Monday, August 6, 2007

Call it what you want, but ...

I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a simple guy. I like very basic things, especially in the food department.

Meat. That is my specialty. I'm one step shy of being a carnivore. Beef, pork, chicken, seafood, a wide variety of wild game. All of it is fine , long as you cook it. Raw fish is bait not food and meat that is still bleeding is merely wounded, not ready to serve.




Anyway you name a meat and there is a good chance I've eating it, maybe even made jerky from it, but don't ruin good meat by smothering in some fancy damn sauce or piling on a bunch of green crap and calling it herbs. Fry, bake, grill it, dehydrate it, but don't get any fancier with it that sticking between two pieces of bread. Ahhh ... Meat Sandwich.

Think of that stuff up above as your prologue, since I'm just now getting to the MEAT of this particular post.

What's wrong with calling a spud a spud? A burger a burger? A sandwich a sandwich?

Gotta be something cause all of a sudden every commercial, fast food chain, and frozen dinner company around is offering something called a panini. Looks like a hot sandwich with some fancy grill marks to me.






Now I understand why people stopped calling Tuna, dogfish. I mean most people are rather fond of man's best friend, unless you happen to be in Michael Vick's close circle of friends, and I can understand how the name dogfish would deter sales. Same thing with Mahi Mahi. Sure they are really dolphin fish but when you say dolphin most people think porpoise and start thinking of The Lassie of the sea, Flipper. Same exact show with a different animal star but that is another post for another day.


But why panini? I happen to like the word sandwich, and between you and me the word panini sounds like a slang term for the lower portion of a woman's anatomy. Sure go ahead, and laugh but it sounds better than Vajayjay which seems to be the trendy word of late. I say we all boycott the word panini and just call the damn things what they are, hot sandwiches.

I'm going to stop here because the rest of thoughts and metaphors would only lead me down a twisted and bumpy road. Which would probably get me in trouble, but I'm curious what other words or product names do you think are misnomers. What word makes you giggle like a room full of nine year old boys at every mention of the word Uranus?

17 comments:

Stephen Parrish said...

I'm an old fucker. I never got used to the word "pasta." I still say "spaghetti." If someone served me a "panini" I'd send it back and make them bring me a sandwich.

Monnik said...

I agree. A panini is just a hot grilled sandwich.

I got a call from a company who is interested in recruiting me today. When I returned their call, I got a message saying, "Hi, this is Diane from Company X's talent and acquisition department." How's that for a semantic upgrade? What happened to Human Resources?!

Duck said...

Indeed, a panini is a sandwich. A quick trip to Wikipedia informed me that panino is italian for "small bread roll", and the sandwiches made on these rolls are also called a panino. Apparently, panini is technically plural for panino, but we americanized it and just call one of them a "panini". Whatever. It's a sandwich. That's marketing for you.

jjdebenedictis said...

The proper name for Canola is rapeseed. Would you want to fry your food in rapeseed oil?

Brooke said...

I am a sucker for Boudreaux's Buttpaste.

Anonymous said...

ohhh Travis Travis Travis. You say toaster oven I say panini grill on sale for 60 bucks. This comment is going just as far as the horses do that run inside your head.

Dawn said...

You sound like a man after my husband's heart. He is a big meat eater. Me, I'd settle for a panini!

JM said...

Thank You!! I've been saying for years that meat should not be bleeding.

alex keto said...

Hey, I don't want to be a spoil sport, but you've got two photos. One looks like a pile of lobster bait from crab trap and the other is a panini. If those are my choices, I'll go for the panini.

Anonymous said...

Travis... I will never hear "panini" the same way again... and I am pretty sure I can't ever order one now without cracking up with giggles. psh :P

Tena Russ said...

Stephen says: "I'm an old fucker. I never got used to the word "pasta." I still say "spaghetti."

Tena agrees with the above (even the old fucker part), only she calls "pasta" "noodles."

"Canola" is another way of saying, "Don't talk dirty around the children."

I like my steak cooked "Pittsburgh" -- barely warm in the center.

And leave dogs out of this conversation.

Aaron said...

You are quite correct, Travis. We all know sex sells. Therefore, by calling these new-fangled hot sandwiches paninis, they're bound to sell more because they make guys think of 'ginas.

Makes perfectly good sense to me...

lattégirl said...

Are you saying that you wouldn't even marinate meat because that would somehow make the meat experience not as authentic?

Travis Erwin said...

Stephen - spaghetti is the only past I will eat.

Monnik - That is hilarious. This is probably the same company that came up with sanitation engineer.

Duck - You are my new research assistant.

JJ- Yeah, rapeseed oil conjures all kinds of negativity. I did not know that was the correct name for canola.

Brooke - What exactly is Boudreaux's butt paste?

Jenn- Do you have to let out all my secrets?

Dawn - Follow you hubby's lead. He is a wise man.

Angel Jr - Kill it, don't just wound it.

Alex - You disappoint me. I though you of all people could recognize a meat sandwich when you saw it.

Christen - Maybe they will serve paninis at FIW next year and we can giggle together.

Tena - You never struck me as a medium rare kinda gal.

Aaron - I once saw a guy wearing a shirt that said I'm a vagitarian. Maybe he really likes paninis.

lattegirl - marinades are okay I'm mostly referring to souces and junk that people put on after cooking.

Cicily Janus said...

Instead of being called a nurse at my job they call us Physician Substitutes, which is all a nurse really is, right? Substitutes for what the doctors don't want to do and for a hell of a lot less money.

Yours,

Me

alex keto said...

Sigh, I took the "are you Texan test," and, well, the answer was pretty emphatically no. Something about a dam on the Yangtze or something. But why they are talking about China, I don't know.
What can I say?

Mary Witzl said...

On one hand, I'm all for not making things sound better than they really are. I grit my teeth when I read menu descriptions of farm fresh eggs, fresh OJ, and home-cured sausages. Most of the time, the eggs are about ten days removed from their factory farm, the OJ is fresh out of a carton, and the home-cured sausages didn't get cured in anybody's home.

But panini? That sounds like fun. Just take away the poncey accent, likely higher-than-average price,
and 'panini' is sheer poetry.