v for frequency?

ICK! American Cheese is nothing but slices of solidified salty goo pretending to be "cheese" but really are just slices of yellow jelly.

Dairylea and Laughing cow is in the same category as these.

I am extremely proud of my two daughters as they are 2 and 6 and neither of them will eat any of this rubbish and will actually say to me I wand Parmesan on my pasta or Cheddar on my crackers......

I have to say that since my childhood where we had Red Leicester, Wensleydale, Cheddar, Stilton or Danish blue, plus a few goat and processed cheeses, things have come on marvellously.

Must be over a hundred cheeses on sale that are not hard to find.

Authentic Parmesan imported from Southern Parmesia is to die for.

Same here in California. Most stores don't even offer the silly Kraft goo, and have a huge range of local and imported cheeses, often with advice and samples offered.

Of course, some of the prices are insane, like $75 a pound. But some of the foodies here will pay $600 for a bottle of wine, or $150 for a sushi sitting or an afternoon high tea with silly little sandwiches.

I should talk. I sometimes pay $45 for a bowl of cioppino or $22 for a hamburger.

Yes. We also use the Sartori parmesan from Wisconsin for cooking, because we can get it fine grated at Safeway.

I prefer my penicillin by injection. That's less painful.

Kerrygold butter is good. They make the only decent soft spreadable butter. The other soft stuff is cheap butter thinned with used motor oil or something.

Kerrygold briefly sold a margerine here. I wrote them a nasty email and it's gone now. I suspect they got a lot of similar emails.

Nobody forces you to buy that stuff. Some people like it, especially kids. Some people can't afford high-end cheese.

Make your own nachos with your own sauce.

They can't make enough.

I wish you could still get "baking liquid" in the UK. Stork used to make it, and then there was Flora Cuisine which was the same. It's a kind of liquid margarine sold in plastic bottles you keep in the fridge.

It makes making fairy cakes very easy. You just sieve the dry ingredients into a bowl, crack the eggs in, pour the baking liquid in and mix thoroughly. Then just put in paper cases in a baking tin.

Much easier than using butter or ordinary marge, which has to be at room temperature and creamed with the sugar then beaten egg blended in before adding the other ingredients. Then you have to add milk to get to the right consistency to put in the baking cases.

"Most stores" where you are, perhaps. I bet there are places in rural and suburban California that have the full panoply of crappy Kraft cheeses. And worse.

The Safeway in Oakland has Kraft singles, spray cheese, Cheez Whiz, the whole nine yards.

Sure. People have different tastes and different budgets. Some people voluntarily drink Bud. Some people like that spray-can whipped cream stuff.

Kids like that sort of stuff. Do they still make Velveeta? I've heard of it being used on pipe threads.

Our Safeway (Diamond Heights) has a cheese island with some decent stuff, but we go to Tower or Gus's or Canyon Market for better cheese. (Those stores are still in America.) Safeway doesn't have Cowgirl or really good gouda.

Safeway is for bulk shopping, milk and paper towels. Their rotesserie chickens are OK and make great broth.

Furriners like to trash America, out of ignorance and jealousy. Based on the time I've spent in England and Ireland, the food is much better here.

Why not ?

I think the worst place I ever shopped was Sweden 57 varieties of Pickled fish and rye bread. And that was it.

I like cheese but I dispense with the crackers so it has to stand on its own merits.

A long time ago in the USA, margerine was white and it was illegal to color it. Sometimes it was sold with a little capsule of yellow die that people could mix in themselves.

I like to use a coarse cheese grater to grate cold butter into flour, and stir that up a little, to make biscuits. Use White Lily flour for light southern-style biscuts, not the weapons-grade ones the yankees make from hard wheat.

The local markets carry a fairly decent selection but the upscale Good Foods Store really has a range. I try not to do the math to determine how much per pound I paid for the $9 prewrapped piece.

Our upscale store packages pieces in plastic wrap and is canny enough to size them so the sticker shock isn't too bad. Just don't think too hard about the price per pound.

I did at one time use olive oil like that when the recipe called for butter or marg.

Worked fine, and the olive oil flavor was fine with a fruit cake.