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American Style Hot Dogs and Other Examples of Possibly Misrepresented Foods and Customs

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I have a question for all of you Americans: have you ever seen hot dogs packaged like this?

Disclaimer: this photo was actually taken in England on a different trip but we did see and photograph several examples of this exact product on this trip. I was just too lazy to go and find our more recent photos.

No! Our hotdogs come in non-recyclable plastic shrinkrap, duh! And despite our reputation of boiling hot dogs (as confessed to us by a very nice Danish hot dog vendor), I suspect most of the hot dogs consumed by Americans are cooked for 45 seconds in the microwave. We are not patient people.

This grievous representation of American hot dogs got me thinking about what kinds of things/food that we attribute to other cultures and how many of those are probably wrong or at least misguided and warped.

Here is my list. Feel free to add to it and to point out which items fall in the above mentioned wrong/misguided/warped category.

FRANCE
French onion soup (this one is actually served quite regularly in France and is, appropriately, called just onion soup there)
French fries (I don't think Freedom fries ever really caught on...)
French kissing
French toast
French bread
French dressing (what exactly about that unnaturally orangish colored dressing is French?)

HOLLAND
Double Dutch
Dutch oven
Going dutch
Hollandaise sauce (adding "-aise" appears to be a common theme around the world as we saw restaurants advertising Japonaise and Thailandaise foods)

BELGIUM
Belgian waffles
Brussel sprouts

SPAIN
Spanish rice

MEXICO
Mexican rice

ITALY
Italian dressing
Notably missing is Italian rice. Risotto sounds so much more sophisticated.

SWITZERLAND
Swiss cheese
Swiss cake rolls

SWEDEN
Swedish meatballs

DENMARK
Danish (pastry)

GREECE
Greek salad

ENGLAND
English muffin

GERMANY
Hamburger
Frankfurter

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 15, 2010 at 9:41 AM

    Belgium beer and chocolate are the best in the world. Second to none.

    ReplyDelete
  2. EllenOctober 15, 2010 at 10:43 AM

    Oh, I forgot about Belgian chocolate! Good catch. And I totally agree with you re: Belgian beer - yummmmmm!!!

    ReplyDelete

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