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Me too! Hop on over here;
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Where did I dis your marshmallows? Eat what makes you happy, treat everyone with respect, and don’t get caught up in semantics 
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Ditto. We need a group shopping trip and then access to a huge kitchen to cook up the haul
I was joking, of course.
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But lingua is right. “American” food weeks at Lidl and Aldi (and the American section of most grocery stores) always have marshmallows for some reason. Theyre usually pretty bad.
But the one that continually left me shaking my head was the hot dogs in brine in glass jars. I can honwstly say thats something Ive never seen anywhere in the US…
And the Old El Paso taco makings…which are even worse than Old El Paso fixings in the US. Who knew that fajitas are a braise of chicken and peppers?
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vienna sausages? they are big in the caribbean/hispanic community. even costco sells them.
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Wait… in the American section or the German section? I not-fondly-at-all remember my dad making Wiener Würstchen for dinner, but I can’t seem to recall whether they were in a can or a glass jar. As for the brine… wasn’t there a craze / dare a few years ago to come up with a use for wiener boiling water? Might’ve even been CH, but I can’t say for sure.
They are still very much a staple on supermarket shelves in Germany.
My German father adored Vienna sausages and other pitted meats. Camping staples in our family. My sons love them too. Generation skipping gene?
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No, not vienna sausages. Full sized hot dogs in a glass jar.
They always showed up at Lidl and Aldi during “semaine americaine”…usually around 4 July ish… from 2008-2013.
They stick in my mind because i was so repulsed! I dont like hot dogs anyway, but to embalm them in a jar of brine just seemed over the top disgusting.
And yes, CH had an enor.ous thread about hot dog water. I could only ever bear to read a few posts at time
Like these ones ? (I have to say that I quite like them but they tend to be quite expensive now with all the increased import costs)
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Looks close!
Oh, this was for… American week? How weird. I thought jarred wieners (full-size) were solidly a kraut* thing. Huh.
*Hope the term doesn’t offend anyone here.
There were always a few things that we giggled about because they were so NOT American.
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I guess these were developed for situations where there is no or limited refrigeration for fresh sausages like weiners.
Well for the NYers here, given the prevalence of dirty water dogs, having the 'dogs packed in brine just gave them a head start. 
Hot dog in the jar would be great for camping.
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If i understand your point correctly I think it’s the same for me. I don’t use ethnic to describe any single store.
It’s more of a concept of an amalgamated group that means “stuff I know and like now, but is not what I grew up with”. (Edit - and this grouping also includes German, Polish, and what not - our little town had few restaurants)
Maybe that’s still a “problem” viewpoint, as it boils down to “not American”.
If you’re from the majority background.
Stuff I grew up with (in Canada ) was considered ethnic by all my classmates.
I was never walking around calling the classmates ’ meatloaf , chicken pot pie, and peas and carrots ethnic. I was very aware, from kindergarten, that stuffed grape leaves and spinach pie were foreign or ethnic or weird to the majority WASPs and 4th Gen Irish Catholics of Ontario.
Colcannon and Boxty are kinda foreign and regional Irish food. The 4th gen Irish Catholics of Ontario weren’t eating that kind of Irish food out in the open in the 1980s. Maybe because of the stigma of boiled Cabbage.
We have a Cabbagetown in Toronto, a beautiful historic neighborhood with Victorian homes, where the scent of cabbage was in the air back in the day.
I know that my German- as-a-first -language, immigrant uncle was treated poorly in Pennsylvania when he first arrived in the 1930s, in his 20s. He married an 3rd gen Irish American. Their baby boomer kids were raised on very mainstream, intentionally not ethnic, not German, not Polish, not Ukrainian and not Hungarian foods from around 1945-1980. Ham and iceberg lettuce with Wishbone salad dressing salads. It had a lot to do with fitting in during difficult times.
It’s been interesting, now that there’s no significant stigma towards foods from Central Europe and the Mediterranean, maybe half of my late uncle’s grandkids uncle have the regional ethnic foods at their weddings (from 2000-2019) and other gatherings.
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