......so says the oracle Gwynneth Paltrow, this week.

She was talking about this - canned cheese aka "Easy Cheese"

http://www.retroland.com/wp-content/...sy-Cheese1.jpg


Let's have your suggestions and links for the strangest American processed foods you've either eaten or come across..... or even wanted to try.... see below, that's me:

https://media.giphy.com/media/xyPWsgSb4P00U/giphy.gif

( British examples are too well-known and definitely not extreme enough.)

Here's another to get the ball rolling.

Hamburger Helper, still very popular.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/~/media/...25&la=en&w=503


Basically you take one pack of this stuff and throw in a pound of any meat/ tuna/ chicken and it becomes whatever you want it to be

Now I'm not starting a food snobbery thread here as some American processed junk is worth a try, at least once but I'll pass on this "complete meal " that comes in multiple flavours, as it turns out something like this:

http://www.frugalandfunmom.com/wp-co...ger-Helper.jpg

Something different, just my cup of tea.

Can't do links though.

Everything on this page is so disgusting that it makes me wonder what kind of people would actually pay to eat it. http://burgerlad.com/2015/12/kfc-wish-list-2016.html

Oh my! The 'Double Down Dog" and a KFC Pizza Twister wrap for seconds.
"no bun all meat" tag.

For curiosity if presented with one, I would have to try one bite before my mouth seized up.

Problem is they are all so cheap too.

Best is this popular diner breakfast dish - "chipped beef" on toast. Comes in a pack, dried beef mince or slivers with a white sauce.

http://thecookinggeek.com/wp-content...ipped-beef.png

A few more oddities on here.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelblack...ist#.xn2NKN1Vp

Hi maddie, do you mean pasting them in or opening links?

Opening them I think.
I am hopeless at anything to do with computers.

If you're on the computer just click on the blue line with your mouse/pad to open them.
To paste them, i just copy the URL , that's the address line of the website - select it - highlight it, next use your copy function command and finally paste function to put it into your post.
You can't be as bad as you say. Hope I haven't made it as clear as mud.

I don't see anything wrong with chipped beef. It's a legacy meal going back to wartime/rations.

Basically it's corned beef or roast beef in a cream sauce served over toast.

It reminds me of this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YT5kI3zJFmA

I read the history of it on wikipedia. I'm not being snobby nor anti-american - some of this stuff is wartime/poverty origins, i get that - it's just alien to me as a go-to snack and I've never encountered read meat in bechamel - but yes I do like lasagna.
I will eat corned beef certainly.

I thought US was best because they have such a range of processed stuff we would find alien, whereas posting about Pot Noodles , Pink wafers, Angel Delight - well it's a bit of a yawn.

Anyway I 'm still not tempted.
What about this one - sausage gravy, courtesy of the deep south?
http://cdn-image.myrecipes.com/sites...?itok=m8defQto

Had forgotten that sketch. Miss him - he was funny.
Anyway you should get in touch with Kraft Inc. and say you've had a great idea.
You might get minted, geddit?

Oreos.

They are ******* vile.

Stop buying them.

Thanks for your help I will have a go but it may go wrong.

To be honest I think us Brits should stop throwing stones inside our glass houses. We're hardly culinary leviathans.

Just a little bit off topic.

A few years ago Jay Leno that American chat host who has all those cars, on one of his shows I think he was talking to the lovely Kevin Spacey and was pulling our food to pieces.
It made me so angry I found out an email address for his show and in no uncertain terms I told him off,saying he needed to learn about his own countries food than to start on ours.
I never received a reply so I bet he never even saw it, but it did make me feel better.

Just watch what schoolkids are buying at lunchtimes. They seem to have a talent for homing in on the most disgusting, unhealthy muck that's available.

Yuk !!!! that should come with a warning, I'm going to have nightmares now.

My husband used to work at a place that had a lot of international guests. Sausage gravy and biscuits was the number one requested food on the breakfast menu when British guests would come over for conferences and such. (Yes, we live in the south.)

Chipped beef is really, really old fashioned. I make it occasionally, but I can't remember the last time it was on a menu. You did used to be able to buy it frozen. But it's been decades since I've seen it that way either.

Skillet stroganoff is better than it looks. Hambuger Helper makes most of the 'you can have a meal in minutes!' recipes found in most standard (ie not celebrity chef) cookbooks. They're handy as emergency food (because everything but the meat is in the box.)

Can you still get an all day breakfast in a can? Because *that* seemed like a really questionable food choice to me.

Oh, and cheese in a can is super useful if you have a dog that needs pills on a regular basis.

Watching Frasier recently, Marty was lamenting that Frasier had 9 different kinds of mineral water blocking up the fridge and so he had to keep his spray cheese under the sink! Frasier and Niles would always be very sniffy about the fast food Marty loved!

Talking of which I was wondering what "fixins" were made of that were sprinkled on top of salads? Do they taste like those tiny crisp bacon flavoured crunchies you sometimes get here?

BIB I love the names of these things "fixins". We'd just use "toppings" which sounds less intriguing.
( I have those fried garlic & onion toppings which are great as it takes ages to fry up that stuff to make as they do in Thai restaurants. )

I found this. "Salad Fixins’ Original. Contains: Sesame Sticks, Raw Sunflower Seeds, Slivered Almonds, Cranberries, and Pepitas."
Sounds delish - maybe I 'm not looking hard enough
http://www.auroraproduct.com/product...riginal-14-oz/

That's a funny Frasier moment - an excess of "healthy" mineral waters vs the can of spray cheese which ends up with the sink detergents

Have always wanted to try Southern cooking - looks really intriguing and as I have always eaten full dairy fats etc the richness doesn't put me off. ( I did try & find the worst image of the sausage gravy TBH, I can well believe that Brits would actually like it. as proved with your conference guests. The biscuits are like a savoury scone? )

A dog trainer near me uses tube pastes for training. I can see that it would be useful. You have just reminded me how as kids we used to spray the can of aerosol cream into the dogs mouth when parents weren't looking - how gross were we! Dog loved it.

Breakfast in a can - I just checked - yes. We have sausage & beans in a can over here, so it's not that dissimilar, but yes it's without the toms & bacon.

These "Hungry man " ready meals are quite funny. "Eat like a man". "packed with protein power1"
Again, it's not really weird or strange though, just classic meals.

http://www.hungry-man.com/

Hungry Man makes delicious tv dinners. They grabbed a market share back in the day when a tv dinner was a pitifut excuse for a quick meal because you could have one and not come away hungrier then when you took the foil off.

Most southern cooking is agrarian based. It's food meant to fuel you for a day working in the fields. Most people don't do that any more, but food is one of those cultural heritage elements that refuses to catch up to the times.

Cat head biscuits. This recipe is pretty typical. If you don't have buttermilk handy, add a dessertspoon of vinegar to whole milk and let it stand for five minutes or so.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/236141/cathead-biscuits/

I remember a breakfast in a can that also had an egg in it. (This was an advert from years ago.) I thought that was questionable.

Dogs and whipped cream... lol RABIES! RABIES!
(Yeah, kids are dumb that way.)

You can get tins of All Day Breakfast in the UK.
Beans, sausage, bacon and egg.


Fine for a cupboard filler but I would probably just stick to a tin of beans & sausages or just beans as I have to be in the right mood to eat fried egg and would prefer freshly fried.

And people knock Jamie Oliver.