[HN Gopher] Uh-Oh: A story of SpaghettiOs and forgotten history
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Uh-Oh: A story of SpaghettiOs and forgotten history
Author : samclemens
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-06-21 20:28 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (snackstack.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (snackstack.net)
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I love so much about that TV guide recipe insert. The border art,
| the Kalligraphia font of Partridge Family / Peter, Paul, & Mary
| fame... but damn those gelatin salads always sound _revolting_.
| estebarb wrote:
| I thought it was about an operating system. Spoiler: it's not.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Uh oh! Somebody missed out on some pop culture!
|
| Dumb question for the folks with kids: how are they
| indoctrinating the kiddos these days? I remember SpaghettiOs
| ads from Saturday morning and after school cartoons. Do kids
| even still do those things?
|
| N.b.: all the people in my life with kids are weird.
| Delightfully weird, but weird nonetheless. I feel totally out
| of touch with anyone I might describe as a mainstream parent.
| aidenscott2016 wrote:
| > Uh oh! Somebody missed out on some pop culture!
|
| A large percentage of the world is not American
| jandrese wrote:
| > Dumb question for the folks with kids: how are they
| indoctrinating the kiddos these days?
|
| TikTok and Youtube shorts.
| tomcam wrote:
| They had me at "Hello, snackers"
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Reminder that if you were a paid subscriber on Substack, you
| need to set up a new account here on WordPress (sorry!) and you
| should have gotten a prorated refund already from Substack.
|
| Huh, weird. Just looking at the page said "Substack" to me, but
| apparently the characteristic Substack styling has been
| intentionally carried over after the author has deliberately left
| Substack.
|
| Which boggles my mind, since default Wordpress styling looks
| _much_ better than Substack 's center-of-the-page styling.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'm going to try making that salad, sounds intriguing.
| toast0 wrote:
| The v8 gelatin salad?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| The one with tuna
| Tao3300 wrote:
| How about the pizza punch with the V8 and _garlic_ that is
| "guaranteed to make the teen scene"
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Back in my teen years, I would eat a single large can of
| SpaghettiOs for lunch. (The plain ones, of course; the hot-dog-
| infested cans were anathema.)
| wincy wrote:
| Meatball spaghetti-Os were my favorite.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >there may not have been any predecessors in the circular-
| spaghetti game
|
| Except in Sicily, where this type of pasta is traditionally
| called anelli.
| wincy wrote:
| Anelli-O's just doesn't have the same ring to it.
| masfuerte wrote:
| You also get circular pasta in Minestrone soup, and the article
| mentions that canned Minestrone was a thing in the 1950s, but I
| don't what kind of pasta it had back then.
| astura wrote:
| I usually see minestrone made with ditalini[1].
|
| Which, to be fair, are circular.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditalini
| masfuerte wrote:
| Packet and tinned Minestrone in the UK have spaghetti hoops
| (as we call them). Maybe fancier brands use ditalini but
| I've never see it here.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Betty Ossola really has very little trace on the internet. I did
| find a great picture of her inspecting olives on eBay:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/395395490195
| jandrese wrote:
| The article doesn't even address the fact that a company called
| Franco American makes Italian food.
| borski wrote:
| Truly a missed opportunity to call it Frankie American, or
| Frankly American if we were going for irony.
| quercusa wrote:
| How many of the Stouffer's TV Dinners can you recognize in the
| second photo?
|
| I remember the "Chinese" one (just above the SpaghettiOs) as
| being especially vile.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| Turning "pasta fazool" into a real product was a stroke of
| genius. Excellent essay on an undiscovered person! But would
| their research published into the blank space on Wikipedia be
| greeted with "this article lacks sources/ link context"?
|
| It was okay to compliment women positively on their 'looks' in
| news articles in the 1950s who ever they were. It was even okay
| to use that in a teaser vignette of an article, the opening part
| that is to capture readers. Or a photo caption.
|
| The author claims to find this depressing, but I'll wager Betty
| Ossola did not. No crime was committed here, and the publicity
| helped her brand. Even the silliest gaffe of all, a headline that
| crows that she has "has a Husband", seems something the Husband
| would rib her about and (nevertheless) was positive in nature.
| What if the headline said "is yet unmarried"? Still positive.
|
| To find offense in historical things too often people have to
| imagine some entire upside-down world they think would have been
| a better world, and imagine that many things that are the result
| of what they perceive as 'comments of negative value' simply
| rather have been left unsaid. A lot of positivity in the world
| simply not there, and people just didn't say as much in that
| pretend-world.
|
| "The past is a different country, people do things differently
| there." ~ L. P. Hartley
|
| The present depresses me sometimes as well. There has always been
| a cultural contingent that follows the First Lady as a fashion
| icon and even an independent spirit and even awards self-praise
| for the idea for disconnecting their attention to her with the
| husband's politics. And follows her charity outreach and
| autonomous actions. It actually expresses respect for women with
| these political confines.
|
| All until Melania Trump. The first First Lady it was okay to hate
| and to ignore. And she received attention (and out of context
| misreporting) for wearing a shirt that said "I don't care, do u?"
| which was directly about the media phenomenon that was so sudden
| in our history. She felt personally stung by it and still holds
| her head high. And she has the 'looks' too!
|
| I would like to see if Betty Ossola can become a Wikipedia
| article, I'll work on it in my spare time.
| vel0city wrote:
| > The first First Lady it was okay to hate and to ignore
|
| I don't know, there was lots of hate and dislike for Nancy
| Reagan and Hilary Clinton. Seems like a lot of people thought
| "Just say no" was pretty asinine and out of touch.
|
| And FWIW, I think she deserved the coverage she did wearing the
| "I don't care, do u?" jacket. Sure, whatever, she meant it to
| be pointed towards left-wing haters and wasn't supposed to be
| directed towards the immigrant child separation crisis. But
| there's a time and place to make a statement like that. Wear it
| at some fundraising dinner or other public event, not in some
| place where you're going to visit an ongoing humanitarian
| crisis. Not when there's such a massive chance for that
| statement to get misunderstood.
| borski wrote:
| Precisely. Couldn't have said it better myself.
|
| Wear a jacket with the message all you want. But timing and
| context of the message matters.
|
| Even if I were an anarchist, I wouldn't wear a "let's burn it
| all down" jacket to the site of a massive fire either.
| Sometimes your message is less important than paying
| attention to your surroundings, especially as _the First
| Lady._
|
| So yes, she deserved all the anger headed in her direction
| for that stunt, but the jacket wasn't the issue. The context,
| timing, and absolute tone-deafness was.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'd love to see a return of the aluminum containers for frozen
| dinners. Lazy Dog sells fresh-made take-home dinners (albeit at
| restaurant prices) in aluminum trays, and it seems superior to
| those plastic ones. Cooking the food in the plastics, having the
| tray be pretty much unrecyclable, being mostly limited to only
| cooking in the microwave as most of those plastic trays couldn't
| stand a 350F oven for long, pretty terrible experience overall
| with plastic IMO.
|
| I never really lived in the time when those aluminum trays were a
| thing though. What were some of the big negatives, other than the
| obvious cost aspect? Durability? I guess microwavable issues?
| buescher wrote:
| They took forever in the oven, plus however long it took your
| oven to heat up.
| vel0city wrote:
| I get that. So microwavable issues.
|
| I'm probably an odd-ball though. If there's oven directions,
| I almost always go with those. Usually more evenly heated,
| things can be crispier instead of just soggy, etc. My
| countertop convection oven heats up pretty quick and uses its
| fan to cool off pretty fast as well when done, so I can often
| get a set it and forget it kind of deal reheating frozen
| foods in it once I dial in the time/temp on convection mode
| for whatever dish I'm making.
|
| I also tend to let a lot of my pre-made frozen foods thaw in
| the fridge the day before cooking to speed up cooking times.
| Once again that usually takes some trial and error to dial in
| the cook times as the packaging pushes you to keep the food
| frozen until cooking.
| OJFord wrote:
| > My countertop convection oven
|
| Thank you; I'm with you! I'm not sure I could even bring
| myself to buy one over it. (I decided not to on cost vs
| savings basis before having to make that choice, since time
| to preheat isn't something I generally care about so that's
| not a benefit to me.)
| buescher wrote:
| Pretty much that, remembering that you probably didn't have
| a microwave. Nobody bought a microwave just to get away
| from aluminum foil.
|
| I hear you on the convection oven, but the real game
| changer for me was moving into a house with a double oven.
| The top oven heats very quickly but can fit a half sheet.
| taylodl wrote:
| I would say today's frozen food is better than the old frozen
| "TV dinners" we had back then. I always thought the microwave
| enabled the quality in today's frozen foods? IDK.
| katbyte wrote:
| I think microwave won out because it was quicker. That said
| many frozen foods have both oven and microwave instructions
| and almost universally I find oven tastes better
| borski wrote:
| Actually, I can't think of a single item that tastes better
| reheated in the microwave than an oven.
|
| I just recently got an Anova Precision Oven (which has
| steam injection in addition to otherwise just being a
| really good and consistent convection oven) and literally
| everything I reheat now just tastes fantastic.
| vel0city wrote:
| I imagine foods that need a lot of moisture content are
| probably better with the microwave, those trays probably
| wouldn't seal well and you could lose a lot of moisture in
| the 30min or so it probably takes to reheat from frozen. But
| in the other direction it seems foods that are crispier
| usually aren't great in the microwave in comparison.
|
| But IME even with a good microwave a lot of frozen meals tend
| to reheat somewhat unevenly with the default directions even
| with a rotating tray. I do admit I've never used a microwave
| where the magnetron moves though.
| tw04 wrote:
| I don't see why they couldn't do a sealed aluminum top. I
| remember they used to do that for frozen lasagna.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > I'd love to see a return of the aluminum containers for
| frozen dinners.
|
| You can't put aluminum in the microwave...
|
| And if you can't microwave a frozen dinner, good luck trying to
| sell it.
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(page generated 2024-06-24 23:01 UTC)