LOL! I was thinking the same thing, jujube. There isn't much you can do with ground beef, potatoes, and home canned green beans. It seems that's all I can remember ever eating. We were on a self-imposed tight budget.I'm trying to picture my mother trying to get us to eat by doing fancy things with food.... She was not "into" that sort of thing; you ate it as it was put on the table or you didn't eat it....your choice. ...
At the end of my junior year in college my room mates and I took all the food we had in the house and mixed it into one big pot and made a stew. Mostly it was canned stuff like sardines, beans, corn, tuna, spaghetti, kippered herring, ravioli, beef stew etc. It was pretty bad. We ended up throwing most of it out.