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.
Yes, I'm scarred for life. Disgusted by powdered milk syndrome creating yoghurtly avoidance. If that's a thing.
(Others may have had gustatory trauma resulting in aversion, and if not, I'm uniquely weird)
I heard a minister this morning (he's Canadian, originally from North Carolina) - refer to his backyard garden, a phrase I don't think I had heard before. I am pretty sure that would cause puzzlement in the UK, but I took it to mean his flower or vegetable garden that was located in his back yard.
***
Edited to add my (American) wife's comment that she thought all gardens were in the back yard, i.e. you don't grow vegetables on the front lawn.
A dairy food never seen by me before about 1975 is yogurt, which seems to have more spellings that any other foods.
Yes, I recall it coming on the scene a few years after that, as any food-related trends were always a bit late getting to Newfoundland. I would have been late 70s/early 80s that my dad recalls seeing a child pointing to something in the dairy case and asking, "Mom, what's yuck-art?" to which the mother replied, "Some kind of cheese, you wouldn't like it."
I heard a minister this morning (he's Canadian, originally from North Carolina) - refer to his backyard garden, a phrase I don't think I had heard before. I am pretty sure that would cause puzzlement in the UK, but I took it to mean his flower or vegetable garden that was located in his back yard.
That’s what this North Carolinian would understand it to mean. “Garden” always means a place dedicated to growing vegetables or flowers here.
Without the explanations on this thread, a 'Mac and cheese' would convey to me a not very nice burger with a square piece of processed cheddar type on top of it, served in a bap and if you were really lucky, with a few pieces of fried onions added as well.
I don't think I've ever heard of a Cheese Whiz, a Velveeta, a Kraft Dinner. a Cheeto or a Ramen. Calling anything a Cheeto would strike me as bad marketing.
I don't think I've ever heard of a Cheese Whiz, a Velveeta, a Kraft Dinner. a Cheeto or a Ramen. Calling anything a Cheeto would strike me as bad marketing.
You've not heard of ramen? It's the name of a Japanese noodle just as macaroni is the name of an Italian noodle.
I don't think I've ever heard of a Cheese Whiz, a Velveeta, a Kraft Dinner. a Cheeto or a Ramen. Calling anything a Cheeto would strike me as bad marketing.
You've not heard of ramen? It's the name of a Japanese noodle just as macaroni is the name of an Italian noodle.
We have Ramen in the UK. My kids are all addicted to the "instant" form. Not pot noodles; God forbid and confuse them not!
That's another pond difference - "noodle" for Italian style pasta sounds odd to my UK ears; we tend to reserve the term for the Oriental versions. We generally think of "noodles" and "pasta" as two separate things.
Yes, I'm scarred for life. Disgusted by powdered milk syndrome creating yoghurtly avoidance. If that's a thing.
(Others may have had gustatory trauma resulting in aversion, and if not, I'm uniquely weird)
No, my kid had an unfortunate encounter with American processed cheese in preschool, and has a cheese aversion to this day. (Not so much to the expensive stuff, surprisingly--NOT.)
Technically Ramen is a Japanese dish, meaning pulled noodles, consisting of...well...Chinese wheat noodles. The Japanese developed dish after the failure of their rice crop. It does not have to be salty. There are several variations. We have a shop about a block away from where I live that sells real Ramen. It is quite popular here.
I heard a minister this morning (he's Canadian, originally from North Carolina) - refer to his backyard garden, a phrase I don't think I had heard before. I am pretty sure that would cause puzzlement in the UK, but I took it to mean his flower or vegetable garden that was located in his back yard.
***
Edited to add my (American) wife's comment that she thought all gardens were in the back yard, i.e. you don't grow vegetables on the front lawn.
Yes, in the U.S. gardens are normally garden plots (exception made for botanical gardens, etc.). And so we tend to associate them with veggies and occasionally flowers all-in-one-place, as a cutting garden or a garden of bedding plants laid out to form a design, the sort of thing gas stations and community colleges do sometimes.
At the time of writing (2011), Julie Bass faced a possible 93 days in jail! I haven't followed up to see what happened; but ISTM, from the details, that the nuances of the rules were on her side.
Anyway, more than one way to have a garden on your property.
They dropped the charges. I gather there was a media shitstorm (maybe a small one, I don't know) but enough that they backed out.
We grow watermelon in the front yard (on the side, but hey). We also have a fruiting cherry tree there, and amaranth and strawberries some years. We thought our next door neighbor would kick up a fuss, but either she didn't recognize it, or she'd decided to stop making our lives a constant misery with all her complaints to the code department (every neighbor on our street has REAMS of complaints she's filed, but it sort of came to an end after the guy across the street sued her.)
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.
I grew up with a yoghurt maker in the kitchen, in glorious late-70s plastic. It made quite acceptable yoghurt, although I don't think powdered milk was involved.
Yeah, well, our neighbor is also the one who referred to us as "the little brown people." As if weight loss and some color to my skin wasn't the height of my ambition, heh.
I grew up in a small town that had a fairly large population of Italian immigrants, and depending on the configuration of their lot, their veg gardens, though not in the front yard, were often quite obvious from the street. Not all Italians had these extensive gardens, but extensive gardens were almost always Italian - the bean poles were the signature. I always like the look of them, being in them, the smell of them in the hot sun. Besides, they're much more productive and ecologically friendly than a manicured lawn. What I wouldn't give to have the backyard turned entirely to a veg plot.
There was a lady who lives a few blocks away from me who planted a large variety of veggies in the soil area between the sidewalk and the street including corn, beans, tomatoes, and summer squash. I stopped to admire it one day and spoke to her as she tended it. She got it through the whole season, so I assume no one complained and/or there isn't a code issue.
We have Ramen in the UK. My kids are all addicted to the "instant" form. Not pot noodles; God forbid and confuse them not!
When I bought my first flat back in the 1980s, the mortgage interest rate was sky high, after I'd paid all the bills all I could afford to live on was pot noodle! I still have a nostalgia for them.
English usage, can't speak for Scotland or Ireland.
'Garden' - area of ground usually by a house, but not always, cultivated with possibly a lawn, flower beds or vegetables.
'Front Garden', garden in front of a house, between the front door and the road. Often small. More likely to have flowers than vegetables and often with a small lawn if enough room. Sometimes has a low wall or a hedge between it and the pavement (US sidewalk), or sometimes covenants to discourage walls.
'Back Garden', garden behind the house and not so visible from the road. Often bigger than front garden. Can have lawn, flower beds, vegetables, seats, washing line etc. Used for adults to sit in and children to play in.
'Kitchen Garden', (lessened) garden devoted entirely to cultivation of vegetables, herbs etc.
'Yard', small enclosed area behind house with a concrete, tiled or other hard surface. Often just outside kitchen door. May have washing line, plants in pots, and seats. Sometimes between house and back garden. Also used of any other enclosed outside area with a hard surface, e.g. farmyard, builder's yard.
So I think usage on opposite sides of the Atlantic is fairly different.
I second Enoch in this, growing up in England. A yard was always paved or concreted, though in my experience it was more likely to have a wrecked bike than potted plants and seating.
I second Enoch in this, growing up in England. A yard was always paved or concreted, though in my experience it was more likely to have a wrecked bike than potted plants and seating.
In private rented areas, a broken bed and an old fridge that the Landlord is too tight to pay for disposal of.
Similarly we don't have schoolyards, we have playgrounds. The yard in a UK school is usually near the kitchens and boiler room and is definitely out-of-bounds for pupils.
Garden if said alone means growing vegetables. Flower garden or vegetable garden would be said if you want to be specific. A yard means the whole thing, front yard, back yard if needed to be specific.
Very commonly in the past when people were building a new house they'd plant potatoes the first year in the front yard to break up the soil, putting in lawn the second. Most lawns are now from turf farms, laid down like squares of carpet.
FWIW, I hate lawns, and also lawn chemicals and fertilizers. Which are ubiquitous here.
US here. What you call a yard across the pond is a patio or courtyard here (concrete, brick or stone flooring, possibly enclosed by a low wall). These are usually right up against the building. If you say "front or back garden" we will understand it to be a reference to a smaller plot of ground for growing flowers or veggies that is located within the front or back yard. We also have sideyards, which tend to be narrow aisle-like areas between a house and a property-line dividing wall or fence, though occasionally they are much larger, as ours is. Our house is on a Nevada-shaped bit of land and it's set within three feet of the angle in the crooked line--so the other sideyard is relatively huge.
A patio here would be paved with brick or stone, probably not with concrete, probably not enclosed, and normally within a larger garden, whereas if you have a yard then a yard is what you have. (My brother's old house had a square yard. It was rectangular.)
Comments
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.
Yes, I'm scarred for life. Disgusted by powdered milk syndrome creating yoghurtly avoidance. If that's a thing.
(Others may have had gustatory trauma resulting in aversion, and if not, I'm uniquely weird)
***
Edited to add my (American) wife's comment that she thought all gardens were in the back yard, i.e. you don't grow vegetables on the front lawn.
Yes, I recall it coming on the scene a few years after that, as any food-related trends were always a bit late getting to Newfoundland. I would have been late 70s/early 80s that my dad recalls seeing a child pointing to something in the dairy case and asking, "Mom, what's yuck-art?" to which the mother replied, "Some kind of cheese, you wouldn't like it."
I don't think I've ever heard of a Cheese Whiz, a Velveeta, a Kraft Dinner. a Cheeto or a Ramen. Calling anything a Cheeto would strike me as bad marketing.
You've not heard of ramen? It's the name of a Japanese noodle just as macaroni is the name of an Italian noodle.
We have Ramen in the UK. My kids are all addicted to the "instant" form. Not pot noodles; God forbid and confuse them not!
That's another pond difference - "noodle" for Italian style pasta sounds odd to my UK ears; we tend to reserve the term for the Oriental versions. We generally think of "noodles" and "pasta" as two separate things.
No, my kid had an unfortunate encounter with American processed cheese in preschool, and has a cheese aversion to this day. (Not so much to the expensive stuff, surprisingly--NOT.)
Yes, in the U.S. gardens are normally garden plots (exception made for botanical gardens, etc.). And so we tend to associate them with veggies and occasionally flowers all-in-one-place, as a cutting garden or a garden of bedding plants laid out to form a design, the sort of thing gas stations and community colleges do sometimes.
Yes, usually in the backyard. However, some people use "edible landscaping" or "foodscaping" in their front yards!
"20 Plants to Grow for an Edible Front Yard" (Morning Chores).
But, depending on where you live, you might have to take local laws and home-owner association (HOA) rules into account. I came across this story
"Woman Faces Jail Time For Growing Vegetable Garden In Her Own Front Lawn" (ABC News).
At the time of writing (2011), Julie Bass faced a possible 93 days in jail! I haven't followed up to see what happened; but ISTM, from the details, that the nuances of the rules were on her side.
Anyway, more than one way to have a garden on your property.
We grow watermelon in the front yard (on the side, but hey). We also have a fruiting cherry tree there, and amaranth and strawberries some years. We thought our next door neighbor would kick up a fuss, but either she didn't recognize it, or she'd decided to stop making our lives a constant misery with all her complaints to the code department (every neighbor on our street has REAMS of complaints she's filed, but it sort of came to an end after the guy across the street sued her.)
Ah, the neighbor was your Mrs. Kravitz! (The nosy neighbor on "Bewitched".)
Thanks for the other info.
I grew up with a yoghurt maker in the kitchen, in glorious late-70s plastic. It made quite acceptable yoghurt, although I don't think powdered milk was involved.
When I bought my first flat back in the 1980s, the mortgage interest rate was sky high, after I'd paid all the bills all I could afford to live on was pot noodle! I still have a nostalgia for them.
'Garden' - area of ground usually by a house, but not always, cultivated with possibly a lawn, flower beds or vegetables.
'Front Garden', garden in front of a house, between the front door and the road. Often small. More likely to have flowers than vegetables and often with a small lawn if enough room. Sometimes has a low wall or a hedge between it and the pavement (US sidewalk), or sometimes covenants to discourage walls.
'Back Garden', garden behind the house and not so visible from the road. Often bigger than front garden. Can have lawn, flower beds, vegetables, seats, washing line etc. Used for adults to sit in and children to play in.
'Kitchen Garden', (lessened) garden devoted entirely to cultivation of vegetables, herbs etc.
'Yard', small enclosed area behind house with a concrete, tiled or other hard surface. Often just outside kitchen door. May have washing line, plants in pots, and seats. Sometimes between house and back garden. Also used of any other enclosed outside area with a hard surface, e.g. farmyard, builder's yard.
So I think usage on opposite sides of the Atlantic is fairly different.
In private rented areas, a broken bed and an old fridge that the Landlord is too tight to pay for disposal of.
Very commonly in the past when people were building a new house they'd plant potatoes the first year in the front yard to break up the soil, putting in lawn the second. Most lawns are now from turf farms, laid down like squares of carpet.
FWIW, I hate lawns, and also lawn chemicals and fertilizers. Which are ubiquitous here.