Real food to me means food that is in its original state - vegetables, fruit, grains, meat, dairy, nuts, beans. It means the end product has not been processed. The dish can have flavors added to the Real Food component such as simple sauces using pure ingredients - oil, tomatoes, etc.

To me real food in a restaurant means made from scratch and not SYSCO. Speaking of made from scratch I wonder what diners in the Baltimore area make everything from scratch? I was at the Forrest Diner the other day and the waitress mentioned they had just changed brands of home fries. I thought every diner would slice and fry their home fries. Not so.

To me, real food is prepared from scratch, non-real food is processed (like you). McDonald's is fake food. Sushi is real food. My chocolate cake is real food. Hostess cup cakes are not. Nor is chocolate cake from a box mix.

There is a certain kind of pretentious, stylish, looks good yet contains approximately 15 calories type of food that I also consider fake. I rarely run across that kind of thing, though.

I would say a place like Woodberry Kitchen serves real food, meaning they choose the best ingredients and let them shine without a lot of adulteration and adornment. Perhaps that's what was meant.

So "Real Food" is what your mother would have made if she remembered what her mother taught her and had the time to do it. "Real Food" is what Rachel Ray makes ("prepared from scratch"). "Fake Food" is anything commercial. If I use canned tomatoes to make spaghetti bolognese is it real or fake? From what I am reading so far it appears that "Real Food" is what you like and "Fake Food" is what you don't. I think we are confusing what is termed "Comfort Food," such as the meatloaf and lemon meringue pie mentioned, for "Real Food."

Real? Food where you can name all the ingredients. And you have to be able to name all the ingredients in those ingredients.

Veggie burger with soy cheese and ketchup? "Burger" and "cheese" - fake. Ketchup? Borderline. I wouold say fake. Can you name all the ingredients in ketchup off the top of your head? Can you guess how many? Eight. Tomato Concentrate Made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavoring. Fake.

Real? Food where you can name all the ingredients. And you have to be able to name all the ingredients in those ingredients.

Veggie burger with soy cheese and ketchup? "Burger" and "cheese" - fake. Ketchup? Borderline. I wouold say fake. Can you name all the ingredients in ketchup off the top of your head? Can you guess how many? Eight. Tomato Concentrate Made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavoring. Fake.

Real food: big thick steak, baked potato (not done in a microwave) with butter and sour cream. Two items, 4 ingredients. Coq au vin is real food, just a longer list. I'm with RiE. There is confusion with comfort food and 'real' food. But I have the same problem with the whole 'organic' thing. While popular culture would not call a Big Mac 'organic' I keep wondering what inorganic ingredients are in it? Rocks, sand? That's the opposite of organic.

Let's make this simple - contains chemicals I can't pronounce - fake. Contains vegetables I can't pronounce - real, get me a second serving!

I don't know what's in a Big Mac but real meat isn't gray.

Real food = meat & potatoes
Slim Jims & Munchos

but the correspondent's friends could be (not saying they are) those people who won't go with you to a Mediterranean restaurant ("hummus? I want REAL FOOD"), or a tapas joint ("Can't we just get some REAL FOOD?"), or to a Korean barbecue (no way, I want some REAL FOOD)

hard to tell.

Let's make this real easy - suppose you snuck into a Panera Bread store overnight, took all their product and left them with bags of good flour (King Arthur), yeast, etc. They wouldl be closed for days - all their product is prepared in a central commisary, shot with preservatives, quick frozen, and shipped to the stores. There are no real bakers at Panera stores as there is no real food. And Panera is just one example - there are many others (Ruth's Chris, McCormick Schmick, the list is endless).

RtSO & Owl - I worked at McDonalds when I was 16 & I don't even know what's in a Big Mac. We used to get silver packages of the "secret" stuff that made mayo and ketchup into the "secret sauce". It smelled like death. To this day, I can't stand to be around McFood! (BTW, I understand the McSauce now comes completely mixed and prepackaged in tubs like tub-o mayonaise comes from Sams Club. Lucky kids today that don't have to mix that nasty stuff!

Rie, you made me laugh, because I always swear that there's nothing real about Rachel Ray!

My brother-in-law seems to define real Food as Dead Cow.

Some coworkers and I were discussing Mari Luna and I mentioned that they serve a great lamb shank. The response was "we don't want a lamb shank we want REAL Mexican food". I assured them that tacos and burritos were also available.

Eve - I've been pondering this all morning. (I've been doing work, too. Ponder a little, work a little, ponder a little, work a little...)

I'm thisclose to agreeing with your brother in law. For it to be real food, you have to kill it, catch it or pull/dig it up out of the ground. (Or pick it off a tree/bush, I suppose.)

If after doing that, you apply anything to it other than heat, you've departed the real food station. At that point, you might as well be eating those little chocolate donuts that come out of the vending machine.

But I'm still pondering...

there's nothing real about Rachel Ray!

So untrue. Sartre famously said that Hell is other people. Everything about her is real. She proves that Hell can be reality. That's why you need to create your own reality. Go to a Chuck E Cheeze - those aren't robots that are fueling your murderous rage - that's (real) other people.

And now just for fun I'm having Opera read this back in a robot voice for comfort.
[Sweet sassy molassey the robot voice reading my own words made me tingly. So cool. I am robot. ]

So, if The Golden Arches were to make their signature cheeseburger with all organic ingredients, sourcing from humane-certified producers, would you accept it as "Organic" or would you still call it "Fake"?

OMG II -- Electric Boogaloo:

You said that real meat isn't gray, but I disagree. I have seen gray meat at the grocery store on more than one occasion.

Thank you Stacy ...

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

Habibi, not I am robot. It is we.

Mashed potatoes: real food This reminds me of the time my cousin's daughter was invited to have dinner with a friend. She came home raving about the mashed potatoes and gravy. My cousin said, "But, Ali, I make those things, too." her daughter said, "But, Mo-om--this was really good!"

Very nice Lissa. Although I never go far without a little Big Star, this makes my afternoon more bytey. Could they have been anything but German? I don't have time to watch the whole thing, I'm busy arranging Sun Staffer's socks by size and color.

As for Sartre's "Hell is other people", that reminds me of my days in IT support. One of the guys I worked with in Desktop Support came back to his desk after working for a long time on a software glitch (and a very unappreciative investment banker) and said, loudly, "I hate people!"

That became our unofficial slogan.

No, Kraftwerk would have been so different were they, say, Thai.

So I was browsing through some Thai electronica videos like I do every Thursday and I found this gem. Come on, I don't think Thai people are like the opposite of Germans, i.e., not capable of making angst-ridden robot music.

Okay, that was a little lame but very Thai. Check out on the same page the Thai hip hop dancing. Now that made me laugh out loud. They are SO not bustin' a move. It's like bizarro gangsta.

I don't know the emailer EL references above, but I am one of those people who asks if we can have "real food" when eating out.

Yell at me about my prejudices if you want, but when I ask for "real food," I want non-tapas, non-sushi, non-vegetarian, probably not too ethnic, not just the usual pub fare, and definitely not Sysco. To me, it means being able to get steak, fish, seafood, pork, chicken, pasta, etc. made fresh and simply prepared.

Coq au vin, which someone mentioned above, is a perfect example.

Some reliable places to get real food during the dinner hours: Rocco's. Tio Pepe. The Prime Rib. John Stevens, Ltd. James Joyce. Mama's on Half Shell.

Yeah, just a bit lame. More like a Bollywood rip-off.

I think both of those vids are more advertisement for the, erm, female establishments of Bangkok than anything else.

I'm busy arranging Sun Staffer's socks by size and color.

Good one, Bird.

Next thing we'll be listening to Techno-Klezmer.

RiE it is out there. I googled it.

I thought techno-klezmer was a joke.

Hmm...that sounds more Latin than klezmer to me, but there are lots of google results for techno-klezmer, so I'm willing to believe it exists.

After all, if Weird Al can do the "What's Love Got to Do With It?" polka, why not techno-klezmer.

I wonder if they grew hemp on any of those shtetls?

RiE, thanks. If you hadn't mentioned klezmer, I wouldn't have found the most excellent Budapest Klezmer Band on YouTube. Wow...they are just amazing!

Catching up again (which I seem to be doing a lot of lately!) ...

1) Gray meat: When first invited my wife (of now 27 years) to have dinner with my parents, she asked what the menu was likely to be. I suggested two possibilities: Eye roast of beef cooked to thorough grayness or a canned Polish ham with a can of cherry pie filling dumped over it for the last half hour. She thought I was joking, and was stunned to see that both were on the Christmas table.

2) Strange as growing up was for me, a weekly joy was the fact that Philadelphia had a three hour Klezmer radio show on every Sunday (go figure!) afternoon. I think it was on WHAT (later WWDB). My father played it loudly enough for us to hear throughout the house. Why good goyim such as us should have tuned in, I got no idea.

3) I got an interesting compliment from the nice woman behind me at the Giant Friday. She said, "Someone in your house likes to cook." Sue, the cashier, answered for me: "Yeah, the kitchen is his room." (She will get extra almonds in the biscotti next Christmas for that!) When I asked what brought the comment on, she pointed and said, "There's nothing there to eat as it is, except those crackers." (New Special K Crackers -- my rule of life includes the prescription that I be ready to try everything once.)

4) Which brings me to my nominee for "Ingredient of the Week" from that selfsame box of crackers: mixed tocopherols and BHT for freshness!

MD Canon, klezmer isn't just for Jews. I have always liked it. It is so alive. What other genre of music has you crying, laughing and dancing at the same time?

Somehow, I doubt mixed tocopherols are like mixed nuts.

For some of us Klezmer is soul music.

Mixed tocopherols are just Vitamin E, the stuff that would keep them fresh if they were removed from the ingredients in the first place.

For some of us Klezmer is soul music.

Turn down your soul please, it's giving me a headache. And get off my lawn!

Owl - don't forget to shake fist vigourosly!