No, it was the only thing my father would order at a Chinese restaurant. All the restaurants made it the same way.
Okay, Iāll ask again. Who decides what the āauthenticā version is?
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I had a graduate school friend who absolutely adored HH. But he loved Wonder Bread, too - IIRC heād tear out the middle of a slice, mash it into a ball, and eat it.
Admission: as a kid I liked to eat powdered Nestleās Quik directly out of the can with a little spoon.
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Everything you have listed changes. What does authentic mean to you for the list?
Clothing is extremely perishable. The concept of fashion inherently means things change. Rituals change a lot too. I was raised in a Catholic household. Went to Catholic schools. What Catholicism means has changed several times through its history. Language changes with frightening speed. Terms that the cool kids used when I was a kid mean nothing to the kids today. And so on and so forth.
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I have absolutely no idea what āauthenticā clothing would entail - can you give an example? Because so far I donāt understand. Authentic agriculture? Language?
IMO the term traditional would work in most of your examples (tho perhaps not language, unless weāre going back to the primal language), and have a more tangible meaning.
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Better yet, what would unauthentic clothes look like?
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Now Iām worried Iām wearing fake pants.
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So your authentic chicken chow mein contains rice and not noodles. Got it. Lol.
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Maybe we should all go back to loin cloths? Full-on nudity? I justā¦ I donātā¦ 
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It isnāt? LOL
I actually love meat sauce over rice. One of my favorite Italian restaurants makes what its calls a keto lasagna. Meat sauce layered with eggplant. Its great.
I also like hamburger helper. Mom made it all the time. At one point I introduced my wife to it. She had never had it before. Made a new convert to the HH church.
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On a tangential point, if it is that difficult to decide what āauthenticā is, that makes it even harder to condemn any sort of cultural appropriation.
Because if there is no good way to tell if it is truly authentic, how could a person be wrong to use or wear it?
Or would cultural appropriation be more of a case of āI know it when I see it.ā?
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I find it impossible, myself, but Iām often lonely in this.
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I donāt want to skirt too close to topics we arenāt supposed to discuss but I feel that those who get most worked up by supposed cultural appropriation often belong to a certain part of the political spectrum.
If it werenāt for cultures appropriating foods and techniques from other cultures, most of the food we eat wouldnāt exist
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If you are asking about Chicken Chow Mein, I would assume ācontaining noodlesā is a good place to start.
Correct. āAuthenticā is a marketing word without any deeper meaning than what we might want to make of it. Nothing is āauthenticā in any kind of serious way. Weāll just have to disagree on this concept & co-exist on enjoying much of the same foods.
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And thatās the part I think Iām on! But maybe not?
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If we ever wind up sharing a table at Indian Table (or elsewhere in the neighborhood) we can discuss this. If I read you right, I donāt think I agree.
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Iām not. Iām asking about āauthentic,ā the blanket term you are defending. You staunchly refuse to identify a (for want of a better term) governing body that gets to define whether this or that or the other version of something is āauthentic.ā And without that, itās meaningless to search for āauthenticity.ā How would you recognize it if you found it?
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I just asked the question, I did not state an opinion.
