Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: You made me a Santa burger … He has a hat and everything.
LUKE: Yeah, I just cut a piece of Wonder Bread, you know, poured a little ketchup, piped on a little cream cheese.
Wonder Bread is a brand of bread first produced in the US in 1921. It was one of the first brands to sell bread pre-sliced, and their classic item is a white sandwich loaf. It was owned by Hostess in 2000.
LORELAI: Don’t you have any kind of holiday special? Something festive?
LUKE: I just got some Grey Poupon. That’s French.
Grey Poupon is a brand of mustard originating in Dijon, France, and first produced in 1866. The American rights to it were bought in 1946, and it was eventually acquired by Kraft Foods in 1999. The mustard became popular in the US in the late 1970s and ’80s.
Despite Emily’s prickly demeanour, you can see that she just loves this opportunity to nurse Lorelai and mother her – the months that Lorelai was healing from a broken leg and never even told her obviously bothered her a lot. She makes Lorelai tea and heats up her burrito for her, even making the mashed banana on toast that Lorelai apparently liked when she was little, even though they both decide that it actually tastes horrible.
And despite Lorelai’s grouchiness, there is a part of her that enjoys being mothered by Emily too, as her “Thank you, Mommy” comment shows. Mind you, she’s pretty out of it on prescription medication by that stage.
EMILY: I’ll go start some tea. Please tell me you have something besides Lipton.
A popular brand of tea first introduced in the UK in 1890, and now owned by Unilever. It is aimed at the mass market and obviously doesn’t meet Emily’s high standards.
Sookie brings the Gilmore girls some tacos and burritos for dinner, which are both popular traditional Mexican dishes. Unusually for Sookie, she seems to have bought them (maybe from Al’s Pancake World or the anonymous take-out window place?) rather than making something herself.
A taco is a corn or wheat tortilla (flatbread) folded or rolled around the filling; in the US, they are often made commercially as a hard corn shell. A burrito is a wheat tortilla which is wrapped around the filling into a cylinder shape. Sookie got extra hot sauce, so the Gilmores must like their food spicy – as the fiesta burger demonstrated.
RORY: I’m gonna go get another Coke.
Coca-Cola, a fizzy soft drink made by the Coca-Cola company since 1886. The name comes from two original ingredients: kola nuts (for caffeine), and coca leaves (for cocaine). The current formula is a trade secret, but the coca leaves now have most of the cocaine removed from them, and there wasn’t really much to start with. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of caffeine.
Coke was the go-to soda on Gilmore Girls, and apparently Alex Bledel’s coffee cup had Coke in it, since she doesn’t drink coffee. However any time I saw them drink coffee the cups looked empty, so I’m not sure how much actual liquid ever got drunk.
RORY: Frozen pizza is a staple at our house. Mom’s become a major doctoring genius. She’ll put anything on it. One time Sookie came and brought us some foie gras, and Mom stuck it on a pizza.
EMILY: How was it?
RORY: Pretty good once we took the foie gras off.
Foie gras is a luxury food originating in France. It is made from the liver of a duck or goose which has been force-fed corn through a tube, giving it a rich texture and more delicate flavour. Due to the animal cruelty involved, many countries have banned the production or importation of foie gras, but it is still available in most of the US.
Lorelai gets fiesta burgers for she and Max to eat at the movies – the bookstore is clearly more relaxed about the audience bringing their own food compared to a standard movie theatre. The burgers are bought from a takeaway place with a pickup window; we later learn this establishment is named JoJo’s.
A fiesta burger is a hamburger which includes chilli peppers amongst the ingredients. Fiesta is Spanish for “festival, party”.
Sookie gives Rory a bag of these cookies as a gift for Dean. Rocky road is a type of candy which has marshmallows and nuts melted into milk chocolate. It seems to originate in 19th century Australia, although the UK and US have their own versions of rocky road which slightly differ from the Australian one. Rocky road cookies are cookies with choc chips, marshmallows and nuts in them. Despite her sweet tooth, Rory doesn’t like them.
SOOKIE: Okay, how does this sound? Maple sugar snowflakes on all the pillows.
LORELAI: Oh, that’s sounds wonderful!
Sookie is making candy from maple sugar, and using a mould in the shape of a snowflake. You can buy this candy commercially as well as making it yourself.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 