This is the best alfredo ever

(it's not Lipton, obv)

But these Bowl Appetit things, boy...GOLLLLLY they're good as hell.

While it is often said that Marco Polo brought the concept back with him from China, pasta had been known in Europe for many centuries before his voyage. The earliest known records are found on Etruscan tomb decorations from the 4th century BC.

Thomas Jefferson is credited with bringing the first macaroni machine to America in 1789 when he returned home after serving as ambassador to France.

I don't blame your cousin for changing his name, and if my last name ended in a vowel I'd change it too. But to me, it's more of a local stigma. I have no problem with Eye-talians per se, but I have a LOT of problems with the majority of them around here. All except my mom. :)

(When I was living with someone who was lactose-intolerant, this was my cheese fix.)

In counting "favorite" there, I am obviously discounting any and all frozen potato product, in the interest of fairness. And I am perhaps finally admitting that The Perfect Food -- Ore-Ida's Tater Dogs, cocktail-sized hotdogs stuffed into tater tots -- is no longer produced, which removes it from consideration as well.

I miss you, Perfect Food. I trust you have moved on to some Platonic kitchen where frozen potato product always cooks evenly, and the ketchup never veers from the ideal temperature.

best frozen pizza - Celeste zesty four cheese. But that's another thread.

This is depressing. Once upon a time, Wifey COOKED meals. Once she snagged me, that was the end of that.

I haven't had it for ages, but in HS I used to live off the Marie Calendar's pasta combo dinners: ravioli and rigatoni in marinara, plus garlic bread. Their lasagna was pretty good too, IIRC.

(I thought this was just an "I moved out of the northeast" thing until I visited my mother and realized the grocery stores there had exactly the same hot dog selection.)

Tep, I know what you mena about things tasting different. Is it just me or did Devil Dogs used to taste much better?

Also - Mini Sugar Daddys are my favorite thing to eat. EVER. If I was to be executed by the state, I'd ask for a plate full of them. But i will NOT eat Sugar Babies or even regulation sized Sugar Daddys. They taste gross to me. But I buy the mini ones by the box. They're getting harder and harder to find.

Devil Dogs, man -- you can't get them here, and my ex asked me to pick her up a box when I visited my mother. So I did, and my girlfriend had never tried them either, since she's from Washington and had never been east before. So she tried one, nodded, it was good, etc. Later, I saw her eating another one -- this is a woman who never eats snack food, doesn't really go for dessert unless it's ice cream or I've made something -- and caught the look on her face, told her we could always pick up a new box for Kathy before we left. By the end of the weekend, the box was empty.

So I don't know if they taste different or not :) I know Twinkies are moister than they used to be, but only because I used to fry them in jr high, and I can do so now and note the way it cooks differently.

(Well, this will stand, on record, if I don't make it back when ILX returns, it's because I've died eating fried Twinkies)

What are Devil Dogs?

Devil Dog -- um, hrm. I'd say "like a whoopie pie, sort of," but people who don't know what a Devil Dog is usually don't know whoopie pies. I have an explanation written down, if I can find it.

Devil Dogs are the best-known product of Drake's Cakes (which is probably something like Corporate Foods International or something now), and I've always assumed they get their name from being roughly the size and shape of a hot dog bun: they're a sandwich of two cakes everyone calls Devil's food cake, but that really aren't. They're denser and drier -- in a good way, especially when you freeze them -- than Devil's food is. If you imagine a spectrum where Real Cake is in the center, and Twinkies' relationship to sponge cake brings them off to the left, then Devil Dogs' relationship to Devil's food cake is somewhere off to the right. An equal distance, but the opposite direction. It's almost more like a soft cookie than a cake; there's no porousness, no airholes like cake has. And again, this isn't a fault: this is by design.

Devil Dogs are actually the manufactured, prepackaged version of Whoopie Pies, more or less; Whoopie Pies are round, and look like large homemade Oreos. But they rarely have that dense texture, because it's very hard to do.

The cream filling is like a cross between Oreo cookie filling and Twinkie filling. It's dense, too, almost like homemade frosting -- not the thixotropic stuff of Twinkies.

That choc coating would always crumble half way off and I'd notice that I actually liked it better without, so then I'd just peel it off myself. So the cake part of the swiss rolls is close to the devil dog's? I definitely like that texture better than suzy q's's'. I can't get any Drakes products out here, or at least not at any store I've been to.