This year I made "fancy" rice crispie treats. Fancy meaning they had chocolate mixed in them and were topped with caramel, a pecan and chocolate. I'm also going to make plain rice crispie treats. Don't know why. I haven't had one in years (and years, and years). It just struck me to do it this year for Christmas.

That sounds like a recipe my mother made in the late 60's called Munchy Crunchies and are still a must-have for my daughter.

Munchy Crunchies
(yield: 60)

6-oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
6-oz. butterscotch chips
6-oz. chow mein noodles
1 c. peanuts

Spread chocolate and butterscotch chips evenly in an 11- or 12-inch electric skillet. Set control at 200-degrees F. Cover, cook 5-minutes. Stir to combine softened chips. Add noodles and nuts; stir until coated. Remove from heat. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper.

(Up dated version: Melt chips together in a microwave-proof bowl and add remaining ingredients.)

-Grainlady

I had the urge to make chocolate macaroons, and made them for Thanksgiving. I asked my brother if he remembered them as a kid, but he didn't. :(

I make the chow mein treats as well, using melted peanut butter and butterscotch chipits for the coating. The nuts sound good in them!

I think it's time I made those chocolate cocoa cookies that you mix in a saucepan on the stove with the oats added. What are those called anyway?

Teresa

teresa nc7

Do you mean the cookie recipes that go by the names No-Bake Cookies, Boiled Cookies, or 1-Minute Cookies (sugar, peanut butter, cocoa, milk, butter/margarine, vanilla - optional: coconut, nuts)?

I judged the Children's Open-class Food Division at the Fair for years and I got so SICK of those cookies I would have to be starving to eat one (lol). There might be as many as 15-20 entrees of these cookies. Even more amazing was how dissimilar they looked and tasted. Nothing says gross-me-out like old rancid oatmeal or peanut butter, and margarine mixed into an over-cooked lump of sugared goo.

-Grainlady

Teresa, those are the macaroons. Stir in oatmeal and coconut, plop onto waxed paper and refrigerate.

Uhmmm, I make vintage food all the time. If it tastes good and is natural, it's all good. Sweetened condensed milk macaroons are always a part of my cookie baking.
A family favorite is chocolate pudding cake and I LOVE brie in puff pastry even if screams 80's.
Many of the old fashioned recipes are the Best.

A bit ashamed to admit that I open a can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli from time to time. As a kid thought that WAS ravioli... know better, but it's an occasional comfort food for me.

As kids, we would make "pizza" from the Chef's "kits"... little pouch of flour mix for dough, little can of sauce, little packet of grated cheese. KNEW it wasn't REAL pizza, but fun to make. Found them briefly a few years ago, and gave them to teenaged niece... said she'd have fun with friends... but DOCTOR them up with extra cheese, pepperoni, etc.

Some blasts from the pasts are great and some are regrettable. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: The Gallery of Regrettable Food

Yep! No Bake Cookies/Boiled Cookies, etc. with sugar, butter, cocoa powder, peanut butter, and oats.

BBeeze, we love Chocolate Pudding Cake in our family - best comfort food of all time!

denise8101214 - your page does not say where you are from. James Lileks (the author you linked to) is a local Minnesotan and writer and for my hometown paper - the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I love his columns!

Teresa

Teresa, it has been my Dad's favorite for decades. We all love it and it's so amazing how something so simple, from basic pantry food, can be so good. We have a friend coming for dinner Friday night, I think I will make it (again).

My mother had a Quaker cookbook from 1954, High Point North Carolina Friends Church. When I was growing up, I cooked so many things out of that book. I took it to my best friend's house when we had a sleep over and cooked out it there too. I remember one night we made chili. After my mom died, I got the cookbook, and then it disappeared out of my house. I am pretty sure my sister took it. I grieved for that old cookbook for many years....the batter splattered pages, the notes written in the margins and recipes copied onto blank pages. I found it on line, with the help of one of my internet friends. Amazon had it. It was expensive for a spiral bound, church type cookbook...but I had to have it. I hate to say I haven't cooked anything out of it yet. I have spent a lot of time reading it though and remembering. I do need to at least make the buttermilk pie or the chili.

Something I loved when I was a kid was Swansons' chicken fricassee in a can. I bought myself a can of it. I can't figure out what I thought was so good about that...the chicken was just shreds...it was certainly nothing to write home about. Something else my mom and I used to get...Chung King chow mein. It came with a can of chinese
noodles attached to the top of the can. Pretty exotic fare back in our day....when there were no Chinese restaurants for miles around. That too was almost inedible. Tastes were simple back then in the 1950's in a tiny Texas town.

I remember thinking that Chung King chow mein was so exotic and "gourmet", too. LOL! I also thought that those Jeno's frozen pizza rolls were just the bomb!! But seeing that we were raised on pinto beans, fried potatoes and biscuits, I guess I was right back then. And when we got hold of a rare can of Chef Boy-ar-dee spaghetti, my sister and I would have a knock-down-drag-out over any extra meatball.

Chun King (no g) Chow Mein originally was a Minnesota product created by Jeno Paulucci, a first generation Italian American who grew up on the Minnesota Iron Range. He grew his own bean sprouts and canned the chow mein himself. Jeno also created Jeno's Pizza rolls which were rebranded Totino's when he sold the company.

I never had the chow mein until I was 10. Jeno had a Chun King booth at the State Fair. I worked in a snow cone stand next to it. I ate it everyday - for all 12 days of the fair - year after year. Chun King was also served at the 1964 World's Fair and there was a huge article in the Minneapolis newspaper. He sold the Chun King company a couple years after the World's Fair for more than $60 million. That was huge for the time!

Jeno died last year. Michelina's frozen meals company still owned by his family was named for his mother Michelina. In an article about his death it was noted that although he owned several Lear jets, he still owned the first truck he used to deliver Chow Mein in 1947. He was known for saying "I never want to forget my roots."

He was quite a character. Anyone I've ever known from the Duluth/Iron Range area has had a "Jeno" story.

Wow - talk about a blast from the past!

No Bake Cookies, what a great memory! We call them "College Cookies", because my mom always sent them to us when we were away at school. Easy to make and they actually keep well, though I like them best straight from the freezer. :-)

I remember Chun King Chow Mein, too, with the little can of noodles on the top. We thought that was a special treat when I was a kid! Now, the thought of canned bean sprouts makes me shiver. lol

Cj

I also remember those chow mein noodle candies, we called them "haystacks" and made them with peanuts, chow mein noodles and butterscotch chips. We also made the No-Bake cookies, but I've always made them and didn't realize they were "vintage", LOL.

I love the hot fudge pudding cake and made one a few months ago, my girls used to beg me to make it when they were small. And, of course, I still use Grandma's recipes for molasses cookies and blueberry crisp, so those are blasts from the past for me, at least.

Annie

I remember Jeno's Pizza Rolls from way back! They were quick and tasty for a party.

Michelina's entrees are another convenience food that I sometimes buy when I'm not in the "creative cooking" mode.

My sister in law makes the chow mein things yearly--she calls them reindeer poop (I know I know, deer scat doesn't look like that). In third grade they were called "haystacks" by the teacher.

My spouse just finished his annual batch of No-Bake cookies. My mother in law used to make them so they have a warm fuzzy childhood memory thing going for them. They're okay. I decided they are better frozen.

I don't know about blasts from the past, but I was and shall forever be a devotee of the rice crispie treat--plain or with embelishments. Loved them in the past, still do. But I rarely got treats back then and still rarely do, so it is actually a big deal to get one now and again. Perhaps absence makes my heart grow fonder.

I loved Chun King dinner, and it was the only "Chinese style" food available in my small hometown for miles and miles too. Now there are a couple of Chinese takeouts but nothing special.

Tonight I think I am going to make "boiled dinner" with some kielbasa and homeade sauerkraut for flavor. Mom made it with corned beef also sometimes too, but we don't do corned beef here. Always a blast from the past for me.

And whenever I have a latke, it's my blast from the past. Although my Cuisinart ones don't get purple and ferment quite the way Bubbe's hand grated ones did.

Jello and pudding are also my blasts from the past. I hardly ever make them nowdays because I really don't like them enough to go to the trouble, and yet when I have them at someone else's house, I enjoy them. Mom made parfaits with chocolate pudding and cool whip, which was the cat's pajamas back then but the thrill is gone for me with those. I do like to layer vanilla pudding and fruit and whipped cream though. Or yogurt and fruit and granola. Yogurt, now that's something that is NOT a blast from the past!

OK, Jello was another one Grandma made. I bet I haven't had that for over 30 years. And they always had it in school lunches. I hated the green jello with the fruit cocktail, and that was always what they had in school. I liked all the other flavors, but then I found out somewhere in my twenties that it was made out of boiled down bones and thought that was just too gross and refused to eat it anymore. I probably would try it again now that I think boiled beef bones make a great beef stock.

Hmm. My grandma was a very good cook and made this Jello salad even kids ate. I think it had apple sauce and ginger ale and it was a little fizzy. I always thought of it as elegant and maybe it wasn't, but she always plated things nicely, way before anyone I knew had ever heard of "plating" something. I will have to ask my mother if she has those jello molds and the recipe.

Occasionally think back to school and some of the lunches. Pizza burgers for one. When I moved out on my own, I made a lot of fish sticks and instant potatoes, another school lunch that was decent. But that was in the day when you could get fish sticks that were chunks of fish rather than McNuggets.

Do you know that Twinkies was owned by Continental Baking, which was owned by International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), which during WWII owned a subsidiary company in Germany that owned 25% of the Focke-Wulf company which made fighter aircraft for the Luftwaffe. In the 60s, ITT received a $27 million compensation for damages to its subsidiary companies aircraft plants in Germany from Allied bombing.

Many years ago, when I found out ITT made Twinkies, I just had to have one. That was the first one I ate, and the only one I ate all this time.

As you know there will be no more Twinkies made. They are going out of business. So I ordered 40 Twinkies to take with me to a Christmas party.

The last of the Twinkies.

dcarch

Two fun videos you may enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bVtmtq1O9M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVgzY2Sjf0E recipe
{{!gwi}}

Here is a link that might be useful: Twinkie, Recipe?

That's the worst plating I've ever seen! I've come to expect so much more from you DC!

On another note, I'd forgotten how cute the little Twinkie character was with his kick butt cowboy boots!

"----That's the worst plating I've ever seen! I've come to expect so much more from you DC! ----"

I am so sorry, I didn't realize I had run out of parsley. No garnish this time.

dcarch LOL!

Ah, but if you come to Canada, you will still be able to get your Twinkies. Up here, the trademark and manufacturing rights are owned by Saputo, a major dairy/cheese entity. Having said all that, I really can't remember ever consuming one. I've always had a very sweet tooth, but Twinkies just never registered on my junk-food radar.

Here is a link that might be useful: Only in Canada????

Don't be too sure that Twinkies are gone from the US for good. They received court approval to sell off the assets, including trademarks, recipes, etc so another company could well buy it. Not sure it'd be worth too much since there are already so many knockoffs already and would a company want to pay to sell something whose sales have declined? Will the price of the knockoffs go up? Will the 18,500 people affected get jobs? Time will tell.

I want to try making Banana Flips!

And to top it off you used - A SQUARE PLATE!!?? Just no.

"----And to top it off you used - A SQUARE PLATE!!?? Just no.---"

Well don't blame me. Blame this guy for making square plates popular. :-)

dcarch

Well, dcarch, you may have bought some of the last Twinkies, but I got the last three Hostess made little fruit cakes at our Walmart store. My niece in Ocala, Fl just loves those, but hasn't had any since she moved from Indianapolis several year ago. Today is her birthday and well be a day late, but I will hand deliver them to her sometime tomorrow. We're stopped for the night in our motor home just outside Birmingham, Alabama.

OK, dcarch, I see a whole stack of perfectly good, wholesome, round plates right there within his reach yet he chooses this radical, artsy-phartsy, pretentious square slab to serve up some unsuspecting diner like me who is going to not only probably pay 3 times the money to be served on it because it's "innovative" but is also going to want to walk out unless served on a righteous ROUND traditional plate. This guy should be dredged in Panko and deep-fried for starting this fad, whoever he is. :)

My mother use to go to the Hostess outlet store and buy a whole box of snacks and put the in the freezer. Banana flips, snowballs, the cupcake, some rasberry thing twinkles and fruit pies we would take one out after school for a snack. We also got the pizza kits made some very interesting pizza, I don't think hot dog pizza is something I would eat today. They must be making those kits again I seen some in the store not long ago. My mom use to make a dish when she was pressed for time spaghettio bean (hotdish) it's a Minnesota thing. It was a lb. of browned hamburger 2 cans of spaghettios and a can of baked beans. I know it sounds strange but every couple of years I make it. A friend of my son had triplets and they loved it as toddlers and are almost grown they call it the Clarkie special and still love it. Patty

The angle of the photograph and the chef's hairline makes it look like he prefers square plates because his head is square.

Bob - that same thought crossed my mind!

I'm old enough to remember when Twinkies first came out and they had a REAL cream filling!

My Twinkie story is from a home magazine, of all places. They were highlighting loft conversions, when this was still an emerging trend. One was a beautiful, high-ceilinged industrial loft in an old factory - that used to make Twinkies.

I admired the brick walls, the giant windows, the clever remodeling they had done to turn it into a home. But it wasn't until I read the text that said:

"...And we just left the pipes up there exposed. Those are the old pipes where they used to move the Twinkie cream filling across the building. When they closed the factory down, they just left the filling, still in the pipes. Who knows, maybe it's still good after fifty years?"

Holy cow! They live under gallons of Twinkie cream filling?!? (These were very big pipes, several of them crossing through the length of their apartment)

All I could think of was, "Boy, I hope they never have a fire there - think melted fake cream filling, smoke and water, making an oozing mess all over your living space!"

Nanaimo Bars!!!! Certainly not a commercially made product, but I remember these from my childhood. When I described them to my mom a few years ago, she didn't know what I was talking about. Finally found recipes for them after searching with various words such as custard & chocolate, etc.

Sweet Sue Chicken Stew! It was probably a southern thing, but 50 years ago, my mom would buy one regular-sized can, add cooked potato, carrot, and whatever else was in the fridge, put biscuits on top and feed all four of us girls. I haven't found it in years, although I can find Sweet Sue Chicken and Dumplings--it just isn't the same.

>>Nanaimo Bars!!!! Certainly not a commercially made product>>

I couldn't say if they're authentic, or who produces them for the US retail market (never had the interest to look), but they are sold in frozen packages at our local supermarkets here in the San Francisco Bay Area. They've been available here commercially for at least the last five years, possibly longer.