I'm a tad younger (48) but remember those pork skins with the sauce. So delicious and wish I could find something like that now, just for a treat. I was stationed in the PI during the late 90's and they had those pork skins and sauce and ate them like we do chips now. My mother wasn't much of a cook but my Nana was and I always make the dishes she did over the holidays. LOL, I always made her mash the potatoes on my plate because they tasted better when she did them ;) It's good to have food memories!

Fried bologna sandwiches with real mayonaise, Velveeta cheese sandwiches with fresh slices of tomato, pot roast with lots of fresh cooked carrots included, crab apple jelly, fresh milk with the cream still on top, maple snow, Lake Erie perch cooked with milk and "herbs" ( have no idea what those herbs were), corn on the cob steamed on a real steam engine slathered with butter and lots of salt, homemade peanut brittle spitting all over the stove, hot coffee with cinnamon made in a Chemex, break apart Popsicle's to share with brother or sister, root beer barrels (candy), Vernor's ginger ale, candy buttons on a paper tape.

I'm 69 and really wonder what the kids of today will remember.

Nancy

Bedsides what you've all already mentioned, I miss the salads that the Swedish immigrants made for a picnic or event when I would visit relatives in out-state Nebraska. They still exist... but don't taste right or as good: Seven Bean, cucumber in sour cream, even potato salad, and the like.

Mom's fried chicken. She never changed the flour in the shaking tub. Just kept adding more to it as needed. Never changed the oil in the electric skillet. Just kept adding more as needed. She very well could have changed the flour and oil once in a while, but I don't remember it.

GrandMa's caramelized cinnamon rolls. 'Nuff said. :-)

My mom doesn't cook (or well - she uses only salt and garlic salt as seasonings) but I still remember with some nostalgia the HoJo's fried clams, frozen french fries and chicken pot pies she used to serve. And the "homemade hamburger helper" - ground beef with egg noodles and canned gravy. Fried chicken from a restaurant called The Chicken Coop near the railroad tracks.

Her mom's chocolate waffles (she would make them for me after I walked to their house, my grandfather would eat cornflakes with the rooster on the box). My great-aunt's headcheese on Christmas Eve. My dad's homemade chicken/turkey noodle soup with homemade egg noodles.

My other grandmother's baked goods - strawberry shortcake, blueberry buckle, and Christmas stollen - I have recipes for those (though the stollen has multiple recipes and so I've cobbled some together and do a 2nd rise).

I know my kids (esp. DD) will remember those recipes fondly, since I still make them. As far as favorite home-cooked meals, I'd have to ask - DD will probably say rare spoon roast, home-grown strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. DS is likely to remember his favorite chili (made with Annie's salsa) and corn muffins, home-grown green beans with garlic, grilled squash, fresh corn on the cob, grilled salmon with wasabi mustard, shrimp and scallops with pasta and broccoli, clam chowder, homemade pickles. Both kids like homemade chicken noodle soup, but I don't make my own noodles - I should, but my dad doesn't even anymore.

But I wonder if they will remember all the times we eat frozen lasagne, Scout-night frozen meatballs and Classico spaghetti sauce (DD says my homemade is "too tomato-ey"), frozen chicken flautas and take-out Chinese. DS should remember every birthday he asked to be taken out for sushi. I wonder if he remembers all the "character" birthday cakes I made when he was little? DD does (though she's outgrowing those too).

Well, here's what I remember, but I don't miss it as my tastes have changed :)

White rice cooked in whole milk and stirred several times. It was very sticky and gooey. Then we ate it with brown sugar on top. On birthdays we could request what meal we wanted and I know sometimes my younger brothers and sister asked for rice and brown sugar. As I got older and saw my mom's reaction to their choice of special birthday food, I began to realize that it was probably an easy meal when time and energy where in short supply or a super cheap meal when money was tight. Definitely not what mom thought of as a special meal. I somewhat recall her telling me that cooking the rice in milk helped make it more nutritious than cooking in water. I'm sure the piles of brown sugar we heaped on cancelled much of that out.

I also remember eating Tang drink mix straight from the jar...when mom wasn't looking. Just recently I bought my first jar of Tang in a loooong time with all the fake food ingredients I generally avoid. I remember as a kid adding it to hot tea on cold winter days after sledding and ice skating and thought I'd try "orange tea" again after all these years. Reading this thread sent me to the cupboard to eat a spoonful straight from the jar. Still good stuff even without having to sneak it when no one is looking. Think I won't look at the ingredient list, though!

My Dad used to put a little bit of flour, onions, carrots, potatoes, and hamburger meat in "tin" foil and bake it. Small separate servings so that we wouldn't fight over a it.

After it cooked for a little while he would take them out and shake them to make the gravy. I have never mastered that, my gravy is lumpy if I don't make it before I put it in.

"I'm a tad younger (48) but remember those pork skins with the sauce. So delicious and wish I could find something like that now, just for a treat."

If you find a recipe or a source for it, Please let me know!

"White rice cooked in whole milk and stirred several times. It was very sticky and gooey."

I ate that for breakfast this morning! With sausage and an egg! I love it!

We did the same thing with Kool Aid packets WITH sugar, as you did the Tang. Food from my childhood? Same as now. Hm. Probably because my mom is still around and cooks it! I'm 47, but surely that shouldn't make that much difference? Maybe we were just too poor to eat the stuff everyone else ate? She always cooked from scratch and we never went out to eat. Except very special occasions to Farrell's Ice Cream or Shakey's pizza. Those are probably out of business, but I wouldn't know, I don't live in that state any more.

I do not hanker for a specific food per se but I do hanker for the simplicity of if you were hungry, you just cooked the food and ate it. I miss going to the grocery store and buying what you needed for the recipe and not spending 20 minutes contemplating the amount of sodium in a packet of taco seasoning or looking for a brand of bacon with no nitrites, bacon was bacon then. I understand why things are that way now but I find it tiring. But, I also appreciate the variety available today.

Wertach, I hope you didn't cover your rice and milk with as much brown sugar as I remember using :)

We also camped and would make syrup for our camp pancakes with brown sugar and hot water. We thought it was the best syrup ever. Our parents probably preferred to take along a solid like brown sugar then a potential sticky leaking mess like syrup. Hmmm, might have to try some syrup like that again. I bet it would taste great if I ate it outside on a cold morning after sleeping on a flat air mattress!

Fluffernutters!

I don't know that I "miss" foods from my childhood. My mother was of that generation that became enamored of Julia Child and gourmet cooking, so we ate a lot of fancy stuff: Larded roasts, strawberry tart, king crab legs, whole stuff smoked salmon. My father insisted on a full, formal meal for every dinner and lunch, with a full place setting, cloth napkins, bread plate, soup spoons, salad forks, etc. no matter what was on the menu. Sure don't miss that!

I do remember the white rice thing, though -- but with syrup. And milk toast for breakfast. I think these things were a remnant of my parents growing up during the Depression. Along with chipped beef on toast, which I wouldn't touch!

This post was edited by Violet.West on Thu, Jun 26, 14 at 16:56

My folks belonged to a monthly birthday club with about 8 other couples... They'd be going out for dinner and we would be piling on extra goodies on the cardboard pizzas... more cheese, olives and even drained canned shrimp.... oh we'd also get a cold bottle of pepsi to go with it..... ah... those were the days...

My mother's pie crusts.

Linda

naturegirl_2007, No sugar at all! Just rice, milk, salt and butter, the way that Dad always made it.

He always cooked breakfast. We normally had grits, the sticky rice was an occasional weekend treat. Of course he fried the eggs in the sausage or bacon grease!

We never ate anything sweet for breakfast. The only time I ever ate cereal would be when I spent the night with my cousin.

Peanut Butter Pie!

Dave

My mamaws fried corn. YUM I wish I had some now! She's 80 and not in good health doesn't cook much any more. Also, us grandkids used to love when she would make home made ice cream. I still remember her using the rock salt and everyone turning the ice cream handle.

The thing that strikes me about this post are the emotions that these foods each bring back to us. These foods represent special people and special times.

When I was dating my hubby, he used to rave about his grandmothers angel food cake. He would talk about watching her make them and how they would cool upside down on coke bottles and how he couldn't wait for supper and then desert so he could eat some with Gramma's homegrown strawberries on top. He couldn't wait until I could ask he for the recipe (she wouldn't give it to him cuz in their family men don't - shouldn't - cook). So one day after supper, I asked her for the recipe. She looked at me quizzically and said "Honey, they come from a box". My hubby was devastated!! From then on he became suspicious of his food memories, but never the memories of the people.

LOL, that's funny! It reminds me of the Friends episode about the chocolate chip cookies.

Mom used to make a ton of breaded, fried pork chops. We would eat them cold with a tall glass of milk. Delicious!!!!

I don't miss anything. Our food is far better now. We have a lot more ingredients available to us and it isn't cooked by my Mother. She was a poor cook and her skills were not enhanced by having started housekeeping on rations - meals at home were basic and penny pinching. Her 'fruit' cake contained about three raisins and was kept until the last crumb had been eaten, never mind if it had become brick-like. No new cake until the old was eaten. Same with the few shrivelled apples in the fruit bowl. Nothing edible was ever thrown out. Food was fuel - the taste was neither here nor there. When she made her first bolognese sauce in the 1960s it was like a daring experiment. And she never managed to get it to not have lumps of boiled mince in it.

I asked my kids what they think they'd remember and I nailed it (I know their favorites!) but they reminded me about "backwards day". We don't do it often, but that's when I decide (on a weekend) to have something vaguely dinner-like for breakfast/brunch, like kielbasa with scrambled eggs, and then for dinner we'll do something really breakfast-like like pancakes or waffles.

Sometimes I'll do a backwards dinner and have dessert first - but more often I'll just do something like homemade (chicken) pie or (mashed potato) frosted (meatloaf) cupcakes. Once I cut a boule in half horizontally and baked a meatloaf in a round cake pan, made a family-sized "hamburger"

Not sure it's exactly something I miss, but it brings back memories and was entertaining...

When I had 4 teens at home, we (very) occasionally had a night where they could eat anything they wanted for dinner. You can probably guess that these almost always followed an extremely busy or rough week for me!

It was hilarious to watch them go through cupboards and fridge to see what all the options were before deciding.

At first, they chose the most restricted items (i.e. candy, chips, etc.). However, they quickly learned that these do not make a meal and that they didn't feel so great afterward. Later, they made wiser choices, albeit some strange combinations.

To this day, one of them will occasionally make a "meal" of odds and ends that I wouldn't eat together, but she is fine with it. For example, maybe hummus with veggies, scrambled eggs, a peanut butter sandwich, and a piece of fruit. Just whatever is easy and available.

Deanna

On the rare occasions when we didn't cook, Kentucky Fried Chicken, A&W Root Beer (brought home to make floats) and ribs from humble little shacks. We had to go to town to get these, so it was infrequent.

Home-cooked memories:

Okra breaded in cornmeal
Fried potatoes and onions
Green beans slow cooked with ham hock
Blackberries with dumplings (these were steamed over simmering fruit, any fruit really.)
New potatoes with butter and fresh parsley
Cornbread and beans
Roast chicken (my great grandmother's, This was holy victuals.)

And since we're near the 4th of July, this was always the menu, eaten outdoors overlooking the Finley River:

Fried chicken
Smoked brisket
Potato salad
Baked beans
Pea salad with mint and pecans
Deviled eggs
Homemade ice cream, hand cranked
Peach pie
Watermelon
Chocolate cake
Lemonade or Iced tea (my family didn't drink alcoholic beverages)

Deborah

I'm only 37 but miss my great grandmother's cooking the most. Every Sunday after church the whole clan would go to her tiny house and eat, everyone would bring something. It was heaven for a little kid who didn't love her mom's cooking. Fried apple pies made from her apples she grew, Greens, Poke, Turnip, and Mustard usually, Fried chicken, Chicken and Dumplings, Fried squash and okra, homemade Mac n cheese, chocolate pie, blackberry cobbler made with the berries from out behind her house, she grew a huge row of them and had a huge garden. I did not eat tomatoes then, but I would eat the cherry tomatoes she had with a bit of salt. My great aunt also would make us duck eggs fried in bacon grease getting the edges lacey like we liked and chocolate mayonaise cake. I have most of the recipes except the cobbler, making my mom look for it. My grandma made pretty good Purple Hull Peas and rice with a brown gravy. I cook very similar to this now, can't help it, it just tastes better to me. I don't really miss Kool aid or peanut butter and jelly, think I ate way too much of that and hotdogs as a kid at home.