/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>19046683
>>19046895
And yes, also burgers and pizza, which don't need to be fast food.

The ideal American burger doesn't come from McDonald's. The ideal burger is cooked at home over a charcoal grill in your huge backyard, while the sun sets and your kids play with the dog, and you reflect on your life while enjoying an expectedly bland but undoubtedly REFRESHING American adjunct lager. The entire concept of the burger is bound up with the so-called "American dream", the homestead ideal, the luxury of abundant meat and cheese, the leisure of lazy summer evenings, the enjoyment of family life, and the satisfied success of a man who has been able to attain a house and a piece of real property (land) in a country enjoying postwar abundance in a place of rich natural resources. Despite what "some people" would have you believe, pic related was real, and very American, and although it was never perfect, there were always shadows lurking, but we approached it more closely than many think, and it was great, and that's why we all become fat old truck driving boomers in the end.

I'm not saying this ideal image is entirely unique to Americans, but it found a special place here after the war, and we all know what pic related means. The home-cooked burger is a simple pleasure, usually eaten with few condiments, reminiscent of a simpler time, unsurprising since so many American immigrants were no-nonsense, hard-working "meat & potatoes" kind of folks--but also expressing optimism for the future, since meat & cheese have often been true luxuries in many times & places.