130 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 7/21/2017 It’s 1500 Miles To Helsinki, We’ve Got A Full Tank Of Pixels, Half A Pack Of Scrolls, It’s Dark, And We’re Wearing Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses. Hit It!”

1. Whereas I prefer most types of cucumbers nice and raw, as nature intended. (there are breeds of cucumbers which are meant for pickling only. Other people can plant those…)

   Cucumbers, for those wondering:

   standard North American store-bought “slicing” cucumber: about 9-10″ long and two in diameter, smooth-skinned, dark green outside. Meant for putting in salads or on sandwiches.

   “Long English cucumber” as bought in North America: a foot long at the shorter end, around 1 1/2″ diameter, fewer seeds, bumpier skin, more flavour IMO. Also mostly meant for salads or sandwiches. Slightly less dark green.

   “Mini” cucumber: a 6″ or less and 1″ or so wide variety, often even less green closer to the English Long in taste and attitude.

   IN all of these the skins are edible but a bit more bitter than the white flesh.

   (I’ve heard of “peeling” cucumbers, meant to differentiate from “slicing”, because you need to remove the bitter skin, but have not seen those in-store in a long time)

   Besides all these, there are a variety of garden grown cucumbers. Garden grown ones tend to range from 2″ to 8″, have small prickles easily washed off (these probably existed on the store bought brands before packaging, but you never see them so…), range in shape from the standard tubular to tapered like many pickled kinds to pear-shaped to lemon-shaped, and in colour from “white” (white with green strips) to yellow (really yellow) to various shades of green. Some of them require peeling to eat raw, some are pickling only, most unless they specify otherwise are “slicing” varieties.

   The yellow “lemon cucumbers” (named for their shape and hue and do not taste at all citrussy) are the tastiest “Just eat them as is” cucumbers growable in our locale, though my pale whitish heirloom ones and pear-shaped ones last year in my garden were close.

2. Miracle Whip is disgusting — way too much added sugar and has a chemical aftertaste once you get through the excess corn syrup and vinegar. In my youth, it was also quite declasse, associated with the lower class (in both money and “classiness”).

   Best Foods/Hellman’s is THE thing. I’ve eaten Best Foods my whole life (That’s where the ad jingle came from; they were just kind enough to let you Easterners not have to get used to a new name).

   If you’ve never had Miracle Whip, you won’t like it. It’s mayo’s evil twin, probably wearing a goatee.

   Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, however, is the food of the gods, and damn the sodium and fat content, because it is creamy and umami. Newman’s is not canonical, but it’s very good.

   Too many sandwich/burger places include dill pickles standard, which I also disapprove of. Dill pickles are gross, but the husband likes them. I do like sweet pickle relish in potato salad, tuna salad, and tartar sauce. Cucumbers of any ethnicity (English, American, Persian) are so dull unless you do something to them; garlic sans dill is a good idea. I would like to taste the garlic/mustard stuff @Chip Hitchcock’s house.

   Cornichons are the new hot artisanal hipster thing; us regular folk stick with gherkins.

   On the whole, the German and Dutch contributions to American cuisine are awesome. Except sauerkraut. Pleh. But the baked goods are sublime.

   @Kendall: You laugh, but a Toronto friend of mine buys Chex whenever she’s in the US and has people bring it vice versa. She makes her own Chex Mix at Christmas, as the Baby Jesus intended (not the pre-made), and it disappears faster than the fancy party stuff. And then Canadian people haz a sad that Americans get to eat bowls of it on the regular and they can’t. I don’t know why Wheat Chex is so damn hard to find and only comes in small boxes, though.

   @Xtifr: Never eat British ketchup. It’s like American with a ton more sugar and a ton less vinegar. We ended up mixing it 1-1 with malt vinegar just to get it to taste almost right, though white vinegar would have been better.

3. Bah. The three Chex cereals (Corn, Rice, Wheat) (and I deny the existence of any others) are in regular rotation in my breakfast diet. Of course, so are Shredded Wheat with Bran and Multigrain Cheerios, so my tastes may not be everyone’s.

4. Regarding pickles, cornichons are smaller than regular pickles. I always Aldi’s house brand cornichons.

   Other pickle variations you can find in Germany are dill pickles, spiced pickles, mustard pickles (pickled with mustard seeds) and the famous Spreewald style pickles from the Spreewald region in former East Germany. If you’ve seen the movie “Good Bye, Lenin”, Spreewald pickles or rather their sudden unavailability after the fall of the wall play an important role in the film.

   Regarding ketchup, I’m not a big ketchup user, but I always buy Heinz Ketchup, because IMO it’s the best. Not a fan of German brands like Hela, Zeisner or Hamker (and if you need Curry ketchup, you can mix your own). Just lately, I was at a barbecue and all the guests were happily dumping Hela ketchup on their plates, while the Heinz bottle was sitting there unopened. So I opened the Heinz bottle and promptly another guest, who’d been to New Jersey as an exchange student, appeared behind me and said, “Oh, you found Heinz ketchup, great. I don’t like Hela.”

   One ketchup variation I quite like is the politically incorrect Zigeunersauce (gypsy sauce), which is ketchup with chopped bell peppers, mushrooms and pickles as well as a few extra spices. Though these days, I mix my own when I get a hankering for it rather than use the storebrought stuff.

   Coincidentally, Heinz offers both curry ketchup and Zigeunersauce in Germany, though I’m not sure if you can get them in the US.

   Sauerkraut is fine, when properly made, though I don’t have it more than once or twice a year. But in general, I prefer Rotkohl (red cabbage).

5. I feel like I should go buy a cucumber and take photos of it.

   I’d completely forgotten gherkins go in homemade tartare sauce which is a bit silly because that’s about the only way I’ll eat them.

   So! Does America have much in the way of chutneys? Or non-tomato ketchups? Chutneys (including what we call ‘pickle’) are hugely popular here and we have things like mushroom ketchups, although they’re not nearly as popular as the tomato version.

   @Xtifr

   Remembering fries means chips is a lot easier than remembering that when American’s say chips they mean crisps. 🙂

   @lurkertype

   Never eat British ketchup. It’s like American with a ton more sugar and a ton less vinegar.

   Really? Even British Heinz ketchup (the most popular brand)? (Partner mentions that Heinz ketchup has got steadily less sweet as they’ve gradually marched towards no added sugar formulations.) Cafe (pronounced “caff” – think greasy spoon) ketchups often taste sweeter than Heinz, though.

6. Dill pickles were what we put on burgers – sliced, usually lengthwise, and in the potato salad my mother made (where the hot potatoes got doused with a basic oil-and-vinegar dressing, and everything else, including the mayo, went in after it cooled).
   Sweet pickle relish went on hot dogs, and into tuna salad.
   One year, my mother put up bread-and-butter pickles, which are relatively sweet, with sliced onions as well as sliced cucumbers. (And you eat them on buttered bread.) Her mother’s recipe:
   1 gallon cucumbers
   3 large onions
   (they get sliced and brined overnight, 1 cup salt to 1 gallon of water)
   2 quarts vinegar
   4 cups sugar
   1 tbsp turmeric (level)
   1 tbsp mustard powder
   1 tbsp celery seed
   Boil 5 minutes, then add the cucumbers and onions and return to boil. Can.

7. Yeah, the US definitely has chutney. Especially on the coasts. Even when I was young, you could go into a typical grocery here in the SF Bay Area and find at least one type of chutney. (Usually Major Grey’s, I think.) These days, you can usually find a few. And of course, most Indian restaurants offer a variety with your meal.

   I don’t think Indian food is as popular in the US as it is the UK, but it’s still pretty popular. (Our big Asian cuisine is Chinese, of course, for various historical reasons.)

   Absolutely no non-tomato ketchup, though, except imports in specialty stores.

8. @lurkertype: sauerkraut varies widely; I hated the mushy canned stuff my mother served when I was young, but love a current friend’s choucroute garni(e?) — not home-made but there are reliable sellers locally.

9. Absolutely no non-tomato ketchup, though, except imports in specialty stores.
   Recipes for non-tomato ketchup are actually available. (I enjoy reading recipes. They’re on my diet, even if the food isn’t.)

10. Even in the 70s in the middle of the country, you could find Major Grey’s.

    @Meredith: This was in the late 90s, so perhaps things have gotten better? It was so disappointing to see something labeled “Heinz” that clearly wasn’t. It was sweet enough I swear we could have put it on dessert; what with tomatoes being a fruit and not having enough vinegar in, it practically was one!

11. Prawn salad is the way to go. Here’s when Travel Channel tried the swedish flatbread roll with hot dog, mashed potatoes and prawn salad.

12. @Meredith: “Or non-tomato ketchups?”

    I understand each of those words, but the question makes no sense. It reminds me of that abomination called “turkey bacon,” which always makes me ask, “well, which is it? Turkey or bacon?” Verily, ’tis fowl marketing…

13. Camestros Felapton on July 22, 2017 at 9:41 pm said:

    Is this Mircale Whip thread going to be the new Jello Salad thread?

    Yes, yes it will 🙂

14. @Rev Bob (matching your hyperbole): “ketchup” comes from words meaning a sauce of preserved fish (cf liquamen(*)); the notion that it should contain poisonous plants is a bizarre New World affectation.

    * an advertisement for liquament was one of the stranger recovered artifacts in the traveling Pompeii exhibit a few years ago.

15. “Made primarily from tomato” is part of the definition of ketchup. Literally! Like Rev. Bob, I understand the individual words, but the combination conveys no meaning to me.

    Two countries divided by a common language?

16. Definition of ketchup in English: A spicy sauce made chiefly from tomatoes and vinegar, used as a relish.

17. @Rev. Bob & Lis Carey

    Mm, and most people will assume you mean tomato ketchup if you say ketchup, but mushroom and a few other sorts actually predate the use of tomatoes by quite some time. Tomatoes may have taken over the word in the same way that pickle has been claimed by (American, which I now know are different from British, which is very confusing) cucumbers in the USA, but they weren’t anywhere close to the first. Rather unfair to exclude the others just because some johnny come lately had a great marketing campaign. 😀

    (Plus there are some later innovations, like banana ketchup in the Philippines.)

18. What does mushroom ketchup taste of? Is it strongly mushroom-flavored, or more vinagar-y, or spicy, or what? I’m having a hard time envisioning this, honestly. But I love mushrooms.

    (I’m amused that ketchup is called “a spicy sauce…” in the definition a few posts up, because that mantle has been pretty much been stolen by salsa. Ketchup is extremely bland by comparison, although it is certainly a spiced sauce.)

19. Cassy B, there’s a recipe for mushroom catsup in The Joy of Cooking (they get salted, drained and rinsed, simmered with vinegar and seasonings, and the remaining liquid gets canned). 4 pounds of mushrooms…. (There’s also one for walnut catsup – green walnuts, you’ll need a tree; make it in May or June – and one for red onion-garlic catsup. 5 large red onions and a quarter cup of minced garlic.)

20. @Cassy B

    Depends on the mushroom ketchup, mostly (unhelpful, I know). Some of the commercial ones are really stingy with the mushrooms (which I resent, because mushrooms are great). But they’re all strong enough that some people use them more like worcester sauce than tomato ketchup, if that helps.

21. Meredith, so they have some of the tang and… um.. for want of a better word, zest… of Worstershire sauce? (Which my family always (deliberately) mispronouced “worsta-chester-shire” sauce. Yes, I know there’s no “chester” in there. Don’t know how it wandered into the middle of the word, but it’s taken up residence and it refuses to leave my vocabulary…)

    I’m guessing it has a lot of umami (however you spell that).

22. @Cassy B

    Yeah, a bit closer to the original fish sauce that ketchups evolved from than tomato ketchup (although I had a look and apparently some early tomato ketchup recipes included anchovies, which is neat and probably tasted pretty good). But, you know, mushroomy.

    The full name for Worcestershire Sauce* has something pretty close to a chester visually, even though it isn’t said that way. Because British place names basically exist to confuse tourists and the British people who have to decipher the phonetic pronunciations in order to give directions.

    *Often said without the shire, because laziness.

23. I’ve heard of the recipes for Roman style Garum fish sauce. It sounds awful to make…but yet, this stuff was popular, and shipped throughout the Empire in its day.

    I don’t want to make it. but I’d sure try it.

    (fun fact: Pompeii was a center of Garum production)

24. I do have to say that although I never expected to see this sort of condiment discussion here, I’m quite relishing it.

25. @Rev. Bob

    Relishing – ha! 😀

26. Let’s not forget the one true sauce without which no bacon roll is complete.

27. People with experience in mushroom ketchup, a question! How’s this one? https://www.amazon.com/Watkins-Mushroom-Ketchup-fluid-ounce/dp/B000OCQH3I

    I dig mushrooms, I dig sauces, I am intrigued (though initially appalled) at the idea of a mushroom ketchup.

28. @Hampus Eckerman: I’m surprised but slightly intrigued at mashed potatoes on a hot dog (though I was never interested in the …dunno their name, the things that look like miniature french fries, that some put on hot dogs). But shrimp salad on a hot dog?! Eek! 😉 That sounds wrong in at least two ways, but if you like it, well, enjoy.

    Some of the things on this page of hot dog topping combinations just sound like people trying to think of weird combinations.

29. Ketchup is more tangy than spicy, that’s for sure. But its taste profile is very bland. If you want a spicy tomato-based condiment, you gotta have salsa. Which outsells ketchup in the US nowadays.

30. @Paul Weimer — I don’t remember seeing that brought out in the exhibit, but it explains the advertisement.

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