Food is such a powerful memory magnet.
Much of the food around our house, until I was ten-years-old, was dictated by my grandfather. He was a meat and potatoes kind of guy so we had a lot of meat and potatoes. Roast beef every Sunday with mashed potatoes. Fried catfish that absolutely melted in my mouth. Duck he had shot himself (and we would pick the BBs out while we ate). Shepherd’s pie which I remember only because it usually meant I would go to bed hungry. (I am not a person who likes their food all mixed up and I would usually only eat the crust.) About once a month my grandmother would make corned beef and then I would beg for a bowl of cereal or something else to eat. I have never acquired the taste for it. Creamed tuna on toast was a fallback when nothing was available or she didn’t feel like cooking.
My grandmother made grilled cheese sandwiches in same grille she used for making waffles – you could flip the irons over and use the flat side. It squished the sandwiches really flat and all the cheese was melted. It was a long time before I could eat a grilled cheese sandwich that wasn’t smooshed flat like a pancake. Cheese was Velveeta. I loved fried bologna and grilled Spam. In my lunch box I took bologna sandwiches (mustard only) with the crusts cut off and Ding Dongs or Ho Hos or Hostess cupcakes.
There was a lot of Bisquick used for waffles and pancakes and biscuits. We had turkey for Christmas and ham for Easter. Always. It wasn’t often but sometimes I got Kool Aid or Hi C or Tang. Carnation made this chocolate breakfast bar that I remember liking a lot.
My grandmother had a yellow cake she made from scratch and timed it so that it came out of the oven just when dinner was done. She’d make a single layer and then serve it with giant globs of butter. I loved Bosco syrup on my ice cream and loved to whip the ice cream until it was a soup I could drink with a straw.
My all-time favorite sandwich was (okay, still is) creamy peanut butter on soft white bread with slices of sweet pickles.
What about you? What foods stand out in your memories from childhood? I know I’ll remember more once someone else chimes in.
I also loved spam and bologna, and remember lots of Bisquick for pancakes and waffles. Never had Velveeta, though.
In Hawai’i food is an institution, and I grew up with all kinds of wonderful ethnic dishes. I loved musubi (rice balls), saimin (ramen), Chinese rice cakes/dim sum, and my aunt’s apple pie.
I also remember loving frosty malts, chocolate babies, and jujy fruit at the theatre. I had many happy moments at Dairy Queen — for 50 cents I got a hamburger, french fries and coke. Loved their dilly bars and ice milk sandwiches, too.
I must try some p butter with pickles!
Frosty Malts. I remember those. Yum!
I remember thumb print cookies to use up all the globs in the bottom of the jam jars. There are lots more memories of food of course but right now I have to know how the heck does one cream a tuna?
Sand
LOL. As I recall it was a basic white sauce with some butter and some flour and then she dumped in the canned tuna.
Then we’d make toast and she’d spoon that over the toast.
I remember liking it as child. I also remember making it as a new young wife and making my then husband sick as a dog. Oops.
Okay, this’ll tell you how boring I was as a kid. My mom was a pretty good cook, although, yes, a lot of meat for my dad. By the time I remember food, she was working school hours and still cooking a full dinner each night–which blows me away, since I can’t manage that while I’m home!
Anyway, my favorite, favorite food when I was young (and I’d still eat it in mounds today, if I could handle the calories) was Uncle Bens’ Rice with magarine. (My dad’s cholesterol was always high…hmm, all that meat?), so we did margarine, not butter, but it was what I knew, and I loved it.
We’d all put our rice helpings on the plate with everything else, and eat, then maybe take second. Then, when it looked like everyone else was done, I’d ask politely if anyone else wanted more rice, and when the answer was no, I’d pull the pot over to my place and finish it all off.
Other special treats were fried matzo (in chicken fat) and bagels and cream cheese. For years, we couldn’t get any of those in our town, so when my great-aunt and great-uncle would come up from LA, they’d bring those foods up. Again, we’d all have our bagels with cream cheese on top (the basic Philly solid block in the foil wrapper), then we’d pretty much sit around and just slice slabs of cream cheese off the main block and eat it plain.
Oh…and my father is the inventor of the Peanut Butter & Jelly omelet, which I perfected during 9 months of pregnancy and which my son now eats, as well. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, people!
Love the rice story! You’re not boring, you were just dedicated. 🙂
A&W root beer served in a big frosty mug, along with a barbecue beef sandwich. It was the only place in town back then that served it just the way I liked it.
Pies. My mother didn’t like to bake, so whenever we went to my grandmother’s house, I looked forward to her pies. She made a combo banana cream with a layer of sour cherries on the bottom that was scrumptious. But to this day, I can’t bear lemon meringue. Just the meringue part. She sucked at it. Yak.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Every Saturday morning, my best friend would park in front of the TV and watch old Tarzan movies while eating them. Johnny Weismuller rocked!
Oh yes, A&W root beer. My grandfather did love them. They would come out to the car and put the little tray over the window. I still have my little bitty mug from them. Holds about one swallow. I think they would fill it for the kids for free.
Mmm, bologna and mustard. My best friend’s mother used to give her bologna and mustard every day, and I traded my tuna salad for it. Now, my daughter trades her PB&J for Lunchables. I never understood why Laura wanted my soggy tuna, and I don’t understand why anyone wants my daughter’s peanut butter with strawberry jelly.
Never developed a taste for corned beef either — and it is the one and only thing (that isn’t canned or frozen) my mother-in-law can make!
Why is it that foods we traded always tasted better to us?
Forbidden fruit, I guess. I wasn’t allowed to have bologna because it was unhealthy. My daughter isn’t actually allowed to have Lunchables except if I’m travelling.
My Grandmother…
…(on my Dad’s side) was a lousy cook. And the more she’d drink….
My Grandmother on my Mom’s side was a good cook for those who liked what she cooked. I didn’t. So, Mom always sent me with liverwaurst (sp) or salami sandwiches.
Though my Grandmother Slattery couldn’t cook she’d always have the best things to eat at her house. For anything we saw on TV, she’d order the next day. Fresca, Bugles, Pop Tarts… some of the “new” stuff we’d see on TV–that my Mom would never buy–but Grandma always did.
I can remember Saturday morning junk-food fests. We’d eat Pop Tarts–and every new flavor of the week–til we’d burst! (And these Pop Tarts were the REAL thing!–they were REALLY STUFFED with Smuckers Brand jellies and jams).
Another bizarre “heart-stopping” treat we use to have at Grandma’s, were Bacon Grinders. Somewhere in a Good Housekeeping or some other mag of the day, some mom wrote in about a treat she gave to her kids of the ’60’s. REAL simple! Cook up some bacon. Stick it in a hot dog roll. Add lettuce. Tomato. and Mayo. If you’d like. But if your grandchildren were anything like us. Bacon on bread was fine. And often two or three of us would go through a pound or more.
How I’m even alive, I don’t really know.
Re: My Grandmother…
How I’m even alive, I don’t really know.
Oh boy. I hear you there! Real Pop Tarts! Yes. I remember trying some a few years ago and I was shocked at how bad they tasted.
Fresca. Bugles. Oh yeah!
The bacon grinders sound good to me. Nothing wrong with bacon.
POP TARTS
No, kids born after 1969 or 1976 or whenever they got cheesy with Pop Tarts, lost out BIG time!
I tasted one about five years ago and it was like a doughy, dry cookie with one dollop of filling!
Shame!
And BUGLES rocked!!! Their little horn allowed you to scoop an “ice cream cone” of dip! MMMMMMmmmmmm!
🙂
Wow!
I love reading about everyone’s favorite foods!
Sometimes the things we remember as delicious, wouldn’t appeal to others, but you have to remember that for that person, they’re being transported back to a time and place, and a taste that takes them there immediately!
Although I probably wouldn’t enjoy it now, I remember onion sandwiches… sliced scallions on soft bread slathered with horseradish mustard, then sprinkled with salt and pepper. Sounds awful, I know, and while it left my stomach feeling like I’d drilled a huge hole into it, it was satisfying.
And the precursor to baked potato with sour cream… hot mashed potatoes with cold buttermilk poured over it. (And on a good day, bacon bits mixed in.)
Okay, now I’m hungry.
Re: Wow!
It is interesting, isn’t it, the way food can characterize a time or a place? My stomach would rebell at the scallions and horseradish combo but it does sound good. I love the spicy stuff but we never had much spicy food when I was young.
I just have to comment on your food memories…I LOVE Shepherd’s Pie and corned beef. 🙂
My grandma had a special iron for grilled cheese. It was old and cast iron, and you’d just use it over a burner. It was forever before I could eat a grilled cheese that wasn’t round. 🙂
I probably have slightly different food memories. Take a whiff of a first-generation Chinese childhood: Braised onion duck, which was lots and lots of onions at the bottom of a stone pot and a duck on the top, all cooked in a sweet soy sauce until all the duck fat is rendered and the meat falls off the bone. Mmmm…
Saturdays were always “porridge and noodle” lunches: a simple rice porridge with meat and green onions and then stir-fried noodles and usually my mother daring my brother and I to add as much hot sauce to the noodles as we could take without crying.
Quotation of Plato
He was a wise man who invented beer.
Quotation of Plato
thanks for the shout out!
Hi Susan,
well, I’m technically supposed to be completely off-line and unplugged, but I HAVE to say thank you for sharing about my blog. Empowering GLBTQ Teens – in fact, ALL teens, is really my passion, and I really appreciate your enthusiastic support!
Namaste and Happy Holidays,
and now I’m going to try to go truly off-line…
Lee
I think the animals have the right idea with the living in the now. I’m trying to adopt that. And yes on the rewards!
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