What has gotten better (or worse) in your life time? Starting with food!

Old Salt

Old Salt

Senior Member
Location
New Brunswick, Canada!
I remember well the fifties in Nova Scotia. You had four menu choices in your average family restaurant:

Hamburgers, Hot Chicken, Hot Beef and Hot Hamburger sandwiches with fries!

Wine was unknown, except for Andres Cold Duck which was for "Winos" only! My wife's first reaction to a Demi-Sec Riesling. "Gross, that is way too sour for my taste!" Ten years later everyone drank wine ... and many found Demi-Sec a bit too sweet! Go figure!

Using garlic was frowned upon. Only Italians used that evil smelling spice! Now I couldn't imagine life without garlic!
 

Too much baked goods & breads taste like preservatives instead of food. I loved Pop Tarts, but now if I eat one, it really upsets my stomach. I found the Trader Joe organic version of them without the extra junk doesn't bother me. Same with some other baked goods so I steer clear of them now if they have preservatives in them at stores.

Since the early 90's, I pretty much make all of our desserts, cookies & dinner rolls from scratch. We used to make all of our bread in the 90's when we had a bread machine. We don't eat that much bread now, but where I had been buying it closed & they did it from scratch. I think I'll be getting back to bread making again when we want it. The Kitchen Aid mixer makes kneading easy on my hands.

As for the meats, I'm lucky my friend's dad still raising beef & his nephew does pigs. I don't know what I'll do when his dad decides to retire :(. I buy the Amish raised chicken at the IGA, but I would like to have a source for locally raised birds. Most grocery store chicken doesn't have any flavor. I think much of the problem with chickens is that they have been bred to grow fast & they have no flavor. Same way with most of the hogs. The heritage breed hogs take longer to grow, but so much more pork flavor.

I didn't get to can or freeze-dry as much veggies as I wanted. It may just be me, but I think they have more flavor than what is in the store, fresh or frozen.
 
Old Salt said:
I remember well the fifties in Nova Scotia. You had four menu choices in your average family restaurant:

Hamburgers, Hot Chicken, Hot Beef and Hot Hamburger sandwiches with fries!

Wine was unknown, except for Andres Cold Duck which was for "Winos" only! My wife's first reaction to a Demi-Sec Riesling. "Gross, that is way too sour for my taste!" Ten years later everyone drank wine ... and many found Demi-Sec a bit too sweet! Go figure!

Using garlic was frowned upon. Only Italians used that evil smelling spice! Now I couldn't imagine life without garlic!
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I remember going out after church as a little kid in the late 60's to a little hole-in-the-wall truck stop that my Dad ate at on one of his monthly runs. Every Sunday they had pan fried chicken that they kept frying because almost everyone ordered it. Me, I had my hamburger with mashed potatoes & gravy, go figure.

If you went there any other day of the week, you had to wait 30 minutes for the chicken. It was well worth the wait when I went there as an adult. It closed up about 10 years ago. My husband & I miss that place because it was close to where we live at. It didn't change it's menu as long as I remember. The homemade pies were unbelievable. The only thing I have left from it is their Sugar Cream Pie recipe that the pie lady shared with my Mom.

Garlic is something I don't ever remember not having. One of the food groups at our house. My Dad made his own garlic sausage & would smoke it himself when the weather was cool.
 
As a kid I ate wonder bread and that bologna with the olives, and we ate velveeta cheese. So, in my life the food has improved a lot because now I eat frozen dinners that have whole grains and leafy greens.

This past week I had a loaf of bread from a bakery that tasted like genuine old fashioned real bread. My cat loved it as much as I did. Loaf was gone in 2 days.
 
Ok, so I started with food. Now I'll move on to my spine.

I knew it would gradually get worse, but not this much worse, and it hasn't been all that gradual. And it's really disappointing that the awesome relief I got from the last major surgery I had wore off after about 5 years.

On the better side, I've gotten quite a bit better at relationships.
 
Food tastes better to me but I shop at an upscale grocery store store because what I put into my body matters to me that much. I'm willing to pay extra for it. What's worse is the quality of life for people not in the 1%. When I was born you could own a home and a car and send the kids to college on one salary. Now people work two jobs just to squeak through life. This is the worst change I've seen in my entire life. :(
 
Jules said:
There was no garlic in the house when I was a kid. Probably no more than 10 spices, including S&P. A meal was meat, potatoes and one vegetable. In a word, it was blah. Admittedly, the farm fresh chicken did have flavour.
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Hubby & I was talking last week about how his grandma didn't cook with garlic & didn't like onions. Looking back, we had about the same spice amount as you did, but there was always a few we used more than others. No one bought new spices until what you had was used up so it's no wonder why food was so bland a lot of the time. No hot sauces or anything spice in the house except black pepper.

One time my kid looked at our spice cupboard & said if this was medieval times, we would have been considered rich, LOL. Amazing how food tastes change.
 
Jules said:
There was no garlic in the house when I was a kid. Probably no more than 10 spices, including S&P. A meal was meat, potatoes and one vegetable. In a word, it was blah. Admittedly, the farm fresh chicken did have flavour.
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lol...we only had white pepper and salt in our house growing up... but then we never did think to put spice on Canned Meatballs or Packet powdered chicken noodle soup...:D
 
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WE never had garlic in the house at all.... and to this day I rarely use it, altho' I have it here... I like the taste I just don't want to have stinky breath..

Useless fact :.. The Queen never ate Garlic..it was completely banned from her kitchens, and not permitted by overseas chefs to cook anything with Garlic for he... for the same reason with regard to smelly breath
 
There was a family-ran Italian restaurant, sadly gone, that made a salad dressing that was pure garlic. We would get carryout at work & even if you didn't get dinner, you bought a salad to protect yourself.

I haven't ever thought of garlic as offensive, but once. Two couples showed up late to a philharmonic concert & were bumping into the people already sitting. One of the men permeated the area with garlic. I could smell him & he was sitting about 10 people from me. I couldn't imagine being closer or next to him. I'm thinking most was hoping he wouldn't come back after the intermission. I don't know what he ate with garlic, but it diffentley was rank.
 
People eating restaurant food more often. When I was growing up, my mother fixed our meals and we ate at the table together. Desserts were a special treat at Sunday dinner. Ice cream on Saturday nights, again as a family watching television together. Both of my parents worked so somehow she made time for meals. Though my father made breakfast before he went to work. The only time we ate in restaurants was when were traveling (by car).
 
I can't deal with garlic unless it's in very, very small amounts. The smell makes me sick to my stomach. As far as food, my main food complaint is that fruit does not taste good like it used to. Some fruit is virtually tasteless, with a few exceptions. I've given up on buying fresh fruit for that reason, even bananas which I used to love. I tried a few brands of organic apples and decided I wasn't going to spend that extra and they had no taste.

There is a Muslim brother who with his crew sets up at the same spot, every single Sunday evening, come rain, shine, sleet or hail. They serve full course dinners to anyone who lines up to get a hot meal. This brother has been doing this for years. Somehow, he manages to find some good tasting fruit. He used to have so much food left over that he'd call my husband to come pick some of it up (since my husband "loaned" him his cook who prepared meals at his take out joint). On the menu was always chicken or fish, a starch, a vegetable and dessert, which was sometimes fruit salad. Most of time the fruit he sent us, including melons, tasted good.

Now I buy Motts organic applesauce from Costco and frozen mango chunks, sometimes from Costco...sometimes Great Value, Walmart's brand. I recently bought canned mandarin oranges, but haven't tried them yet. I stopped buy fresh ones a couple of months ago because I'd get the 3 lb bag...wasn't eating them fast enough plus there were always a couple per bag that were on their last legs.
 

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