Community Chat

[SloopJohnB]

Let me start off saying, if any or all of these items are things you like or liked, I don't mean any offense.  Looking back at my childhood,  I know my parents didn't buy or cook certain foods.  They were both first generation Americans and were used to a different culture.  Although some items I have learned to love, for the most part I still.follow suit.  

Also, we hardly ever bought school lunch.  We brought from home.  Money wasn't the issue, because truth be known, our lunches probably cost more than the school lunch did.  Most of the other children brought peanut butter and jelly on white sliced sandwich bread.  Not us.  It was usually Italian cold cuts or sliced roast beef.  Fridays were meatless, and that translated to tuna fish!  But not with mayo.  Tuna salad was made with a little olive oil.  And the bread was usually fresh hoagie rolls.  Occasionally we would have cream cheese and jelly on sliced Italian bread.

So, some of the foods we never had were mayonnaise and Miracle Whip, Spam, Velveeta cheese, peanut butter, jarred spaghetti sauce, and frozen dinners.

Anybody else have childhood food memories that might not be the norm nowadays?

👩‍🍳🍽🍶

[beach-mom]

We never had bagels. I didn't know what they were until I went to college. Back then you didn't see them much in the south. 

We also didn't have candy bars much. My dad would let us choose a Hershey bar, with or without nuts, every Friday night if we'd been good during the week. Mom made her special chocolate chip cookies every two weeks. And we had cobbler for dessert from time to time. My parents weren't big on desserts.

When I went to college my friends couldn't believe I didn't know what certain candy bars were. I made up for my lack of knowledge at the vending machine in the dorm!  

[SloopJohnB]

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@beach-mom wrote:

We never had bagels. I didn't know what they were until I went to college. Back then you didn't see them much in the south. 

We also didn't have candy bars much. My dad would let us choose a Hershey bar, with or without nuts, every Friday night if we'd been good during the week. Mom made her special chocolate chip cookies every two weeks. And we had cobbler for dessert from time to time. My parents weren't big on desserts.

When I went to college my friends couldn't believe I didn't know what certain candy bars were. I made up for my lack of knowledge at the vending machine in the dorm!  

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@beach-mom  Nothing like making up for lost time.  🍫🍫🍫

[Imaoldhippie]

Fish, we did not have fish that I can remember.  However, we did have salmon patties from the canned salmon.  Another was rice.

[Jaspersmom]

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@SloopJohnB wrote:

Let me start off saying, if any or all of these items are things you like or liked, I don't mean any offense.  Looking back at my childhood,  I know my parents didn't buy or cook certain foods.  They were both first generation Americans and were used to a different culture.  Although some items I have learned to love, for the most part I still.follow suit.  

Also, we hardly ever bought school lunch.  We brought from home.  Money wasn't the issue, because truth be known, our lunches probably cost more than the school lunch did.  Most of the other children brought peanut butter and jelly on white sliced sandwich bread.  Not us.  It was usually Italian cold cuts or sliced roast beef.  Fridays were meatless, and that translated to tuna fish!  But not with mayo.  Tuna salad was made with a little olive oil.  And the bread was usually fresh hoagie rolls.  Occasionally we would have cream cheese and jelly on sliced Italian bread.

So, some of the foods we never had were mayonnaise and Miracle Whip, Spam, Velveeta cheese, peanut butter, jarred spaghetti sauce, and frozen dinners.

Anybody else have childhood food memories that might not be the norm nowadays?

👩‍🍳🍽🍶

---

Growing up, I lived in an area that changed from mostly first and second generation northern and eastern Europeans to southern European people who came here for the first time.  My family ate mostly what was considered American food - meat and potatoes.  My father was of Polish descent and grew up eating a lot of sausages, stews, etc.  As a family, we ate the same thing on the same day every week.  For example, steak was Monday, chicken on Tuesday, etc.

It took awhile for my grandparents and other relatives to embrace Italian food.  My parents on the other hand fell in love with it and yes, it became a part of our weekly meals.  Today, Italian food is probably the most popular food where I live and I can understand why.  It's delicious.  Almost everyone in my family married someone who has an Italian background, so I learned how to cook from the best of them.  I make a great sauce.  Uh oh, is someone going to start the sauce vs. gravy fight?  LOL.

[Carolina925]

Not really a "food" but we never had sodas in our house, only iced tea or milk. We never had cereal, only grits; we never had sweet rolls or doughnuts for breakfast, only grits, eggs, some kind of meat. Weekends we splurged sometimes with pancakes or waffles. I thought my mother was terrible because she actually cooked breakfast for us We lived in a very small town with not a lot of fresh vegetables in the grocery stores, those available were only those that were grown by our local farmers. We always had canned asparagus. The first time I ate "real" asparagus, I was totally shocked; haven't eaten the canned stuff since.

[kaydee50]

I never had pizza until I was in high school.  Rarely had any sort of Italian food at home even though my paternal grandfather was Italian!

[chickenbutt]

I can't believe that none of us kids grew up to be ginormous, from finding/eating all the great (and junk) stuff that's out there!

We didn't have much at all and definitely nothing like sweets, soft drinks, savory junk stuff like potato chips, etc.  There was literally none of any of that for my entire childhood.

We had the bare minimum to eat, so we were a pretty scrawny bunch.  When I had to start cooking at 6 I had to make the best of very small amounts of stuff and learn to stretch to make it feed us 4 kids.   I got pretty good at that, for the most part.   I remember the mother going out to dinner and a couple of times brining me a doggie bag with a little 1-1.5 inch piece of steak that she gave me to use to make dinner for us 4 kids.  That's the degree to which I needed to learn to 'stretch'.

There were some foibles (the other kids would hate me for a while, especially the one where the pepper fell into the dish, massively over-peppering it, and we had to eat it until it was all gone anyway).  The first time I made the oatmeal (gawd I hated oatmeal!) I didn't know it grew so I made way too much and we had to eat it cold until it was gone.  So gross!

But to this day one of the things I AM good at is cooking. 

Now, I do love my sweets and some savory treats but don't want to gain weight so I ration it where I get a little bit each day.  I can eat whatever I want now but, fortunately, I'm also pretty practical so I think it out.  I also keep a few savory treats on hand and have the occasional soft drink.

[millieshops]

Until I had my own home, I don't think I knew mayonnaise and Miracle Whip were not the same thing.

[shoptilyadropagain]

We had very little fresh vegetables except for what came from our small garden (and then canned).  I'm sure the selection at the grocery stores was not like it is today but most store bought veggies came in a can.