To spin off that idea, my favourite single shortening is one that, as far as I'm aware, is unique to Canberra.
While all the official signs don't say this any more as it's far too confusing to non-locals, for any long-term resident the centre of the city is known as Civic.
On the original plans it was labelled as the civic centre. Nobody stuck with that. It's just Civic. For years it didn't occur to me that non-Canberrans saw that as an adjective crying out for a noun.
I have the same response to the common UK dialect (maybe elsewhere as well) "the electric". My brain waits for the noun, but of course in the dialect 'electric' is the noun used for "electricity supply" and "electricity bill".
I have the same response to the common UK dialect (maybe elsewhere as well) "the electric". My brain waits for the noun, but of course in the dialect 'electric' is the noun used for "electricity supply" and "electricity bill".
And also "electricity supplier / company / board", as in "the man from the electric."
I agree entirely with mousethief’s explanation — it’s the use of “salads” as a collective noun for the veggies you’d put in a sandwich, that strikes the North American ear so oddly.
This. I would have been as baffled as Trudy and family. AFAIK in North American usage, salad is not something that goes on a sandwich. Salad is its own thing, a dish unto itself. "Veggies" would be the more likely term. Veggies wouldn't imply cooked vegetables only.
(I would define veggies as the produce, served appropriately raw or cooked, which my carnivorous family ignores in favour of consuming all of the meat and half of the carbs at the evening meal, which we in our household would call supper.)
I have the same response to the common UK dialect (maybe elsewhere as well) "the electric". My brain waits for the noun, but of course in the dialect 'electric' is the noun used for "electricity supply" and "electricity bill".
I refer to paying my electric bill as paying Con-ed, referring directly to the company. (Con-ed = Consolidated Edison, though even Con-ed uses "Con-ed" now.)
I agree entirely with mousethief’s explanation — it’s the use of “salads” as a collective noun for the veggies you’d put in a sandwich, that strikes the North American ear so oddly.
This. I would have been as baffled as Trudy and family. AFAIK in North American usage, salad is not something that goes on a sandwich. Salad is its own thing, a dish unto itself. "Veggies" would be the more likely term. Veggies wouldn't imply cooked vegetables only.
(I would define veggies as the produce, served appropriately raw or cooked, which my carnivorous family ignores in favour of consuming all of the meat and half of the carbs at the evening meal, which we in our household would call supper.)
Can't you buy a ham and salad sandwich for your lunch? That is, a couple of slices of bread with ham, lettuce, tomato etc between? If so, what would you call it? Or a salad roll, a bread roll filled with various vegetables and fruit?
To go back to Trudy's post, what is odd is the use of "salads". You'd asked what of the various vegetables or fruits you'd like in your salad.
Can't you buy a ham and salad sandwich for your lunch? That is, a couple of slices of bread with ham, lettuce, tomato etc between? If so, what would you call it? Or a salad roll, a bread roll filled with various vegetables and fruit?
No. You can buy a ham sandwich OR a salad. You can buy a veggie roll, not a salad roll. If you want veg toppings on your ham sandwich, you specify which veg/veggies/toppings you would like if you're ordering it.
If you tried to order a "ham and salad sandwich" here, you might instead receive a "ham salad sandwich" which is chopped-up cubes of nasty pseudo-ham, mayonnaise, pickles, and other items God did not intend to be consumed together.
The use of the word "salad" as a collective word to describe these added items is not known here.
Here (US) you'd simply call it a ham sandwich, with lettuce and tomato if you cared to specify so far. Or if you wanted to save words, you'd say "ham and veggie sandwich." You'd never say "ham and salad sandwich" because "salad" by itself, with no qualifiers at all (such as "jello salad" or "egg salad") ALWAYS means a dish-in-itself, served separately from your sandwich or soup or whatever, and composed of at least two veggies tossed together.
If you wanted a sandwich filled with plant bits but without meat, you'd ask for a veggie sandwich.
There's also a strong, strong tendency to identify a "salad" as something that contains leaves, though in a pinch you can get around that. And most commonly it is dressed with oil and vinegar or some other dressing, to the point that it causes mild surprise in your server if you request a "salad" with nothing at all, just the plant bits.
Right - much the same thing but using "veggie" rather than "salad". "Veggies" (plural) here is used to describe what comes on your plate at dinner alongside the meat/chicken/fish etc.
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.
It's peanut butter and jam. No one days peanut butter and jelly. In fact even if the thing is technically jelly (no semi-solid pieces of fruit within), it's still called jam. And only on TV is peanut butter PB.
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 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.
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 '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.
Chacun à son goût* I really liked Heinz sandwich spread as a child, and still do.
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.
Chacun à son goût* I really liked Heinz sandwich spread as a child, and still do.
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.
Comments
MMM
While all the official signs don't say this any more as it's far too confusing to non-locals, for any long-term resident the centre of the city is known as Civic.
On the original plans it was labelled as the civic centre. Nobody stuck with that. It's just Civic. For years it didn't occur to me that non-Canberrans saw that as an adjective crying out for a noun.
And also "electricity supplier / company / board", as in "the man from the electric."
This. I would have been as baffled as Trudy and family. AFAIK in North American usage, salad is not something that goes on a sandwich. Salad is its own thing, a dish unto itself. "Veggies" would be the more likely term. Veggies wouldn't imply cooked vegetables only.
(I would define veggies as the produce, served appropriately raw or cooked, which my carnivorous family ignores in favour of consuming all of the meat and half of the carbs at the evening meal, which we in our household would call supper.)
Or, sometimes, "th'lec".
Around here it's always 'hydro', though the supply (at this moment) is roughly 50% nuclear and 27% hydro electric. (https://gridwatch.ca/)
Can't you buy a ham and salad sandwich for your lunch? That is, a couple of slices of bread with ham, lettuce, tomato etc between? If so, what would you call it? Or a salad roll, a bread roll filled with various vegetables and fruit?
To go back to Trudy's post, what is odd is the use of "salads". You'd asked what of the various vegetables or fruits you'd like in your salad.
No. You can buy a ham sandwich OR a salad. You can buy a veggie roll, not a salad roll. If you want veg toppings on your ham sandwich, you specify which veg/veggies/toppings you would like if you're ordering it.
If you tried to order a "ham and salad sandwich" here, you might instead receive a "ham salad sandwich" which is chopped-up cubes of nasty pseudo-ham, mayonnaise, pickles, and other items God did not intend to be consumed together.
The use of the word "salad" as a collective word to describe these added items is not known here.
If you wanted a sandwich filled with plant bits but without meat, you'd ask for a veggie sandwich.
There's also a strong, strong tendency to identify a "salad" as something that contains leaves, though in a pinch you can get around that. And most commonly it is dressed with oil and vinegar or some other dressing, to the point that it causes mild surprise in your server if you request a "salad" with nothing at all, just the plant bits.
It's peanut butter and jam. No one days peanut butter and jelly. In fact even if the thing is technically jelly (no semi-solid pieces of fruit within), it's still called jam. And only on TV is peanut butter PB.
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.
Worse by far - vol-au-vents filled with Campbell's Condensed mushroom soup. Damned things were everywhere in the 70s befoulling anything they touched.
Chacun à son goût* I really liked Heinz sandwich spread as a child, and still do.
*Each to their own taste
Me too!
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.