the way I heard it was, "beans beans good for your heart, the more you eat the more you f---"

but--I saw a mention of the moose turd pie joke, which I have only heard once, from one person, and thought it was the best ever!

"BUT GOOD" is now a standard reply, in certain situations, at my house!

Sometimes when food processors try to give their product a 'catchy' name,they mean well with what they come up with but they just don't get it quite right.  In a weekly grocery ad I perused a couple days ago, a supermarket here advertised a new product by Plum Organics. 

I peered at the picture of the orange and white bottle with the orange cap and read that it contained "MISH MASH" for tots.   This is a good Yiddish word, and means "a mess, a hodgepodge, a hopeless mix-up, according to Leo Rosten's Hooray for Yiddish: A Book about English.  The folks at Plum Organics must think it is a German word, defined in Cassell's New German Dictionary as "medley....hotchpotch".  

"Medley" I might feed my little one, but , , , , , ,I wonder how mothers who know the meaning of mish mash would feel about giving it to their tots?  P.S.  It rhymes with "pish posh", and perhaps should be spelled mish mosh .

My children constantly ask me "What's for dinner?" even though I never give them a serious answer.  Here are some of the things that I have announced that I'm preparing for them:

Snake stew
Bird turds
Gopher guts
Roadkill parfait
Spider eyes
Roach-a-roni

After so many of these silly responses, you would think they would stop asking the question.  But no.

Growing up my mother called me a "Ding Bat."  It was not kindly meant.  As an adult, much to her chargrin, I found out it is a cookie.  :)  http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1610,145176-253203,00.html

I'm peeling potatoes at this very moment. Guess 'Slop on a Spud' is what we're haveing for dinner tonight!

Today I was studying the grocery ads (again . . . . .sigh), and once again, I was made unhappy by the way they're dominated by "kits" and "micro-wave-ready" meals.  It's a good thing my hubby is a patient fellow, 'cause he has to listen to my brief rants about what is advertised.  Anyhow, I thought I'd share with all of you authentic home cooks out there the term I've come up with for those frozen "TV dinners"-----we call 'em "CRAP-U-ZAP".

"The more you toot, the better you feel, so eat beans with every meal."

You all read or heard about the "pink slime" used in a lot of school cafeterias, as 'meat' or 'meat extender'.  Maybe if it hadn't acquired that nickname that it carried,  it  would have been . . . .well. . . . .a little less nasty to think about.  Anyhow, I'm glad most grocery purveyors around the U. S. have announced that they will not sell the stuff any longer.   But that nickname got me to thinking about a favorite food of my kiddies and grandkiddies, that is known as "PINK GOOP."   It's just strawberry Jell-O and Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk beaten up together after the Jell-O has 'soft-set" and then spooned into parfait glasses (or some pretty containers or other) with some thawed sweetened strawberries added to each glass.  (I've used those plastic 'highball' glasses for Goop when they take it with them on a longish car trip.)

Next, this morning, I was reading Trader Joe's little monthly publication, and one of the new products offered is "Green Plant Juice Blend".  Apparently, some folks, looking at this new beverage, think it bears a striking resemblance to "monster slime", or "pond scum", or "toxic sludge".  Well.........doh!....it's made of broccoli, spinach, barley grass, chlorella, and spirulina.  It sorta gives another meaning to "going green.".  But it also includes apple, peach, pineapple, banana, and mango juice, too, for a "lovely, fruit-infused flavor".    I'm from Missouri, the "Show Me" state, and I'll believe it when I taste it , , , this next week!   In the back of my mind, I recall a beverage (decades ago) called Green River, but I can't supply any detail on that, sorry.

But I do remember two PURPLE foods.  One was "Purple Cow", a concoction like a root beer float or "Black Cow", but made with purple grape juice.  And the other was a 'liquid refreshment' drunk at college students' frolics on the creek near our campus.  It was called "Purple Passion", and one of the ingredients was purple grape juice.

I was reminiscing recently about "back in the day" long before we had "Politically Correct" terms we are supposed to substitute for all those 'colorful' old names we used to have for various ethnic groups, other people's favored things, and so forth.  And something in the news (Pope Benedict XVI's visit) brought to mind one of those B.P.C. (Before Political Correctness) words   Even my maternal grandpa used it, and he was an Irish Catholic in his younger years.  Grandma was of English Methodist Episcopal descent, and she didn't use the term, because she was so insistent on what she called "decorum".  When buying a whole (dressed) chicken to cook, the carcass included the tail (where the oil duct is) and so, one would,of course, cut off "the Pope's nose."

Well, I have to be honest here and say my siblings and I were quite gross in our descriptions of things, as were our best friends.  Our parents all couldn't stand it, but unless we said it out loud to them, we wouldn't often get in trouble for the names.

My friend's mom fried up tuna from a can, much like you would ground beef patties.  He called them "Tuna fish barfies".  This is the same friend who would say "I want overeasy eggs without the snot".  Haha!

Our dad called "SOS" by that name and my mom hated it, but she let it go since he was the one always saying it.  We loved SOS and had no idea what it stood for, actually.  That's just what it was called.

This is an interesting thread and deserves to be kept going so I'll add my 2 cents.

When my kids were little, we had a hard time getting them to eat veggies. Their #1 fave was broccoli because I served it with hollandaise sauce. Of course, they called it holiday sauce.

Then there was a time when everyone was drinking all kinds of mixed drinks. My rugrats were already beyond the "Shirley Temple" era (Shirley who???), so I made a drink for them called the Pink Moo Juice. It was a glass of milk to which I stirred in some juice from a jar of maraschino cherries.

And once I saw a recipe in a turn of the 20th century organization cookbook for devil's food cake they called Nigger Cake.

As for SOS, we don't use chipped beef. The same company that makes it (Buddig, I think) also makes a similar product called honey ham, which we like much more.

Thanks for a great topic!

I just remembered a joke about the old fellow from Mississippi who was asked about what folks liked to eat in his part of the country.  He told about those good old Southern favorites, and then he was asked "Do they know about sushi down in Mississippi?"  The old feller allowed as how they'd had it for a long time, "only down home, we call it bait."

This year at the annual orgy in "The Star of the North/L'etoile du Nord", the Minnesota State Fair, one of the goofy new foods is Bacon Ice Cream.  I can't tell you anything more about it, since I have not yet attended the Fair or sampled some of the odd culinary offerings.  I can only say that, in the photo of the cone in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, bacon ice cream looked to me more or less like French vanilla ice cream.

Then, in Sunday's Star-Tribune, a coupon section carried an ad by Baker's Square, about the restaurant's "Pie Rush Wednesday".  The ad announced that BS will feature a new pie, in September, called "Salty Hog" pie.  "Everything's better with bacon!" claims the ad.   The picture shows a slice of pie with a dark-colored filling, a layer of white topping, and a strip of fried-crisp bacon atop it.  I dunno ........whaddya think?  If my curiosity gets the better of me, I may have to hie myself over to the local BS and taste it . . . . 

I often throw together a WIMP Dinner or maybe a WIMP Casserole for hubby and me. WIMP = Whatever's In My Pantry. I've also been know to make a wicked WIMP-OFF Soup - Whatever's In My Pantry, or Freezer/Fridge

"WICKED WIMP" , hunh??????

LOL wicked used in the 1990's vernacular. Okay, I admit to being a little behind the times ;)

Will I get in trouble if I mention a piece of slang I heard from a fellow from Kentucky that uses the "trade name" of a food product?

Well, here goes, anyhow------Harold (who liked  'em a lot, himself) always called White Castles (those bitty-burgers, you know) "belly bombs".

Grandma always said that if we were hungry enough, we would eat anything, and I believed her.  But that was in the context of white, lower-class people (with pretty puritanical ideas) in Missouri.   Fast forward to now, the 21st century, and a far more ethnically diverse nation than it was in the Thirties, and visit a big Asian market somewhere if you get the chance.  I saw parts of  a beef carcass, a hog carcass, and various and sundry poultry, that I had never seen before in my eight decades of Life, all wrapped and labeled, or laid out in glass showcases, for shoppers to buy, take home, cook, and EAT!   I don't want to upset anyone reading this post, so I won't name the more 'unusual' items one could get, but I sure was wondering to myself, when I saw the packages of chicken feet, and beef testicles, and all the other innards of the birds and meat animals, how the devil did one fix them into dishes that would make peoples' eyes light up when served for dinner?

When I was in college the cafeteria served "veal parmesan"  we always called it elephant scabs.  When my kids were young, they loved to eat strange things (or what they thought were strange things)  We'd have fried lemar and other assorted odd meals  but one time I outdid myself and couldn't manage to eat dinner after I told the kids the rice & peas were maggots & gall wasps.  I hadn't seen this thread before.  I like it!

Another school thing was that everyone called grilled cheese sandwiches grinders and I have no idea why

Ann: I don't know either, about 'grinders'.   But 'subs' , hoagies, "po' boys" and all those other names for "grinders that one finds around the USA sure look an awful lot like each other, don't you think?  Ever hear of a "muffaletta"?   And in  Madison, Wisconsin,  I had one of (if not) the best "gyros" of my eating life!

Okay, maybe the "grinders" name has something to do with the way some people call their molars their "grinders" ?

oops I meant binders which actually makes sense.(my husband corrected me)  Yes I have had a muffaletta and that's the only time I like green olives.

Grinder is what sub sandwiches are called in some regions, never heard it used for a grilled cheese.

A few days ago the "fantasy football" party for the upcoming season was held at my neighbor's house, and it featured a lot of "macho" food items.  I was the recipient of some of the leftovers, and that's how I learned about the local favorite here in central Minnesota---"buffalo snot".

Terrible name, but it's very tasty-------Mexican Velveeta with whatever extra stuff you like in it, heated up so you can swipe  big corn chips in it and munch between swigs of the traditional liquid refreshment.

An ordinary Minnesota supper, by the way, consists of a "hot dish" and a "mold".   That's an all-in-one casserole and a gelatin mold with stuff in it.

I grew up thinking that sunflower seeds where called spitiz.