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Oh, I'm with you on that one! I was 18 years old before I realized hamburger wasn't supposed to be crunchy! If I hadn't learned how to cook, we'd have all died or gotten cancer from eating all that burnt char. I think that's why we loved spaghetti so much. Mom couldn't really mess up noodles and Ragu! (The sauce softened the crunchy ground hamburger.)
Everything we had was from a box, can or bag. To this day, I still cook completely from scratch, including making my own bread and butter every week. (Ever had homemade garlic and basil butter? H.E.A.V.E.N!) I make very few exceptions, and those are usually desserts from Trader Joe's! (Sometimes ya just gotta let your taste buds know ya love 'em!) I've never owned a microwave in my life.
We had a roast (beef, lamb, chicken) every Sunday at 1:00. Always with gravy, home made rolls, lots of vegetables and mashed potatoes. Pie for dessert usually.
The rest of the week was meatloaf, shepherd's pie, mac and cheese, goulash, steak, roasted chicken, chicken a la king, hamburgers, hash, brown bread and beans, etc. In no set order.
Fried hamburger, peas, and boiled potatoes...far too often.
On Wednesdays, spaghetti. All over town, there were billboards that said, "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day!" The largest employer was Kodak, and everyone was paid on Thursdays, so I guess spaghetti was a good cheap meal for the day before pay day.
On Fridays, when we weren't supposed to eat meat, we had creamed tuna on toast, which was surprisingly tasty. And peas. I hated peas.
It wasn't until all of us grew up and moved out that she discovered Julia Child, and she then always made great meals.
Breakfast could be served for breakfast, lunch, or dinner in my house growing up. Scrambled eggs, sausage, gravy, and biscuits were the one things my mother could cook well. Anything else was a toss up if it would be edible or not.
Now, my grandmother was another story. Sunday's were always chicken and dressing or dumplins. Friday was hamburger night. Through the week it would be chops, cube steak, fried chicken always accompanied by mashed potatoes, and some sort of bean vegetable.
We lived on a farm and mostly ate food from that farm. Dad killed two hogs and a young calf every year. Mom canned green beans, corn, peaches, grape, apple and peach jelly, we had Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, made our own butter, lard, popping corn, etc. Pinto beans were a favorite for all of us because with that we got corn bread made from corn ground at the mill down the road. We always said our mother made the best corn bread in Wilkes County.
My favorite meat was stewed beef and Mom's wonderful soft biscuits. I just discovered that I like most meat stewed. Stewing makes it so tender and renders the fat so you don't eat so much fat. I really don't like fat.
We got eggs from our chickens. We had apple and walnut trees. Blackberries and huckleberries grew wild in our cow pasture. Trout came from our river that ran through the middle of our 100 acres. We had about 100 feet grape arbor beside our yard.
In the spring of the year we would raid the creek banks for wild lettuce and multiple greens. These were wilted using hot grease and milk made into what Mom called thin gravy. Thin gravy is made like cream gravy except there is no flour added. Yum! Yum!
We had early peas that I didn't eat, but my brother loved. We also had corn field peas in the fall. Cressy greens, turnip greens and mustard greens came from the fields too. Too many different foods to mention them all.
Saturdays usually would be a time for Mom to make chocolate cake, banana pudding, peach and blackberry pies and not as often but sometimes apple pie. We preferred our apples fresh.
About the only things we went to the grocery store for were coffee, flour, sugar, and flavorings for desserts such as lemon, etc. We sometimes went into the woods to get roots for different teas. They were so good.
Something that my mom created by herself were molassy biscuits. She just put molasses in with the biscuits she was making. They were so good. It was a little like gingerbread without the ginger and extra sugar. Mom was a health nut. She lived to a week before her 85th birthday.
My mother was a terrible cook. I remember a lot of frozen dinners and pot pies. Yuk. I'm envious of all your moms that actually cooked real food. You were lucky!!!
Goodness in reading some of these meals I am thinking I was a pretty lucky person! I would have loved to have enjoyed a tv dinner when I was younger, but I guess the grass always looks greener.......
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