Well, two, in fact....I am attempting to shame my old university buddy - and erstwhile leading commenter - 'The British Cowboy' into returning to the fold by dedicating this post to him.
He has been living in the States for getting on for 16 years now, and is thoroughly converted to the 'lifestyle' there - in particular, to the massive portions of tasty but unhealthy food. When I used to visit him in Philadelphia (10 or 12 years since; he had a house just a couple of hundred yards from the best bar in North America - great days!), our favourite snack from his local corner store was 'Pennsylvania Lard Chips'. In my memory, that was what it said on the packet - but I suspect that memory, as so often, plays me false, that this is just what The Cowboy and I called them. I think they were probably the brand below, Good's (although I am pretty sure there at least used to be a prominent banner on the packet back then saying something like 'Cooked In Lard' - it seems they've become more discreet about advertising the lard factor in these increasingly "health-conscious" times).
So enthusiastically did The Cowboy embrace the pleasures of lard that he bought a t-shirt (from Viz magazine, I think) with the picture above on it (purporting to be a genuine 1950s advertisement, but I'm pretty sure it's a spoof). I always rather coveted one myself; I wonder if they're still available. [I'd downloaded this picture from the Net ages ago, but only just noticed it was tagged with the name of the StrangeCosmos website.... which I visited for the first time a couple of days ago, and got rather bogged down in for an hour or two!]
Darn, I wish we could get a really good potato chip (or 'crisp', as we like to call them in the UK) here in Beijing. Lay's and Pringle's don't quite cut it, and the local brands are mostly just horrible.
So..... come back, Cowboy. We miss you.
8 comments:
Apparently the ad. is a spoof from Viz, issue 52, February/March 1992, on page 21. Sorry to disappoint you.
BTW, how do you think that the British Cowboy would do at the Singapore bar?
That's just mean, Nags! 'Man breasts' should never be mentioned in polite company.
I had been pretty sure it was a Viz, but couldn't remember the where and when.
Have you heard anything from the BC? Wasn't he back over for Christmas?
I recall back in the late '90s, Philadelphia was named and shamed as The Fattest City In America in an annual survey of average weights. The Mayor was galvanised into action, launching a number of public health campaigns to try to encourage people to eat less and exercise more. It seemed to work, to a limited extent (I don't suppose many people gave up the infamous Philly Cheese Steak): a year or two later, they dropped out of the top spot in the Fat Cities league (replaced by Houston, I think). This year, apparently, it's Miami, with Philly having dropped all the way down to 20th!
When Philadelphia escaped from the No. 1 position, a British newspaper did a back-of-envelope calculation of the total weight loss the city had achieved thanks to the Mayor's campaigns, assuming that the survey's sample averages could be fairly extrapolated to the whole population - leading to the memorable headline: "Fat City loses two tons of lard."
It was most unfortunate that the British Cowboy had just moved away when that story appeared.
And you said that I was being mean!
OK, here I am. I never owned the t-shirt, but always wanted one. I have these days an alarming collection of odd tshirts (mainly Simpsons) so it should be bought. I guess I am trying to fight the onset of feeling old. Turning 40 last year was bad enough - what is really making me feel decrepit is Jack turning 10 in a week and a half.
So where have I been? Well, for the longest time, our work filter decided to ban blogs. Very annoying, especially when some of them have tasty useful titbits for work. Apparently it is no longer the case, as I am here now. Other than that, work has been crazy. Which is kind of a good thing given the total lack of job security around at the moment.
I don't remember the brand, but they weren't Good's, though the packaging was similar, and they did proudly say cooked in lard, god bless them.
Ah, it worked!
Good to have you back, Cowboy.
I grew up on the New Jersey side of metropolitan Philly and still make what are surely among the best cheese steaks exported thence to Florida.
Crap. Now I'm hungry.
(My word verif. prompt is roogine.)
Which sounds like some kind of Quebecois snack food....
It hadn't occurred to me that people ever made cheese steaks at home. We Brits seldom attempt to cook fish'n'chips for ourselves, and would never make our own doner kebabs.
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