Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home. The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”
If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese. Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.
Also, most American restaurant portions are 100% intended as two meals’ worth of food. Some of my older Irish relatives still struggle with the idea that it’s not just not rude to eat half your meal and take the rest home, it’s expected. (Apparently this is somewhat of an American custom.)
Until you’re hitting the “fancy restaurant” tier (the kind of place you go for a celebration or an anniversary date), a dinner out should generally also be lunch for the next day. Leftovers are very much the norm.
From the little time I’ve spent in Canada, this seems to be the case up there as well.
the portions in family restaurants (as opposed to haute cuisine types) are designed so that no one goes away hungry.
volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.
so in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.
of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of american hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.
it’s not about pigging out until you get huge. treating it that way is pretty disrespectful of our culture. and you know, contrary to what the world thinks, we do have one.
I want to wear a sumptuous gown of velvet and lace and be waited upon by ten ladies in waiting and write laws on midwifery but my husband has yet to conquer the Western world as his birthright to rule
Last night I had Bob Ross on while I was practicing and he was painting a mountain that he said looked a lot like the Tetons. He said one of his students told him what “Teton” means but, and he turned to look cheekily at the camera, he said he wasnt going to say what it means, I would have to look it up.
I stopped everything to Google “Teton.” 1. Its another word for Lakota. 2. It is a french word meaning “NIPPLE” and the mountains were named by french and Iroquois members of an expedition??????
I told my husband “THE GRAND TETONS ARE JUST GIANT BOOBIES AND I LEARNED IT FROM BOB ROSS” and we both giggled.
I have a recurring dream that the baby comes early and everyone at the hospital looks at us warily and says we look pretty unprepared and they tell us we can’t have her and we go home dejected and unhappy to a bunch of baby furniture we havent put together yet.
I still have about 6 weeks left but I’m about to put together my hospital bag and work on moving furniture around so I can set up her corner in our bedroom bc if I went into labor rn and they wouldnt let us have her, THEYD BE RIGHT
So we have a work potluck today and somebody brought mac & cheese. Now y’all know I don’t use the term “white nonsense” hardly ever, but if I was ever going to use it it would be to describe this absolute abomination of a dish. The noodles were dry, poking out at all angles without a hint of moisture, and sitting on top of it, barely even melted, were cracked, dried out, crusty squares of Kraft singles. It was like a “bone apple teeth” dish come to life. A crime. A sin.
Yes please consider adopting a Greyhound, they are incredibly misunderstood pets! I was inspired to look into it when seeing them on stop 5 list of perfect apartment dogs! They are not energetic in the slightest, in fact they sleep about as much as cats do.
They’re big dumb soft babies who love cuddles and don’t smell at all and have the softest ears of any good boy
Obscure Fandoms 