And am I right in remembering that most “pumpkin” pie is actually made from squash?
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Well, not really. There are many varieties of pumpkin. The ones we carve to make Jack-o-lanterns aren’t the best to make pie from. I think some people might call the pie ones squash, but it’s not like it’s the yellow squash from the grocery store. They’re all just varieties of squash anyway.
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A lot of canned pumpkin puree is made from butternut squash or other similar squash instead of the sugar pumpkins you probably use if you make it from scratch. They all pretty much taste the same especially after you put all the spices in anyway.
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There is a legend, oft told late at night in families of rats, of a time in generations past when entire hordes of rats disappeared from around McDonalds stores, indeed, for many blocks around. But time passed, the episode was forgotten, and other new rats moved in. But then the rumors began to spread among the rat clans, of farms deep beneath the arches, where there was breeding a new kind of giant super rat, the size of a pig, nay, larger, and they were not at all respectful toward their smaller brethren. Then, one fine fall day, the giant rats were gone, vanished, and never were seen again, but for an occasional massive paw, bones gnawed and picked clean of meat, or a stray tooth the size of a walrus tusk. But along with their mysterious departure came the debris of a delicious new dish: the McRib. And there was much rejoicing amongst the smaller rodents.
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They make basically the same thing at Quick Trip in my area. Not quite as good as the McDonalds, but not bad.
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My college buddies and I tried this abomination from McDonald’s when it first shambled out of the lab somewhere in Virginia to be test-marketed back in the late 1970s.
We branded it the “McPigNuckle” sandwich.
It actually squeaked audibly against your teeth when you tried to chew it. Washed it down with an ice cold “Chelsea” (Google that one.)
The TV ads said: “Available for a limited time.”
In response we said, “Well, that’s for damn sure.”
Why it has crawled out of its grave again and again since then is for the same reason anyone votes more than once for Donald Trump.
No one likes to admit their greatest mistakes.
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McDonald’s says on its German-language sustainability blog: “Only whole pieces of meat are used for the McRib patties. There is nothing to the rumours that McDonald’s Germany is using low-quality leftovers.”
According to the ingredient list on the McDonald’s web site, a McRib patty in Germany consists of 99% pork meat (the remaining 1% is made up of salt, spices and similar non-animal ingredients). This implies no offal or mechanically-separated meat (“pink slime”), which would have to be declared as such; the food declaration rules stipulate that “meat” means “skeletal muscles of mammals and birds of species considered suitable for human consumption” rather than “random marginally-edible animal bits”. (Incidentally, there is also a rule that if something looks like a solid piece of meat but in fact isn’t, the manufacturer must declare what it actually is.)
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Nutritionally speaking, you could do a lot worse than eating McDonald’s hamburgers. In fact you could subsist for a very long time on three Big Macs a day without missing out on anything essential, and you would probably lose weight. Which is not to say that this is in any way recommended – it’s just that the Big Mac is actually a lot less bad for you than its reputation in certain circles would suggest. (And that’s based on the US ingredient list; here in Germany with its stricter food standards this is probably even more true.)
When you’re at McDonald’s, you should instead avoid the fries, sugary soft drinks, and milk shakes because that’s where most of the excess calories are.
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Repackaged K-rations, basically.
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Penalties for law-breakers are harsh but fair.
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Yup, but the meaningfulness of that depends on the locality. In parts of the world, “squash” and “pumpkin” are pretty much interchangeable terms. They sell “butternut pumpkins” at the shops here; it’s what I tend to use for my pumpkin soup.
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Both “squash” and “pumpkin” translate to German as “Kürbis”.
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Mmm cicadas.
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Long time ago, mid '80s, had my first McRib experience. Me & 3 army buddies, Pembroke, Ontario. One of order a McRib. As we opened our wrappers, I quietly said something like “Whoever’s carpet bombing this restaurant had better stop.” We we in uniform, I was in charge, and thought someone was farting up a storm.
It was the McRib.
NGL, I’ll have one if me & McDonalds intersect when they make their very rare appearance. They taste better than they smell. But it’s been ~10 years since I’ve seen one. Or even smelt one.
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You’re mixing a lot of disparate terms here, and there’s a lot of misinformation mixed in.
First, mechanically separated meat is not “pink slime”. Almost all the news reporting on that when it went viral was wrong because of a couple of scandalous looking photos.
Second, the USDA also requires mechanically separated meat to be clearly labeled as such and cannot be called just “meat”.
The US McRib is all pork meat. Some of that pork probably came from a machine that scraped extra edible meat off the bones, but it’s not the “pink slime” that you imagine. I see no reason to believe the German one is different just from looking at it. Again- both products are all pork and clearly labeled as such. Obviously the German McDonald’s “sustainability blog” is going to go way out their way to spin that such that you imagine artisan butchers carving McRibs from lovingly raised heirloom pigs. They are still pressed patties made from pork scraps. There may be some slight difference in how those scraps are obtained, but again there is no evidence yet presented for that.
I’m sure that German food labeling laws are better, but the US is the not the backwater nightmare you seem to think, either, I strongly recommend reading the Snopes article on mechanically separated meat. Almost nothing that has been said in popular media on that topic is true.
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I like how many people pretend that McDonald’s food is not delicious. It is terrible for you, obviously, but let’s not pretend that anything on that menu hasn’t been engineered to hit every animal desire of their customers. Including the McRib, which I get every time it is available. I am not an outlier, regardless of the “ew, McRib” comments that come around every time it’s mentioned.
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All food is pretty terrible if you go too deeply into how it is produced. Yet it never stopped us from eating (cheap) hotdogs, which is easily more disturbing than a McRib patty.
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And on the topic of egg nog - is anyone aware of any other kinds of lesser known nog? Cheese nog or maybe meat nog? I’ve always been curious. Colodas as well - are we just stuck with pina?
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