I think I can speak for everyone when I say French fries are probably Americans' favorite guilty pleasure. So much so that Americans dared to rename them Freedom fries when France objected to the war.
Interestingly there is nothing French about them. As history goes,
potatoes were first brought to Spain via the New World expeditions.
Fried potatoes became popular during the 17th century in the Spanish
Netherlands, present day Belgium.
When there were no fish to fry, the
poorer citizens fried potatoes. Sometime during World War I, an
American or British soldier eating fried potatoes erroneously named
them French fries since French was the official language of Belgium.
Another theory suggests that the culinary term for slicing into thin
strips, "to French," was applied to fried potatoes and thus the name.
However
the story goes, fried potatoes or pommes frites have achieved worldwide
acclaim. American fast food chains accepted them as their own and their
popularity soared. Once you bite into a golden crisp fry with a pure
white fluffy interior, you just can't stop at one.
My girlfriend took one bite of these and said, “this tastes like Mac ‘n Cheese”. Voila, the Mac ‘n Cheese cracker was born.
Recently I was at a dinner hosted by 
Traditionally this fish would be cooked in parchment paper, and opened at the table (See NY Times article: "
There was a time when gathering people around a fondue pot to cook their own food was very popular. It was the 1970's I think – about the same time I got married. My husband and I recieved three of these "communal" pots as wedding gifts. I think I remember using one or two of them one or two times soon after the wedding. And then they sat. For years.