Americans aren’t American because Americans use forks to eat noodles unlike Italian food which is American because Americans eat those noodles with a fork? I hope this is a bit about how pasta was invented in China first and I’m just too tired to understand it

              • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                I’m saying in order for it qualify as “American Food” and not just “Chinese American Food” non-Chinese Americans would need to know how to make it like they know how to make Italian food. At the minimum Non-Chinese Americans don’t get to simultaneously shit on Chinese food and claim it for their own. KFC in China is also distinct from American Cuisine but nobody in China is claiming it’s “American Chinese” or whatever.

                • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                  dawg I know you mean well here, but you are doing race essentialism based on food utensils. Chinese Americans have existed in America for nearly 200 years and have distinct foodways based entirely on the history of regional cuisines, available ingredients, and the interaction between those two things and other cultures in a new space. It is called Chinese American because it is distinct from the remembered cuisine and unique to the space where it was created. This is what happens to any and every culture when they are displaced, forcibly or voluntarily. Chinese-Argentinian food will be related to Chinese-American food but will be unique to that culture and local ingredients.

    • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Lmao what a ridiculous take. Being leftist doesn’t mean you suddenly have to pretend to hate hearty meals or entire culinary cultures.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      Southern German food is pretty good, spaetzle, knudel, 200 different types of sausage. Freshwater fish from alpine lakes…and of course regional schitzel, beer, wine etc.

      • Egon [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Isn’t that all cuisines though? Like it’s all fusion food, it’s just a question of how soon the latest fusion was

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Is this supposed to be british food good or british food bad, I can’t tell.

    Cause bacon sandwich is obvious, but fish and chips is just fried protein so that is good in the hivemind, toad in a hole sounds gross so thats obvious, but shepherds pie is just literally good, and beef pie I guess you could find gross if you really wanted to, and then mac and cheese is american right?

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      This could be a British meme making fun of being British. Self deprecation is a national sport, probably one of the best features of Brits is their ability to shit all over being British, and similarly wherever you currently live is always the shittest place in the country. It’s just generally considered a virtue to do self deprecating banter, it’s a sign of a strong person who can have a laugh and doesn’t take themselves too seriously.

      I don’t think anyone in Britain considers “mac and cheese” British though and that phrasing isn’t really British either, so I’m going to side with it being made by a yank.

      If a Brit made it Greggs sausage rolls would have been included.

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]@hexbear.net
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        Tbh I hate British self deprecation, cause it seems to always end up paired with trying to deprecate everywhere else even more. Also seems to prevent them from actually defending British stuff that they wanna defend through any means other than just going for the lowest blows or bigoted shit.

        As overblown as the meme might be, theres a reason people joke about “Well at least we’ve gawt healfcare/don’t get shot in our bloody schools mate innit”

    • Timberknave [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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      I am not sure what the intention was, but I find the presentation very unconvincing. I assume it was ironic as it is kind of on the nose with very starchy and meaty foods that are all the same color put over soiled diapers. I really like how much cognitive dissonance it causes, though.

    • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Toad in a hole is one of the best breakfast items ever invented by mankind. So simple, yet so perfect.

  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    what is the excuse for all this lonely insufficiently spiced meat being stuck in stuff without vegg? not Ze Germans, they kept the brits from eating as much meat i imagine

    in all cases i can imagine a way for the dish to be pleasant but in practice motherfuckers always make this shit bland and disappointing. tell me honest the likelihood of a mac & cheese at either a restaurant or a potluck to be genuinely good. its like less than half, and that’s a dish where cheese can do all the heavy lifting.