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Horrid Foods of Your Youth? (AKA Reminisce about Childhood)


Maggie Mae

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How many of us had to suffer through the awful food of the pre-2000s? My family rarely went out to eat, and my mom always had salad and fresh foods around, which saved me from my dad's HORRID concoctions. Here's a list:

  • tuna casserole
  • "shit" on a shingle (i think it's supposed to be called "chipped beef on toast.")
  • "goulash" (not Hungarian Goulash, which is really good. This was some sort of weird tomato sauce + noodles + ground beef)
  • Sloppy Joes (ground beef, tomato sauce, served on hamburger buns)
  • salmon patties (canned salmon, overcooked into a patty that was made with bread crumbs and dried out to the consistency of a hockey puck)
  • "welsh" rarebit (this isn't so bad, other than he didn't add any sort of spices to the cheese sauce)
  • beef stroganoff (egg noodles with ground beef and a can of mushroom soup)
  • meat loaf
  • meat loaf sandwiches
  • meat loaf on noodles
  • hamburger soup (greasy soup with bits of old hamburger and vegetables, overcooked and undersalted)

Compared to my mom, who is also a bad cook, but her food was more like:

  • iceberg lettuce with cucumbers and tomatoes (this was served before dinner every single night. sometimes my dad would sprinkle shredded cheese on it which was not my favorite)
  • polish sausage and sauerkraut
  • kielbasa
  • brats
  • liverwurst sandwiches
  • homemade spaghetti sauce on spaghetti noodles
  • meat loaf
  • tacos (american style), fridays only, make your own
  • fondue (my family loves fondues and has for as long as I can remember. One version that is wildly mocked is the one that is just a vat of hot oil sitting on the table with an extension cord, ready for anyone to trip over and cause a disaster, plus the plate of raw meats to be individually cooked in said bowl of hot oil) . This was a "special occasion" meal, so I guess we just really wanted to poison our friends and extended relatives.
  • microwave "chips and cheese" (this was her idea of a "special snack." gag)

And of course I had the usual stuff that was always around

  • peanut butter sandwiches
  • grilled cheese and campbell's tomato soup
  • breakfast burritos w/homemade salsa from grandpa's special closet that also held rhubarb wine/moonshine and a seemingly endless supply of picked vegetables
  • brats
  • various soups and casseroles made from leftovers.

We always had a side of veggies, which were often cooked in a casserole dish, covered with the old style of saran wrap, and microwaved if they were frozen, or chopped and served raw, or cooked in a pan on the stove if they were fresh. fortunately my grandparents had a lot of garden and we'd hit up roadside stands on the regular. 

Anyway, so my point is that things have changed so much that I'm really curious about what other people ate growing up!

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Edited by Coconut Flan
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Well my mother doesn't really like any herbs and spices so everything was salted or doused in ketchup but that's about it. My dad loves spices but he is not from America so he would have a lot of non-typical foods like cow intestines or chicken feet. So I had to choose what I wanted to eat for dinner. Tough decisions. ?

 

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I was born in the late 70’s.

Breakfast: oatmeal made in the microwave, toast, scrambled eggs, pancakes, french toast, and as a teen cereal. (Usually oatmeal 5 days a week.)
 

We had Kraft mac and cheese, homemade mac n cheese, baked chicken breasts, pasta salad, beef liver and onions, potato soup, hamburger soup (same as Maggie’s, but I loved it), hamburger meat and pasta (like  homemade Hamburger Helper), taco salad, a lot of veggies from the garden, sandwiches made with deli meat and cheese, apples, green salads, and I’m drawing a blank on what else. Chili. 

Eta: spaghetti, pinto beans and cornbread, baked potatoes 

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7 minutes ago, Kailash said:

I was born in the late 70’s.

Breakfast: oatmeal made in the microwave, toast, scrambled eggs, pancakes, french toast, and as a teen cereal. (Usually oatmeal 5 days a week.)
 

We had Kraft mac and cheese, homemade mac n cheese, baked chicken breasts, pasta salad, beef liver and onions, potato soup, hamburger soup (same as Maggie’s, but I loved it), hamburger meat and pasta (like  homemade Hamburger Helper), taco salad, a lot of veggies from the garden, sandwiches made with deli meat and cheese, apples, green salads, and I’m drawing a blank on what else. Chili. 

Eta: spaghetti, pinto beans and cornbread, baked potatoes 

Sounds like we had a lot of similar things going on! I'd forgotten about the potato soup! 

My mom saved me from the liver and onions by refusing to allow liver or beef tongue to be cooked in her house. Didn't stop my dad and grandma trying to get me to try them at some weird west Michigan restaurant in an old train. Gag. I hated onions as a kid.

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35 minutes ago, meep said:

Who else had hot dogs using a slice of sandwich bread as the bun?

Raises hand. 

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On ‎1‎/‎14‎/‎2020 at 2:53 PM, Maggie Mae said:

"goulash" (not Hungarian Goulash, which is really good. This was some sort of weird tomato sauce + noodles + ground beef)

Mulligan?  I make this, kids love it still.  It's one of my most Duggaresque recipes and if Jill were to post it FJers would tear her apart.

(lots of people here call it goulash)

Edited by HerNameIsBuffy
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3 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Mulligan?  I make this, kids love it still.  It's one of my most Duggaresque recipes and if Jill were to post it FJers would tear her apart.

(lots of people here call it goulash)

it's this: https://www.thecountrycook.net/grandmas-goulash/ but without the Italian spices, because why would we use anything in the spice cabinet? We might run out!

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11 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

it's this: https://www.thecountrycook.net/grandmas-goulash/ but without the Italian spices, because why would we use anything in the spice cabinet? We might run out!

Yep!  I have three versions of this in my repertoire....two are family favorites.

And a little something from the 70's called "Spanish Rice."  which in my house was white rice mixed with cans of diced tomatoes, hot dogs cut lengthwise laid over the top and that covered with sliced of American cheese.  

it is not Spanish, it is barely food, but now and again it's yummy.  It is absolutely worthy of the Duggar table.

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Most of what is mentioned above showed up at one point or another in my household.  Did anyone else have navy beans with ketchup?  That was my mom's go-to, and I didn't realize navy beans could be served any other way for the longest time, lol! 

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8 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

it's this: https://www.thecountrycook.net/grandmas-goulash/ but without the Italian spices, because why would we use anything in the spice cabinet? We might run out!

I make this all the time! Except I add green peppers, oregano and basil, and celery seed. My mother always added cumin, but I don't. I make it with more meat than I used to, and less macaroni because of my diabetes, and sprinkle (okay, more than sprinkle!) shredded mozzarella  on top, and walla! pure comfort food. 

I'm a child of the 60s, so I grew up on the aforementioned tuna casseroles, sloppy joes, spaghetti, meat loaf, and shit on a shingle. Never had navy beans with ketchup, though, @CTRLZero

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I grew up with most of the meals mentioned in the original post.  Goulash, for us, was the same as spaghetti but served with macaroni instead of spaghetti. ?‍♀️

My brother’s favorite meal was “Hash Burgers.” Open a can of corned beef, mix it with a bit of horseradish and ketchup, I think.  Spread that deliciousness on a hamburger bun. Then add ONE HALF of a Kraft American cheese slice.  Wrap each sandwich in foil and bake.  The best part was the crispy bun...and the melted cheese, of course.  


My mom called sloppy joes “scrambled hamburger,” and I still love salmon patties and tuna casserole.  

Edited by usmcmom
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  • 1 month later...

School dinners were pretty interesting for us in the 90s/2000s. My primary school served us "cake and custard" which was a very soft, underbaked sponge cake covered in incredibly runny custard. There was also semolina which is just gross.

High school wasn't much better once they "deskilled" the kitchen staff and we got microwaved meals instead of freshly cooked stuff. The worst one was the "curry" which tasted vaguely of washing up liquid and was incredibly runny. Supposedly this was a "healthier" meal than what we had before when the meals were cooked in the kitchen. We found out later that it's the same stuff they serve in care homes, it's deliberately "mushy" so that people with few teeth can still eat it.

Please kill me before I get old, it was bad enough the first time round.

Edited by unsafetydancer
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  • 4 weeks later...

Did anyone else grow up with that Weight Watchers dessert of jello mixed with cool whip? As a kid, I thought it was atrocious and my mom made it so often! Now as an adult, I actually kind of miss it. ?

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1 hour ago, meep said:

Did anyone else grow up with that Weight Watchers dessert of jello mixed with cool whip? As a kid, I thought it was atrocious and my mom made it so often! Now as an adult, I actually kind of miss it. ?

Ugh, i hate Jello so much. And cool whip.  Whipped cream does not make jello better, but it's still better than cool whip. There was aslo a jello pudding covered with cool whip. I don't understand my midwest family. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand their food choices now. 

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I hated spaghetti for a while as a child. We had it fit one meal while camping. A bird stole a noodle from my plate. Everyone jokes that it looked like worms. I could not eat spaghetti for a few years. I was convinced that it had worms in it.

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