What type of meals did you grow up on?

GAlady

Well-known Member
Location
Georgia USA
My family had home cooked meals all the time. Only exception would be maybe on vacations.

D233834F-0B83-40FF-8A72-105895C4F5F2.jpeg
 

Basic American home cooked cuisine 99.99% of the time. My family was on the poor side of middle-class and couldn't afford to pay more for restaurant food. Besides, there weren't than may places to get eat-in meals around here than. Decades before even a McDonald's, although eating out couldn't be avoided on vacations, but then dad saved up for that. I remember we almost always had a "special" meal on Sunday - like pot roast and such.
 
Definitely "a". Meat, potato, veggie; stews, cabbage rolls, sometimes beef roast for Sundays. We stopped for box of a dozen donuts on our yearly trip to the cottage. We did roadside picnic on occasion but food was packed for this. We couldn't afford restaurant meals that much. I never knew there was tv dinners at that time.
 
After the depression and WWII, my grandparents, with whom we lived, did not have much money so all meals were home cooked often using canned vegetables and staples from the root cellar. The memory of beets, turnips and rutabagas keeps me away from them today.
 
Unfortunately, my dear mom was not a great cook, and she had to cater to my dad. He liked his meat well done and his favorite veggie was Green Giant canned french cut green beans. We had a little garden, and one of the things he grew was beets. My mom would cook them, and that is why I never liked them.
 
Sorry mum in heaven.. but the food was horrible...

Mainly processed.. like Campbell's canned meatballs.. Birds Eye fish fingers ( yeah I know you all call them fish sticks outside of the UK)..Knorr packet Chicken noodle soup... Findus Crispy Pancakes.. *ugh*.. I hated those...

She would make stew from scratch ( which I detest to this day ) and was watery and grey..with just an added stock cube.... or the odd pot of home made soup....or Mac & cheese, ..or mashed potatoes, & cabbage, but in truth our diet was pretty much processed food.. and not much of it either, we were 1/2 starved as kids because the portion sizes were so small.. not for my father tho'.. if we got fish fingers, he got pork chops.. etc...
 
Last edited:
Home cooked. No TV dinners ever and restaurants were 10 miles away. Mom still is a great cook and she taught me early. I cooked full meals at 13 when she worked late. We occasionally used convenience foods like Hamburger Helper but most meals were from scratch. Summers were wonderful with tons of fresh garden produce and we froze and canned garden bounty.
 
A until I was a teenager when my mother began to sneak in a bucket of chicken, fish & chips, or pizza every now and then.

We rarely ate out when I was growing up. When we traveled my mother would usually pack a picnic lunch and then we would stop for an ice cream cone or some other treat.

I think about the difference nowadays.

When I was growing up we didn't have much in the way of prepared or fast food.

When we were too tired to cook we would have a bowl of cereal, eggs & toast, or grilled cheese with tomato soup from a can.

These days most folks opt for pizza wings and salad or Chinese delivery at a substantial cost and think nothing of it.

I still find it easier to pull something together than it is to order in or go out for a takeaway.
 
Last edited:
Grew up on my grandparents dairy farm my early years (1940's-50's) ... seems like 98% of what we ate came from the ground, or trees or cattle/chickens or processed in the smokehouse on the farm. My grandmother was always making cheese too. I remember that.
Shopping at a grocery store was for whatever was needed to put stuff together, as I recall, like sacks of flour, etc.

My favorite "meals" most of the time consisted of picking things from the garden and just eating them raw, or getting up into the trees (fruit and nuts) or grape arbor or berry bushes... I would eat strawberries until I got sick.
For the most part, it never occurred to me as a kid to eat inside the house ... well, maybe my morning bowl of cereal.
 
Last edited:
Mostly ate at home, but some eating out.
I grew up in East Texas and Grandparents were farmers - I grew up on Southern Food.
Bacon, Eggs, Sausage, Biscuits & Butter and Blackburn Syrup.
Fried Chicken, Cube Steak, Roasts, Meat Loafs, Fried Fish, Hamburger Steaks, all kinds of vegetables from the Garden and of course Cornbread.
I'm getting hungry !
 
Home cooked, hot meals. We never went out to eat unless the church had a breakfast or tea or we went to an amusement park and got boardwalk food. My family of great cooks originated in the south (although we were in Jersey) so my mother cooked what would be considered "soul food." She cooked all kinds of meats and poultry. I remember she even cooked rabbit once. She cooked collard greens which I never cared for, as well as fresh green beans and her cabbage was to die for. She made a mean macaroni and cheese too. My mother made sweet potato and apple pies but was known for her cakes. Often church members would ask her to bake for them. I did grow up eating pork because my mother made pork chops and bar-b-que spare ribs. I even ate her pigs feet but the thing I never ate was chitterlings.
 
Last edited:
Pinto beans, greens and cornbread, again and again...
Meat? what's that.
Swore I'd never eat pinto beans once i was grown, but in a few years i missed them.

Married a Yankee that did not know what Pinto Beans, Greens and Cornbread were
 
Unfortunately, my dear mom was not a great cook, and she had to cater to my dad. He liked his meat well done and his favorite veggie was Green Giant canned french cut green beans. We had a little garden, and one of the things he grew was beets. My mom would cook them, and that is why I never liked them.
I never like beets because they tasted like crap, seemingly regardless of how you cooked them - the exception being some pickled beets I once had. They weren't bad.
 


Back
Top