100 must-eat American foods
Here’s a list of 100 must-eat American foods, which I mentioned the other day when I revisited my Omnivore’s 100 list. This list of 100 American foods one should try before they die was created by Slashfood. All the ones I have eaten before have been made bold.
- New York pizza
- Hoppin’ John
- New Mexico green chile
- Homemade buttermilk biscuits
- Tasso
- Whole Maine lobster (can anyone actually eat a whole Maine lobster? Those things are huge.)
- Calabash-style shrimp and hushpuppies
- Kansas City barbecue ribs
- Hot glazed Krispy Kreme (my sister and I got them for free when we bought coffee! That was a happy moment).
- San Diego fish tacos
- Cheese curds
- Key lime pie
- Philly cheese steak
- Memphis pork barbecue sandwich (Does this mean Memphis style or in Memphis? For all the ones that include a place name, I’m going to assume they mean the style, not that it had to be consumed in said place)
- Lowcountry boil
- Huckleberry pie
- New England clam chowder
- Boiled peanuts
- Buffalo burger
- Eggs Benedict
- Pastrami on rye
- Corned beef and cabbage (does a Reuben count?)
- Pancakes with maple syrup
- Everything bagel with cream cheese and tomato
- Thin Mints (preferably frozen)
- Frito pie
- Potato knish with mustard
- Silver Queen corn on the cob
- Soft pretzel from a street cart
- Fresh-picked blueberries
- Sourwood honey
- State fair funnel cake
- Chesapeake crab cakes
- Candied yams
- Oyster dressing
- Snow cone or snowball
- Wild Alaskan salmon (not absolutely sure I’ve eaten this one)
- Sautéed morels
- Persimmon pudding
- General Tso’s Chicken
- Frozen custard
- Italian sausage with peppers and onions on a hoagie bun
- Chili dog
- Buffalo wings with blue cheese
- Spam musubi
- Saltwater taffy
- Fluffernutter sandwich on Wonder Bread
- Black and white cookie
- Frybread
- BLT with thick-cut applewood bacon
- Baked beans
- Pumpkin pie
- Collards with vinegar and Tabasco
- Tex-Mex fajitas with skirt steak and sautéed peppers
- Fried green tomatoes
- Succotash
- Shrimp and grits
- Hot water cornbread
- Barbecue chicken pizza with red onions
- Chicken fried steak
- Carnitas burrito
- Apple butter
- Geoduck
- Soft-serve ice cream cone dipped in chocolate shell (especially Dairy Queen)
- Pecan pie
- Catfish supper at a church or fire station
- Oysters Rockefeller
- Homemade cranberry sauce
- Pimiento cheese
- MoonPie washed down with R.C. Cola (I don’t know if I’d even want to eat this)
- Pickled watermelon rind
- Cracker Jacks at the ball game
- Smithfield ham
- Meatloaf and mashed potato blue plate special at diner
- Chicken and waffles
- Po’Boy
- Green bean casserole with French’s fried onions
- Stuffed sopaipillas
- Turducken
- Shad roe on toast
- Sweet potato casserole with or without marshmallows
- Cioppino
- New York cheesecake
- Pan-fried river trout
- Jambalaya
- North Carolina pig pickin’
- California rolls
- Burgoo
- Penuche fudge
- Fried peanut butter and banana sandwich (the Elvis)
- Scrapple or livermush
- Elk medallions in red wine reduction
- Muscadine grapes
- Cheeseburger at backyard barbecue
- Open-face turkey sandwich
- Chicago deep dish pizza
- Cobb salad
- Peach pie a la mode
- Macaroni and cheese with Tillamook sharp cheddar
- Root beer float
My grand total is 47, which is only slightly better than my tally for the Omnivore’s 100. A lot of the names were unfamiliar to me and I had to look them up to know what they even were. It seems to me that a large number if items on the list originate in Southern or Midwestern states, most of which I haven’t visited (I am from Maryland, which I don’t really consider the South). That seems a little unfair, but the author readily admits that it’s a very subjective list. Perhaps she herself is from the South?
I’m surprised about a few things that aren’t on here. What about a Philly cheese steak? Or scrapple? (Oops– just looked back and realized that scrapple actually IS on the list). And what about Hershey’s chocolate? Was there any candy on the list at all? There are plenty of unique regional candies. (There are two on the list– saltwater taffy and penuche fudge). Once again, a fun list but rather uneven (and lacking in my #1 American food, chocolate chip cookies 
).
I wonder if there’s a list like this about Estonia. If there’s not, we should make one, something like “50 Foods You Must Eat Before You Can Understand Estonians”. The first three items should be dark rye bread, sült, and boiled Estonian potatoes with dill. What else?
My fridge is full of cows
This morning I opened the fridge and couldn’t help but smile. I felt like I was surrounded by cows.
Moo.
Moo. (Look at how happy he is!)
Mmmooo.
Moo.
Nothing special, but as stated, they made me smile first thing on a Monday morning. Quite an accomplishment. Well done, cows, well done.
Whole wheat rolls
I’m willing to bet that your home does not smell nearly as good as mine does right now. Why, you may ask, does my apartment smell so amazingly good at the moment? I’ll tell you– because J baked bread today.
The last time J’s parents came to visit, they brought along a few boxes of J’s old stuff, and one of those boxes contained this cookbook, which his parents had given him when he first moved out and was living on his own.
Otava is the name of the publisher– it means the Big Dipper in Finnish– and suuri keittokirja means big cookbook. It is a big book, with lots of clearly-explained recipes, and J was eager to cook from it again. Today he decided he wanted to bake whole wheat rolls, or Grahamsämpylät.
The recipe. Did I mention it’s in Finnish?
Estonian Graham flour (whole wheat flour).
I find the various face parts on the bag odd. The bag also has a little description of who Sylvester Graham was on the back, but it fails to mention his theory that a vegetarian diet would prevent unpure thoughts.
Dough.
Risen, unbaked, topped with poppy seeds.
Final result. Perfect chewy but light insides, a nice crust around the outside. Flavorful enough to eat on its own. Yum.
And, like I said before, the place smells heavenly. Perfect for a Sunday night. Say, honey… that big cookbook of yours has a lot of different bread recipes… how about you do this every Sunday?
To market, to market
Summer is obviously long gone. I mournfully packed up my summer clothes and replaced them with sweaters weeks ago, the temperatures last week made me consider getting out my long winter coat, and yesterday we got a decent amount of snow (!).
Despite having bid farewell to summer, there’s something from the summer that made me very happy and is making me happy still– namely, the fact that I made it to the market quite a bit this summer. The previous summer I didn’t go at all, as we spent half the summer traveling and the other half too exhausted to go out of our way to get seasonal produce from the market. That made me really sad. But this year I was a market-goer, which was facilitated by the fact that they opened a small marketplace right around the corner from us at the beginning of the summer. I could stop by there on my way home from work and grab whatever looked good. My first time there I impulsively bought green peas and raspberries at ridiculously low prices, not sure of what I would do with them. The next day my sister and her friend finished the camp they were attending here and came to spend the night at our place. I put them out on the table and those fresh, Estonian-grown peas and raspberries quickly became the best afternoon snack imaginable. I later got more raspberries, some of which are still in the freezer.
And remember these strawberries, from one of our first trips to the market this year? Beautiful!
I miss them!
I also got chanterelles from the market at a very good price (although the price dropped even lower later in the season). Chanterelles are called kukeseened in Estonian, which I love– it literally means rooster mushrooms! Sounds a lot less fancy than “chanterelles”, doesn’t it? Kukeseenekaste, or chanterelle sauce, is an Estonian favorite. I made some with the fresh mushrooms, then cleaned and froze the other half of my haul to use later in the winter. I love freezing things. I’m thinking of making some kind of quiche or pie with them.
I’m so glad I rediscovered the wonder of the market this summer. Somehow it makes it a little easier to face the impending winter knowing that I filled up (and stocked my freezer) with as much fresh, beautiful local produce as the short season has to offer. As we head into the cold months of carrots, cabbage and potatoes, hopefully those delicious berries and fresh mushrooms will keep me feeling strong, warm and healthy until next summer comes along.
The Omnivore’s 100 revisited
It’s been over a year since I dedicated a post to the Omnivore’s 100, a list that a blogger compiled of “100 things… every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life”. At that time, I had tried 43 of the things on the list. As of right now, I’m not doing a whole lot better. I can check off spaetzle (#56), which I had at a restaurant in Tallinn this past year, and louche absinthe (#73), which I’ve actually had earlier but I didn’t check off initially because I thought it was some special kind of absinthe (when actually it’s the traditional method of preparing absinthe). And that’s it. Kinda sad. I blame it on the fact that a lot of the ethnic foods on the list aren’t available in Estonia, but there are also some things on the list, like nettle tea (#2) and blini and caviar (#72), that are readily available here, so I could seek those out at some point. I also didn’t make much of an effort to try any of the things on the list while we were in London in May– I’m sure I could’ve very easily found stuff like pho (#12) and steamed pork buns (#19) there. Oh well.
I think the list should include “an amazing chocolate chip cookie”… maybe I’ll add that to mine
I’m not taking the list too seriously– I think I’ll be OK with never eating a Hostess Fruit Pie– but it is a fun source of ideas for foods I’d like to try someday. Somebody also made a version of this list made up entirely of American foods– I’ll see how I do with that one another day.
