Lima beans - my mother planted them and picked them and served them. Hated them then and would rather have a steam-roller do its thing on me rather than eat those things.

However, there were many other great things in the garden. Strawberries, peas, corn, lettuce, rhubarb, currants, gooseberries and more. Sadly, the missus doesn't care for many of those things. We do a lot of red meat and potatoes now.

My grandmother used to make the most wonderful wild plum jelly. It was the perfect blend of tart and sweet. I've tried every homemade and commercial variety that I can find and none have the same flavor. I only wish I had her recipe and the variety of plums she used so I could replicate it.

I had fifteen bean ham and beans last night with meaty ham hocks I love a good pot of beans. I didn't have cornbread I don't want to use the oven it the rv it heats it up.

I grew up in the city, but my mother was a country girl and a good cook. One of my favorite vegetables was the same yellow crookneck squash I've been eating all summer. She cooked kohlrabi, too, another vegetable I used to grow. I don't see it often in the stores.

I guess I was an unusual eater as a child . . . I loved salad, and saved mine for last so I could eat it after dinner in front of the TV. I still love salad, and often have a big one for dinner--usually eaten while I watch Jeopardy.

My parents loved Chinese food and made some of it themselves. After my mother died my dad often took me to dinner at the House of Chan. Very recently I discovered there is a House of Chan cookbook, published in 1952--the year my mom died. I got myself a used copy on Amazon.

Some foods became special when my kids were growing up. We always had a huge vegetable garden and an orchard, so we had plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Today, my son carries on the tradition with his vegetable gardens and fruit trees. It's a lovely continuum.

Sylvia, sure takes me back, and I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had some of those good vittles. You mentioned one thing I never heard of: hot-water cornbread with no sugar. Actually all the cornbread we ever had never had sugar in it; it was the hot water that was strange to me. We made it with buttermilk. I have to confess though, now that it is just me I use the Martha White mix. I also have a recipe for cornbread that includes broccoli (cooked) and cottage cheese, and I make that very often. I grew up in a large family and those meal times around the table were so very special.

jim, you reminded me that my son would never eat lima beans; I had forgotten that.

Wonderful stories!

so interesting that I (think I can) get a sense of where people grew up from the kinds of foods they reminisce about!

My comfort food is blackeye peas and cornbread (also no sugar). I could never get my grandmother's chocolate pie just right despite many attempts as she never measured anything. I finally found a recipe in a small church cookbook that is the same!

Growing up we always had a garden, my Dad's family were farmers and we grew potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, onions, peppers and everything you can think of. My favorites are green beans, tomatoes, and corn. They also grew black raspberries and I love all of those today. I think we ate potatoes at least twice a day. To cultivate our garden, my Dad hooked up the hand cultivator and hitched my pony to it and I would ride her and guide her down the rows. I wish I had my Grandma's yeast roll recipe. I can still see how she would shape them. I was fortunate enough to get her big oven canner that came apart and had two big baking pans that she used to bake her rolls on. It is made of aluminum. I do not use it to can with. Wonderful memories.

Sue who still lives in the country and has a garden.

I make my cornbread similar to the taste of Tippins cornbread. I make a small Jiffy cornbread according to directions, and a small Jiffy yellow cake mix according to directions. Mix the two batters and bake according to the cornbread directions - it is melt-in-your mouth good - it will be slightly sweet and have a fine texture. Use REAL butter and a bit of jam for a wonderful snack.

My parents had a raspberry patch in the back of our garden, the canes having been shared by the mother of mom's best friend. I LOVE black raspberries, especially with milk and sugar on them. They don't sell black raspberries in the stores, and when I complain about that, so many people insist that blackberries are black raspberries. No where close! My mom baked all our rolls and bread, and I do miss her clover leaf rolls too.

My comfort food is green chili. I do love corn bread, turnip greens with onions and bacon, ham on the side. Wonderful to fix a big "pig out" meal!

Love a big pot of ham & beans and fried cornbread. Corn meal, a touch of salt, add enough boiling water to make patties, fried up in bacon grease.

cooper8828, black eyed peas are one of my favorites too. How about black eyed Pea Soup? I have to have that every year for New Years Eve. Remember "Ps for prosperity"? I have the recipe if you would like to have it.

My mom use to make her own Boston baked beans with bits of salt pork or bacon and home made brown bread in a can. The store canned brown bread does not taste the same. She also made spiced crab apple rings, which is something you don't see much anymore.

New Year's Day reminds me of Hopping John, black-eyed peas with stewed tomatoes & rice.

Yeast rolls! We called them "light rolls", & they were heavenly, just melted in your mouth. I could eat a million of 'em.

Black raspberries reminds me of dewberries - not sure if they're different from blackberries, but we always said "dewberries".

Dewberry cobbler was so scrumptious, & once, when we picked dewberries in the heat of summer in Huntsville (near Houston) & wore our mothers absolutely out, they were so exhausted that, instead of making cobbler, they washed the berries, put them in a big glass bowl, sprinkled sugar over them, set the bowl in a bigger bowl of ice cubes, & put it in the fridge.

Our dessert that night was ice-cold sugared dewberries!

The first hospital that I ever worked in was a small one in the downtown of my smallish hometown. Every Thursday the same thing was served for lunch in the cafeteria -- soup beans and cornbread -- and every Thursday the cafeteria would be packed with people coming from all the offices and shops for lunch.

My mother's split pea soup is something I think of when the weather starts to get chilly, and my grandmother's green beans and chicken'n'dumplings. Cornbread was usually eaten with chili (Cincinnati style) at my house.

Apples are something else that I associate with childhood. Although we had a couple of apple trees on our property, they were Red Delicious which none of us particularly cared for. My parents would take us all out to a local orchard and select 2 or 3 different varieties - Winesap for one, always my favorite- and buy a couple bushels to keep in the cold storage room over the winter. Mom would make applesauce and pies from the supply and we of course ate them out of hand. I still drive nearly an hour away to the only orchard that I know of that has Wealthy apples, to get some for my pies.