Lots of things aren’t as popular as they once were but I still like to have some old school type things now and again. We eat much more fish, vegetarian stuff ,salads these days but can’t resist some old favorites now and again.
Meatloaf, Swedish meatballs, fondue, waldorf salad, Boston cream pie, pineapple upside down cake, etc. What do you like or miss?
My mother used to make a cheese ball for parties, with cream cheese, scallions, tobasco, and covered with those tiny little cocktail shrimp. The canned shrimp is hard to find, but I make this at holidays now. My kids love it.
Sometimes I also crave spam and pineapple, all fried up and yummy. Or corned beef hash and eggs. We only eat these on camping trips.
I love retro foods
meatloaf and mashed potatoes
swedish meatballs
beef stroganoff
chicken fried steak
fried chicken
red licorice
corned beef hash
cheese spread–blanking on the name, but it comes in a ball and is rolled in nuts
velveeta
jello
yellow cake with chocolate frosting
pineapple upside down cake
As you can tell, I grew up eating “diner food.” My mom’s dad owned a diner, and that’s what she ate growing up in the late 40’s/50’s, and because my mom hated/hates to cook, she just made what she knew. I’m sure this food would be too heavy for me now, but my tastes go toward home style old-fashioned food.
Pretzel jello
bundt cakes
green bean casserole
and we are having meat loaf tomorrow with mashed potatoes- my husband’s favorite dish.
Mac n cheese
TV dinners!
Kool-Aid
and, occasionally, Chef-Boyardee!
Kool -Aid and Chef Boyardee- it doesn’t get any better than that! My dad worked shifts and my mom would make Chef Boyardee pepperoni pizza sometimes when he was not going to be there for dinner. It seemed like such a special treat!
I do like a good meatloaf with mashed potatoes.
Every once in a while I make my grandmother’s “chili”. It’s a pound of spaghetti, a pound of hamburger and a can of tomato soup. No one in my family can understand it’s appeal, and it’s not healthy, so it’s been years, but it makes me feel very nostalgic.
Boston Cream Pie… mmmmmmmmm
Meatloaf
On the other hand, I grew up in Israel, so much of what is considered here to be new and trendy is everyday middle class and poor people food,
Just before the pandemic, I was gobsmacked to see z’hug on the menu of a hipstery restaurant. It was something that the Yemenite community lives off of. In the 1970s, most of this community were low income, btw. It is pretty cheap - green zlhug is green chile peppers, olive oil, lots of garlic and lots of fresh cilantro, add coriander and cumin, and there is is. Red z’hug uses less cilantro and red chile peppers. All of these are cheap and plentiful anywhere in the Middle East.
Of course it was bland and weak, and the waitress could not pronounce it, of course (that guttural “kh” sound, the Arabic and Mizrahi one, not the German or Spanish one, as well as a schwa), and tried to “correct my pronunciation”
<In prissy, pedantic voice> “it’s pronounce Ze-Hoog”. “Ze-Hoog”? “ZE-HOOG”??! there are 50 generations of Yemenite Jews spinning in their graves! I swear, I’ll pay for my niece’s Yemenite mother-in-law come and explain “politely” just how it’s supposed to taste and how you pronounce it. “Ze-Hoog”, my Pale Ashkenazi Posterior.
Anyway, Jerusalem kugel (with a Middle Eastern pickle on the side, of course), schnitzel (chicken, of course), chicken soup and kneidalach (it’s almost time!), matzah (yes, I like matzah, sue me), and some old fashioned mizrahi foods, which I guess aren’t retro, since they’re still being eaten in many places, and now are, apparently, being sold in hipster restaurants.
blintz
bacon wrapped scallops
goulash
liverwurst
I made those " mom bridge club" apps pre covid – pimento stuffed olives baked in cheesy crust. Those little balls of goodness were scarfed up in about 10 minutes!
I remember my dad used to buy shrimp cocktail in those little jars with the lids you had to pop off with a bottle opener. I would LOVE to get my hands on that again! Teeny tiny shrimp in a tangy cocktail sauce. And of course we had to reuse the glasses for drinking purposes.
I love those! Another old time appetizer I love- red pepper jelly on a block of cream cheese with Triscuits. Yum.
Pear salad (pear half, mayo, cheddar, topped with a maraschino cherry)
Jello marshmallow salad
Cheese straws
Deep-fried anything! - chicken, cubed steak, vegetables, seafood (I may have to try this sometime. I haven’t fried anything in years and years, but that used to be comfort food for me.)
Casseroles
Fruit cobblers
Pineapple upside down cake
Pound cake
We lived a few houses down from my grandmother so had family dinners at her house several nights a week (and always Sunday lunch!) A typical “simple” weeknight meal might be fried cubed steak, creamed corn (cut fresh from the cob), rice and gravy, green beans, butterbeans, sliced tomatoes (because you must have some color on the plate so it is pleasing to the eye) and a lemon icebox pie. All vegetables were from her garden. All that fried food, fat and carbs and no one needed an exercise plan to maintain a healthy weight. Life took care of that. My how times have changed.
I still have a slight aversion to mayo because of those pears. But my mom never topped them with cherries. They were always a mystery to us kids…
Love your grandmother’s family dinner description!
My great aunt used to make something she called “Heavenly Hash” for every holiday dinner. I loved it!!! I used to scour the internet looking for a recipe and stumbled across one in a vintage church supper cookbook we inherited from DH’s grandmother. It’s actually called 5 Cup Salad and has one cup of each: canned pineapple tidbits, canned mandarin oranges, mini marshmallows, shredded coconut, and sour cream. I make it occasionally but only because I still love it and would eat it by the 5 gallon pail.
We called that ambrosia. And it should have been on my list too since my grandmother made it for special meals. 
I like the “heavenly hash” moniker. 
I know that salad as ambrosia. My aunt made it for every holiday.
Brach’s Pick-a-Mix
Calico Beans
No Bake cookies
Jello salad
Are these retro enough?
Fluffernutter sandwich!
Loved Brach’s Pick a Mix. Butterscotch disks, Cinnamon disks, and the Neopolitan were my favorites. Hated the orange slices.