Oh yes, I know that now, but when I was a kid I didn’t think it was odd. I just went by what the restaurants called it. It was ubiquitous.
And it was probably chop suey. Maybe you remember the name wrong.
No, it was the only thing my father would order at a Chinese restaurant. All the restaurants made it the same way.
Okay, I’ll ask again. Who decides what the “authentic” version is?
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I had a graduate school friend who absolutely adored HH. But he loved Wonder Bread, too - IIRC he’d tear out the middle of a slice, mash it into a ball, and eat it.
Admission: as a kid I liked to eat powdered Nestle’s 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 “authentic” clothing would entail - can you give an example? Because so far I don’t understand. Authentic agriculture? Language?
IMO the term traditional would work in most of your examples (tho perhaps not language, unless we’re 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 I’m worried I’m 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 just… I don’t… 
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It isn’t? 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 “authentic” 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 “I know it when I see it.”?
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I find it impossible, myself, but I’m often lonely in this.
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I don’t want to skirt too close to topics we aren’t 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 weren’t for cultures appropriating foods and techniques from other cultures, most of the food we eat wouldn’t exist
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If you are asking about Chicken Chow Mein, I would assume ‘containing noodles’ is a good place to start.
Correct. “Authentic” is a marketing word without any deeper meaning than what we might want to make of it. Nothing is “authentic” in any kind of serious way. We’ll just have to disagree on this concept & co-exist on enjoying much of the same foods.
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And that’s the part I think I’m 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 don’t think I agree.
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