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Cooked from scratch. My mom stayed home. Occasional treat of Whip and Chill, pudding or Windmill cookies. Mom loved to bake and cook. Only boxes were cereal and canned veggies, soup and fruit. And of course ice cream. But our frig was small so never had that much on hand.
We drank Hi-C-Hawaiian Punch or Wylers because it was cheaper then Kool Aid.
We came home for lunch. Usually a sandwich or-good Catholics-tomato rice soup if it was Friday.
I never liked breakfast and luckily mom never pushed it. I would occasionally have a slice of Dutch Kutchen bread or a slice of pie for breakfast.
Dad would take us to Walgreens on Saturday night. Pick out pints of ice cream. Each kids could also pick a nickel candy bar and my parents got Almond Joy or a Mounds bar.
in high school we also came home for lunch - that was nice. We had an hour for lunch and we had a car, so it was easy.
Nowadays kids are barely given 20 to 30 minutes to eat
We have the avocado slicing thing and it works pretty well. Someone gave us a thing for onions - not to slice them, but say you use half an onion, what do you with the portion you didn't use? It is an innovative, uh, "onion condom" that completely wraps the onion to keep it completely air tight. Designed specifically for onions, although you could probably use it on a head of garlic. It is innovative.
in high school we also came home for lunch - that was nice. We had an hour for lunch and we had a car, so it was easy.
Nowadays kids are barely given 20 to 30 minutes to eat
I never had a cafeteria until 10th grade. In elementary school, we got out at 11:30 and walked home. We didn't have to be back until 1:00. It was a 10-15 minute walk each way.
In junior high, we had to pack our lunch and each at our homeroom desk. Couldn't leave the building. I think we got 30 minutes.
I remember paying for those little boxes of milk, too.
I can remember the long line outside the cafeteria at elementary school. Cannot remember junior high. High school is foggy. I don't remember any trauma in the cafeteria lunchroom in high school. I don't remember what I ate, either! Darn it.
Does anybody else remember their school cafeteria lunches??
Fridays it was fish sticks and tater tots. I think the other might have been corn or some green veggie.
Those paper milk cartons were a pain to open. So sometimes it was nice to have a lunchroom monitor who roved around the room. It wasn’t just a mother volunteer, sometimes it was a teacher.
My father was very particular about food and usually expected a meat, potato, and vegetable. We usually had a salad with Italian dressing. My father liked most foods fried, so we ate a lot of fried pork chops and fried potatoes. The vegetable was either canned, frozen, or sometimes fresh like green beans. My mother also had a pressure cooker. She used it for stuffed cabbage, stuffed green peppers, and chili. Spaghetti was also a favorite at least once a week. We neve at canned stuff like Franco American Spaghetti or Chef Boyardee ravioli. We also never ate Hamburger Helper. My father didn't like rice, so that was never a side dish. We also ate a lot of fresh corn on the cob when it was in season.
My dad, lucky guy, "worked late" to strategically avoid my grandmother's "supper". Unless my mother cooked and made roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy (only on Sunday), chicken corn pie, sometimes spaghetti, etc., then he'd be home for meals. He also hated my grandmother's scrapple and fried potatoes, but other Depression-type "main dishes" my grandmother frequently made (and my dad didn't show up for) were ham and string beans (a kettle of string beans and potatoes boiled to mush with a ham bone), "turnips" (a kettle of turnips and potatoes boiled to mush with a beef bone), "cabbage" (a kettle of cabbage and potatoes boiled to mush with a beef bone), and "rice" (a kettle of white rice, milk, and sugar boiled to mush).
He confided to me years later that when he saw my grandmother get out that kettle, he planned on not being home for "supper".
Had my grandmother not been so nasty about it, I would have taken over more of the cooking when I got older. I loved to cook and try out new recipes in magazines. But anything I'd make (tuna noodle casserole, chicken chow mein, sloppy joes, etc.), she'd call "high tone-ish" and bully my younger siblings to say they didn't like it.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 07-07-2022 at 02:14 AM..
Fridays it was fish sticks and tater tots. I think the other might have been corn or some green veggie.
Those paper milk cartons were a pain to open. So sometimes it was nice to have a lunchroom monitor who roved around the room. It wasn’t just a mother volunteer, sometimes it was a teacher.
A favorite at my school was a "smokey burger"...slices of Taylor Pork Roll, baked, on a hamburger bun. I also remember veal cutlettes (alternately called a "chuck wagon patty"), meat loaf made with tomato soup, a square of baked haddock (alternated with fish sticks or pizza on Fridays). Tater tots, mashed potatoes, or parsley potatoes. Jello salad...a square of jello with shredded carrots and celery in it served on a lettuce leaf.
When I was in sixth grade, our class was the last in the school to eat. By the time we went down to the cafeteria, they would be out of most of the food on the menu and have to "substitute" for the entree (usually with baked beans...they never ran out of THOSE). They'd often run out of milk and have to give us a dixie cup of juice from the canned fruit. That year, I usually packed my lunch or volunteered to be a cafeteria kitchen aid one week a month (got to miss gym class, and got to eat my cafeteria lunch first when the food was plentiful).
I'm now a school cafeteria cook, and the pandemic food shortages have been an issue, but we've NEVER had substitute baked beans for any entree.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 07-07-2022 at 02:35 AM..
oh my goodness. What do you say to your mom when she says that?!
I just nod and smile. My mother is in her 90's and obviously doesn't remember how much I hated scrapple and complained about it as a kid. I don't want to hurt her feelings, so I don't say anything (but I don't eat it).
There was always apple sauce at supper. She still insists on having apple sauce on the table at every meal. I don't like apple sauce, and no one else in my family cares for it either. At meals on visits home, she'll tell me to get out the apple sauce or tell me that I "forgot to put out the apple sauce". I'll put it in a serving bowl, put it on the table, and no one (not even her) has any of it, but she'll still push it. "Don't you want apple sauce?" DH and our kids: "No thank you". Five minutes later, "Don't you want apple sauce?" Then I end up putting the untouched apple sauce back in the jar and have to wash the dirty serving dish. This happens meal after meal, and the jar never gets any emptier.
Another gem growing up..."gravy bread". Leftover gravy served over plain bread. I ate it without complaint growing up, but my own kids wouldn't touch it. At family dinners with roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy, my mother would ask them several times, "Don't you want gravy bread?" DD's didn't know what "gravy bread" was, and didn't want any once they found out. I guess kids during the Depression thought gravy bread was a huge "treat", but mine thought it was disgusting.
I didn't tolerate my kids being "finicky" or rude, it's just that their tastebuds were raised and developed differently.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 07-07-2022 at 04:23 AM..
Did you in the US have free milk at school? We were pretty much forced to drink it, wasn’t refrigerated in the early days. Many of us cannot stand drinking milk. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...QIjpv_Ojp&s=10
I remember having a music collection, consisting of about 40 LPs, which cost $5 each then ($50 today's dollars), which totaled more than I ever paid for a car. And a "portable" pre-stereo phonograph the size of a suitcase, that you could turn up so loud, you could hear it all the way in the kitchen.
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