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My mother died when I was young. There were seven children and I was the oldest girl at home - age 13 - so I did the cooking from then on. I'd never cooked before so we ate simple things like hamburgers and hot dogs until I discovered those "women's magazines" at the grocery store. After that, I fixed whatever Family Circle and Woman's Day said were good recipes. Lots of hamburger!
I did have a few recipes my mother had written down. One was for meatloaf. She'd noted "use about 50 cents worth of hamburger..." This was for a family! Prices were a little lower then.
I used to cook a lot at my childhood home but I cooked/baked what my mom instructed me to do (my dad was not big on experimentation). When I moved out on my own this was the first thing I made, which I found in a recipe book at the library.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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It was probably spaghetti with meatballs - that was my favorite meal back then, and still high on my list. The sauce was made mainly from crushed tomatoes back then - for some reason we didn't use pre-made sauce then. The meatballs were made from hamburger, an egg, and any herb I could find in the cabinet (later I would wrap it around a small chunk of cheese).
I probably made a salad too, which was simply lettuce, tomato, and onion tossed with white vinegar, cooking oil, and salt. We didn't know anything about olive oil or balsamic vinegar, that was what Italians used, and commercial dressing would have been considered a wanton extravagance.
The first meal I cooked was breakfast -- french toast. I was probably 5-6 then.
Dinner was a lot longer coming along. I was probably 12 or 13 by then and I think it was green beans and mac n' cheese -- mind you, not any box thing, wholly from scratch. I put too much flour in the bechamel; it was a very dry & crumbly mac 'n cheese. I'm much better now :-)
I used to make French fries from scratch after school for me and my little sister when I was about 9. We were latchkey kids and there was nobody else home. We could have burned the house down.
Used to make Rotten Apple Soup in my Grandma's back yard under her apple tree every summer with my cousins. From the time I was maybe 3-4 on up. It was no more edible than mudpies, but we made it anyway!
After fried bologna and grilled cheese? I am sure it was spaghetti with meat sauce, chicken curry or beef curry! Perhaps it was beef stew. Those were among my faves as a kid.
I remember it well and my Brother and I dang near burned the house down. I think I was 5 and my Brother was 6 or we were 6 & 7, somewhere in that age range.
Our Mother was asleep and we wanted peanut butter and toast and did not want to wake her so we decided to fix it ourselves.
We took out bread, butter and peanut butter, put butter on the bread, put peanut butter on the bread then put it all in the toaster so we could have the "toast" part.
It did not end well.
I used to cook a lot at my childhood home but I cooked/baked what my mom instructed me to do (my dad was not big on experimentation). When I moved out on my own this was the first thing I made, which I found in a recipe book at the library.
Mmmm, I might have to try that! That does sound good!
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