Somehow I got to thinking about some of the derogatory names Americans have for certain foods....you know, like the way many ex-military folks speak of S O S ?  Here at our house we used to have a version of it every once in a while, but we served the creamed chipped beef over a mashed boiled potato and told the children it was "S O S" -- Slop on a Spud.  Then I thought that other contributors to this forum will have funny little anecdotes about food to tell.  I would almost wager that "glop" is a widespread children's word for any melange in which they can't readily identify the component parts.

Plus, don't you wonder, too, if the use of the term "SPAM" for electronic junk mail isn't a source of chagrin for the execs at Hormel Foods?

Well, not really derogatory terms, but DH has a friend who makes "S---- on toast"  (chipped beef on toast, he's thinking "sh.t on toast", but tells his kids it's "STUFF on toast"). 

I call roast beef, roast beast (DD liked that when she was little, but now that's she's 10, I just get an eyeroll), and raisins are "roaches" in our house (none of us like them). 

Almost everyone I know calls any flavor of Kool Aid,  -  bug juice.  And I almost swore off meat as a kid when my dad called the Thanksgiving turkey "Roasted Flesh of a Dead Bird"  uh......yummy?

Katz

Mountain oysters, anyone?

Sow's belly?

Kibbles (for breakfast cereal)?

"Nigger toes" for Brazil nuts with the skins on?

Ever heard the joke about "moose turd stew" ?

There is a mushroom that grows here that everyone calls puppy peckers.   I am not even sure what the real name is!!

In our family, we have a name for the Pistachio/ cool whip/marshmallow salad.  I'm not even sure what the real name of it is but we call it Parrot Poop Salad.

I call red meat "a blood meal", as if I were a mosquito.  In our family we quote the Coneheads, who were fond of "seared mammal flesh".

Remember how the alien cop in Alien Nation referred to fried eggs as "chicken placentas"?

My mom always called hotdogs "tube steaks" to make dinner sound more fancy.

My friend Paul used to refer to his mom's cooking as "twine beans and loathe loaf" and "chicken tetrachloride"

Paige, were they by any chance stinkhorns?

http://www.dcnature.com/photosfull/Mutinus_caninus.jpg

My best friends Dad used to call vienna sausages 'monkey peckers'

we used to call chicken fried steak, chicken fried snake...not sure why!

kiwi fruit = monkey balls

One of the grandkids heard me call what I had made for them "Fruit Compote", but as he promptly dubbed it (and got his sisters to follow suit), it is now known at our house as Fruit COMPOST.

This is the most hilarious thred. I am totally coasting on Ambien time right now, but I will be back to think of some from my childhood. A kid growing up in NJ has GOT to come up with some bizarre stuff. Happy Reading!

When my husband was in the marines they refered to chipped beef gravy on toast as "Foreskins on Toast" and "SOS" was a ground beef gravy on toast.  YUMMY!

Oh, the military is a rich source of names for things served in mess halls!  As lively as college kids' coinings concerning the stuff served in their dining halls!    Who can ever forget "mystery meat", that old standby among school food?  During my time in the USNR, we had to drink "torpedo fluid" . . . in the Comm Center, the coffee was made by the CPO who ran the mimeo machine, and like Navy men with "hash marks" up to his elbow, he liked it S T R O N G . . . .after that time, I have been able to swallow ANY liquid!

Another Navy usage was "landing mats" or "landing pads" to refer to pancakes.

I learned about GOOD coffee when I worked on a newspaper in Louisiana, where the Cajuns live.  Translated from the French, they believe that GOOD coffee should be "Black as Night, Strong as Death, Sweet as Love, and Hot as Hell!"

I looked up "slumgullion in a big dictionary the other day, and one definition was "an insipid drink, as weak tea or coffee"  and another was "a meat stew".  There were two more definitions, but one had to do with the processing of a whale aboard ship, and the other with mining.

my grandpa called whipped cream "calf slobber" or "lickdab"

SOS was s*^t on shingles when I learned of the recipe for sausage gravy on toast.

It's a small tradition here at my house that the "helpy-selfy" treats table for the winter holidays include a certain kind of tidbit.  It's something I first made when my kids were little, and of course they wanted to know what it was called.   I hadn't thought about a name for the goodies, so on the spur of the moment, I told them "they're winter delicacies."   Well, the kids thought they were "weird" and so the name got changed to "(Winter)Grossities."   Now, years later, guess who makes them for her drop-in guests at holiday time, at her place up North?  My older daughter!  And yes, her friends think they're "weird", too.

To make "grossities", you take a piece of dried fruit (fig, date, prune, or apricot)  flatten it a little, put a gob of cream cheese that has been combined with pineapple or strawberry ice cream topping on it, and finish it off with a nutmeat (pecan, walnut, etc.)  You can vary these, of course, by using  bits of candied fruits, or starting with honey-nut cream cheese, and so forth.

Have a cool Yule, y'all!

A proposed state tax on sugary soft drinks was the topic of Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed piece the other day, and in it he remarked he'd "love to see a "Twinkie tax as well."   That made me remember an unusual recipe I ran across, for "Twinkie Pie."    Those of you who read The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, by Jill Conner Brown, will recall it, where its other name, according to Ms Brown, is "White Trash Trifle."

I made the concoction a couple of times, first following the instructions in the book, using Twinkies, pudding, canned fruit pie filling, and Cool Whip.  But the second time I gave it a little "social mobility" and used Lady Fingers, pudding cooked with whole milk, REAL fruit, and whipped cream, not that chemical glop Cool Whip.

(The high school yearbook staff liked it, but I don't think the grandson told them the name of the stuff.)

It's September again, and this fall, I'm getting cabbage from the garden of my older daughter and from my weekly basket from the local farmer.  I was kind of reviewing the uses for cabbage, and I remembered "Bubble and Squeak".  You know, that British concoction involving leftover meat, potatoes, cabbage, etc.?  It gets its name from the sounds it makes during cooking, I'm told.

An ad for charcoal for grilling had a recipe that amused me-----it was for "Brined Bird Legs with Pop Sop".  One ingredient in the "pop sop" is 12 ounces of cola.

Here in Minnesota, we're having the annual orgy of Deep Fat-fried Food on a Stick----the State Fair.  Today someone texted me that one of the offerings is Key Lime Pie on a Stick!    At this rate, Americans in days to come won't need knives, forks and spoons any longer! And soup already comes in cleverly-designed cups one can sip or swill from . . .  it's a whole new world, ladies.

Sweet potatoes refered to as "blow taters" because of they have more gas power than any bean.

Hey, Lynn.......thanks for the tidbit about the "power" of yams, I hadn't ever heard that one.   The mention of beans made me remember the old saying:  "Beans, beans, the musical fruit, The more you eat, the more you toot."