Wtf are you guys eating over there… Jesus christ, I wonder why Americans seem so crazy. Artificial food, artificial media, Artificial work culture…
And two weeks vacation, maybe, on a full year of work… What? And still no money in the wallet at the end of the day?
I watched a video last night about an American guy that was just losing it, and rightly so:
Watch five minutes of that and be happy if you are European, I guess.
I have had 1 week off the whole year. I have some PTO coming up. I feel guilty using it (even though I shouldn’t).
I mean, yeah…a lot of people here have it very rough. I am lucky in that I work for the federal government and get 10 weeks plus holidays off. A lot of people here do not get that.
I am definitely doing life wrong, mind if I ask the field?
I had that once, turned out the head of my department was a sociopath though. Never been unhappier at work in my life. I had managers that handled themselves better at a car wash than this lady did at a public library.
I get 40 hours of sick time off per year that I can use for vacation. This is the New York State minimum that had to be fought for.
Two weeks? If you’re middle to upper middle class, sure. If you’re lower middle to lower class, you’ll get a week, if anything at all, unpaid. Sick? Unpaid. Spouse died? Unpaid. What, give people welfare? Not on my tax dollar, that’s communism!
The US stopped being the land of opportunity two generations ago, and only now people are starting to realize.
“You can have the funeral in the alley behind the restaurant during lunch. Throw your wife in the dumpster after you’re done.”
-Your manager
“The price of meat is skyrocketing, you sure your wife couldn’t… contribute?”
-Owner
“Your wife didn’t have enough meat on her bones, bring in your eldest child on Monday.”
-Corporate
Today’s special:
Long pig served with boiled potatoes, haluski and dandelion salad. Pay only 1$ extra for entree (mystery meatball soup) and 50c extra for dessert (vinegar pie)
They eat shit and buy 85" TVs .
Yeah but the TVs are like $300. And one week of groceries is like $300.
It’s not really fair to say people waste their money on tvs
I tried reading the rest of the comments on this post but I think my soul broke, I wanted to reply to multiple of them but the words just didn’t come to me
I also feel deep sadness over it because its just so incredibly unfair and evil.
Welcome to unregulated capitalism. I was screamed at by my managers all the fucking time when I made $13/hr with 35 hours of paid sick, that never rolled over and counted as vacation time. Now I make nothing and I only scream at myself. I’ll take a win where I can get one
Yeah. Actually i admire your human spirit. Taking so much crap and still not letting it beat you down. I honestly dont know how it would transform myself if I was subjected to it. You are talking to someone who always had a cushy office jobs in IT their entire career, well paid, in Sweden.
I havent come close to suffering the way you have in my career.
And that is all I’ve ever wanted, but not having a bachelor’s degree and two masters means I’m unemployable to 90% of corporations. I have been coding since I was 14 but that doesn’t matter in terms of experience on job applications. After 11 years of dead end jobs that I could never live off, I’m living with my older sister who has a bachelor’s degree and 2 masters and owns her house. So that how lifting yourself up by your bootstraps goes, a very common American myth is that something comes from nothing.
lie just lie on your resume to get that job, if your survival is at stake you have no other choice.
100% this. Do what you need to do.
Highschool needs to teach financial literacy. $200 a month for insurance is insane. I pay that for 3 vehicles on full coverage (older trucks and suv, but damn).
Not saying this guy is wrong to be pissed but I see a lot of people who just don’t understand how to shop around for shit and just eat the cost.
I agree with him though, we need single payer and mass transit.
Edit: also the further I get into this. The more I think we need to single payer so he can go to therapy, cause he’s depressed as hell.
people who just don’t understand how to shop around for shit and just eat the cost.
The problem is, you can shop around and find a good deal, but that good deal is “introductory”, only for new customers, so after a while the price goes back to “normal” and you have to do it all over again. Then you have to do that for every damn thing, it gets pretty tiring.
Yea usually you gotta do it every few years.
$200 a month for insurance is peanuts if you have a teen on your policy. Our premiums tripled when we added our 16yo. He’s 24 now, so pretty soon we’re going to remove him from our policy and enjoy the savings.
16 year olds shouldn’t be driving anyways, so I’m not surprised your premiums went up. Also…24 and you’re still paying for his insurance???
In most states the guardians can pay insurance for their dependent up until 25, at least for healthcare and the parents are probably extending that to their son’s car insurance, generously. My mom kicked me off her plan when I was 23, but I’ve always had to pay for my car’s insurance
18 here but at that age kids gotta grow up. Helping them financially when they get into a pickle is one thing but not teaching them what stuff costs sets them up for a world of hurt.
Thanks, I will certainly give your parenting advice the credence it deserves.
In my state, it doesn’t matter if he’s 25 or 55. If he drives my car regularly he has to be on my policy for my car. That’s the law. He has his own policy, for his own car. I don’t ever drive his car, so I’m not on his policy. But since his car is a Mini, he borrows mine a lot too. And I don’t like committing insurance fraud, so I follow the law.
Dunno where you are, but in the US, 16 year olds drive.
And every kid and every family is different. You parent your child, and I’ll parent mine. You’re not entitled to even form a fucking opinion on my parenting.
In my state, it doesn’t matter if he’s 25 or 55. If he drives my car regularly he has to be on my policy for my car. That’s the law. He has his own policy, for his own car. I don’t ever drive his car, so I’m not on his policy. But since his car is a Mini, he borrows mine a lot too. And I don’t like committing insurance fraud, so I follow the law.
The car is insured, not the driver. Your comment made it sound like you still had him on your policy for his car.
Dunno where you are, but in the US, 16 year olds drive.
In the USA, and while this is correct that they can drive, they shouldn’t be. Just as when someone hits 65 they should be required to take yearly driver courses. A vehicle is not a right it’s a privilege. We should have mass transit and the same level of driving requirements the EU has to get a license. Way to make people absolutely fucking suck at driving, and unfortunately the elderly and teens make up the majority of crashes.
And every kid and every family is different. You parent your child, and I’ll parent mine. You’re not entitled to even form a fucking opinion on my parenting.
No where did I question your parenting. I made a comment about an over all belief that kids need more responsibility these days. Calm down padre.
How tf do you shop around for insurance.
My employer: you have 3 options. The high deductible HSA plan, the medium deductible plan, or the low deductible plan.
Even if there are other options that aren’t subsidized by my employer, you can’t change your plan most of the year because of fucking open enrollment.
How is this user error and not America being America?
Car…car insurance, it’s why I called out we needing single payer healthcare. This video was a dude bitching about car insurance.
LOL guess I just proved Americans are illiterate cause I reread the comment and it clearly said car insurance
Lol you’re good, we do need to spend a lot more on our education system though.
Insurance rates change depending where you are and who you are. 250 a month per vehicle for full coverage where I am. We just dropped coverage to minimum on one of them and it went down barely 15%. Shopping around found only higher rates somehow. I think insurance agencies are colluding to fix prices.
O they absolutely collude on pricing, but $250 a month for full coverage means you’re probably driving a nearly brand new car…just why. Why does everyone buy the latest and greatest constantly and then cry about how much shit costs.
Nope, ones a 2015 and the others a 2017. I bought the 2017 for under 10k.
That’s crazy, it means you’re going to write off the entire worth of the vehicle in 2 years time. The hell do you live that you’re paying $500 a month for 2 vehicles? Or do you have a shit driving record?
Well god forbid I actually need to use the service I pay for.
This is my easy hamburger helper recipe in case people want real food. I skip the box and throw paprika and onion and garlic powders on my ground beef, brown it. Add ziti noodles, or anything I have, add beef stock and water. Let the pasta become tender, abt 7-8 mins. And throw in a huge glob a sour cream and mix it in. Salt as needed, skip the sodium spike
Also FYI hotdogs roughly contain about 2% human DNA in them.
It’s achingly frustratingly clear that the dumbasses at ClearLabs accidentally contaminated their samples. This is horseshit.
This guy trying to rain on our human flavored hot dog parade!
Sorry, I’m European, could someone explain what Hamburger Helper actually is?? I’ve heard the brand name before and assumed it was just some kind of seasoning powder for making hamburgers, but this image looks more like it’s more like powdered sauce base for a whole range of random meals?
A box meal. Like a cake mix. It comes with parts of the meal, the pasta and the sauce, and you add the meat and milk, water, butter. Whatever else it calls for. These are cheap. And don’t take very long to make.
They are mostly eaten by poor people and kids. They have very little nutritional value and are high in carbs, sugar, and salt.
The high carbs and protein (if you are rich enough to add meat) make the food very filling though. Some people call this type of food “comfort food”. It definitely will make your stomach feel full and content.
But it’s not good food for you.
Lasagna, except way grosser.
It’s cheap pasta with a sauce you add hamburger to.
Oh, you eat it without the bread?
Yeah; you don’t put a hamburger into it, just ground beef (or chicken, or tuna, or whatever other meat you’d like, really). lol
If you had money for a hamburger, you probably wouldn’t be eating Hamburger Helper.
Yeah, that makes sense. I can even imagine how it tastes now.
Around here, people use spaghetti (and probably an egg to make it larger), what is probably not too different.
Adding eggs to random shit really does help it feel more filling. Like if I eat a packet a ramen I would never feel full, throw in a couple eggs and it’s fine. And I can’t afford to go to the doctor so it’s not like they can tell me my shit diet is killing me. I didn’t know what a frittata actually was until recently. We have chickens and I was trying to get rid of some eggs and my fiance found a frittata recipe online. It’s basically, whatever you’ve got throw in a vessel with eggs and bake it. Cut up peppers, onions, can of green beans, or corn, maybe some sausage or whatever you had left, add that other can you had sitting in the cupboard throw it in the oven and go sit down. It may not be considered a frittata at that point. What spices were added. Whatever the fuck sounded good at that moment. Probably some Tajin, why not.
Why am I still typing, I don’t even know what I was talking about… Maybe I’m hungry
It tastes a bit like plastic and gel.
Take that imagined taste and make it about 30% worse then you’re in the ballpark.
30% worse, 150% saltier.
I skip the box and throw paprika and onion and garlic powders on my ground beef, brown it. Add ziti noodles, or anything I have, add beef stock and water. Let the pasta become tender, abt 7-8 mins. And throw in a huge glob a sour cream and mix it in. Salt as needed, skip the sodium spike
it’s the kit to make the meal in the front, just need to add the hamburger… or hot dogs…
but yea it has the seasonings, maybe emulsifiers, the macaroni, and instructions, and that’s it
ooh, hamburger as in, ground meat? For me a hamburger is always the round puck of meat between buns, makes more sense if it’s just the generic name for the meat itself!
Usually people say ground beef, but some call it hamburger meat, or just hamburger.
It’s because ground beef became synonymous with Hamburg steaks, which was basically a patty of ground beef. Some dude went to a Hamburg steak place and wanted to get it to go so they slapped it between two pieces of bread and thusly the hamburger was born.
Seemingly many great dishes were born from impatient diners.
Desperation is the mother of utility and hunger is the grandfather of all creations.
Thickeners too. Modified corn starch. Less objectional ingredient really since starch as a sauce thickener instead of reduction is pre industrial and modified starch is frankly a good innovation. I don’t want to sit there and stir. People who make pudding from scratch with regular corn starch are insane.
Who can afford hot dogs?
They’re like $12 for a pack of 18 huge ones at Costco
4 USD for 9 small ones in Denmark.
450g=16 oz or whatever you use.
Food in the kitchen is usually measured in pounds for meat and vegetables (similar to the UK) and grams for most other dry goods. So the recipe would call for 2 pounds of beef but 5 grams of salt. The Costco hot dogs are guaranteed to weigh at least ¼ pound.
The most confusing thing is soda, because it is sold in containers of either 350 mL, 16 oz, or 2 L.
Edit: Photograph of Costco hot dog. They are also sold at the food court for $1.50 each, and it comes with unlimited soda from the Coca-Cola machine in the background. This is probably why Americans are so fat.
Yeah, so for anyone too lazy to do the math, that means Costco hot dogs are more than twice as big as those Danish ones, and only cost 50% more (excluding taxes).
Costco wins this round.
Not a fair fight. Costco keeps the hot dog and rotisserie chicken prices artificially low to attract customers.
These items bring in people that buy
You’re not quite there yet. It still says ‘real cheese’.
“made with” real cheese.
They throw a one ounce cube in with each batch.
or they just place a block of cheese near by as a shelf or counterbalance for the chopping board for the actual ingredients.
It’s not “real cheese” it’s “Real Cheese™”, it really tastes like cheese.
Ah, Real Cheese brand cheese flavored product.
It adds real shareholder value.
Pretty sure fake cheese is made with vegetable oil, no?
Also the other day I bought a small block of kraft brand Colby cheese. A little treat for myself.
I always buy whichever brand is on sale. I’m not a cheese snob or anything.
Anywho. I got it out to eat it.
It’s super soft. Like. … well like fake cheese. Just like their kraft singles.
Floppy oily yellow cheese.
I got swindled. It says it’s Colby. But it’s not ! It’s the fake cheese !
Not happy. Won’t ever buy it ever again.
They just started doing this. It was real cheese not that long ago. I suspect it’s been “cut,” with fake cheese.
Like it’s not 100% fake cheese. But like 60% fake cheese.
I checked packaging to make sure I just didn’t buy the wrong stuff. Nope. It definitely says Colby cheese.
Minimum viable product kind of cheese
“Minimum viable product” describes a lot of the items that end up in my grocery cart these days – produce especially.
Meat!? In this economy?
Clearest recession indicator I’ve seen so far
I don’t know why, I’m pretty sure hotdogs are more expensive per pound than ground beef at my local shop. 70/30 (which is fattier than I normally purchase) was $3/lb last time I was there, hotdogs are almost double that. Maybe that’s just a local thing?
I think this labelling is just marketing. Given the name of the product contains “hamburger” they can assume anyone buying it already knows they can add ground beef. I think they just added hotdogs to the label to give people ideas about other proteins they can use.
It’s been decades since I’ve eaten Hamburger Helper, but I recall liking it more with hotdogs.
I mean the CS skin market tanked today so I still think I’m on to something.
It’s wild that trading skins for a video game had a market cap of 3 billion. It’s ridiculous that speculative trading has infected videogames.
Dont use hamburger helper, learn to make goulash. Its a pretty good recipe for beginners
I ate a lot of hamber helper growing up. Often with weird meat we would get from food pantries. Like bison. Emu. And my dad would hunt deer some times or a relative would so we would eat it with ground venison. Which apparently is considered gourmet meat but I really do not like it. It always tastes like blood to me.
Anyway, when I was lucky enough to get it with ground beef, I recall actually loving it.
As an adult I haven’t really eaten it so I went and bought a box a while back.
I think the cheeseburger kind.
Jesus. It’s so gross and bland. Like salted cardboard. It also only had like 3/4 of a cup of dried noodles in it.
I remember a box of it feeding all 3 of us kids easily. With leftovers. There is very little yield after it cooks now. Shrink-flation.
Now I will say the box casseroles that Aldi sells are decent.
I like the orzo cheese broccoli one and the hamber one , which I cook with peppers. It has a strong cilantro flavor.
But the Hamber Helper brand ones are just so gross. I don’t know if the flavor has changed or maybe they were always that bad.
I swear so much food I thought was good as a kid literally just tastes like salted cardboard. Tostitos “pizzas”. Pizza rolls, McDonald’s food.
I’m pretty sure they have stopped putting seasoning on a lot of food to cut costs.
Removed by mod
What is the word for laughing and crying at the same time?
Pseudobulbar affect which could be caused by a psychotic break since they’re driving us fucking crazy.
Also related to Emotional lability. Sometimes this can be a response to high stress of prolonged stress.
Bold of you to assume you’ll still be about to afford hot dogs.
Also, in these cases, get a chicken who can lay eggs (and be prepared to guard that thing, but you should also have eggs to share), or be ready to grow some beans.
I used to watch this youtube channel, Depression Cooking, with this old lady who lived through it showing recipes she made during the depression. It was uploaded by her grandchildren. (This was about a decade ago, before she died). Hot dogs do feature into her recipes a lot, as they were made of less choice parts and less choice meats or parts could be mixed in to stretch it. Sausage in general is like that.
It is of course possible that sausages could be too expensive, but you see that more in a war/famine type situation, as the government procures food stores for fighers and trade routes collapse. So like, the Max Miller episodes on food of the Soviet home front.
Im sorry I find historical food so interesting.
Great Depression? Shit I was serving that shit with hot dogs in the 90s.
American food makes British food look yummy.
