Your mom's go-to dinners (stepfather, relative, separate, married)

[in_newengland]

My mother was a good cook but she was a kid during the Depression and she stuck to a lot of the things that she had helped her mother cook back then.

We had meatloaf a lot, macaroni and cheese, shepherd's pie, sirloin steak with home made French fries. Later on there was a phase where you'd use canned soup in everything--chicken and rice casserole with cream of mushroom soup and Lipton dried onion mix sprinkled over it, tuna noodle casserole. Sunday was roast lamb or roast beef.

We always had canned peaches or pears for dessert. Sometimes rice pudding, baked custard, or tapioca pudding.

Lunches were the best--melted cheese over Saltines, pb&j, scrambled eggs, pancakes, that chipped beef thing.

And snacks. Chocolate chip cookies, brownies, blonde brownies, chocolate cake, something called fudge batter pudding (baked in the oven and covered with ice cream and chocolate sauce, cream puffs covered in warm home made chocolate sauce, etc. Always with a glass of milk. The after school treats were pretty GOOD! We also made fudge and sometimes at night after a snow storm, we were sent outside with a big bowl to gather clean snow. That's when we would feast upon Sugar on Snow. (Family was from Vermont so that was a specialty made with boiled maple syrup that would harden onto the snow.)

[athena53]

Mom was a good cook and over the years gradually expanded her repertoire- she stir-fried vegetables before anybody else I knew. when I saw the vivid colors I thought they were artificially-colored!

But, she had a lot of 1950s/1960s dishes and ideas. You HAD to have a cooked dinner every night even thought it was 90 degrees out and we had no A/C. One dish was hamburger pizza; she pressed ground beef into a glass pie plate, poured on tomato sauce, sprinkled on dried oregano and baked it. I hated pork chops because they were thin and she cooked them till they were tough and dry; didn't want us to get trichinosis! She served margarine and called it "butter". Ee didn't know any better.

She was one heck of a baker- even made doughnuts sometimes. There were always homemade cookies. I can't believe now that I felt deprived that my classmates had plastic-wrapped multicolored junk food from Hostess instead.

Now when I visit my siblings I love seeing bits and pieces of Mom's kitchen all over. I have her pale green, fish-shaped ceramic spoon rest from the 1950s. My sister has her tattered book of hand-written recipes, including Potato Chip Cookies. Lots of good memories.

[galaxyhi]

Originally Posted by Over the hill gang

I don't think the fruits and vegetables taste the same either. They say its all so genetically modified and are now bred for yield, production, disease resistance. The growers are not paid for flavor. So the breeders have given us this stuff that produces a lot of fruit and veggies but doesn’t have any flavor.

I agree with both statements on the subject.

There still is nothing like a home grown tomato, picked at perfection.

Too much breeding out the bad characteristics in favor of good ones so to speak had ruined our food stuffs.

Im sure everyone over 50 remember s that carrots had a pithy center that was about impossible to eat. Even when cooked, they were tough centers. Ugh.but unless i grow my own heirloom, the store bought are tasteless.

Now if i could keep the rabbits and the squirrels out of my veggy patch...even with a fence.

[Spuggy]

Can’t say I relate to your post at all , both my mum and my grandparents who went through the war rationing years knew how to cook or turn a few scraps into a tasty meal.
On sundays it was beef and Yorkshire puds OR pork and apple sauce OR lamb and mint sauce.for dessert the choices were fruit pies with hot custard, or a homemade cake, or pudding (sticky toffee pudding yum) , baked apples, or fruit cocktail with ice cream.

Weekdays: fish and chips, Cornish pasties, casseroles, baked potatoes and of course lots of different types of sandwiches, pies, shepherds pie, curries. Can’t really list all the choices.m

[in_newengland]

Originally Posted by Spuggy

Can’t say I relate to your post at all , both my mum and my grandparents who went through the war rationing years knew how to cook or turn a few scraps into a tasty meal.
On sundays it was beef and Yorkshire puds OR pork and apple sauce OR lamb and mint sauce.for dessert the choices were fruit pies with hot custard, or a homemade cake, or pudding (sticky toffee pudding yum) , baked apples, or fruit cocktail with ice cream.

Weekdays: fish and chips, Cornish pasties, casseroles, baked potatoes and of course lots of different types of sandwiches, pies, shepherds pie, curries. Can’t really list all the choices.m

I want your foods. My dad's side (the English side) ate that way. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Fish and chips. And I think I could live on Cornish pasties, but I'd be really fat!

But even my American mother always had a roast on Sunday--lamb with mint sauce, roast beef with gravy. People don't seem to eat those foods here anymore, I don't think. Can't even afford lamb anymore.

[marino760]

My mom born and raised in Italy was/is an awesome cook. She's still around but doesn't cook like she used to now that she's in her late 80s. Among other things, she'd always make her own pasta by hand, rolling it out with a large dowel on a large wooden table till it was paper thin and would make sauce without any canned tomatoes just fresh ingredients. Sundays she'd always make something like homemade gnocchi, lasagna, tagliatelle, ravioli.
Somehow, even the simplest things she made were really good, roast chicken, pork chops, you name it. She never used a recipe or measured anything. I don't think she ever owned a measuring cup. It was all by common sense and memory from what she learned from her mother.

[Deelighted]

Both my parents were good cooks. In fact, when they first got married, Dad made the pies because he said her crust came out like shoe leather.

While Mom loved her Betty Crocker cookbook, she had several other ones. She clipped recipes from the Sunday paper and magazines. She also exchanged recipes with friends and relatives. Most of these were taped into her notebook, but some were scattered throughout the cookbooks.

Not sure why, but Sunday dinner was a big deal. There was some kind of roast: beef, pork, or a whole chicken along with potatoes, vegetable, salad and always a dessert too. We ate pot roast about once a month. There was always some kind of dessert in the house: cookies, brownies, pies, cakes.

Mom had so many different ways to cook ground beef. Besides baking meatloaf, she made it in the pressure cooker with carrots and potatoes. That cooker scared me when it started whistling! I was always afraid it would blow up one day.

Dad didn't like macaroni and cheese for a main dish, so Mom would only fix it when he wasn't home. During the week, we ate a lot of casseroles. I didn't like fried pork chops - they were dry and tasteless. I loved with she stuffed and baked the chops.

The only thing she made that I hated, besides liver & onions, was fish on Fridays. She would buy packages of frozen haddock or cod and bake it in the oven covered with milk. It stunk and tasted awful. I was glad when she fixed fish sticks

[Spuggy]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

I want your foods. My dad's side (the English side) ate that way. Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Fish and chips. And I think I could live on Cornish pasties, but I'd be really fat!

But even my American mother always had a roast on Sunday--lamb with mint sauce, roast beef with gravy. People don't seem to eat those foods here anymore, I don't think. Can't even afford lamb anymore.

I still do the occcasional Sunday dinners and the occasional high teas, and even though my son was born and raised in the USA he knows how to do a good Yorkshire pudding . Cornish pasties are a rare treat since yes I’d look like a hefalump if I kept eating those.

[yellowsnow]

Saturday lunch was always macaroni and cheese! Baked in the oven, not out of a box. Sunday was always hockey puck overdone pot roast. My father insisted that all meat be well done!

[jrkliny]

Lots of people are bad cooks and it is pointless to try to blame the depression, or war rationing, or any other cause except extreme poverty. Even with some or all of those excuses, good cooks can make the best of bad circumstances.