<p>My Mom cooked a roast with veggies every Sunday, except in the summer when Dad would cook something on the grill. I still like that roast, but I now cook it in the crock pot.</p>
<p>A few years ago one of the elderly nuns at my children’s school asked me to organize a luncheon - she gave me a list of requested foods, and it included “ham salad.” Had not seen that in years, but the local Stop and Shop was able to whip up a batch for us - kind of a weird shade of pink, though. No one touched it at the meal, and the nun took it all home with her - must have been one of her childhood favorites - all of the parents got a big kick out of it.</p>
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Baklava is our go-to dish for neighborhood parties. If you buy the filo dough it’s super easy and everyone loves it.</p>
<p>I can’t understand why anyone would serve a canned pea. Frozen ones are yummy and no trouble at all. I did eat more canned veg than I would like as a child, but that’s because I lived in Somalia where frozen vegetables weren’t available.</p>
<p>Another Minnesota hot-dish eater, here! I still call them hot-dishes. My kids wouldn’t know what we were having, if I told them “a casserole”. We also have the honor of knowing what lefse is. I try to buy it whenever I’m in Minnesota/North Dakota.</p>
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Where I come from, anything like that was called a “congealed salad.” It came in many forms–most of which I liked, as long as there were no nuts.</p>
<p>We also used to eat a lot of deviled ham sandwiches. I still eat this occasionally.</p>
<p>Never had tuna casserole growing up. My parents said they had so much of it when they were first married that they vowed to never eat it again!
Favorites: spaghetti (yummm…), fried chicken, my mom’s chocolate fudge frosting
Food to be skipped forever: Spam (still don’t see how anyone could eat that), beets, just about any canned veggie starting with asparagus.</p>
<p>Canned peas…kids and I can’t stand the sight or smell. H thinks they are the best. Until I left home for college I thought cauliflower ws supposed to stink and be all yellow, broccoli was supposed to be all mushy and limp and beets always came pickled. H taught me otherwise (now, if I could only break him of that canned pea thing!). His parents did awesome things with vegetables, but they cooked meat til it became shoe leather. My mom really could cook well. Just not veggies. </p>
<p>My dad was in school while I was young, so not a lot of spare money. The things that defined our table at that time were…navy beans, mutton (lived near sheep ranches), powdered milk, and fried cornmeal mush. Sundays I remember rotisserie chicken, the smell of mowed grass and the voice of Vin Scully doing Dodgers games.</p>
<p>To this day I cannot stand navy beans, lamb, powdered milk. But I do miss that fried cornmeal mush and those sunny Sundays.</p>
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<p>I could have written this post. My best friend in grade school and I used to trade lunches: she’d take my PB & J, I would take her egg salad sandwich. </p>
<p>Thank God for that child!</p>
<p>My mom used to buy Cheerios for us to eat every morning. The smell of it made me gag…I couldn’t eat it. My brothers would scarf it down every morning with added sugar on top. I subsisted on raisin bran instead, eating on the sofa in the family room so I wouldn’t have to inhale Cheerio breath the entire meal.</p>
<p>I could actually live on peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and on the rare occasions when I pull it together and actually get to work with a packed lunch, that is one of my favorites!</p>
<p>Foods my mother served that I always hated and will never buy, nor cook: Liverwurst, liver, cauliflower & rutabagas. Our family take out splurge was chicken chow mien - I can still visualize the gloppy MSG-covered Chinese cabbage with small strips of chicken. </p>
<p>Food never served in the house when I was growing up, but I now love: spinach, beans, sweet potatoes, homemade coleslaw and grilled chicken. </p>
<p>Since I’m now GF, lots of dishes I ate as a kid are off our menu, but H & I ate in the early years of marriage: mac & cheese, tuna casserole, and meatloaf.</p>
<p>You can easily make a gluten free meatloaf. I use oatmeal where many recipe calls for bread crumbs.</p>
<p>I sat at the table until bedtime more than once because I wouldn’t eat canned peas. Blech. We had different food rules for my kids.</p>
<p>My mom made “macaroni, cheese, and tunafish”, which I guess was her version of tuna casserole. I liked but, but have never made it.</p>
<p>The only Chinese food I had when I was a kid was Chung King Chow Mein in a can. We only got it when my father was away because he didn’t like Chinese food. That stuff is pretty gross, but I ate it. I didn’t know what real Chinese food was until I got out of college.</p>
<p>And pizza from a pizza place? No chance. It was Mama Celeste frozen cheese pizza. We’ve eaten other frozen pizzas over the years, but Mama Celeste has been left out in the cold. Permanently.</p>
<p>Ditto on not knowing what real Chinese food was as a child. It wasn’t uncommon back then (late 50s, early 60s) for kids - or even teens - to think they “didn’t like Chinese food” because all they had ever been exposed to were things like that unspeakably gross chow mein from a can.</p>
<p>As I recall, they even served that kind of yukky “Chinese food” in the school cafeteria sometimes.</p>
<p>The best school cafeteria day was Mexican food day on Wednesday. This was in Texas, but a girl I met in college who grew up in Kansas said they always had Mexican food on Wednesdays at her school too. I always wondered how widespread it was, and why Wednesdays. :)</p>
<p>The Mexican food was Tex Mex, but it was so much better than the “Chinese food.”</p>
<p>My H had never had Chinese food until he asked me out. He wanted to take me to Black Angus, I refused & made him take me to the most innocuous Mandarin restaurant I could think of. He loved it!
( while my mom didn’t attempt to make Asian dishes, we did go to restaurants in town & on vacation in San Francisco)</p>
<p>I used to actually like swansons dinners. The only time we had them was when my parents were going out. I always had the turkey & dressing. But I think it had peas & pearl onions. I don’t understand why pearl onions exist.</p>
<p>No spam ever again. It was spam and eggs (for dinner!) in my house, yuck. I like but cannot cook liver and onions or tuna casserole because H will not eat them. I will order liver and onions in a restaurant. We regularly had creamed chip beef on toast, never have it now. I think spam and SOS came out of my dad’s navy years, from WWII. I never knew broccoli was supposed to be green when cooked, not gray, until I went to college. I never ate Chinese food until I went to college.</p>
<p>Another favorite of mine: breakfast for dinner–pancakes and bacon!
Swanson TV dinners–salisbury steak! Never eat them now but I’ve had enough in my lifetime.</p>
<p>Loved Liver and Onions that my grandmother used to make when I was a kid. I have never made it as an adult though. Also, her Velveeta mac and cheese, her Swiss Steak (which I have never been able to duplicate), creamed Turkey on toast, and her Chinese Pepper Steak (which I have figured out). </p>
<p>I also loved Liverwurst as a kid but now the though makes me gag.</p>
<p>Could not stand a lot of my mother’s cooking. Her hamburger/tomato/elbow mac “goulash” (yuck), chili that was watery and not sauce like at all, creamed tuna and peas on toast, fried pork chops with green peppers (hated peppers until I was an adult, the smell alone used to make me sick). Her homemade frosting made of tons of 10X sugar and vegetable shortening totally made me sick.</p>
<p>I did like her tuna casserole but only as an adult did I realize potato chips on top are good. Her spaghetti and lasagna were pretty good.</p>
<p>My paternal grandmother was an even worse cook! Mackerel baked in milk, chopped up very red hot dogs mixed with canned corn, frozen Tony’s Pizzas. Thank goodness she liked to order out a lot lol.</p>
<p>We do eat breakfast for dinner, not as a child but when it is just H & I.</p>
<p>When I was pregnant with D1, I was on strict bedrest for 15 weeks. H * does not * cook & in any case he was wiped after working at the shipyard all day. I had many meals of cornflakes or Stouffers lean cuisine with chicken, rice & green beans. I still buy it * very* occasionally, just for the nostalgia factor.</p>
<p>My maternal grandmother was a great cook. Midwest farm girl. Biscuits, wilted lettuce salad, pork tenderloins from Mo. Boysenberry pie. Cucumber & onion salad. sweet tea.</p>
<p>My ‘special’ meal when my parents were going out was a Swanson TV dinner - my favorite was the friend chicken, mashed potato, corn, apple cobbler & vegetable soup. </p>
<p>My birthday dinner request at that same time was some horrible (current opinion) family-sized tray of a frozen breaded chicken cutlet dinner with stuffing and gravy. I still see it in the stores and shudder.</p>
<p>You all have been busy while I was away. Love Jell-o. In Iowa, we called anything with a Jell-o base, Jell-o salad. Sometimes it was even green. My favorite Swanson dinner was the turkey one too. And my absolute favorite food from home, though I have rarely made them, are pork tenderloins. Yum!</p>