Fringe OT: Weird food combos you love

French Fries and Gravy @ Angelo's Coney Island

I notice there are a lot of peanut butter recipes here. But what do you do when you run out of peanut butter? I used to make jelly and mustard sandwiches. My family was probably poor when I was a kid. Another great dish is scrambled eggs with cream cheese.

and cottage cheese

With chorizo stuffing. It's awesome.

I got through most of college dipping fries into a Wendy's chocolate Frosty in between classes in the Michigan League basement. Absolutely delicious.

Peanut Butter and Bread&Butter Pickle sandwiches, so good

Red bean popsicles and taro smoothies are really good

This thread just made me yack... Onto a delicious Triscuit cracker. My great combination.

I think the key point here is that peanut butter is amazing. Mine is something I never would have considered until a friend raved about the combination at a local chili dog joint:

Peanut better underneath the chili on a chili dog. Outstanding combo. 

Chocolate covered Jalapenos and/or ghost peppers!

and some of you eat some really nasty stuff.  

we might want to take a look at just exactly what 'good' means in terms of food.  i think it means something better than:  didn't cause me to go in to immediate anaphylactic shock.  

Solid white albacore tuna mixed well with spicy hummus and pickle relish, instead of mayonnaise and diced celery, spread on thick slices of fresh challah bread, topped with slices of pepper jack cheese, heated open-faced until the cheese melts, then topped with barbecue-flavored Doritos and covered with thickly sliced, warm pumpernickel bread, so the Doritos are crushed into the cheese and tuna. Sliced on the diagonal and served with a half-sour pickle. 

Washed down with either a drink that’s equal parts cranberry juice, orange juice and orange-flavored sparkling water, or a chocolate egg cream made with Fox’s u-bet original chocolate syrup, whole milk and seltzer.

And for dessert: Ice cream sandwich made with vanilla-caramel swirl ice cream between two large oatmeal raisin cookies.

This is a fascinating question. On a philosophical level, what makes something "weird?" If enough people start to like it, does it become mainstream? Where is the tipping point? If most everyone in a family/community eats something, is it therefore not "weird?"

For me, this really came home spending 6 months in Korea. There were just a ton of things I ate that were "weird" to me. Some of them I enjoyed, some not so much. For instance,

• Kimchi. Until in Korea, I had never had kimchi (fermented pickled spicy cabbage.) Nor did I realize there were so many different kinds of kimchi.
• Varieties of sushi and sashimi. I love sushi. However, lobster sushi? Not as much. And octopus sushi, where the tentacles are still squirming (really fresh!) and a sucker locks onto your lip on the way down? Not as much.
• Bulgogi. This is not uncommon in the states. Fine, marinated steak, (soy, sugar, sesami oil, garlic) sliced fine and grilled on a brazier. Delicious. But even better is to eat it the right way:  combine with rice, grilled onion/pepper, and very fresh clove of garlic, wrapped in lettuce. I absolutely love that combination.
• Bibimbop. Extremely common in Korea. Getting common in the states. It literally means mixed rice. Rice, sauteed and seasoned veggies, chili paste, soy paste, sunny side up egg, and a little meat, all mixed together. Love this.
• Cold spicy buckwheat noodle soup. Not an American kind of thing, but pretty good.
• Dog meat stew. Not my favorite. However . . . I ate some extremely fresh raw dog liver with a bit of salt. Tasty. Doubt I'll ever have it again, but definitely in the weird food category.
• Korean "American" restaurants. We're all used to Chinese or Italian or Mexican or Greek or Middle Eastern restaurants. 30 years ago at least, "American" restaurants were not uncommon in Korea. But their idea of "American" food was . . . interesting. Was it shaped by Army food? I dunno. But I remember having breaded pork cutlet, potato buds whipped potatoes with brown gravy, crinkle cut carrots . . . but with some Korean sides. Just weird. The reverse is true. There are certain things we think of as "Chinese" that you don't find in China (fortune cookies? Smh.) Same with Italian food.

Living in Chicago, I love Chicago style hot dogs . . . (Vienna all beef kosher hot dog, poppy seed bun, chopped onions, sweet pickle relish, dill spear, sport peppers, yellow mustard, celery salt.) I like Detroit coneys, but love Chicago style. And having wussy hot dogs with ketchup and mustard? Nope.

Since I have my first colonoscopy in several hours, and haven't eaten for a day, I best stop talking about food and just get it over with.

 

People outside of where I grew up think it is nuts, but diced dill pickles with pepperoni on a pizza. Delicious!

When I was a kid, Mom used to make bologna stew. Just like beef stew, but with sliced ring bologna instead of beef. I think it was a Depression-era recipe she'd learned. It was cheaper, and since we had six kids and tried to save money whenever possible, we got it frequently.

Thing was, we loved it, and preferred it to the real thing. Whenever she'd make actual beef stew, at least one of us would complain, "Why can't we have bologna stew instead?"

Buy a bucket of movie popcorn and dump a box of Junior Mints in, amazing combo I discovered by accident.

Also I use Gulden's Spicy Brown mustard in my tuna salad instead of mayo.  Arose out of necessity in undergrad when making some tuna and realizing I had nothing buy mustard.  20 years later and still make it the same way.

I was quite surprised when I opened the first page of the thread to see the banana and peanut butter sandwich, a food I don't find odd at all, and only did when I first heard of it in either the 7th or 8th grade. As soon as the friend who informed me of what he was eating for lunch supplied me with half a sandwich, I fully understood. I even go so far as to add them to PB&J, and have one in front of me at this exact moment. 

One involving peanut butter, but  one I also know is weiird and not really that good, eaten so see if I could create as much annoyance as I thought it might and judging by the let's say not kind words uttered by various family members reflected excellent judgment on my part. It merely involded the addition of fritos to peaunt butter and a willingness to chew rapidly and loudly for no other reason than to piss people off. 

Not by me, but I know it to be weird and so will you, and eaten quite often by cousin when we arrived to his house after school. Always peanut butter and jelly, but on this particular day, he set the jelly asiide and asked me not to tell anyone. For a second, I thought he might be going for the peniis in the peanut butter jar for a reasoon only he could be able to come up with, but not neary as disturbiing. He simply inserted a piece of lunch meat into the peaut butter and thoroughly  enjoyed his PB and bologna sandwich. He indulged in this after cominng out of the peanut butter closet on a pretty regular basis. RIP cuz

They do a weird food every year on its menu.  They all look strange, but are good. 

 

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2017/02/post_630.html#…

I was poor in college. I used to eat tuna and cranberry sauce mixed together 5 nights a week. When I couldn't afford the cranberry sauce, I would mix dijon mustard right into the can.

The Kimchi is added on and not cooked into the pizza.

just about anything. Examples:

--When making French toast, whip up those eggs and milk without any sugar, syrup, etc. and add Italian seasoning instead.  Rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, whateveryou got. Superb, savory, delicious, you won't miss the sweetness.

--Rice:  Saute a tbsp of butter and a tbsp of peanut butter in your rice pan with italian seasoning until it sizzles.  Then add your rice and stir that around for a while, also adding just enough broth (beef, chicken, veg, whatever) so it doesn't stick to the pan.  Keep stirring for 5 minutes or so.  Then add the liquid and bring up to a boil.  Cover the pan, lower the heat and cook for however long the rice variety calls for.  Result:  Perfect rice, fluffy, flavorful.

Here's a weird but good snack I grew up on: those little cocktail rye bread slices, spread with mayonnaise, then sprinkled with parmesan cheese (we used to use Kraft in the green can but there's real stuff out there now), and with some thinly sliced onions scattered on top. Put them in a toaster oven until golden brown. 

Cottage cheese, garlic salt or powder, and crushed potato chips.  Mix it up.  Great texture, delicious.

I'd like to buy a beer for whoever came up with the olive burger.  Tangy, briny goodness.

Equally deliciously tangy, is the combination of mayo, dill pickle, and onion.  Not weird at all, but truly a case of the sum > parts.  Favorite fast food snack is a Whopper Jr, no cheese, no ketchup - this delivers a good dose of MPO.  BK has the best fast-food mayo.

Bacon with EVERYTHING!!

Love it on cottage cheese.

Jelly with hash browns--I'm not a big fast food guy but grape jelly on a McD's hash brown in the morning is amazing. Same with regular restaurant shredding hash browns if they're well done.

Pancetta with honeydew or cantaloupe as well.

I'm a big fan of salty/sweet.

a nice greasy pork sandwich in a dirty ashtray?

 

I love to take a peice of wheat toast, butter, then peanut butter, then Jelly, and finally on top, an egg fried over easy in a cast iron skillet in bacon grease.

If I'm eating breakfast at a diner-type joint, my go-to with sausage links are those little tubs of Smuckers strawberry jams. It's a delicious combo.

Kraft single, spread with peanut butter. Fold in half or optionally top with another Kraft single for the full-size experience.

My wife's variation on this is sunflower butter on a muenster slice. She independently developed this before we met. I think it's why we're married.

I have to say I love Peanut Butter and Miracle Whip but not mayo. In all other cases I prefer mayo, but maybe because it is what I ate as a child Peanut Butter and Miracle Whip us whete it is at.