For those of you who grew up in places that have distinctive regional cuisines...

[xiphias]

Some foods are place-bound. There's no reason that a Cincinnati Chili couldn't be made outside of Cincinnati, or that there could be a Garbage Plate somewhere other than Rochester, NY. But they're not. And some are a bit less place-bound, but still place-bound -- try getting Moxie outside of New England. Is there a region somewhere down South where they drink it, too? But not most places.

So, for those of you who grew up with such a cuisine, how old were you when you realized that other places just don't have it?

For me, I was just thinking about Whoopie Pies. And the age that I realized that they're not ubiquitous outside of New England was 40 2/3.

Yeah. Okay, I'm slow sometimes.

Oddly, I think I've got almost all the ingredients I'd need to make them in my kitchen right now. The only thing I'm missing is ... eggs. I've never made them before; it didn't occur to me until half an hour ago when Lis asked me that they were a thing that you actually COULD make. But they don't look all that difficult. It's just basically chocolate cake and buttercream frosting, really.

Well, one of the variations we found includes a buttercream/marshmallow combination frosting. Dunno how that would be.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The Massachusetts one is the only one with no artificial flavors, colors, stabilizers, or preservatives, unless you count vanillin instead of vanilla to be an artificial flavor (to me, it's a borderline case. It's not vanilla, so it definitely is an IMITATION flavor, but whether it's an ARTIFICIAL flavor, I dunno.)

Fluff is egg whites, sugar, corn syrup, and vanillin. Everything else has other stuff in it, too.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. I had no idea, and while I'm not sure how much it'd matter to me (I'd have to taste test some of the others), it's good to know.