(no subject)

[inulro]

Today I finally saw one of the iconic European films that I'd never had the chance to see before, La Dolce Vita. I wasn't blown away. It looks absolutely gorgeous, but I didn't feel that much was added by the last hour. The point had been made by then. I also didn't know how long it is - I tend to assume that old movies are short by today's standards, unless they're like Gone With the Wind and famous for being really long.

My last Amazon Christmas order arrived today (the last I ordered, anyway - I'm still waiting for some stuff my mother bought me). It contained my Christmas present to myself: The American Diner Cookbook.

Yeah, I know, I don't cook and I'm a vegetarian. I'm going to have time on my hands though, and I figured that lots of the recipes involve ground beef, and it's easy to substitute the soya stuff. What I was really after was the pie and cake recipes, and it has donut recipes as well. There's even a recipe for making your own ketchup, in case I ever get really bored.

Call it pandering to my inner redneck. I somehow survived for 37 years without knowing I have an inner redneck, but it looks like I do, which is a long story I'm nowhere nearly articulate enough to tell at present.

I should really wake myself up sufficiently to peruse some internet news in the near future, because News 24 has become the 24 hour Suffolk murders channel with occasional breaks for the weather. That's another rant I'm not in any state to do justice to.

Still not feeling significantly better, but I put up what few seasonal decorations we do own today.

Comments

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

I like American cake recipes, but some of their other recipes strike me as very odd indeed. Then again, that could just be my mum's American cookbooks. I think I've got quite European tastes and the American recipes look offputting, but they probably taste great.

I'm getting more into traditional British cookery at the mo, so she gave me a few old cookbooks at the weekend, including a 1920s one where everything is in alphabetical order by recipe title. "Chicken soup" and "Supper dish of chicken" are at opposite ends of the book!

[inulro.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, if you know exactly what the name of every recipe is!

Traditionally, Americans not only had some different ingredients and very different conditions to work from, but also a lot of it comes from non-English sources. A lot of the recipes in the Diner cookbook are of German origin. I'd kind of forgotten how mainstream German-source food is on the other side of the Atlantic (and not just if you are of German descent). So it's not surprising that it's different.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly used to German/Dutch food. It's things like Breakfast Pizza, or the way the American recipes in my mum's book combine things in casseroles. It's a whole different sort of taste. It might be more midwestern; there's a lot of sweetcorn, cornmeal and so on in there.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

In the midwest, corn is everywhere. I love just about anything with cornmeal in it, and just found out that you can buy it at the South African shop in the market. They call it something else, but it's cornmeal. Which I find exciting & Jason finds frightening - I force fed him a cornmeal muffin in New York & he just didn't get it.

I have to say I've never come across breakfast pizza, unless you count eating last night's pizza for breakfast. I'd hazard a guess that most Americans haven't either.