Don't have much fondness for Subway, but the question wouldn't be about toppings or salad etc, just "what do you want on it". Depending on location you'll see a chart or the actual things and you say or nod/ shake head as various things are said. Subway is basically a lot of not so good bread IMHO.
Subways in the UK were (in my limited experience) awful.
I have frequented a couple of Subways sinxe moving to Canada and they were OK. But my "go to" choice was egg mayo on a certain type of bread. Last time I went in, I found that they no longer offered egg mayo. Nor the bread. When I asked what they had on offer as a vegetarian option, I was offered some sort of gunk. I left without a purchase. Won't be returning.
I remember 'Sandwich Spread, a revolting concoction of chopped-up vegetation in 'salad cream' (mayonnaise substitute). It tasted of vomit. I think it was made by Heinz for the British market.
I've had worse things. I didn't notice a vomit taste, and I'm one of thosed convinced that vomit is an ingredient of Hersheys.
Definitely Hershey' - with added carrot
Worse by far - vol-au-vents filled with Campbell's Condensed mushroom soup. Damned things were everywhere in the 70s befoulling anything they touched.
I remember the boiling rage I felt after I'd slaved for hours to make proper mushroom filling for vol-au-vents only for a friend of my mama-'s to complain that she preferred the "proper" filling.
Make your own sandwich spread: ketchup, mayonnaise and relish. My extremely incompetent cook mother would send me with lunch when small. Leftover waffles or pancakes sandwiches of sandwich spread and sardines.
And was the electric frying pan the convenient cooking contrivance of choice in other countries in the 1960s? The microwave of 50 years ago. My bad cook mother would put an inch of water in it, open tin cans of <whatever> and stand them in the water to heat up for supper.
I remember 'Sandwich Spread, a revolting concoction of chopped-up vegetation in 'salad cream' (mayonnaise substitute). It tasted of vomit. I think it was made by Heinz for the British market.
I've had worse things. I didn't notice a vomit taste, and I'm one of thosed convinced that vomit is an ingredient of Hersheys.
Definitely Hershey' - with added carrot
Worse by far - vol-au-vents filled with Campbell's Condensed mushroom soup. Damned things were everywhere in the 70s befoulling anything they touched.
I remember the boiling rage I felt after I'd slaved for hours to make proper mushroom filling for vol-au-vents only for a friend of my mama-'s to complain that she preferred the "proper" filling.
Just when you think you've seen the worst of humanity...
Thing is, the soup ones are really foul. Really, really foul. It should be physically impossible to prefer them to anything that's not already been eaten at least once.
Chicken pieces in a frypan with condensed cream of mushroom was haute cuisine when I was growing up. It introduced the novel idea of food with a sauce - revolutionary if the only other thing that ever went over hot food was brown gravy.
Chicken pieces in a frypan with condensed cream of mushroom was haute cuisine when I was growing up. It introduced the novel idea of food with a sauce - revolutionary if the only other thing that ever went over hot food was brown gravy.
My dad did this in the oven with pork chops. He called them "floaters". They were invariably served with Minute Rice.
I sometimes wonder how some of us who were young in the 70s survived.
When my mother died and we sorted the food cupboards anything she'd ever been given that was more exotic than a kiwi fruit was still there. Nearly full jars of dried herbs turned grey brown with age. Spices that all looked like dry soil and smelt of old attics. Best before dates mostly illegible but when they could be read they went back to my childhood...
When I were a lad pasta only happened in the form of spaghetti, as bologneise, or macaroni as a milk pudding or, on adventurous days, with cheese sauce. Long grain rice could only mean chilli. Everything else was with potatoes. Meat and two veg wasn't just a cliché; it was the reality.
And was the electric frying pan the convenient cooking contrivance of choice in other countries in the 1960s? The microwave of 50 years ago. My bad cook mother would put an inch of water in it, open tin cans of <whatever> and stand them in the water to heat up for supper.
I still have an electric skillet, best thing ever for southern fried chicken.
Note: There's some variation in Subway offerings, depending on where you are. This post reflects SF, Calif.
--Ditto what other Americans said about "veggies", "toppings", etc. And Subway has lots of free veggie toppings to choose from--or get all together.
--A "salad sandwich" would be something like tuna, ham, or chicken, cut fine, mixed with mayo, herbs/spices, and *maybe* minced veggies or minced pieces of pickle (I.e., pickled cucumber).
--Here, there are some special toppings for which you pay extra, like avocado. IIRC, they take 1/2 an avocado, slice it in pieces *while still in the skin*, maybe mash it a little, then flip it onto your sandwich.
--There are vegetarian sandwiches here. Don't remember what's in them, but I think they've long had some kind of tofu or veggie patty available.
--There are generally 5 or 6 types of bread/wraps available.
--I used to get a lot of takeout there. My store went away, though. It was handy for times when I wasn't up to doing a lot of food prep. So I'd get multiple footlong sandwiches, stick them in the fridge, and eat 1/2 or 1/3 at a time.
--Best value, for me, was the Oven-Roasted Chicken, with IIRC an entire chicken breast for the 6-inch sandwich, and 2 for the footlong.
--If you find the sandwiches too bland, try a different dressing/sauce. Chipotle or Sriracha, for instance.
--Odd, cultural thing: I've run into Subway sandwich makers who think cold sandwiches are odd, and will automatically put them in the toaster oven. Particularly the Oven-Roasted Chicken. I got so I'd very clearly specify "cold--don't heat it!"--and even that didn't always register. I say "cultural thing", because they seemed to be immigrants, and they understood the rest of what I said.
And was the electric frying pan the convenient cooking contrivance of choice in other countries in the 1960s? The microwave of 50 years ago. My bad cook mother would put an inch of water in it, open tin cans of <whatever> and stand them in the water to heat up for supper.
Never experienced that, I'm glad to say, but it would make the washing-up easier.
I actually don't know what makes chicken "southern" when you fry it.
Skillet versus frying pan. We don't use the word skillet. It is understood, but it isn't in our vocabulary.
For me what makes it southern is the butter milk used in preparing it, and that it is not deep fried under oil. Skillet and frying pan are the slightly different in my mind. The skillet has higher sides and always has a lid. A frying pan is more shallow and does not usually come with a lid.
When I were a lad pasta only happened in the form of spaghetti, as bologneise, or macaroni as a milk pudding or, on adventurous days, with cheese sauce.
I have one of my mother-in-law's recipe books. It contains a recipe for chocolate macaroni, to be served as a pudding.
--If you find the sandwiches too bland, try a different dressing/sauce. Chipotle or Sriracha, for instance.
AKA "you need to add canned flavour, because our food doesn't have any." None of the actual ingredients have much in the way of taste. The ham doesn't taste hammy, the cheese doesn't taste cheesy - even the onion lacks the oniony quality it should have. Slathering it in a spicy sauce doesn't fix that.
Southern Chicken is a particular way of creating fried chicken. It involves buttermilk, and also standing for several hours at room temperature (which of course food health police hate). It is a particular dish. One might ask "what makes a chicken dish cacciatore?" Well, because that's how you prepared it.
Kraft Dinner is macaroni and cheese. You add butter or margerine and milk and then the powdered cheese packet.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese. You do need decent cheese, though, which is conspicuously lacking in most parts of North America in my experience.
Having said that, a couple of local supermarkets gave just started selling Cathedral City cheddar, imported from the UK. This is a really decent cheese for cooking, as it has a good strong flavour. It is light years better than the tasteless gunk that usually passes for North Ametican cheddar.
I like their food, actually, and don't find it too bland. For fun, I order chipotle sauce on some sandwiches. But I also order much milder dressings/sauces on others.
Kraft Dinner is macaroni and cheese. You add butter or margerine and milk and then the powdered cheese packet.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese. You do need decent cheese, though, which is conspicuously lacking in most parts of North America in my experience.
Having said that, a couple of local supermarkets gave just started selling Cathedral City cheddar, imported from the UK. This is a really decent cheese for cooking, as it has a good strong flavour. It is light years better than the tasteless gunk that usually passes for North Ametican cheddar.
That rather puts things in perspective. By my standards Cathedral City is just about OK melted but is pretty mild and tasteless eaten as is.
Kraft Dinner is macaroni and cheese. You add butter or margerine and milk and then the powdered cheese packet.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese. You do need decent cheese, though, which is conspicuously lacking in most parts of North America in my experience.
Having said that, a couple of local supermarkets gave just started selling Cathedral City cheddar, imported from the UK. This is a really decent cheese for cooking, as it has a good strong flavour. It is light years better than the tasteless gunk that usually passes for North Ametican cheddar.
That rather puts things in perspective. By my standards Cathedral City is just about OK melted but is pretty mild and tasteless eaten as is.
We use the "extra mature" for cooking. Also works for cheese sandwiches (either with homemade chutney or apple). If we want cheddar for eating with crackers (now there's a word that may mean different things across the Pond), we have to go to a specialist importer and pay accordingly. We do that at Christmas only.
The proper stuff removes a layer of skin from the roof of the mouth
We have a specialist cheese factor down in town for those special occasions where parting company with a tenner for around a pound of cheese can be justified.
Other British cheeses are available in France if one is willing to pay for them. However, like with wine, imports usually cost more than French products of equivalent quality.
Moving away from sandwiches... I was listening to Steven Colbert interviewing James Comey. Comey's advice to anyone involved in the riot at the Capitol was, "turn yourself in now, the FBI are coming for you." In UKish I think you would be more likely to give yourself up. "Turning someone in" to my ear has an element of betrayal or treachery about it that makes it something you're unlikely to do to yourself.
Over here in the northwest we have Tillamook extra sharp cheddar, and in the Seattle area in particular we have Beecher's. Makes a mean mac & cheese.
But seriously, making mac and cheese isn't like making chicken cordon bleu, but it's still an undertaking that most weekend chefs are going to find laborious.
Kraft Dinner is macaroni and cheese. You add butter or margerine and milk and then the powdered cheese packet.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese.
Well, there you get into questions of what constitutes macaroni and cheese. In these parts, I’d say all you need is macaroni, butter, milk, egg and cheese—which are baked. That’s the comfort food; the macaroni with a cheese or béchamel sauce is a pale imitation, and doesn’t really qualify as comfort food.
But I’ll agree with you about the challenges of getting a good cheese in North America. I sometimes use a good pimento cheese in my macaroni and cheese. Heavenly!
I no longer buy any cheese other than vintage. My macaroni cheese is made using half vintage and half parmesan with a small amount of hot English mustard included for good measure.
I no longer buy any cheese other than vintage. My macaroni cheese is made using half vintage and half parmesan with a small amount of hot English mustard included for good measure.
Interesting. I don't use mustard, but I do stir in some cayenne pepper, which gives it a little lift. It's something I learned from my father - in the only time I ever saw him cook a meal (my mother was in hospital at the time).
All cheese sauces benefit from either a good pinch of cayenne or splodge of mustard. I tend to favour cayenne, but grain mustard added to mashed potato toppings also good.
How widespread is feta in the US? I'm tending to crumble it over hot dishes (eg lamb tagine, roasted chicken thighs) it not really being salad weather.
Kraft Dinner is macaroni and cheese. You add butter or margerine and milk and then the powdered cheese packet.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese. You do need decent cheese, though, which is conspicuously lacking in most parts of North America in my experience.
Having said that, a couple of local supermarkets gave just started selling Cathedral City cheddar, imported from the UK. This is a really decent cheese for cooking, as it has a good strong flavour. It is light years better than the tasteless gunk that usually passes for North Ametican cheddar.
Kraft Dinner has a history in Canada. When I was young you could 10 boxes for $1.00. It was quick, easy, took no imagination to make. Also the basis for many meals when we had no money. Cost less than buying ingredients separately. Add a can of tuna and peas and you've got all the food groups. Early Canadian student cuisine. If you didn't have tuna, then a couple of wieners.
Re cheese. Mass produced cheese everywhere is questionable. Best is locally produced. Same as everything else food. (Though, we've no choice for fresh vegetables in the winter, and never fruit.) We avoid cheese and everything else with a travel history.
Another Canadian tradition is Cheezies. Tastes about the same as Kraft Dinner but of course is crunchy. There is no other kind produced anywhere that is just like these. I don't think they are available anywhere else.
I had my first ever Kraft Dinner in April(?) 2020. My mother was a wonderful cook, and she made a great mac and cheese, so there was no reason to buy KD. I grew up in a family in which everyone was a good cook, so I grew up learning how to cook, and so, once on my own, there was no reason to buy KD. Last spring, my local supermarket had it marked down, so I thought, Oh, what the hell. My God, it was one of the worst things I've ever tasted. It didn't even taste like food, just neon orange salty glutinous matter. That I didn't even finish it says something. Never again.
I had my first ever Kraft Dinner in April(?) 2020. My mother was a wonderful cook, and she made a great mac and cheese, so there was no reason to buy KD. I grew up in a family in which everyone was a good cook, so I grew up learning how to cook, and so, once on my own, there was no reason to buy KD. Last spring, my local supermarket had it marked down, so I thought, Oh, what the hell. My God, it was one of the worst things I've ever tasted. It didn't even taste like food, just neon orange salty glutinous matter. That I didn't even finish it says something. Never again.
I had so much mac and cheese growing up--it was all we could afford--I have not eaten it since I graduated from High School.
We have Cheetos, I am sure they are the same thing. Eat one and your fingers are orange. They now also have hot spicy ones.
No they are not. We have Cheetos here too. They're quite different. Not as crisp and contain air. Cheezies are extruded and are not puffy at all. The orange is a bit yellower. Cheetos are sh** on comparison.
Kraft mac and cheese (the original version) is comfort food here, along with Campbell's cheap chicken noodle. It was what my folks could afford when I was little and got sick.
I discovered Kraft mac and cheese in college, and it has been a go-to comfort food for me ever since. In fact, I may have it for dinner tonight after seeing all these posts about it.
Ditto on Kraft mac & cheese, and ramen. I still sometimes eat cheap ramen, but I ditch the flavor/sauce packet. Way too much salt and other best-avoided things.
Growing up, there were also sales on frozen meat pies and frozen TV dinners, and you could get several for a dollar.
rhubarb, in the UK, I have only ever said ‘macaroni cheese’ as well. I recall a few years back, asking on these very boards, whether what I knew as ‘macaroni cheese’ (i.e., macaroni in a cheese sauce) was the same as ‘mac and cheese’, which was being discussed at the time - to me, it sounds like macaroni with cheese on top, rather than in a sauce.
Since then, I have started to see ‘mac and cheese’ on menus, whereas 5/6 years ago, I had never seen it at all.
The other ten-for-a-dollar pseudofood we had when I was in college (uni) was Top Ramen. My kids still eat that crap.
"Ramen" is a new word for me within the last 10 years. We just called them "Chinese noodles". Like Kraft Dinner (macaroni and cheese), they were the basis of many marginal meals.
Calling macaroni and cheese "mac and cheese" is not usual to my ears. Always the whole word "macaroni". Probably because this means an pseudo upscale version where you've actually made a cheese sauce from flour, butter and cheese.
Cheeze Whiz was a popular thing (probably still is). Heavily salted, spreadable goo. Velveeta is the solid version. I think it is officially labelled "process cheese food" in Canada if memory serves.
A dairy food never seen by me before about 1975 is yogurt, which seems to have more spellings that any other foods. I loathed the stuff from the beginning and do to this day, having been turned totally off after my mother started to make it herself from powered milk. I learned the word "glairigenous" in this context.
Comments
Subways in the UK were (in my limited experience) awful.
I have frequented a couple of Subways sinxe moving to Canada and they were OK. But my "go to" choice was egg mayo on a certain type of bread. Last time I went in, I found that they no longer offered egg mayo. Nor the bread. When I asked what they had on offer as a vegetarian option, I was offered some sort of gunk. I left without a purchase. Won't be returning.
Definitely Hershey' - with added carrot I remember the boiling rage I felt after I'd slaved for hours to make proper mushroom filling for vol-au-vents only for a friend of my mama-'s to complain that she preferred the "proper" filling.
And was the electric frying pan the convenient cooking contrivance of choice in other countries in the 1960s? The microwave of 50 years ago. My bad cook mother would put an inch of water in it, open tin cans of <whatever> and stand them in the water to heat up for supper.
Just when you think you've seen the worst of humanity...
Thing is, the soup ones are really foul. Really, really foul. It should be physically impossible to prefer them to anything that's not already been eaten at least once.
My dad did this in the oven with pork chops. He called them "floaters". They were invariably served with Minute Rice.
When my mother died and we sorted the food cupboards anything she'd ever been given that was more exotic than a kiwi fruit was still there. Nearly full jars of dried herbs turned grey brown with age. Spices that all looked like dry soil and smelt of old attics. Best before dates mostly illegible but when they could be read they went back to my childhood...
When I were a lad pasta only happened in the form of spaghetti, as bologneise, or macaroni as a milk pudding or, on adventurous days, with cheese sauce. Long grain rice could only mean chilli. Everything else was with potatoes. Meat and two veg wasn't just a cliché; it was the reality.
I still have an electric skillet, best thing ever for southern fried chicken.
Skillet versus frying pan. We don't use the word skillet. It is understood, but it isn't in our vocabulary.
Note: There's some variation in Subway offerings, depending on where you are. This post reflects SF, Calif.
--Ditto what other Americans said about "veggies", "toppings", etc. And Subway has lots of free veggie toppings to choose from--or get all together.
--A "salad sandwich" would be something like tuna, ham, or chicken, cut fine, mixed with mayo, herbs/spices, and *maybe* minced veggies or minced pieces of pickle (I.e., pickled cucumber).
--Here, there are some special toppings for which you pay extra, like avocado. IIRC, they take 1/2 an avocado, slice it in pieces *while still in the skin*, maybe mash it a little, then flip it onto your sandwich.
--There are vegetarian sandwiches here. Don't remember what's in them, but I think they've long had some kind of tofu or veggie patty available.
--There are generally 5 or 6 types of bread/wraps available.
--I used to get a lot of takeout there. My store went away, though.
--Best value, for me, was the Oven-Roasted Chicken, with IIRC an entire chicken breast for the 6-inch sandwich, and 2 for the footlong.
--If you find the sandwiches too bland, try a different dressing/sauce. Chipotle or Sriracha, for instance.
--Odd, cultural thing: I've run into Subway sandwich makers who think cold sandwiches are odd, and will automatically put them in the toaster oven. Particularly the Oven-Roasted Chicken. I got so I'd very clearly specify "cold--don't heat it!"--and even that didn't always register. I say "cultural thing", because they seemed to be immigrants, and they understood the rest of what I said.
Never experienced that, I'm glad to say, but it would make the washing-up easier.
For me what makes it southern is the butter milk used in preparing it, and that it is not deep fried under oil. Skillet and frying pan are the slightly different in my mind. The skillet has higher sides and always has a lid. A frying pan is more shallow and does not usually come with a lid.
I have one of my mother-in-law's recipe books. It contains a recipe for chocolate macaroni, to be served as a pudding.
AKA "you need to add canned flavour, because our food doesn't have any." None of the actual ingredients have much in the way of taste. The ham doesn't taste hammy, the cheese doesn't taste cheesy - even the onion lacks the oniony quality it should have. Slathering it in a spicy sauce doesn't fix that.
A skillet is another word for a frying pan, whuch has tapered sides.
A sauté pan is usually heavier, has straight sides and a lid, and a short handle so it can be put into an oven.
An omelette pan is smaller than a frying pan and usually has a longer handle.
Which I still don't get. I mean - it's not as if macaroni cheese is hard to do. It's one of our comfort foods for cold, wet days.
All you need is macaroni, flour, butter, milk and cheese. You do need decent cheese, though, which is conspicuously lacking in most parts of North America in my experience.
Having said that, a couple of local supermarkets gave just started selling Cathedral City cheddar, imported from the UK. This is a really decent cheese for cooking, as it has a good strong flavour. It is light years better than the tasteless gunk that usually passes for North Ametican cheddar.
I like their food, actually, and don't find it too bland. For fun, I order chipotle sauce on some sandwiches. But I also order much milder dressings/sauces on others.
That rather puts things in perspective. By my standards Cathedral City is just about OK melted but is pretty mild and tasteless eaten as is.
We use the "extra mature" for cooking. Also works for cheese sandwiches (either with homemade chutney or apple). If we want cheddar for eating with crackers (now there's a word that may mean different things across the Pond), we have to go to a specialist importer and pay accordingly. We do that at Christmas only.
We have a specialist cheese factor down in town for those special occasions where parting company with a tenner for around a pound of cheese can be justified.
Moving away from sandwiches... I was listening to Steven Colbert interviewing James Comey. Comey's advice to anyone involved in the riot at the Capitol was, "turn yourself in now, the FBI are coming for you." In UKish I think you would be more likely to give yourself up. "Turning someone in" to my ear has an element of betrayal or treachery about it that makes it something you're unlikely to do to yourself.
But seriously, making mac and cheese isn't like making chicken cordon bleu, but it's still an undertaking that most weekend chefs are going to find laborious.
But I’ll agree with you about the challenges of getting a good cheese in North America. I sometimes use a good pimento cheese in my macaroni and cheese. Heavenly!
Interesting. I don't use mustard, but I do stir in some cayenne pepper, which gives it a little lift. It's something I learned from my father - in the only time I ever saw him cook a meal (my mother was in hospital at the time).
How widespread is feta in the US? I'm tending to crumble it over hot dishes (eg lamb tagine, roasted chicken thighs) it not really being salad weather.
Kraft Dinner has a history in Canada. When I was young you could 10 boxes for $1.00. It was quick, easy, took no imagination to make. Also the basis for many meals when we had no money. Cost less than buying ingredients separately. Add a can of tuna and peas and you've got all the food groups. Early Canadian student cuisine. If you didn't have tuna, then a couple of wieners.
Re cheese. Mass produced cheese everywhere is questionable. Best is locally produced. Same as everything else food. (Though, we've no choice for fresh vegetables in the winter, and never fruit.) We avoid cheese and everything else with a travel history.
Another Canadian tradition is Cheezies. Tastes about the same as Kraft Dinner but of course is crunchy. There is no other kind produced anywhere that is just like these. I don't think they are available anywhere else.
I had so much mac and cheese growing up--it was all we could afford--I have not eaten it since I graduated from High School.
No they are not. We have Cheetos here too. They're quite different. Not as crisp and contain air. Cheezies are extruded and are not puffy at all. The orange is a bit yellower. Cheetos are sh** on comparison.
Hence the mention in the Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had A Million Dollars”.
Growing up, there were also sales on frozen meat pies and frozen TV dinners, and you could get several for a dollar.
Since then, I have started to see ‘mac and cheese’ on menus, whereas 5/6 years ago, I had never seen it at all.
MMM
"Ramen" is a new word for me within the last 10 years. We just called them "Chinese noodles". Like Kraft Dinner (macaroni and cheese), they were the basis of many marginal meals.
Calling macaroni and cheese "mac and cheese" is not usual to my ears. Always the whole word "macaroni". Probably because this means an pseudo upscale version where you've actually made a cheese sauce from flour, butter and cheese.
Cheeze Whiz was a popular thing (probably still is). Heavily salted, spreadable goo. Velveeta is the solid version. I think it is officially labelled "process cheese food" in Canada if memory serves.
A dairy food never seen by me before about 1975 is yogurt, which seems to have more spellings that any other foods. I loathed the stuff from the beginning and do to this day, having been turned totally off after my mother started to make it herself from powered milk. I learned the word "glairigenous" in this context.