Attention What are you having for dinner?

[rareboy]

Pan fried sole with green salad.

 

[Nude_Dude]

Mustard greens are a specific plant, one of numerous varieties of Brassica: https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Mustard_Greens_6451.php

They are not the same plant that the mustard condiment is made from the seeds of.

Mustard greens are a favorite green regionally, as they continue growing in parts of the South through the winter, if mild enough. They are a more tender green than collards. Many families prefer them as a part of a mix of collard, turnip, and mustard greens.

All three are boiled to death, which is only recently a negative thing, as they date back hundreds of years when most food was turned into stews. Even if vitamins are reduced in the boiling process, the greens still provide iron, and minerals, and roughage, as well as calories.

Personally, I prefer them over collards or turnip greens, but do usually mix them with turnip greens.

They are invariably seasoned with some pork fat meat, usually smoked, and a bit of vinegar. It is common here to serve a pickled pepper sauce as a condiment with them.

Thank you, NotHardUp1
This is most helpful.
The U.S. certainly has a range of food product most of (white) Australia is unfamiliar with.
As best I can ascertain "mustard greens" are the foliage of any mustard seed producing plant.

Mustard greens are peppery-tasting greens that come from the mustard plant (Brassica juncea )
Also known as brown mustard, vegetable mustard, Indian mustard, and Chinese mustard, mustard greens are members of the Brassica genus of vegetables. This genus also includes kale, collard greens, broccoli, and cauliflower.

We don't have a comparable "greens" in Australia.
I'm assuming yours is banned for importation into Australia.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I've no idea if our greens are banned, but I strongly suspect most of our greens like collards and mustard were brought here by African slaves. If they are native plants, they were likely inherited from aboriginal tribes, or still through African slaves who sometimes lived among or adjacent or with Natives here.

Our Southern cuisine is currently having a moment, and is probably the strongest regional American cuisine outside of Tex-Mex, which is mighty yet.

Poor Southern white dirt farmers and share croppers had a very similar diet to the former slaves, and it took almost a century for several of the dishes to lose their associated stigma of being the food of the poor. Today, Sout Food and Southern cuisine have become inseparable and are prepared with pride by Americans of all strata, ethnicities, and races.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

^ NotHardUp1's last sentence really is true ^

In fact, I was mystified when I first learned that fried chicken and watermelon were associated with pejorative stereotypes of Black Americans.
Everybody ate fried chicken, And everybody ate watermelon. In the South, where I grew up, watermelon was a summer treat that was sort of a reward for putting up with the heat and mosquitoes.

Australian Nude Dude, teh Google machine tells me that what Americans call mustard greens are called mustard cabbage or gai choy in Australia:

Mustard cabbage: 'The most underrated greens to grace Australian tables'

Whether it’s preserved and popping with umami or fresh, sweet and tender, mustard cabbage is only held back by an unappealing name

www.theguardian.com

And collard greens are called borekale.


There may not be many people growing them up where you are in northern Victoria, but my friends tell me that sort of green is easy enough to find in Melbourne.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

What I had for dinner was a nice big bowl of kway teow tom yum (That spicy noodle soup).

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Steak.

This time really.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Today, Sout Food and Southern cuisine have become inseparable and are prepared with pride by Americans of all strata, ethnicities, and races.

I've been observing this brain misfire for more than five years now, and have recently seen it in the typing of others as well. At first, I worried that it was a nascent tumor forming, but after finding it popping up in the posts of others, I believe it is a common malady that is simply some sort of neural error caused by fatigue. At first, I only noticed that my words were sometimes truncated, lacking the final participle or suffix. But, more recently, I have observed these bizarred word fusions.

It's obvious that these are not spelling errors. And they are not nearby key fat-fingerings. And, since I only post by laptop, it can't be anything to do with texting.

My emerging theory is that it occurs at the intersection of memory and motor-neuron function. The brain is sending s-o-u-l to the fingers, but the brain is moving on, and the fingers finish the task autonomically, like a pianist who plays a piece while talking to someone or thinking about something other than the playing. The music continues, but not with the full attention of the brain, because somewhere, the brain has recorded the motions and is repeating them.

In typing, the brain has moved on rapidly, in many cases, and the fingers are left catching up, and they misfire, typing a pattern ingrained in some ingram, and finishing with the much more common o-u-t. We know that gene copying includes errors, hence mutations.

I wonder if there is some published study already on this phenomenon of the internet age.

We return you now to our regularly scheduled thread topic.

 

[NotHardUp1]

^ NotHardUp1's last sentence really is true ^

In fact, I was mystified when I first learned that fried chicken and watermelon were associated with pejorative stereotypes of Black Americans.
Everybody ate fried chicken, And everybody ate watermelon. In the South, where I grew up, watermelon was a summer treat that was sort of a reward for putting up with the heat and mosquitoes.

I have seen this food bigotry in several forms. First, I disagree with the article's claim that "mustard cabbage" would be an unappealing name. Mustard is popular, as is cabbage, globally, and most people know that mustard refers to a tartness, not just the prepared condiment. Now, there are plants named "skunk cabbage" and similar, so there, I would capitulate.

On the stigma, I remember Grandmother telling me she grew collards one winter when she was only in the 9th grade, and paid for her clothes that year by selling them to neighbors. I gathered it was a pick-your-own kind of sale, as collards are grown right through, with only the lower leaves being harvested as needed while the stalk keeps growing. What she was honest to tell me was that her family did not eat collards, subtlely hinting that they were poor folks' food, without saying it. Her family was not poor. Her mother never worked, nor her step mother, outside the home. Her father had a good job with the railroads operating telegraphs and other office jobs, so he was middle class, and he ran several side hustles like buying broken watches and repairing them, same with typewriters.

And the stigma wasn't for blacks only. Poor whites were just as often relegated to "poor white trash" with an accompanying set of stereotypes for them as well.

When I first taught school, I remember the guidance counselor, who was in her mid-50's, chatting at lunch with several of us teachers. She was a local and from a "planter" family, a distinct class in that society, not to be confused with "farmers." We were talking about favorite foods, and I was a young 23, and gladly volunteered that I could eat rice every day if I needed too, and never tire of it. She replied with a completely serious intent, "we don't eat rice -- we don't grow it."

It was really hard not to laugh out loud or to snipe back with "BANANA HATER!! BANANA HATER!!!" But, I was young and very politick at the time.

It's also worth noting that chicken had long been counted as a meat of the poor, and not fully red meat like lamb, pork, or beef. This was long before the Pork Council managed to rebrand themselves. And, chickens were free range, so ate insects all day long and tasted quite gamey. So NO ONE ever said back then, "tastes like chicken" to mean bland and tasteless, or innocuous. The slave tradition of adding a heavy dose of black pepper to fried chicken dredge was undoubtedly a wise cure to correct the gaminess. Southerners do similar preparations to this day to get venison to not taste like venison.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

For brunch I made myself one of my easy-to-throw-together ersatz pizza concoctions.

Grill a flour tortilla until it's got a nice char (and, preferably, a bit crisp).

Sprinkle with grated cheese. Sprinkle the cheese with "Italian seasoning" (one of those dried-herb mixtures from the spice-rack section of the supermarket).

Cover with sliced ripe tomatoes (I like grape tomatoes cut in halves or thirds) which you have salted and sprinkled with the Italian seasoning.

Put in under your broiler or in your microwave for a quick minute until it's hot.



It actually works. Not great cuisine, but better than almost any frozen pizza I've had.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

In typing, the brain has moved on rapidly, in many cases, and the fingers are left catching up, and they misfire, typing a pattern ingrained in some ingram, and finishing with the much more common o-u-t. We know that gene copying includes errors, hence mutations.

I don't know if there are published studies, but yes, lots of people do that (I've done it right in this thread), and you describe the way it happens well.
It does count as a typo.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

First, I disagree with the article's claim that "mustard cabbage" would be an unappealing name. Mustard is popular, as is cabbage, globally, and most people know that mustard refers to a tartness, not just the prepared condiment.

I don't find the term "mustard cabbage" unappealing (even though I don't much like mustard), but this was an Australian writing for other Australians, and the words may have some associations down there which they don't have here.

And the stigma [associated with collard greens] wasn't for blacks only. Poor whites were just as often relegated to "poor white trash" with an accompanying set of stereotypes for them as well.

Yep!

When I first taught school, I remember the guidance counselor, who was in her mid-50's, chatting at lunch with several of us teachers. She was a local and from a "planter" family, a distinct class in that society, not to be confused with "farmers."

Oh, yes! Very important distinction to old-line Southern whites. And the older the city, the more important the distinction. (I'm looking at you, Charleston.)

We were talking about favorite foods, and I was a young 23, and gladly volunteered that I could eat rice every day if I needed too, and never tire of it. She replied with a completely serious intent, "we don't eat rice -- we don't grow it."

That conversation would have gone differently in the South Carolina Lowcountry. I've overheard the occasional complaint there that, in South Carolina, there should not be a dinner table laid out without a bowl of rice on it. Rice and indigo were the plantation crops that first made colonial and antebellum South Carolina rich. (And, until the invention of the cotton gin, there was also Sea Island cotton, from which it was reportedly far easier to remove the seeds.)


I hadn't realized that big doses of black pepper could remove a gamy taste. I guess that's why black pepper was so valued in Europe in the centuries before chili peppers arrived from the New World.

 

[Vannie]

It actually works. Not great cuisine, but better than almost any frozen pizza I've had.

Yes. We do the tortilla pizzas as well. Nice crispy crunch and easy. Yum.

 

[rareboy]

We are having honest to god hamburgers tonight complete with homemade Ciabatta buns..

I have a whole hamburger about 4 times a year now, so this is a holiday weekend treat.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

We are having honest to god hamburgers tonight complete with homemade Ciabatta buns..

You made ciabatta yourself?

Wow ... I wonder if I'm ever going to have a kitchen big enough to roll out dough ...

 

[NotHardUp1]

I don't find the term "mustard cabbage" unappealing (even though I don't much like mustard), but this was an Australian writing for other Australians, and the words may have some associations down there which they don't have here.

Yes, but it is also possible that it is a personal speculation based on nothing representative.

 

[LoveMyPeppermill]

Yes, but it is also possible that it is a personal speculation based on nothing representative.

Possible, yes. But if she were an American, it would definitely be a personal speculation based on nothing representative.

 

[me203]

ONE glass of wine

The glass might be the size of an oversized stockpot, but it's still just one glass of wine.

 

[me203]

All I know at this point is that it will involve pinto beans, which are soaking as I speak post.

 

[rareboy]

You made ciabatta yourself?

Wow ... I wonder if I'm ever going to have a kitchen big enough to roll out dough ...

It is possible. It literally takes 3 sq feet. And if you get yourself a pasta/bread board of about 3x3 feet, you can slap it on a table and then roll out just about anything

 

[Vannie]

I had a leftover roasted chicken breast that I cubed up and put into a disposable roasting pan. Added a cup of rice and chicken broth. Covered it with foil and put it in the oven. Long grain rice is usually about 40 minutes in the oven or so.

The chicken already had great flavor with garlic and lemon so it made good rice. Added a cup of frozen peas at the end and and a few pats of butter. Was really good. I guess I will give it a fancy name now.

Chicken and rice with peas.