(no subject)

[which_chick]

I was at the grocery last night and in the produce-pimping section of the store (where they put stuff when it's in season), they had strawberries. Now I'm aware that it is not strawberry season just yet. The strawberry festival is in June. June, I say. This, this is March. It is not June. June is about forty degrees away. Be that as it may, there were strawberries in the produce-pimping section of the grocery. Clearly, strawberries are in season *somewhere*. Alongside the strawberry display, there were packets of some kind of horrible red slop that you were supposed to tart them up with. Uhm. Yeah. I expect that the red glop exists to perk up the flavor of cardboardy long-shipped strawberries. It still seems like a heartless thing to do to relatively innocent fresas from south of our borders. The display also had spongecake things with depressions in the top, presumably so that you could dollop the tarted-up strawberries into a gelationous heap on the tops of them, in the depressions.

Do people actually eat this shit? Fucking ghastly, if you ask me.

Anyway, before I sidetrack further onto the eating habits of the locals, the display ALSO had authentic french crepes. That's what the plastic packaging said, anyway, as near as I could read it. (I have difficulty reading when I'm cringing like a slug that has had salt poured on it.)

I had two thoughts. One was that I was like two years ahead of the trendy food industry. Go me!

The other was that perhaps more people needed to know how to make crepes. I've been over that a couple of times. You should have taken notes.

If you buy the stupid stuff at the grocery, I will mock you forever.

Comments

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I love those spongecakey things with strawberries and whipped cream. Strangely enough I whip the cream myself but I'm all over those fake spongecakey things.

[cassandramorgan.livejournal.com]

We do the same thing once in awhile. We skip the red gel stuff though. That looks nasty.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely don't trust that.

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

We are currently in Georgia and strawberries are deliciously in season here. So those may not be cardboardy south of the border strawberries. They may be really quite nice strawberries from Dixie and you should give them a try. :)

(Without the glop or the spongecakey things.)

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I think what we have here is a cultural divide. In my world, the strawberries-with-spongecake-and-whipped-topping thing is not strawberry shortcake. It's entirely unlike that, except maybe for the strawberry part. At my house and among the houses of my people, shortcake is a slightly sweet biscuit dough, made from scratch, removed from the oven, immediately cut into big (about 3" on a side) squares, and served steaming hot in bowls.

At the table, people ladle raw (topped and at least halved, with a little sugar on them to make 'em bleed) strawberries on top of their squares. Sometimes the strawberries fall off because the shortcake does not have a dent in the top for the fruit, but this is no big deal because you've got a bowl, there.

After putting the strawberries on, some folks then sprinkle the whole thing with sugar but this is not a requirement. Anyway, because the shortcake is hotter than hell, we pour cold milk overtop of it (this is why it's served in a bowl) and proceed to eat it with a spoon before it all gets cold. The milk, as you might reasonably expect, makes the shortcake sog into mush near-instantly. It's still tasty. There is no whipped cream involved. Neither is there ice cream. It's shortcake, fruit, sugar, and milk.

I was not exposed to the spongecake-whipped-topping version of strawberry shortcake until I was over twenty and firmly imprinted on the biscuity kind.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

My mom remembers having the biscuitty kind from when she was young, but her parents are from New York. I don't know of any Californians who would make biscuitty strawberry shortcake. My strawberry shortcake scenario consists of whipped cream (that I whip), cut up strawberries with a bit of sugar as you said, and either pound cake or the dumb spongey things (pound cake is better but I admit a nostalgic fondness for spongey cups.)
I can't for the life of me figure out where the red mystery gel fits in with any of this, though. Decorative plate drizzlings? My dining hall loves to do that to everything you can put on a plate.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of the red glop. I can't even imagine the red glop. I'm guessing it's 75% MSG in a condensed milk base with carageenan for stability and red dye number two.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

The red glop, which is *still* prominently displayed in the store, is the sort of thing depicted first in the list here (http://www.concordfoods.com/pie.html) -- this is not the brand that my store has, but it's the correct thing.