I guess the Duggars buy name brand food now

[moreorlessnu]

Though, I'm a Lindt girl. :)

Meh. I find Lindt has a dry milk flavor/after taste to it.

[nuri]

Oddly enough, Aldi has some pretty great chocolate. Their milk chocolate toffee bars are great!

[oscar]

I don't know. I wasn't there. My step dad just handed to me, saying he bought it over there so I took him at his word. He might have been lying (or forgetful).

Kraft Foods owns Planters, which has recently started selling peanut butter in the US. They're marketing the product to adult consumers, rather than to moms who buy for their kids or to children directly. So there's peanut butter made by a Kraft company in the US, but it's not Kraft-brand peanut butter.

[lovemyaspiekids]

I'm also one who can't drink off brand soda, and I have to have the mac and cheese from Kraft. Other things I can get away with using the store brand.

I don't drink soda, but flavored seltzer water and it has to be brand soda. More variety of flavors too. I hear you on the Kraft mac & cheese. I split our shopping between the grocery store and a wholesale club. With club and product coupons, I can buy brand foods for about the price of generic, although it's not a requirement that it has to be name brand. I have no problem serving Magic Stars cereal instead of Lucky Charms if it's on sale in the grocery store. In fact, there are very few products where I specifically buy for a brand -- soy sauce, frozen vegetables, some cleaning products. The same goes for items at the drugstore. I buy a specific brand of makeup, hair color, and hair products for my insanely curly hair. But everything else is store brand.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

I remember the whole swiffer thing (was it swiffer or some other mop-y thingy?). Silly and awkward.

Especially since the house is supposed to have a built-in wet/dry vacuum system.

On the Laundry Soap thing--many, many people use those big Sam's Club size dispenser jugs to hold their homemade soap. Otherwise you've got a big covered bucket (like I have) full of glop and then the kids want to wash something and scream "WE'RE OUT OF LAUNDRY SOAP AGAIN!" so that Mom has to go show them the bucket of glop for the 9000th time. It works great just doesn't look nice. I've used it for about 6 years.

[JesusFightClub]

To be honest I eat and don't notice brands :oops: unless it's something that's boycotted. However Japanese chocolate and fizzy drinks, I couldn't put up with. Japanese soda tastes like they've injected 100 times more bubbles into it than should be there. It's drinking froth. Japanese chocolate is *bitter*. I'm not a huge chocolate fan anyway but when offered I could only eat the liqueur chocolates with rum in them because at least they were sweet.

Having said that I have never found any fried chicken to beat Lotteria and I don't even know where to start with the amazingness that is Japanese food in general. It has spoilt me for life on UK food. Just, not fizzy drinks, not chocolate and not alcohol.

[blisterine]

ok, skipping the gg and the sodas. back to the reese's cup. back in the days when i had both money and time, i used to makes tons of candy at christmas. the filling for a peanut butter cup is actually peanut butter and powdered sugar mixed together. so that accounts for the gritttiness. i didn't use name brand peanut butter to make them. by the time you account for the sugar and and the chocolate "patty" the subtleties of the peanut butter aren't noticed.

if only i had kept my piles of candy molds, i might have opened a chocolate shop and become a proverbs 31 woman.

[snapasaurus_rex]

OK, I'm delurking for this topic ... 8-) Hi everyone!

To those who have said they have a strong preference for Kraft Macaroni over off-brand -- I noticed years ago that the preparation instructions are different on the Kraft box than the off-brand ... significantly more butter. I tried using the Kraft recipe on the off-brand box contents and now can't tell the difference. Wondering if anyone else had ever noticed the same thing?

That said ... I am also a TOTAL peanut butter snob! I LOVE the grind-your-own stuff from Whole Foods -- just peanuts. Yumm.

Autumnchild -- you said you use homemade detergent for your HE washer? I recently acquired an HE washer and am not looking forward to buying special detergent. Do you have a recipe for homemade HE detergent?

[Shoobydoo]

Am I the only person here who was raised on Velveeta shells and cheese? I'll eat the powder cheese kind if someone gives it to me, but I really prefer the texture and taste of the Velveeta kind.

[Pond]

Totally, OT, but you live in Canada, right? Is the peanut butter there the same as it is in the U.S.? Awhile back I was reading an interview with some British actor and he mentioned how much he loved American peanut butter, because it was nothing like what they have in Britain, so you mentioning peanut butter just made me curious since I never knew peanut butter wasn't universally the same.

I haven't caught up with the Duggars in ages, but I'm pretty certain it's product placement. Apple did it at one point, didn't they? With those shiny new iPhones and iMacs... I wouldn't rule it out that the Duggars are not taking any chance they get to get more free stuff.

As for the peanut butter... Where I live we get both local brand peanut butter as well as imported ones (I'm a Jif girl myself, followed very closely by Kraft Peanut Butter ;) ) and I'll be the first to agree with this guy that no two jars of peanut butter taste the same.

Same goes for cat food I guess, since mine seems to notice the difference when we give her a can that's not her usual brand.

[clibbyjo]

I grew up on JIF and white bread. MY kids have only had "natural" peanut butter, which is just peanuts and salt. (no sugar, that is NOT natural :)) and wheat bread.(rarely we will get white,Italian or French bread from the bakery). I am pretty crunchy.

I hate American chocolate, I am a chocolate snob and it is waxy and cheap tasting once you eat it after not having it for a long time. I prefer French dark chocolate with sea slat,but will get anything with high chocolate content if its dark enough and covered in salt.

[The Be-All End-All]

To this day, I've continued a mac-and-cheese "trick" that my parents clued me into: make the mac-and-cheese according to the box, but add some Worcestershire sauce and mustard (to taste). Makes the "cheese" flavor more like real cheese. YMMV, of course, but I like it!

[Deleted03]

I grew up on JIF and white bread. MY kids have only had "natural" peanut butter, which is just peanuts and salt. (no sugar, that is NOT natural :)) and wheat bread.(rarely we will get white,Italian or French bread from the bakery). I am pretty crunchy.

I hate American chocolate, I am a chocolate snob and it is waxy and cheap tasting once you eat it after not having it for a long time. I prefer French dark chocolate with sea slat,but will get anything with high chocolate content if its dark enough and covered in salt.

This I miss from France, the large choice of chocolates in grocery stores... aaawww all those choices!

[LIzzieB]

Mac & cheese in a box seems to be ubiquitous in the USA, but not in Australia. We have Kraft Mac & Cheese but I don't know anyone beyond teenagers who don't know how to cook who buy it. Not being snarky, I just think we generally have less processed food here. When I was in the US earlier this year, my hosts were very amused by my astonishment at the huge variety of canned and packaged foods, foods that are usually prepared from scratch in Australia. "Dough in a can? In a CAN? Dough???" :lol:

I found a lot of the foods to be blander, but sweeter than I'm used to. The one type of food that I couldn't get enough of in Southern California was Mexican food. O.M.G!!! Could eat it every day. That was one thing that was way better flavoured than any "Mexican" food here. I was lucky enough to have tacos prepared by a Mexican friend of the family, with carnitas, queso fresco and homemade tortillas. Freaking awesome.

And Caramello Koalas? We sell them as a fundraiser for my music group. I have literally had hundreds of them boxed in my living room... I'm sort of sick of them now! :)

[LIzzieB]

I'm blanket trained! :dance:

[Patsy]

Brings a little thrill to your heart, don't it? :)

I agree with what you say on processed foods, but we do have something in tins that few will be as familiar with - pickled beetroot slices. Ohhhhh, yeah!

[sacrilicious]

When I temped at a major food corporation, often the bosses would bring back European chocolate when they had to go overseas. It was sold in the company store there, too. I miss temping there. :( And if you think American chocolate is bad, Lacta (sold in South America, I believe) is worse -- overly sweet and nasty, similar to that Palmer chocolate with which all those cheap holiday and novelty candies are made.

Ew. That stuff is so nasty. My favorite chocolate is Cadbury's milk chocolate (I live in the US). I'm pretty sure I've tried the British version that is sometimes carried in the grocery store and I haven't noticed a difference. I've had what was supposed to be good Swiss chocolate and I wasn't that impressed.

My mom has a recipe somewhere for a homemade Reese's-type dessert. You have to add a few things to the peanut butter to give it that grittier consistency, but it's really good, especially with the chocolate topping which is melted chocolate chips. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

I make a lot of food from scratch so I don't have a preference for generic versus brand name, especially for things like frozen veggies, breadcrumbs, flour, milk, etc. I remember about 5 years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter there was an issue with contaminated Peter Pan peanut butter as well as the Walmart brand because they were both made in the same factory, so in many cases it's the same stuff, just packaged differently.

[Soldevi]

Should peanut butter be salty or sugary? In Finland they sell only chocolate peanut butter and ugh, it is too sweet for me. Well, almost everything is too sweet for me :D I can't even eat Swedish desserts and we even partly share our food culture... What is sweet for us is almost like bread for others, lol. Zopf and even challah are like our local buns. Some food stores here have USA food sections and I usually just buy different kind of flavoured cokes and other sodas they don't sell here. Candies and pastries are really too sweet :) My husband visited in the US and complained how bread there is too white for him. Well, we mainly eat rye bread or sometimes but rarely whole wheat bread.

I think I buy some 75 % of store brands. Packets usually say who manufactures them so some of the products are exactly the same brand product only in store's own package and much cheaper. Our biggest dairy producter sells same products with two different brands. The other one goes to Finnish shops and the other to local Lidls. Lidl sells them a bit cheaper. I always buy brand chocolate because I am picky and I prefer Finnish chocolate, for example (sorry Swedes :D), Swedish Marabou is too sweet for me (made by Kraft). Coffee is another 'only brand' one if I buy it already roasted (we usually roast our coffee ourselves).

[clibbyjo]

Should peanut butter be salty or sugary? In Finland they sell only chocolate peanut butter and ugh, it is too sweet for me. Well, almost everything is too sweet for me :D I can't even eat Swedish desserts and we even partly share our food culture... What is sweet for us is almost like bread for others, lol. Zopf and even challah are like our local buns. Some food stores here have USA food sections and I usually just buy different kind of flavoured cokes and other sodas they don't sell here. Candies and pastries are really too sweet :) My husband visited in the US and complained how bread there is too white for him. Well, we mainly eat rye bread or sometimes but rarely whole wheat bread.

I think I buy some 75 % of store brands. Packets usually say who manufactures them so some of the products are exactly the same brand product only in store's own package and much cheaper. Our biggest dairy producter sells same products with two different brands. The other one goes to Finnish shops and the other to local Lidls. Lidl sells them a bit cheaper. I always buy brand chocolate because I am picky and I prefer Finnish chocolate, for example (sorry Swedes :D), Swedish Marabou is too sweet for me (made by Kraft). Coffee is another 'only brand' one if I buy it already roasted (we usually roast our coffee ourselves).

Well now I want a bar of Finnish chocolate! I doubt I will find that at the fancy chocolate store I get my French stuff from.Lots of Belgian and Swiss,but I don;t think I have seen Finnish. :)

[Pond]

Mac & cheese in a box seems to be ubiquitous in the USA, but not in Australia. We have Kraft Mac & Cheese but I don't know anyone beyond teenagers who don't know how to cook who buy it. Not being snarky, I just think we generally have less processed food here. When I was in the US earlier this year, my hosts were very amused by my astonishment at the huge variety of canned and packaged foods, foods that are usually prepared from scratch in Australia. "Dough in a can? In a CAN? Dough???" :lol:

I found a lot of the foods to be blander, but sweeter than I'm used to. The one type of food that I couldn't get enough of in Southern California was Mexican food. O.M.G!!! Could eat it every day. That was one thing that was way better flavoured than any "Mexican" food here. I was lucky enough to have tacos prepared by a Mexican friend of the family, with carnitas, queso fresco and homemade tortillas. Freaking awesome.

And Caramello Koalas? We sell them as a fundraiser for my music group. I have literally had hundreds of them boxed in my living room... I'm sort of sick of them now! :)

I did notice this when I lived in Australia. I'll also admit that I was one of the few who bought Kraft Mac & Cheese but in my defense, I was a student trying to make something quick and easy before running off to class :p Dinners were usually made from scratch.

As far as chocolate goes, I'll have to go with Fredo. And Dutch chocolate.

And snark on me if you wish, but my friend sent me a box of Twinkies a while back and I couldn't get enough of it. :shhh:

[demgirl]

It's been fun reading this thread! I am so friggin' food picky, it's not even funny. I cannot eat any kind of boxed macaroni and cheese that is dry, unless it's Kraft. I've tried making the generic stuff according to Kraft instructions and, to me, it still tastes foul. Like, I would rather eat beets or brussel sprouts, which I HATE, than eat off-brand dry box mac & cheese.

I also HATE natural peanut butter. I know, I know -- good for you, healthy, unprocessed -- but Yecch! I think it tastes oily and oddly flat. I can eat Skippy or JIF, and that's it. My whole family is like that though. My dad sometimes goes to Whole Foods and gets natural peanut butter, and my mom, sister and I won't touch it. It sits on the shelf for a week or two, and then quietly gets replaced with JIF.

I can't drink generic soda. My dad did a whole blind taste test once when I had a fit because he stopped buying Diet Coke. He didn't believe I could tell the difference. I got all of them right. We had to do it three different times, because he just couldn't believe it.

Another one -- American cheese. HAS to be Kraft. I can't even eat other brand names. Also, Heinz ketchup -- I can taste the difference and I've done it in taste tests (this is what my family used to do for entertainment on weekends -- see if my pickiness had any basis in fact), but it's also partly to do with my hometown.

[clibbyjo]

It's been fun reading this thread! I am so friggin' food picky, it's not even funny. I cannot eat any kind of boxed macaroni and cheese that is dry, unless it's Kraft. I've tried making the generic stuff according to Kraft instructions and, to me, it still tastes foul. Like, I would rather eat beets or brussel sprouts, which I HATE, than eat off-brand dry box mac & cheese.

I also HATE natural peanut butter. I know, I know -- good for you, healthy, unprocessed -- but Yecch! I think it tastes oily and oddly flat. I can eat Skippy or JIF, and that's it. My whole family is like that though. My dad sometimes goes to Whole Foods and gets natural peanut butter, and my mom, sister and I won't touch it. It sits on the shelf for a week or two, and then quietly gets replaced with JIF.

I can't drink generic soda. My dad did a whole blind taste test once when I had a fit because he stopped buying Diet Coke. He didn't believe I could tell the difference. I got all of them right. We had to do it three different times, because he just couldn't believe it.

Another one -- American cheese. HAS to be Kraft. I can't even eat other brand names. Also, Heinz ketchup -- I can taste the difference and I've done it in taste tests (this is what my family used to do for entertainment on weekends -- see if my pickiness had any basis in fact), but it's also partly to do with my hometown.

I used to only by Heinz, but now the add high fructose corn syrup so I will only buy the Organic Heinz or HUNTS. I am a trader I know.

My kids only eat Kraft singles as well. They don't even pretend and call it "cheese", they just say "We need Kraft Singles". I tried the cheap ones at Aldi's and they ended up being dog treats.

I love VIVA paper towels.(select a size). They are so soft and good, way better than Bounty. I bought the cheap Aldi ones last week and everyone complained they are no good.

[Wolfie]

Brings a little thrill to your heart, don't it? :)

I agree with what you say on processed foods, but we do have something in tins that few will be as familiar with - pickled beetroot slices. Ohhhhh, yeah!

We get those here, but I like to make my own. (what we call canning, you call bottling)

Actually today's project is canned chicken broth from chickens I raised myself.

[ChunkyBarbie]

Yeah no coffee or green/black teas because they are considered "hot drinks." And no alcohol whatsoever. And the caffeine thing isn't a written rule, it is debated if it really a rule. And from my personal experience is a way of one-upping other members. The mormons I knew who wouldn't drink it, did so in a holier-than-thou attitude.

My family is Mormon. No caffeine as it is a stimulant, therefore a drug. As for hot drinks, old school Mormons drank Postum. Which is a wheat- based hot beverage. My grandparents drank it until it was discontinued. Many LDS bought it by the case load on e-bay to stock up. It is nasty in my opinion, but I drink coffee. Now my grandparents drinks hot water with lemon. My LDS family doesn't drink, but they don't care if others do drink. However, I know just the type of LDS people you are referring to, they're the ones who check out your outfit to try to determine if you are wearing garments.

[luv2cheer717]

I'm also de-lurking for this topic.

We use a lot of generic items in our house and some of the stuff is preferred over the name brand. DH loves Walmart brand honey mustard salad dressing and I'm a sucker for Giant (our local grocery store) brand cottage cheese. We wont go generic on candy, toilet paper, general hygiene products, spaghettios (we enjoy them :oops: ) and sodas. I'm sure there are other things but I really cant think of them right now.

We definitely use Walmart brand peanut butter and love it! I know its all a matter of personal preference and since both of us were raised on whatever peanut butter was the cheapest, we have no brand loyalty.