I agree that some foods are pretty American. My group would include the hotdog, the cheeseburger, the cheesesteak sub, the american coldcut sub, fruit pie, ice cream, boardwalk fries, steamed crabs, corn on the cob, pumpkin prepared in anyway, turkey and gravy, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, greens, and of course the entire emporium of Tastykake and Hostess desserts. Although some or all of these things are perhaps derived from other cultures they remain uniquely American. While my list is mostly "diner food", people must like it or diners wouldn't exist. I'm surely leaving out a lot of other good examples of American cuisine, but I'm severely depleted from my nieces bday party and must have liquid refreshment, of the alcoholic variety!

*Everything* bagel? Oh, that is blasphemy!

I'm not so sure about the Chesapeake crab cakes, either.

Thought cheese curds were Quebecois?

All in all, a pretty tame list. I liked the original Omnivore's Hundred (that is from an awesome food blog) much better. It had more meat. Metaphorically. Most of this list was pretty mundane. Nearly none of it would I think really important.

If, however, the point was to let most Americans feel like they've eaten a lot of important stuff, then it serves a purpose.

Lissa -- cheese curds as a snack are big in Wisconsin (as Piano Rob and jl can probably confirm) and other Midwestern states. I think A Prairie Home Companion is broadcasting live tonight from the Minnesota State Fair, and, if past years' shows from that venue are any indication, Garrison Keillor will refer to cheese curds at least once during the show (with appropriate sound effects for the distinctive "squeak" when one consumes then).

You KNEW that I would add Cincinnati chili.

While each of us will disagree on many of the selections, if you look at the list as representative of the wide range of American cuisines it does kind of come together. And, like the Top Ten, don't take the numerical order too seriously.

Snickers.

I'm still looking for the rhyme and reason behind the choices. There are a few local favorites, but not enough to say that this is a list of all the regional foods you should try. Is good chicken fried steak a more important experience than a decent porterhouse? Why not church hall ham & oyster dinner, or firehouse spaghetti? Whole lobster and crab cakes instead of picking crabs and lobster roll? Eat turducken or make turducken? (Of course, this may just be jealous frustration speaking. I still have nine to go!)

I read through some of the suggested additions, and agreed with many (yea Pork Roll!). Some that I would add include:
Grilled chicken (particularly New York State Fair style);
silver queen corn on the cob;
Brunswick stew;
spedies and
beef on weck.

hmpstd, I'll take your word for that. I'm not from that part of the Midwest, although I have kin up that way.

No Michigan cherry pie or fudge on that list. No coney dog. No Vernors-basted ham. No smelt.

Hmph.

While my list is mostly "diner food", people must like it or diners wouldn't exist.

There's nothing wrong with diner food. And btw, there is nothing wrong with Iowa, either. There is also some good reality tv. Between the whining about the Sun and the complaining about how hard it is to blog if you have to make your own links and the snide comments about any part of the country that doesn't touch the Atlantic Ocean and making fun of people who are religious and dissing Rachael Ray or anything else on the Food Network this blog is getting to be just one big Debbie Downer. That is just the last couple of days.

What a bunch of cry-baby hipster doofus snobs. I'm out of here.

Is John McIntyreJohn McIntyre any relation to Mary HartmanMary Hartman? ; )

Bye, Whiz-inator.

Freedom of expression can be a downer. All Abraham Lincoln did was bitch bitch bitch, whine whine whine, no wonder someone shot him. Thank you Whiz-inator for pointing out all the non-positive facets here. Wah, wah, wah, maybe you should call the Wambulance. Just kidding.

So Whiz-y give us your full list of good reality TV. Generalizations don't count, bring us some specifics. How can you make a point without specifics? I reluctantly admit that I very much enjoyed MILF Island. So there.

And you stole "hipster doofus" from Seinfeld which is as snobby a show as you can get.

Bring the Whiz!

It might be worth pointing out how many foodstuffs are indigenous to the Americas, regardless as to how they are used in other cuisines.
Por ejemplo:
potatoes
tomatoes
chiles, including anything called pepper that is not actually pepper
corn
turkey
most squashes, including pumpkin
quite a few legumes
etc. etc. etc.....
BTW, steamed blue crabs are at the top of my list!

Eve -- I don't think your suggestion would go over well with Snickers (and, anyway, horsemeat's more associated with French cuisine). ;-)

I will admit to liking one variety of reality show--the dance-offs. I'm addicted to
"Dancing with the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance"--it's my guilty pleasure. We can't spend all our time thinking lofty thoughts.

hmpstd--regarding horsemeat, when we lived in Europe our apartment was just across the street from a "Pferdemetzgerei" or horse butcher. I don't think I ever saw anyone go in or out of the place, but I did see empty shipping cartons from Argentina.

Horsemeat, is, however, delicious. And, unlike other animals, horse is better if the animal is old. You don't want to eat a yearling, but a 16 year old horse will be lovely.

Yes, I'm serious. I ride horse, I love them and I eat them.

At first I thought Eve meant Owl's horse, but I guess she was referring to the one that George ate on a plate with knife and fork?

Emily's list had boiled peanuts on it. GACK City!

beef on weck

Oh, yes!! And Wegman's sells weck rolls, too.

Porkie: what is MILF Island?

If Sarah Palin becomes vice president I guess we'll have to add mooseburgers to the list (ducks and runs).

Dahlink, my guilty pleasure is Keeping up with the Kardashians, more embarrassing to admit than yours but for whatever reason (could it be Bruce's horrible eye job? he always looks surprised!) I have to watch it!

Aside from my favorite, MILF Island, I like to think that I'm a superior person of high standards and never watch reality show piffle -- but I'm not. I'm hooked on many things on Bravo as long as it doesn't involve cutting hair. At least on Top Chef and Project Runway people are using skills to make creative things. I can't really explain my fascination with Million Dollar Listing. I love to hate those guys. And the other show with the OCD sadist with tortures his employees.

Oooo, horse meat. Touchy subject for Americans. A horse is just a fast cow that's stupid enough to let you sit on him. Circl of life, Lissa, circle of life. Giddyup!

Don't pick on Owl Meat -- it just makes him stronger.

As a true downhomer from Southern Illinois I would add filleted fried carp. Every county fair and local homecoming has a "fish stand" selling fried carp sandwiches on rye bread with sliced white onion and tartar sauce. Most of the fish is now pond raised but in my youth is was straight from the mighty Mississippi. Another item that shows up in local taverns and family gatherings on farms with stocked ponds is fried bluegill. 90% bones and 10% meat it is still a local favorite.

I think Emily's list and much of this discussion support my point. Sure there are distinctively American dishes, but that doesn't add up to a cuisine. To me a cuisine is a style of cooking, not a particular dish or even group of dishes.
Look at Emily's list. Pizza, tasso, tacos in the first ten. And so on.

FHJ sounds like a Democrat -- everything foreign is better. America doesn't have one cuisine, it has many regional ones. Barbecue alone is a broad-shouldered American cuisine. Am I right BBQ Girl? Go tell Cindy Wolf at Charleston that there's no such thing as Southern cuisine. Emeril Lagasse? I think he would disagree that Cajun and Creole cuisines don't exist.

USA! USA! USA!

Tasso? In the top 10? I am surprised that anyone north of Louisiana knows what tasso is!

Stop pandering to your Girl squad OMG. You're ridiculously zenophilic. I'm surprised you even lower yourself to write in English, Herr Dumkopf. I can't prove it but I think you learned German from Hogans Heroes.

Don't eat ponies! They will come back and haunt you!hey will come back and haunt you

Rock Chicklet -- how could you, of all people, dredge up that sappy song? I don't care if the lyrics to "Wildfire" include a reference to a hoot-owl. That's one song from the Seventies that should have died along with the Seventies -- appropriate for the litter box, but not for the Sandbox.

Well, it is obvious that FHJ hates America. My advice to him: start wearing a flag pin to prove your patriotism...an American flag pin, not some commie flag pin. In fact, a pin might not be enough, it might need to be a belt buckle instead.

hmpstd, I have to admit I would have been in the hater line for Wild Fire, but Letterman played samples of it randomly for months until it developed an absurd appeal. There's a video of the song that is nothing but a slide show of ponies and horses, some with wings -- even I couldn't stomach it. Plus, the lyrics are just plain weird. Extra points for the line "gonna leave sod bustin' behind." In that same vein, this is the most sickening 70s songs ever. "Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup, drink it up, Love her and she'll bring you luck." Brrr... I felt cold death walk by me. Kenny Loggins truly is the devil.

As annoying a song as Wildfire was, I submit the absolutely worst song from the 70's -- Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks. The true nadir of civilization. Gack, gack, gack.

Rock Chicklet and Cheese Girl -- the Seventies were so chock full of bad songs that it's impossible to single one out as the worst. Also, if we keep this thread going, the Sandbox will waste the next two months coming up with additional suggestions that will sicken us all.

OH! Cheese Girl wins! "skinned and hearts and skinned our knees..." Truly abysmal. I think I threw up a little.

This being Labor Day, a celebration of Socialist labor union fanaticism that ruined our once free country, I don't think you should question anyone's patriotism. You should give them a test, like they did to children in Washington State.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/images/december2005/301205paper.jpg

The worst song of the 70's and maybe of all time was "(You're) Having My Baby" by Paul Anka and Odia Coates.

No contest.

Rev Ed, which were the "expected" answers, the ones written in or the letters afterwards? Also, what age "children" was this given to?

10th graders. I'm not sure what the right answers are supposed to be (according to the grader.)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/301205patriotismtests.htm

Now, Bob; you seem to have forgotten Billy don't be a hero...
Extra points to anyone who knows who did the dumb song!

Given the sometimes weird comments on this blog, I don't know whether to roll my eyes or take serious personal exception to the offensive comments by Owl Meat GravyBoat and Robert of Cross Keys. If they were intended to be funny, or sarcastic, they were stupid. These days are no time to insult anyone's patriotism, seriously or not.
That said, OMGB further reinforces my original point. Yes, there are regional cuisines, and they are consumed elsewhere in the country. But no one has yet posted a definition of "American cuisine."
EL: You said you disagreed with me. Fine. Let's hear your definition or description of American cuisine.

MacArthur Park by Richard Harris was the second worst 1970's song. It was the worst until Donna Summer decided to record a disco version of it.

Tasso again ... anybody know where to get some locally? The last decent piece I got around here was years and years ago at the "Gucci" Giant in Pikesville. I've seen it once in a while at Whole Foods in Annapolis, but it doesn't have the depth of flavor that I remember. I asked once at the Belvedere market smokehouse, and though they didn't laugh at me, it was clear that it wasn't in their plans.

FHJ, I think Owl posited by infrerence the beginings of a definition of american cuisine. I suspect an exact definition will be elusive. But like Justice Brennan said of obsecenity, one knows it when one sees it.

Joyce -- You just made me laugh out loud (literally). That is a truly, truly bad song. I had to cheat to look up the answer, and got what I deserved. While cheating, I bumped into a reminder of another bad one -- "The Night Chicago Died."

FHJ -- any "national cuisine" in the world is really an amalgam of several different regional styles of cooking, each based on regional variations in available ingreedients and/or methods of food preparation. For example, "French cuisine" embraces Escoffier's haute cuisine, bistro cooking, the cuisine of Provence, and so forth. "Italian cuisine" starts with the northern/southern dichotomy, with further regional differences. And let's not get into regional differences in India, China, or Japan. (An argument possibly be made that there is a monolithic cuisine of San Marino, but even it borrows heavily from nearby regions of Italy.)

I don't think it shocks the conscience to view "American cuisine" as embracing numerous regional cooking styles, including but not limited to New England (lobsters, Ipswich fried clams), California (Chez Panisse and its progeny with their stress on fresh ingredients), Louisiana (Cajun and Creole dishes), and so on. Even the same ingredients can be treated differently in different regions of the USA -- Marylanders steam our crabs, while Louisianans (shudder) boil theirs.

I think RoCK and I were doing a Steven Colbert there. Making stupid statements on purpose to mock the people who do question people's patriotism and chant jingoistic slogans. Maybe too many layers for a blog. Sorry if it fell flat.

If American cuisine is a patchwork of regional cuisines, then so is French, Italian and Spanish. Even Mexico has distinctly different regional cooking.

Now for more important things. Richard's Harris' "MacArthur Park" is not a bad song. It is so ridiculously over the top that it is a GREAT song.
Someone left the cake out in the rain ...
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants.

And it's sung as stri-PED pair of pants. It's a metaphor meltdown. Oh, I'm listening to it now. It really is dreadful. I need a drink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHS8hj4TdT8

The video is funny. Presumably a still video cam in the real MacArthur Park. At 5:00 I can imagine Samantha and her evil twin-cousin Serena and maybe flamboyant Uncle Arthur dancing up a storm to it.

I have found in my small time here that American cuisine is more of an attitude than a menu. People are very open to the culinary influence of so many many races. Openness and innovation, not being bound by the traditions and harsh rules of our ancestors is what draws so many many people to America. As Mr. Clint Eastwood would say, there is plenty of room for the good and the bad and the ugly. I do believe that the best definition of American cuisine is much like the best idea of the American dream: possibility. Thank you for listening.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Do I detect yet another OMG personality of late?

Interesting conversation. I was going to make the same point as Joyce, invoking "I know it when I see it" -- it was Potter Stewart who said it.

(I recently saw the movie that occasioned the 1964 Supreme Court trial. It was Louis Malle's "Les Amants" -- mostly, kind of boring.)

But I really just stopped by to say that it was Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods who sang "Billy, Don't Be a Hero."

I'm sorry, RoCK, you mean the 99¢ lapel pin flag I ordered off the internet doesn't prove what a complete patriot I am? I was hoping my pinko commie background would not be discovered if I was wearing a flag pin, proving what a patriot I was.

Cheese Girl - coffee on the keyboard alert! You totally got me with that one (The night chicago died). Blech. I'm surprised Ronco hasn't made an album with all of these "hits".

Joyce W. -- I'll bet K-Tel made an album of all thouse "hits".

Joyce W. -- Ronco makes schlocky products, not albums. However, I bet K-Tel made at least one album of those "hits" -- available as a 33-1/3 RPM record or as an 8-track tape. ("Call before midnight tonight! Operators are standing by!")

Reason is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Dr. Adobo Karilli is visiting me for a while. He is on sabbatical from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura I told him he could use my computer. It's been a little quiet in the compound since Chino and Snickers left. I tried growing a beard, but it's really no substitute for companionship.
8>(

I couldn't find any one album that contained everything, but this has some.
Check out Volume 13.
Act now before it's gone!

Billy, Don't Be A Hero was also released by Paper Lace of The Night Chicago Died fame. Their version topped out at #96 on the pop charts.

For a local tie-in, don't forget Frank Zappa's Don't Eat the Yellow Snow.

Susan -- I wouldn't be suprised if that Volume 13 was the one they played at Guantanamo over and over. (I think I'd confess to anything to make that one stop playing...)

At the risk of beating a dead horse to death, let me return to what was supposed to be the topic of this thread. I am glad that I finally got some intelligent responses to my argument, faulty that I think they are. Yes, most national cuisines have regional components, but in almost all there is a theme that binds them. I think most of us would recognize a French or Indian dish as such, regardless of the region in which it originated.

Whew, Susan; what a tribute to bad music! Surely there must have been better music that was in that era!

In support of Cincinnati chili, I present: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/custom/offbeat/sns-ap-odd-chili-chow-down,0,6357421.story

I assume it was just "two-way" spaghetti-chile. The beans, cheese, and onions in a real "five-way" would have done him in (or at least rendered him "unapproachable"). To say nothing of the Tabasco-stuffed oyster crackers.

I am so glad I missed the 70s!

RiE

It was three way, spaghetti-chili-cheese.

Dahlink -- you've got me confused. One minute, you admit to spending 1969-74 in New Haven. Next minute, you were nowhere during the Seventies. Did you spend the decade locked up in the Skull & Bones tomb, with a 45 of the Wiffenpoof Song and a turntable set to auto-repeat?

Well, it feels as if I missed much of the 70s. I was living in Europe from 1974 to 1976. Later in the decade we were starting a family and not paying much attention to the pop music scene. And they never let me into Skull & Bones--it was off limits to women in those days, I believe. I never inquired.

FHJ -- you may think that "[you] know it when [you] see it", but looks can be deceiving. Vichyssoise, that "French" soup, was invented in New York City in 1917. I just heard on WYPR that northern Italy is noted for a sauerkraut soup, although Italy isn't generally associated with sauerkraut. General Tso's chicken was a Stateside invention, probably concocted around the time of Nixon's 1972 visit to China; prior to that trip, what most Americans called "Chinese" food had little to do with the cuisine of China. Perception trumps reality more frequently than some might like to admit.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who admits remembering the 70s. Besides me, of course.

Half the confusion, I suspect, is that so much of what we call the 60's happened during the 70's. Kent State. Woodstock. Many of the larger protests.

Lissa -- somebody once remarked that the Sixties, as a cultural phenomenon, really ought to be considered as the period between the JFK assassination (November 22, 1963, for you youngsters out there) and Nixon's resignation (August 9, 1974). The first event marked the start of the loss of America's innocence, and Watergate trashed what was left of our innocence.

Yes, Lissa, I do remember the awfulness of the early 70s. While students were being gunned down at Kent State there were nervous National Guard troops in the streets of my university town. And we cannot omit Watergate. We were in Salzburg when we learned that Nixon as resigning. A couple of good ol' boys from the States were whooping it up in the Cathedral over the news. We thought--wow, a lot has changed since we left!

However, Woodstock occurred in 1969, as best I can recall. My then-boyfriend missed it because he was meeting my plane at the time.

Dahlink, sorry on that Woodstock date. While I remember the 70's, I actually don't remember anything before the Munich Olympics clearly.

I think the part people don't like to remember is when the hippies turned into yuppies.

And the music. Although I actually liked a good bit of disco.

The 70's were pretty easy for me. I avoided the turmoil and conflict by sitting in front of my tv watching "The Electric Company" and "Starsky and Hutch".

I checked my Woodstock ticket stub, which I still have. (It is actually the whole ticket because by the time I got there, nobody was taking tickets any more.)

My ticket was for Saturday, August 16, 1969.

Lissa and Dahlink -- somebody once remarked that the Sixties, as a cultural phenomenom, ought to be seen as beginning with JFK's assassination (November 22, 1963, for you youngsters out there) and ending with Nixon's resignation (August 9, 1974). The first event signaled the end of the Eisenhower-era age of innocence. At the other end, Watergate shredded whatever innocence remained after the turbulent years in between, making cynics of us all for the rest of eternity.

I've heard that the era of the 60's ended with the Rolling Stones concert of Altamont (sp?) which was December of 1969. I think the bad music began however; in or around 1975 because I remember a few kids doing the "bump" at our senior prom and the whole disco thing exploding soon after.

hmpstd, then calling it "the Sixties" is a misnomer.

I've heard that the era of the 60's ended with the Rolling Stones concert of Altamont

Excellent point, Joyce. I never thought about that, but now that you point it out, I agree.

Nice souvenir Bob. By my count with Bob and Bob UU, the Roberts have taken the lead and now dominate the Girl Squad, unless Monkey Girl comes out of her tree.