The Over 40s Club Meeting

[Goliath]

On cold Winter mornings, I used to have Cream Of Wheat, which is still around, now in several flavors; original Cream Of Wheat is still a major comfort food for me.

Oh, yeah--Cream of Wheat. We used to have that every now and then, in place of oatmeal.

Our most common breakfast cereal was puffed wheat, because it was so cheap. I can't stand that stuff today.

But we'd get Shreddies now and then. I still like those. Their latest marketing campaign kills me.

 

[propita]

Mom made tuna casserole--no, it was good! One of my favorites. And taco casserole--another good one.

She also made "eggs and tomatoes." Kinda just boiling water with canned whole/cut-up tomatoes and then dropping eggs in so they'd poach, then eat with bread. She called it "poor food" from when she was growing up.

Oh, and I grew up eating chopped liver, which Mom would broil herself and then grind with hard-boiled eggs and onions. I know most people hate liver, but this was salty enough to taste good--we'd steal the chunks she had cut up to grind and nibble on them until she told us to leave some for her to chop up. Hey, some call it "pate."

 

[trekkiedane]

Oh, and I grew up eating chopped liver, which Mom would broil herself and then grind with hard-boiled eggs and onions.

Isn't that some jewish dish?

It sounds like something I read about somewhere...

 

[Mallory]

I remember Banquet had these frozen bags of Chicken ala King, that my Mom would make us over toast. They were good!!

I remember those too. There were a lot of different ones, but Chicken ala King was the best. I also ate a lot of creamed chipped beef on toast, which I still like to this day.

 

[Noname Given]

One bit of Fast Food I LOVED as a kid (and Taco Bell was the new fast food franchise on the block, competing with McDonalds), was the Bell Beefer; (and no, you won't find it on Taco Bell's current menu, they ditched it decades ago).

 

[Capn Flukie]

Mom would broil herself

Ouch!

*I'll go away now...*

 

[Star Wolf]

Oh, and I grew up eating chopped liver, which Mom would broil herself and then grind with hard-boiled eggs and onions.

Isn't that some jewish dish?

It sounds like something I read about somewhere...

Sounds like the fixings that Detective Belker made his lunch out of on Hill Street Blues.

 

[trekkiedane]

Oh, and I grew up eating chopped liver, which Mom would broil herself and then grind with hard-boiled eggs and onions.

Isn't that some jewish dish?

It sounds like something I read about somewhere...

Sounds like the fixings that Detective Belker made his lunch out of on Hill Street Blues.

I guess you're right -but shoulden't it then be pickled liver, pickled onion and pickled eggs?

 

[RevDMV]

Mom would broil herself

Ouch!

*I'll go away now...*

I though my mother's cooking was terrible....

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

Cheese grits
Milk in glass bottles left on the porch
Fish sticks
White Castle burgers for 12 cents each!
Chicken-On-Call - the first "fast food" place in Louisville back in the 50s. You'd call in your order and go over to pick it up just like a Pizza order today. No delivery though.

 

[Terengo]

We used to eat tamales out of a can - the only tex-mex food I can ever recall as a child. I also remember a wide variety of Jello salads: chopped fruit or vegetables in Jello. They were very popular at all family get-togethers, but also just for home use in the summertime. My favorite was celery in lime jello.

 

[Shatmandu]

Whenever my father would be in a drunken, violent rage (3-4 times a week), my mother would take us to Burger Chef. We'd hang out until they closed, then go home to see if he had passed out.

It was horrific on one hand and very tasty on the other. They served french fries in brown paper bags.

Joe, greasy

 

[Colonel Green]

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say "How YOU doin?" to all the TBBS cougars

 

[RJDiogenes]

I forgot the aluminum trays! We had the Hoffman soda man, drive past the house once a week to deliver soda. We had a milkman too. I remember Banquet had these frozen bags of Chicken ala King, that my Mom would make us over toast. They were good!!

Heh. And I forgot the Chicken ala King in the pouches. I used to have those all the time. Very tasty.

 

[ladyheather69]

My mom used to make cubed steak and fried potatoes. I dreaded the steak part cause it was usually over cooked and I had to put LOTS of ketchup on it. And they still sell them, but we used to eat Vienna sausages out of the jar.

Tuna casserole was a big item on the menu, and homemade pizza(still make the sauce my dad made today) was Fridays.

And until middle school age(12) my mom had dinner going and ready within 10-15 minutes after my dad got home from work...then she worked so dinner was whenever or whatever we could make ourselves

 

[trekkiedane]

My parents weren't exactly rich -well, they were, but most of their money was invested in the bricks keeping the roof over our heads- so the food was mostly the non-expensive kind; two chicken on a rotating skewer under the grill in the oven for an hour or thereabouts made some of the most memorably good 'everyday' dinners of my childhood.

An entire half chicken for yourself, made the right way: wow, just: wow!

 

[RobertVA]

My mother did have a weekly schedule for breakfast. Cereal Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Sunny side up eggs with bacon Tuesday and Thursday. Pancakes and bacon on Saturday, occasionally substituting fresh made waffles from an electric countertop waffle iron. Sunday was eggs and sausage, with Scrapple (always had to be a certain brand - other brands didn't taste "right") occasionaly substituted for the sausage. In cold weather months oatmeal would ofteen be a substitute for the cereal (the "Quick Oats" type that had to be cooked in a pot).

For a long time Thusday supper would be hot dogs. After years boiling them in water she used a special hot dog cooker that was little more than a box with prongs to impale the ends of the hot dogs on. Each set of prongs was connected to a seperate switch that connected them to the electric outlet when the lid was closed. Yes, the "cooker" worked by zapping the dogs with the wall current!

For a while Saturday supper was sandwiches and condensed soup. to make Saturday supper sandwiches a bit better than weekday coldcut sandwich lunches the filling for Saturday sandwiches would usually be fried spam or fried ballona.

Mom had a rotation of her better dishes (with more complicated preperation) for Sunday dinners. Most of those were suitable for reheating as Monday supper.

 

[SicOne]

I am 42 and have fond rememberances of a restaurant called Dog N' Suds, which served hot dogs and root beer (I'm sure, in retrospect, they served other foods, but that was pretty much all we ordered therein). Not sure if it was a nationwide chain, but a popular restaurant in my town.

Also a pizza place called Happy Joe's. The first time I ever played Pinball was in there, and they had a video game which came out about the same time the first Jaws movie did, where you harpooned a shark that was swimming towards you. Oh, and an Evel Knievel-like motorcycle video game, in which you adjusted your speed by cranking the handlebar throttle, and you had to land on the landing ramp...each time you made the jump, they added a bus.

 

[TGTheodore]

Wow! We had a Dog 'n Suds here in the Bay Area, too. I never knew it was a chain. I remember it was like A&W because you could take their brown gallon jug and get it refilled with their root beer.

--Ted

 

[TrekkieMonster]

wow, what a fun thread. Brings back lots of memories.

I grew up in Oregon in the '60s. My mom stayed home with us when we were little, and both sets of grandparents had farms, so had home-cooked meals almost all the time. It was a big splurge to go out to eat. And, we didn't have any fast food chains in my hometown until I was about 6 or 7, and even afterward if we went for "fast food" it would be the local chain places: Arctic Circle, Flying Scott, Pietro's Pizza (which had an honest to goodness merry-go-round) and my personal favorite, Deb's (Mallory, does any of that ring a bell with you?) Deb's was a real old fashioned drive in where you pulled up in your car, parked under an awning, used a phone to dial in your order off a lighted menu that was at each parking space, and the waitresses would bring the food out to you on rollerskates and it would hang on a tray from your rolled-down car window. Ahhh, those were the days.

And, yeah, mom made us a hot breakfast every morning, either pancakes, waffles, eggs or french toast (there was a "rotation", though I don't recall if it was "set in stone"). And on Sundays we'd have this huge breakfast of fried eggs, bacon or sausage, and hash browns or fried potatoes. God, I can feel my arteries closing up now just thinking about it, but damn was that good!

As someone mentioned above, mom's tuna casserole was to die for, as was her mac and cheese (from scratch, not out of a box.) Unfortunately, meat was usually fried gravy made from the drippings of the meat, and always potatoes. So bad for us, but to this day I still sometimes crave that tough as shoe leather fried venison mom would make, with gravy over fried taters.

Unfortunately, I don't remember school lunches being all that great. In fact, for years I wouldn't eat broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts or pretty much anything they served at school because it was always cooked til it was smelly mush. It wasn't until I was probably in high school that I found out those things could be good when cooked properly. LOL! Oh my God, I do remember one school lunch that -- for what reason I don't know -- I always liked: they were called "wiener boats". It was a hotdog, split down the middle and opened up with 2 small scoops of mashed potato on top, covered with shredded cheese ... and those little 5 cent cartons of milk, of course (or a 10 cent carton of chocolate milk if I was splurging.)

Ah, what memories ....

And now I think I'll prepare myself some bran cereal with bran toast (without butter) and skim milk for breakfast. It's hell to get old.