McCall St. Brewer
Well-Known Member
Reading about all of the interesting recipes here to me to thinking about how much things have changed in my life when it comes to the food we eat. When I was growing up in the midwest back in the 60's we had plenty of good, cheap high quality food, but it was all pretty much the same. Lots of it was canned, too. (The same went for beer back then, come to think of it. You had a lot more national and regional brands, but they were all pretty much the same. Kinda like if instead of having to choose between Coke and Pepsi you had about 27 different colas that were all very similar. But, I digress).
A typical dinner when I was growing up would have been something like this: pork chops, seasoned with salt and pepper and baked in the oven, baked potatoes, a canned vegetable, such as green beans, peas or carrots, and canned fruit, such as pears or peaches. Another nice would be a beef roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, some other kind of canned veggies and maybe jello with canned fruit in it, or some other sort of salad.
Frozen vegatables were new and expensive. In the summer we would have fresh fruits and veggies (especially tomatoes) while they were in season. We would also have burgers, hot dogs, steaks, pork chops, etc. on the grill.
Ethnic foods? Well, spaghetti, lasagna and chop suey were about as close as we ever got to that.
The biggest thing that strikes me, though is not so much the lack of varied ingredients compared to today, but rather how our meals tended to be set up. With the exception of the occasional time saving casserole (most of which my brother and I dreaded and despised) most meals had a plain meat entree, a potato (baked, mashed or fried) and a vegatable, and they were almost never mixed together. My mother, both of my grandmothers, and almost everyone else I knew cooked like that.
No sauces, very few spices or seasoning other than salt, pepper, and the occasional onion. In some ways it was very good, but it was bland, bland, bland.
Lunch? Sandwiches with Oscar Meyer cold cuts, Campbells soup, chips, oreos and milk.
Breakfast? Cold cereal with milk, or oatmeal, or toast with butter and jelly. Sometimes doughnuts from the store. O.j. to drink, coffee for adults. On weekends we would have eggs and bacon or pancakes fairly often.
In short, we ate good, but man oh man would that be boring to eat like that today. I'm not saying that every day at our house is a gourmet adventure (in fact, given what picky eaters SWMBO and our two teenage boys are, it's usually far from it). Even so, though, there are an awful lot of things served in our household during an average week that we would have never dreamed of having 40 years ago.
A typical dinner when I was growing up would have been something like this: pork chops, seasoned with salt and pepper and baked in the oven, baked potatoes, a canned vegetable, such as green beans, peas or carrots, and canned fruit, such as pears or peaches. Another nice would be a beef roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, some other kind of canned veggies and maybe jello with canned fruit in it, or some other sort of salad.
Frozen vegatables were new and expensive. In the summer we would have fresh fruits and veggies (especially tomatoes) while they were in season. We would also have burgers, hot dogs, steaks, pork chops, etc. on the grill.
Ethnic foods? Well, spaghetti, lasagna and chop suey were about as close as we ever got to that.
The biggest thing that strikes me, though is not so much the lack of varied ingredients compared to today, but rather how our meals tended to be set up. With the exception of the occasional time saving casserole (most of which my brother and I dreaded and despised) most meals had a plain meat entree, a potato (baked, mashed or fried) and a vegatable, and they were almost never mixed together. My mother, both of my grandmothers, and almost everyone else I knew cooked like that.
No sauces, very few spices or seasoning other than salt, pepper, and the occasional onion. In some ways it was very good, but it was bland, bland, bland.
Lunch? Sandwiches with Oscar Meyer cold cuts, Campbells soup, chips, oreos and milk.
Breakfast? Cold cereal with milk, or oatmeal, or toast with butter and jelly. Sometimes doughnuts from the store. O.j. to drink, coffee for adults. On weekends we would have eggs and bacon or pancakes fairly often.
In short, we ate good, but man oh man would that be boring to eat like that today. I'm not saying that every day at our house is a gourmet adventure (in fact, given what picky eaters SWMBO and our two teenage boys are, it's usually far from it). Even so, though, there are an awful lot of things served in our household during an average week that we would have never dreamed of having 40 years ago.