The meals of my childhood:

Oh, Gosh, Marianne - fried baloney sandwiches with american cheese were

another household staple! And all our vegetables were cooked to mush.

 
We didn't even have fresh vegetables cooked to a mush - we had canned, and they were premushy . Ugh!

 
You guys are too funny. I always put peas in my mashed potatoes.

I mean, I had to get as much nutrition as possible in one sitting. My Mom was a reed and she thought that we all wanted to eat like birds.

 
Ooh, yah, the jousters! Nope I'm just plain ol' Call of the Wild. You

can't make too much out of a name like Colleen. My cousin married a guy from Ireland and he told my that no one with any status names their kid
"Colleen", just the lower class. So I told him, proudly, that I was aptly named. I don't mind being lower class as long as I have good taste and manners.

 
You were well-fed in my book. And your Dad must have liked beef!

My grandfather was a butcher for the A&P. We always had really good beef on Sundays. And our table was pretty much the same: grace, eat what's in front of you whether it makes you gag or not, and don't speak. Mom and Dad sat across from each other and they talked about things, but we had to be quiet and eat. All of my concentration would be on any leftover roast beef. I'd wait, breath held, watch and listen until I either knew I could get it or, more often than not, Dad would take the last piece.

 
remember mom had a hand written list of meals for each day of the week taped inside the cupboard

door. thankfully the liver/onions didn't stay in rotation after a young me spit it up on the floor! what a brat. my favorite special salad was an avocado half filled with alphalpha sprouts and thousand island dressing. it seemed to exotic! i'll cherish her cookbooks and notes whenever they get passed on to me.

 
I'd completely forgotten about boxed pizza mix! Chef Boy-ar-dee?

My mom used to make that on Fridays (meatless). This was before I had ever tasted a real pizza, so I liked it.

My mom was a good cook, but her weekday meals were pretty basic:

Rump Roast (top round, poked with a fork, sprinkled with Lipton's Onion Soup mix and drizzled with cheap red wine. Overcooked, but the gravy was great! My mom NEVER de-greased a pan before making gravy. Why would she? Lots of Wondra flour to absorb the grease, lots of water and bouillon cubes, and WOW, eonogh gravy for the meat, the mashed potatoes, and the leftover "Beef and Gravy on Toast" the next night, which was devine.)

Baked Chicken (Chicken pieces in a baking dish, seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika, dotted with butter, and baked to death. No wonder I love dark meat; Mom's chicken breast were rubber. I still do chicken like this but I add a head of unpeeled garlic cloves and I baste the poor chicken pieces for moistness, and I stop cooking before rigor mortis sets in.)

Baked Pork Chops

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Canned Ham, baked with mustard and brown sugar, and also canned pineapple slices with cinammon baked separately.

Swiss Steak with noodles

Fried Filet of Sole with tartar sauce (Best Foods mayo and pickle relish.)

(All of the above served with S&W canned green beans and/or frozen peas or corn.)

Spaghetti and Meatballs--the best. (None of us can duplicate Mom's specialty. Odd, since she was Chicago Irish, but she married an Italian and was deterimined to learn.)

Thanks for the memories, Clofthwld!

 
I consider you people lucky. I mean, you got to eat both fat AND sugar? *LOL* >>>

My dad is a health "fanatic" and my mom is a terrible cook!

When you mix these two together you get:

Skim milk for breakfast and lunch - otherwise: Tap water!

Bread baked with NO fat and NO sugar, just a pinch of salt to add taste (Yeah, right!)

I cannot EVER remember being served anything fried. I have a vague memory of getting home made meat balls a couple of times a year because you'd have to brown them in fat and as every health fanatic will tell you, fat will kill you!

All vegetables were eaten raw or boiled beyond recognition (as I said, my mom is no cook.)

And fish - now here's a treat: Try steamed fish, with over boiled vegetables and no sauce (sauce contains fat and fat will kill you, remember?) smileys/smile.gif

My dad used to go moose hunting, and my mom would keep the steak in the oven until there were no juices left in it. Now you all know that a moose steak don't contain much fat, and since adding fat is unhealthy (fat will kill yooooou!) it was dry as a paper napkin by the time it arrived on our dinner table.

We never had mayo as it was too fatty, and ketchup contains sugar!
But we did get "sweets" on Saturdays tho: Mixed nuts (Unsalted of course as too much salt is unhealthy and will kill you!), raisins and a few pieces of dark chocolate.
I have no idea why they gave us dark chocolate on Saturdays.

No wonder I was thin as a stick when I grew up! *LOL*

 
We also had boxed pizza - Appian Way? I found some "recipes" from my mom over the weekend -

Things I loved to eat while still living at home.

To put this in perspective, these other dishes appealed to me because they served as a relief from eating the "mock lasagne" made from egg noodles, crumbled hamburger, with a sauce of cream of tomato and cream of mushroom soup. If things were really flush, we got to sprinkle the green canned cheese on top!

Mom's Corn Chowder:

2 (or 3) Cans of cream of potato soup, reconstituted
1 can corn, drained
crumbled meat (optional, bacon was best, but a rarity)

Heat and serve. You can also garnish this with cheddar cheese, if you have some.

Mom's spaghetti:

1 can tomato sauce
1 envelope Shilling Spaghetti sauce mix
1 lb cooked ground beef, crumbled
1 lb cooked spaghetti

The sauce is best when prepared in advance. Pour half the cooked noodles in a large container, stir in half the sauce, Repeat.

Actually, my mom is a pretty good cook, but we had a very limited budget, and she did rely a lot on convenience items.

She makes a killer tuna salad. smileys/smile.gif

 
My grandmother was a wonderful cook and eventually >>>

my mom started studying on top of having a full time job. With four kids she needed help in the house and she got a danish cook to help her. She and my grandmother taught me that food indeed could taste wonderful and that the palate isn't there just "because" smileys/smile.gif

 
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