What are the foods you grew up with?

[Caserta44]

Basically whats your comfort foods? I come from a Lebanese and Italian backround my gf thinks what I eat is wierd but I dont really care cause its what I love

Here are mine:

My grandmother Bragoile
Pasta Fagiole
Grapleaves
Lubee with Rice Pilaf
Fathiya's(Lebanese lamb pie)
Fried zucchini flowers in the springtime

[mariebrizard]

On special occasions

Seafood paella
Smoked salmon with toast and mayonnaise

Everyday fare

Steak with fries
Chicken with fries
Soups
Spanish omelette
Spaghetti with tomato sauce
Lots of salad, mostly green but also with loads of other vegetables

[FoodFanAustin]

Poutines (I'm from Canada). Basically french fries covered with curd cheese and gravy~ Tastes much better than it sounds!

[spicyandtasty]

I grew up in India eating home-cooked meals so mostly a mix of western Indian staples, mainly Rajasthani-Punjabi food but also some South-indian, Gujarati and Maharashtrian dishes. My mother always cooked - fresh yoghurt everyday, fresh bread every meal!!
Now that I get my mother's cooking only once a year or so, this is all comfort food for me.

Breakfasts
Always a glass of milk with sugar; Chai was only allowed after we turned 14 or so
Indian-style thin Omelettes (chillies, tomatoes, onions) with plain parathas (weekends)
Stuffed Paranthas (flat bread) with Yoghurt (weekends)
Idlis, Uttapams or Dosas with coconut chutney or gunpowder chutney (weekends; for some reason we ate south-indian food only for breakfast in my house)
Sabudana khichri (spicy sago with potatoes and peanuts)
Alu Poha (flattened rice cooked with potatoes, onions, chillies, spices)
Upma (savoury semolina dish)
Dalia (something like bulgur polenta) with milk and jam

Lunch was always a green vegetable, some kind of dal (lentils) and Rotis (flat bread) and plain Dalia with home-made plain yoghurt

Dinners were usually elaborate and had one or more of these dishes:
Pulaos
Bean (chickpeas, rajma etc.) curries or dal
Rotis or different kinds of stuffed parathas (never had naan)
Bajri (milet) or jowar (sorghum) flatbreads made on charcoal or wood fire, gud (molasses)-ghee, and mooli (radish) or sarson (mustard greens) ka saag (my all-time favourite)
Jaadi roti (thick dimpled whole wheat bread), moong dal and gud-ghee
Dal Bati Choorma (roasted whole wheat bread balls)
Moothiye (dumplings made with flour and gourd) with kadhi (different kinds)
Gatte ka saag (never liked it)
Theplas (flat bread with fenugreek leaves and spices) with potato curry
Sometimes just plain dal rice and roti with a vegetable

Snacks with tea:

Pakoras with cilantro and green chilli chutney
Dhokla (white ones) with green chutney or red chilli and peanut chutney
Alu tikkis with chole, yoghurt and tamarind chutney
Patra
Besan ke chile with home-made tomato ketchup

I wasn't into desserts but my mum occasionally made gajar ka halwa (carrot pudding), kheer (rice pudding), lapsi (made with bulgur) and besan (gram flour) ke ladoo and kaju katlis (made with cashews).

The best part of our food was the freshness of all the ingredients - milk came fresh in the morning, yoghurt was set every night, veggies were bought fresh, flour was milled every month and so on. I never had a canned or frozen anything until I came to the US.

And I really miss the fresh fruit. Mangoes!

My favourite summertime food: fresh alphonso mango pulp with lacche paranthe (flaky bread) made with ghee followed by a drink of buttermilk or lassi. Followed by a long afternoon nap:)

Ah, can't wait to go back and chow! Just two more weeks!

[Sam Fujisaka]

Mom was a great cook and baker. Foods included:

All types of Japanese peasant (and other) food

All things "American"

Many, many Cantonese Chinese dishes

Mexican, much learned from the Oaxacan cook who cooked during peach harvest

Plus a large array of Italian, Filipino, German, Swedish, Armenian, and other dishes.

The back yard provided asparagus, grape leaves, walnuts, pecans, kumquats, pomegranates, Japanese pears and apples, valencia and navel ornages, grapefruit, mint, and avocados. Mom and the aunts also did a lot of canning, perserving, jam making, and drying.

We ate well.

[cassoulady]

Sam, when you were a little boy did you realize you ate well or was it only in retrospect that you realized you mom was a great cook with a lot of variety. I ask because my SOs mother is a wonderful cook making homemade everything. He ate wonderful homemade pates as a snack afterschool but it wasnt until relatively recently that he realized that this was out of the norm.

[Sam Fujisaka]

I guess we suspected. About all of the moms saw my mom as a good cook; and now and then my mom would say something about how the hakujins (white folk) always way overcooked their vegetables. We always had a lot of people from different backgrounds over for dinners - they were always full of praise for mom's cooking. Holidays like Thanksgiving we always had turkey, ham, stuffing, gravey, cranberry sauce, lots of vegetables (no green bean casserole), mayber Swedish meatbaslls, rice (!), homemade rolls and breads, AND a full set of Japanese courses followed by from scratch cakes, pies, cream puffs, ...

Friends always wanted to be invited over for holidays - further evidence at the time I guess.

[Passadumkeg]

Lots of good Russian and 'Merican food:
Soups, borscht, schi, chicken garlic veggie; I remember the big hunk of soup meat, steaming on the plate to be cut in thick tender slices.
Prune stuffed veal roast, veal beast.
Great fried chicken, fried liver and onions.
Stes and pot roasts.
Pielmenie, pierogies, kielbasi, kapusta and great corn rye.

[laliz]

creamed (canned) salmon over mashed potatoes
TV Dinners
Scalloped potatoes and stuffed pork chops
Fish sticks and baked (frozen) french fries
meat loaf
roast beef and potatoes and carrots
Fried chickien
City chicken
Franco American (boxed) spaghetti dinner
Kraft dinner
Hot dogs
Campbell's soup with a sleeve of saltines
Pizza (take out) on Friday night

my Aunt Esther's home made bread
corn on the cob

[tayhere]

Spaghetti and red gravy (tomato sauce), usually with Italian sausage
Stewed chicken with rice and lots of gravy
Fried pork chops with pick-a-pepper sauce and pickled peppers
Big pots of gumbo
Jambalaya
Pasta with shallot/red pepper flake cream sauce
Turkey poulet(?) - sliced turkey on toast with bacon and a cheesy bechamel sauce, broiled
Tomato salad with capers
Fried eggs and toast for dinner with bacon made in the oven
Homemade chili (no beans) with chunks of pork on tortillas
Ham with a caramel sauce my Daddy made
Fried ham sandwiches
Stuffed artichokes
Red beans and rice (usually cooked in the slow cooker with ham bones and smoked sausage)
Big baking pans full of garlic-y croutons from old French bread
Potato and leek soup, with heavy cream and cheese and bacon
Trays of crawfish brought home by my Daddy
Anchovy bread, deliciously oily
Beignets buried in powdered sugar on Sunday mornings

[roro1831]

Crawfish here as well, crabs, shrimp, fish freshly caught in the Gulf of Mexico.
jambalaya
Stuffed mirlitons
Gumbo
German potato salad
Lots of fresh made cole slaw (vinegar based)
Pork chops browned on top the stove, then put in a baking dish with a slice of bell pepper, a ring of onion, a mound of rice on top of each and chopped tomatoes spread in the pan and baked until done.
Stewed Chicken
Oysters
Red Beans and rice
Hamburgers cooked on the stove and pork and beans (this was the treat when my dad worked second shift and wasn't home for dinner)
Roast
Sausage made by my grandfather cooked at home and served with bread for dipping in the juice.
Manuel's hot tamales every Sunday night after lunch at my grandfathers

[thenamesdiana]

Breakfast:
Cereal
Lunch:
School Food
Dinner:
Steamed White Rice
Roasted Salted Yellow Croaker
Kimchi
A Chigae of some sort
and
Various banchan
Peeled and Cut Apples for dessert

[al b. darned]

Nothing was ever deep fried in our house. In fact, I didn't know what it was until I went to work in a diner one summer while in high school.

Here's my list:
pot roast
"Fried chicken" but was actually baked chicken with a really great breading crust on it. Think "Shake and Bake" only good.
Frozen French fries done in the oven.
Meat loaf
Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches
Grilled tuna and cheese sandwiches.
Chicken noodle soup
Really good hard salami from a local Mom and Pop store.
Kielbasa from the same place
Polish bread from the store down the street from Bopcha's house
Mushrooms foraged with my Dad from the woods behind my parent's house.
Raspberries picked from the bushes alongside the road.
Little tiny field strawberries from the cow pasture across the road. (Be careful where you step.)
Real potato pancakes
Oatmeal cookies with butterscotch bits.
Home made maple syrup
B&M baked beans
Essem hot dogs (there were no other brands of either, as far as we knew.)
Of course on New England style buns.
B&M Brown bread
Mom's beef stew
PB&J and FlufferNutter sandwiches

[kubasd]

shake and bake chicken
broiled pork chops with rice-a-roni rice pilaf canned green beans was a common meal
chicken breasts marinated in wishbone robust italian dressing, grilled with same sides
spaghetti with homemade sauce
homemade beef stroganoff and beef bourginon
fried shrimp for special occaisions
veal parmesan
meatloaf with mashed potatoes
hamburger pie (ground hamburg in tomato sauce topped with mashed potatoes and cheese, then baked)
chicken cacciatore
pierogies
gwumpkies (sp?)
oven fried chicken

all meals had meat, potatoes/rice/noodles, and a vegetable (usually canned) prob explains why i steer away from such eating now

[slewfoot]

Ranch Style beans. Still great.

[MNLisaB]

Grew up in Brooklyn, in what is now known as "Liitle Odessa". Mom was a great cook, and we did have many of the standard ethnic dishes as well as deli take out: great deli meats, kreplach, chopped liver, gefilte fish, stuffed derma, fresh bagels and bialyis, etc. We went out for Chinese every Sunday night at Kwai Fong's (Cantonese, of course) and bought our pizza by the slice at Rocco's. She worked part time, so a great treat was Swanson's TV dinner, fried chicken. Mom made a mean pasta sauce with very flavorful meatballs.

[Beckyleach]

My parents' marriage was "mixed": He was a sturdy New England lad of German/English ancestry; she was a dirt poor East Texas gal, come from a long line of (previously wealthy before those "unpleasantries between the states") Virginian and South Carolinian landed gentry...

So, we ate: New England boiled dinner, pinto beans and cornbread, brown bread and baked beans, turnip greens and pot likker, rutabaga (ugh) and corn fritters, macaroni and cheese and pimento cheese, deviled ham and pot roast, pan fried chicken, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, German potato salad and peach fried pies, tuna noodle casserole and salmon croquettes, banana pudding and mince meat pie....It was weird, but delicious. And because my father was stationed in China and India during The War, we had not-authentic "chow mein" and "chop suey" and Muligatawny Stew. Because my mother was a wild thang and kept running across the border when they lived on the Rio Grande, we also had tamales and enchiladas and guacamole. My friends--this was during the late '50's through late 60's, mostly--thought we were NUTS. I thought were were lucky. :-)

[Alan N]

This is not the first time that I have been interested in the details of your food experiences. What was the not authentic chop suey? Mac and cheese with pimento cheese sounds great.

[Beckyleach]

Hah! I guess that's really redundant, to call "chop suey" unauthentic? ;-) My father liked a weird version that was sort of a horrible cross between chili and Chinese food...something his father was fond of concocting during the Depression. Later, my mother tried to "authenticate" it but everything, in those days, still came straight from a can. What WAS the name of that company? La Choy? Something like that...

[buttertart]

"La Choy makes Chinese food...orchestral flourish...swing American!" But didn't succeed.

[Alan N]

Got it, thanks.

[trixie67]

I grew up in Southern California with a stay at home mother that REALLY didn't like to cook, yet I have VERY distinct food memories..

1. Spaghetti with red sauce
2. VERY overcooked hamburger patties with iceberg lettuce with Mayonnaise as salad dressing (i didn't even know there was such a thing "real" salad dressing until I was 14!
3. Ortega boxed taco nights- Mom would use the season packet on hamburger, then we got to load them ourselves... LOVED these.
4. Chef Boyardee cheese pizza from the box & root beer floats. We got this any time my parents had company over & they wanted us to happily & quietly stay in our room.
5. meatloaf sandwiches on sourdough bread with ketchup & mayonnaise

[Querencia]

Circa 1937, Midwest, Southern great-grandmother: big pot of dried beans always on the stove (mostly navy beans but sometimes limas). Cooked for hours with a piece of salt pork or a ham bone. A few potatoes thrown into the pot toward the end. Service: using your fork, mash a potato on your plate, spoon over some of the bean gravy, have a pile of beans next to this, and have chopped raw onion with it as a relish.

Same household: brown sugar icebox cookies with black walnuts from the tree in the back yard. Pie: coconut cream, butterscotch meringue, custard with nutmeg on top. On Sundays, chicken cooked in a big pot with the kind of dumplings that are rolled out like fat noodles. Green beans cooked all day with a ham bone. Grilled cheese sandwiches with Delaware Punch or Orange Whistle. Fried (in bacon fat) egg sandwiches on crappy white bread, with lots of salt and pepper. Stewed black raspberries poured over bread. Corncakes (cornbread batter fried on griddle). I cook now in memory of my great-grandmother. People think that little kids aren't paying attention, but they are taking careful notes. (And one more, not home-cooked but from bakery a block away, coffee cakes about 9 x 12 covered with an inch or more of topping---cherry, pineapple, peanut---and icing---price per cake, ten cents.)

[elie]

If you are from the midwest, you may recognise this dish my mother made. We called it Cicago chopsuey. You either loved it or hated it.
Ingredients: beef/celery/bean sprouts/onions/Cinese mollases/soya sauce
It was a far cry from chopsuey as the world knows it, BUT my father loved it.

Elie

[Alan N]

That was "Chinese" at my house. Loved pattisue's post a little bit up. Cajun and Texan.
My Mom worked hard and made some good stuff for us.
BBQ chicken
Big Taco Salads
Rice and Curry (1st had tabasco on this, threw up after using most of a bottle, love it now)
Twice baked potatoes
RAMEN noodles!

[Popkin]

My grandma's chocolate chip oatmeal cookies (which mom and I LOST the recipe for.... all we can remember well is that there was no brown sugar, it had evaporated milk, yet they were still chewy. we are on a joint venture to figure it out. if we keep tossing enough ingredients together, even by sheer chance we should stumble upon it, and that day shall be great!)

carnitas - pork roast cooked with oregano, garlic, onions, and oj concentrate

porcupines - beef and rice meatballs seasoned with garlic and oregano, fried then simmered with water, tomato sauce, and rice

macaroni and cheese using evaporated milk

french cut string beans cooked in too much butter and waaaay too much garlic salt (that was the only way I'd eat them lol)

cinnamon sugar toast - grandma used to carry a little sprekles bear shaped shaker of cinnamon sugar in her purse for when we went out for breakfast. Use too much butter so that the bread gets a little soggy, and be generous with the sugar. I still have the jar *heart*

chicken breasts seasoned with pesto and tossed with egg noodles

egg noodles with butter and garlic salt

fruit salad - bananas, apples, peaches, pears, strawberries in very vanilla real whipped cream

pasta carbonara - pasta, eggs, cream, tomato paste, pesto, garlic, parmasan, and bacon

cakey cheesecake - for the longest time I thought everybody else was getting it wrong, but I guess most cheesecakes are more pie like. the kind mom made was more like a chream cheese cake in a graham cracker crust

"eggnog" - an egg, milk, sugar, and cinnamon tossed in the blender

garlic soup from a certain downtown jamestown (CA) cafe

apples with peanutbutter

pepsi from the can, just a bit below room temperature - the only soda I was allowed growing up was the remainder of my mom's pepsi, so I have developed a taste for slightly below room temp pepsi in a can

[Boccone Dolce]

Pasta, Salad and bread at almost EVERY dinner.
There were 7 of us, and not a lot of $$$$$ so meat was a luxury.
It was almost always good, even if there were yucky peas involved- we were expected to at least taste it.
I remember Mom used to make what she called 'Girl Scout Dressing' - mayo, ketchup, pickle relish (well- we would mince up pickles!) - aka 'thousand island' - I LIVED for that stuff and would dump a cup of it on 3 lettuce leaves!!
I remember making the salad - slamming the head of lettuce on the counter to get the core out- and being scarred for life because one time a bug came flying out!
Sunday Gravy- she started it early and the house smelled so good when we came in from church.
Dad making pancakes, and pizza (if we were lucky)
Mom's bracciole, meatballs and crazy attempts at baking...

[kirinraj]

My dad's indian and my mom's filipino (from hawaii) and puerto rican so i ate some interesting foods when i was little, unti i took over the cooking. these were some favorites:
Sambhar/rasam with vegetables and rice
chicken adobo and rice
"filipino meatballs"
puerto rican chicken stew with rice and tostones
I especially looked forward to when my indian grandma came to visit because she cooked great south indian food. but most of what i ate was mediocre food that my mom got from cooking magazines/cookbooks. which is why i cook for the family now ;) (until i go to college)

[im_nomad]

I'm from Newfoundland, so it goes without saying that there was a lot of fish on the table when I was growing up, problem is, it always seemed ( to me anyway), to be stewed with potatoes, and I hated it. I didn't love fish until I later discovered cod au gratin.

Other regulars on the table:
-baloney stew (yes, stew, baloney, potatoes, onions, gravy,....and despite me being a non-meat eater these days, i remember that one fondly)

-corned beef hash (from a can)

-baloney cups (balogna cooked with tomato soup til it curled up)

-roasts, and chicken, as well as these huge short ribs my parent used to buy that were like fists they were so meaty.

-pork chops

-strange chicken cutlet things that were sort of grey inside..but we loved them.

-we ate alot of canned vegetables growing up, peas and carrots, whole corn on the cob etc. In addition to the fresh stuff like cabbage, turnip, parsnip, onions...potatoes

-which leads me to the summer dishes of salmon and new potatoes with drawn butter.

-capelin, cod tongues, sounds

-jiggs dinner, salt beef, cabbage, veg, figgy duff, pease pudding etc. I loved salt meat as a child.

oddly enough we also had a few (at least for our area) unusual dishes, like tacos, chili, swedish meatballs etc.

breakfast was usually cereal, although i don't remember fresh milk until i was older, I grew up with evaporated tinned milk on cereal, usually corn flakes or that horrible puffed rice that used to come in huge bags.

fruit i remember was mealy mcintosh apples (which is why i still don't like them), only got a "hard apple" aka a "five point" apple in my stocking at x-mas. The odd orange maybe. lots of blueberries, partridgeberries and bakeapples (i.e. lingonberry or cloudberry)

mmmm home made bread, jam , and fussels cream . Fussels was prominent for dessert...on fruit cocktail or otherwise.

[EWSflash]

My mom was an erratic, but nearly always brilliant cook. My folks used to make a dish called mock duck, which involed carefully butterflying a flank steak, topping with your basic thanksgiving stuffing, rolling it up, sewing it closed with industrial cotton thread, and cooking on the grill until it was just perfect. They didn't get along all that well, my parents, the choreography that happened to make that perfect dish time after time completely eludes me. When it was cooked she let it rest and sliced it into always-perfect (from my memory) beautful rolls of flank steak and stuffing. don't know how they did it, they're both dead, I'll probably never know exactly what alchemy made that happen, but boy howdy, if anybody know the recipe from the '50s in Tennessee, I'd like to hear it

[Cinemaverite1]

Ichiban ramen (original flavor)
Cream of Mushroom "porridge" (basically it was condensed cream of mushroom, water, instant oatmeal, and an egg stirred together- I swear it tastes better than it sounds)
Spam and rice
Clam Chowder with rice
Corned hash (from a can) with rice
McDonald's
Rice with butter and soy sauce
Rice and nori

For dinner when mom came home from work...

-kimchi jigae
-kimbap
-seaweed soup
-dwenjang (fermented bean paste) stew
-galbi, bulgogi...I loved to mix the sweet marinade for the bulgogi with hot white rice!
-all kinds of banchan
-homemade mandu- either fried, steamed, or as a soup

Really, nearly every korean dish I can think of, my mom served it forth so effortlessly and deliciously at home. She's an awesome cook.

[momofthreems]

I know this is an old post, but I just had to reply.
My mom was a firm believer in eating breakfast in the morning, so I grew up with grits and bacon, canned sausage over white rolls or canned biscuits, bacon biscuits, french toast with salt and pepper and scrambled egg sandwiches with green pepper and bacon.

If we were home for lunch, it was usually some form of sandwiches....very big sandwiches with ham, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onion slices and mayonaise. We also ate t.v. dinners (turkey or fried chicken) and Schwans frozen pizza.

My mom cooked supper every night. Every other week or so we had spaghetti (my favorite), lasagne (my sister's favorite). Fried chicken with mashed potatoes, deviled eggs and green beans every Sunday. In the winter she fixed pinto beans with fried potatoes and cornbread and then the next night we would have chili beans. She would fix a roast in the crockpot with potatoes and carrots and then the next night would be beef and noodles. We grilled out a lot in the summer with hotdogs, hamburgers, grilled keilbasa and blackened redfish. Mom would fix corn with either peas or lima beans mixed in. Also in the summer we ate a lot of tomato sandwiches, BLT's, cucumber and tomato sandwiches on white bread with mayo, english muffins topped with sliced cheese, fresh tomato slice and bacon. I'm sure there is more, but these are what I remember the most.

[ctflowers]

Fried Chicken Livers
Borscht with a dollop of sour cream
Matzo Ball Soup
Homemade chicken soup
Pot roast with carrotts, potatoes, and celery
Bread pudding
Creamed spinach
Peas or green beans with almost every meal
Spegetti with meat sauce
Pickled herring

[ctflowers]

Campbell's Tomato Soup and a grilled cheese sandwich
Potato Pancakes
My Mom's homemade rice or bread pudding
My Mom's stuffed cabbage and stuffed peppers
Noodles mixed with cottage cheese and cinnamon sugar

[ellaguru]

Kraft Dinner.
Campbells tomato soup with macaroni
Fried bologna. This is still delicious.
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Pancakes with cheddar and tomatoes.
Mustard on everything. Bologna rolled up with mustard. Toast with mustard. Pizza with mustard.
I spent time with my québécois family and my Ukrainian farm family, so all of the above plus baked beans, soupe aux pois, tourtière, cretons, pâté chinois, (this can all be summed up under 'lard') and perogies, holuptchi, perishke, sauerkraut, borscht, kielbasa, potato pancakes (sour cream/cottage cheese, dough, potatoes, cabbage, buckwheat, cabbage) etc. You'd better believe that stuff will kill ya.
...I'm hungry now.

(I have no idea how to spell the farm stuff.)

[pattisue]

My mother was a Texan married to a Cajun. When we were very young, she still cooked Texas style, and Sunday dinner was fried chicken with cream gravy, biscuits, mashed potatoes and sweet peas. As she became completely immersed into Cajun culture, we had gumbos and any rice-n-gravy meals, like chicken fricassee, smothered round steak, pot roast. Not many casseroles unless Daddy wouldn't be home for supper, because he didn't like them. When Daddy cooked it was fried fish, mostly white perch, bream, bass, catfish. Boiled crawfish and crabs.

[goodhealthgourmet]

mom's pot roast/brisket
mom's matzoh balls
my aunt's matzoh brei
mom's/grandma's thanskgiving stuffing recipe
zabar's nova, sable & whitefish salad with an h&h bagel or a kossar's bialy
zabar's chocolate croissants
"honey-dipt" fried chicken
carvel ice cream birthday cakes [back when they were actually edible]
"sloppy joe" sandwiches - not the standard american ground beef & tomato sauce kind, the new jersey jewish deli version: roast beef, russian dressing & cole slaw on rye [with a kosher sour pickle on the side, and chocolate-covered jelly rings or apricot fruit leather for dessert!]
cream cheese & jelly sandwiches
sunday night family dinner at the local chinese restaurant - had to have the dish of fried crispy noodles and packets of duck sauce & chinese hot mustard on the table
fluffernutter sandwiches
mallowmars
archway dutch cocoa cookies

foods that i loved as a kid but now the mere thought makes me gag:
kraft mac & cheese
spaghetti-o's
chef boyardee ravioli
rainbow sherbet when i was sick

i obviously didn't exactly grow up in a family of foodies. they still can't figure out how i managed to become a good cook...and a chowhound to boot!

[cookiez]

My mom was a Jewish June Cleaver. Dinner in the dining room every night.

Prime Rib
Baby Lamb Chops
Meat Loaf with Roast Potatoes
Blintzes
Chicken Soup and Matzoh Balls
Stuffed Cabbage
Stuffed Derma
Tuna Noodle Casserole
Mashed Potatoes mixed with Spinach!
Hamburgers and Milkshakes for breakfast- I was a fussy breakfast eater and mom would jump through hoops so I would eat
Campbell's Tomato Soup and grilled cheese
BLT's
Grilled Steak
Sunday Brunch - Nova, Whitefish, Bagels, Creamed Cheese, Onion, Tomatoes, Lox, Eggs and Onions and Dunkin Doughnuts.
Fresh Fruit Salad
Grapefruit halves with Marischino cherry topper
Noodle Pudding
Carrot Tzimmes with Potato Knaidel
Cinnamon Coffee Cake with Walnuts
Skinless and Boneless Sardines and Cream Cheese mashed together and served on crackers
Cream of Wheat with milk, salt & butter
Salmon smothered with sauted mushroom & onions
Whiskey Sours
Raspberry Mousse
Red Jello with a dollop of whipped cream
Lettuce wedge with Russian dressing
Sauted Cauliflower
Zucchini with tomatoes and onions
Take-out Chinese on Sunday

[goodhealthgourmet]

another thread just reminded me of my childhood favorite junk foods. haven't eaten any of them in years:

tastykake butterscotch crimpets
devil dogs
twinkies
ring dings/diing dongs/yodels
famous amos chocolate chip cookies
keebler fudge stripes cookies
doritos
cheese doodles [the fat, puffy kind]
fritos
entenmann's donuts with the little nuggets on top
freihofer's cookies

amazing. i used to love all that crap, and i was such a skinny kid.

[Caroline1]

Breakfast:
Soft boiled eggs in the shell in an egg cup with a dollop of butter with salt & pepper. Dip toast crusts into it. If my mother's parrot's cage was open, Mickey would come and try to eat my egg.

I grew up in a three generation extended family. I had to gather the eggs every morning before school, then fight with my brother over the tiny little first eggs or the giant double or triple yolkers. Those were cooked sunny-side up. Never soft boiled.

Dense steel cut Scotch oatmeal spread thickly over the bottom of a soup plate, topped with a layer of Kellog's All Bran, then liberally sprinkled with brown sugar with rich milk floated on it. Do NOT stir! Just eat like pudding. God I love it, but now I'm allergic to oatmeal.

My mother's egg salad on toast for breakfast. It ALWAYS had shells in it!

School lunches: Peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches. Three home made peanut butter or chccolate chip cookies wrapped in wax paper. Either a banana or an apple or an orange. Every single day! Good stuff for trading though.

Family meals:

My mother made fantastic stacked enchiladas with a fried egg on top. For company! I love 'em, but won't make them for more than two people. She would make them for a crowd.

Home grown rabbits and chickens cooked every way possible, and always our own home grown turkeys for holidays.

Tons of home grown vegetables from my grandfather's garden. Artichokes, peanuts, pumpkins, beets, ucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, asparagus, every vegetable you can think of. Kids eat vegetables when they help grow and pick them. Except my brother. Won't eat string beans to this day. I also learned that if you feed a cow tomatoes, it will give pink milk. Boy, did I make our neighbor angry! Who knew?

Holiday meals always included my mother's home made yeast rolls. You could smell them baking for miles around! Wish I could find cake yeast today. I think it made her yeast rolls more aromatic.

Huge beef shoulder roasts my mother would buy in Tijuana (we lived in San Diego) on Mondays at her favorite butcher shop. That shop got the bulls from the corrida on Sunday, and my mother liked the shoulder roast because it alread had a hole in it to fill with garlic. For days afterward we would have cold sliced roast beef sandwiches on white bread with fresh made butter and lots of salt and pepper. (Now I'm hungry!)

My grandfather's home made chili.

My grandmother's candied apricots (from our trees) that she would store in tins in trunks to eventually send to family in England. Unfortunately the trunks had moth balls in them. Ever had a moth ball flavored candied apricot?

My grandmother's home made lemon curd.

My mother's "from scratch" chocolate pudding on cold blustery winter nights in front of the fire.

And my mother's fruit cakes. She would make them in spring, then spend the rest of the year dousing them with booze. Everybody, including me, loved them! And her mince pies! I wish I had that recipe. After I married, she would bake a bunch of miniatures in muffin tins and freeze them for me. I had mince pie popsicles for months and shamelessly never shared! God, I miss her.

But I still haven't fogiven her for the year she kidnapped my Christmas goose stuffed with chestnuts, apricots, wild rice and Grand Marnier. She took it to her house and made goose tacos! I didn't speak to her for days. Weeks maybe.

[lesupersteph]

I grew up in Miami with a French father and Norwegian mother.

"potage" that my grandmother in Paris would make by hand with a food mill EVERY night before the main course, delicious.
tuna noodle casserole
my father insisted in "barbeque-ing" totally overdone thin steaks on the grill, my sister and I HATED this.
"salade": green butter lettuce with home-made vinaigrette with shallots.
baked beans from a can with hot dogs in buns
cuban sandwiches and medianoches with my dad when we were out doing errands
my mother learned to make the best "lechon" (pork shoulder marinated in lime, garlic, and onions) I have ever had, AND black beans from scratch.
ratatouille (I saw someone else had this too!)
sunny side up eggs and grilled tomatoes for brunch
soft-boiled eggs with little thin strips of toast for dipping (someone else also had this!)
my mother's best friend was lebanese so we always had home-made "kibbes", "tabouli", "hummus", and "grape-leaves" at their house and she taught my mom to make yogurt in the oven.
tuna sandwiches with just tunafish and miracle whip on small soft rolls from publix for lunches
lefse (i have never been keen on this but it's fun to make)
my grandmother would make rhubard pies from scratch at "The Lake" in Minnesota
cinnamon toast crunch cereal, my sister and I hated breakfast so we were given pure sugar as a bribe.
we were always on the baguette hunt, being in Miami, but we learned to love bagels A LOT (I want one right now)!
spaghetti with ragu sauce, some spices, ground beef, and Kraft parmesean on top
peanut butter and saltine cracker sandwiches (when I was really little)
Carvel icecream cakes for birthdays
McDonalds on road trips
our neighbors were mexican (and my bofriend is now too) but I clearly remember the day that I was invited over to dinner to have chicken rolled tacos there, I could barely believe it. Until that day tacos were Ortega, and they were from a box to be served with shredded cheese, lettuce, hot sauce, corn, and tomatoes.
I hated Shake and Bake but it was served
and LAST but not LEAST:
"Chicken Al Forno", a cut-up chicken in a baking dish, mixed with mushrooms, red and green peppers, tomatoes, and toped with "Wishbone Robusto Italian" dressing and parmesean cheese. We LOVED this but cannot seem to find the dressing anymore. I was served with white rice.

[goodhealthgourmet]

steph:

hang on tight to that carvel ice cream cake memory, but keep it as just that - a memory.

i posted recently on another thread about this. i, too, grew up with carvel birthday cakes, and surprised a friend with one on his birthday last year. it was truly awful, and apparently that's the general consensus about them now.

[lesupersteph]

Come to think of it, I haven't seen a Carvel store in ages!

[goodhealthgourmet]

oh, they're still around. they just sell terrible product!

[bermudagourmetgoddess]

I also grew up with Carvel and my mother would get me one every year for my birthday...even though I was not allowed to have sweet. So I got to watch all my friends enjoy my Carvel birthday cake, while I got to eat a piece of Carob candy!

[goodhealthgourmet]

seriously? that's just cruel. i had a friend whose mother did the same thing. whenever she drove carpool, she'd hand out all sorts of snacks to us - cookies, candy, etc - but wouldn't let her daughter have any. and when i slept at their house, she'd offer to make the guests & her brother whatever we wanted for breakfast, but my friend was only allowed to have Cheerios, which her mother measured/counted out into the bowl. my mom used to invite her over for dinner & after-school snacks all the time so we could make sure the poor girl was fed!

i found out that the Carvel where we always got our cakes finally went out of business last year - it's another [independent] ice cream shop now. sad, but the company has changed so much since the god old days anyway. not only is their ice cream crap now, they also offer all sorts of newfangled creations. it's way beyond Fudgie the Whale and Flying Saucers these days.

[agentoffortune]

"Grandmom" did all the cooking in my family... My favorites were her homemade macaroni & cheese, pot roast, hamburger stew over mashed potatoes and crab cakes. For dessert, her homestyle pumpkin pies, ginger cakes and huckleberry pies are the stuff of great memories. I'm also a big fan of chicken and dumplings.

[BananaNana]

I grew up on the Central Coast in California in the 60's-70's. My Pop would stop off at favorite local fishing spots on his way home from work and we enjoyed whatever he caught from the surf or (then) clear streams several (at least 3) nights a week.
Because of the incredible variety of vegetables and fruits and berries grown in the area it was like growing up and dining in a virtual Garden of Eden all year round. Sometimes he'd bring home fresh broccoli, cauliflower, or brussel sprouts that had just been harvested and piled high in the wagons leaving the fields for the processing plants. The veggies would fall off into clean piles on the street right in front of his service truck at the stop signs. He could never resist stopping to pick up an armful, as to drive over them or past them represented a waste of fine fresh food. I remember the taste of those veggies as far superior to the packaged, long-distance trucked, or frozen stuff I've been eating ever since.
Our parents kept a big box of fresh local grown red or yellow delicious apples under a table at the cool end of the kitchen that all four of us kids - and our friends - could snack on at any time. We maintained our own summer garden and fruit trees, and raised our own rabbits and chickens for eggs and meat. We typically ate one animal a week for a family meal, often fried, but the older ones were "chop suey'd" and served over rice. Our chickens "free ranged" before it was trendy, eating bugs and grass all day and their yokes were a brilliant orange.
Money was tight but my parents managed to feed a family of six very well on $60 a week by being resourceful on our 1-acre property. As kids we learned baking and canning through local 4-H classes.
Favorite dishes included:
Kielbasa from Corralitos Market (still available and AWESOME!)
Skirt steak marinated with soy sauce and fresh garlic
Cucumber salad with sour cream, white vinegar, sliced onions, and dill
Sweet corn fresh picked from the garden, shucked and raced to a pot of boiling water
Fresh spinach salads
Persimmon cookies
"Poor Man's Cookies" - a recipe developed during the Depression
Rolled and painted sugar cookies and gingerbread boys - it was the kids' job to bake and maintain a traditional little "cookie tree" that sat on that same table at the cool end of the kitchen for two weeks in December before Christmas. When our friends came to visit, we were allowed to invite each guest to pick a cookie (kept in tied baggies) off the tree. It was how we learned to practice hosting skills.
Cobblers of every kind were common including: blackberry, ollaliberries, and peach cobblers
Homemade applesauce
Abelskivers
On very special occasions: enormous fantastic Crab Louie's
As both my parents grew up in Maryland - oyster stuffing at Thanksgiving - a tradition that continues.

I'm sure there is much more but I've time- and taste-warped my memories enough for now.

[Telula]

Oxtail Soup
Bellybusters (fried bread dough)
Meatloaf
chicken and dumplings
German potato salad
Sauerbraten
potato pancakes
hungarian goulash

[FoodieKat]

Grandma did most of the cooking. It was a mix of Latino and American dishes.
Macaroni and cheese
Scrambled eggs with hot dogs, green beans, papas fritos or salsa.
Arroz y frijoles, tortillas, enchiladas, sopa, tamales, carnitas, taquitos, tostadas. Pan Mexicano.
meatloaf
Fried pork chops
mashed potatoes and gravy
Chicken noodle soup
tuna casserole
shake n' bake chicken
Pot roast with biscuits
Arroz y gandules, white rice and beans, lechon (roast pork).
And I can relate to the Catholic thing. Grandma always cooked fish on Fridays.

[cor]

When I was growing up, we were lucky enough to have a cook, so we ate lots of soul food:

fried chicken
red beans & rice
pork chops
greens
lima beans
crowder peas
cornbread every night
rice & gravy
mashed potatoes
meatloaf

when mama was cooking, it was more like frozen foods, casseroles, mac & cheese, broccoli, & the occasional steak.

[DenimOrchid]

Blue Crab Spaghetti sauce
Noche Buena Pork
Black Beans

Every summer we would go to my great Aunt Jennies house on Sundays for her spaghetti & crabs. Blue crabs were once plentiful in Tampa Bay.I am happy to say she left me her recipe, and now I am the one keeping the July 4th tradition going.

[Chew on That]

I grew up with a whole bunch of Jewish foods:

Matzo Ball Soup
Cholent
Kishke
Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Brisket

All of the ones I've listed my grandmother was notorious for! Holidays were the best because of her recipes.

Hillary
http://chewonthatblog.com

[Jeters]

Jewish eastern euro dad by way of New York and converted german-swedish mom by way of california rancho..

Brisket
pot roast
Gefilte (blech)
Chopped liver
Matzo ball soup
Chili
various soups..lentil, chicken etc.
Stuffed Shells
Tacos
Santa Maria BBQ Tri-tip (YUM)
Chicken pot pie
Chicken and Dumplings
enchiladas
turkey and mashed potatoes
pesto tortellini
Fish whenever someone went on a fishing trip
The great thanksgiving turkey-off every year (my grandpa and uncle going head to head--2 turkeys, 2-3 different stuffings)
Various stuff from grandma, macaroni salad, the notorious JELLO salad with celery

and Breakfast:
Baked eggs
Salami and cheesy eggs
french toast
...but usually a fruit bar on the way out the door

[smdeneau]

pot roast
elderberry pie
baked chicken
homemade rolls
homemade gravy
sloppy joes
chocolate chip cookies

[othervoice]

I love these types of threads...let's see.

Monday - Usually Sunday's leftovers Pot Roast and veggies. Sometimes made into a hash.

Tuesday - Fried steak, mashed potatoes with steak juice and a salad, tomatoes and lettuce

Wednesday - Spaghetti and meat sauce or American Chop Suey (NewEngland Style)

Thursday - Sometimes baked chicken

Fridays - Always Catholic, Mom's famous fish chowder, sometimes corn chowder and fresh biscuits.

Saturdays - hot dogs and beans, hamburgers and beans, ham and beans (something and beans)

Sundays - Roast of some kind (typical New England meal) carrots, potatoes, onions, turnip, biscuits. Sundays usually had some type of dessert. Lemon Meriengue Pie, comes to mind, during the winter Mom would make a gingerbread served hot, with fresh whipped cream. Can't think of anything in the world that compares.

[EWSflash]

My mon was a great cook most of the time bu somewhat- er- mercurial, and she alternated some really, really stellar homemade dishes with the '50s and'60s junk food, like those dried potatoes au gratin that come in a box and they rehydrate and bake in a mixture of milk and stuff in a foil packet that came with the potatoes. Or Appian Way pizza on Fridays (no meat on Friday back then if you were Catholic). Her homemade best regulars were-
lamb stew
butterflied flank steak filled with Pepperidge Farm stuffing, rolled, tied, and grilled (yum)
hamburger-macaroni casserole
tuna-noodle casserole
caesar salad
grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch
graham crackers and milk before bed
fried chicken
okra with tomatoes and herbs
fried okra
crepes filled with preserves & coated with powdered sugar
cheese crisps
tacos
enchiladas
grits spoonbread

That's enough. there was a lot more, however!

[Kajikit]

My mother was not an inspired cook, and it was years before Australia started to get into fresh and interesting foods... we didn't get exotic until I was well into my teens (when I was doing all the cooking) One of our staple meals was meat and three veg - one of lamb chops, rissoles, chicken breasts, sausages, mashed potatoes and boiled carrots/beans/peas. I loved roast chicken... Dad would make a beef stew when it was his turn to cook. I'm sure we ate other stuff too, but to be honest I can't remember it!

[Hungry Celeste]

Gumbo (made from whatever protein was on hand--chicken, duck, shrimp, sausage), red beans, white beans, field peas, blackeyed peas, various jambalayas, crawfish etouffee (my daddy's is the best!), crawfish pies, fried fish that we'd caught earlier in the day, hush puppies, shrimp made more ways than Bubba Gump could count (including bbq, creole, stew, fried, boiled, remoulade, and more), beignets/fried bread dough, fried leftover boiled potatoes, smothered potatoes & fresh sausage, any sort of seasonal veggie slow-cooked with some ham or tasso, fried chicken, fried pork chops (oh how I miss these), mangled softshell crabs that were too ugly to sell or ship....pot-roasted chicken, blackberry dumplings, homemade yeast rolls, cracklin or sausage corn bread, homemade ice cream made with condensed milk & eggs, chocolate meringue pies, and the everpresent brownies from Aunt Mary Ellen's recipe.

[yogurtsoda]

chelo kabab
joojeh kabab
khoreshe bamiyeh
khoreshe ghormeh sabzi
khoreshe gheymeh
kotlet
goosht koobideh
aab doogh khiyar
mast o khiyar
tah cheen
yum, this is making me hungry! i grew up on iranian food: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_...

[Janet from Richmond]

I am so envious of you all of cool ethnic origins for so many reasons (great food and culture, exotic good looks). I am white bread as they come.

[yogurtsoda]

If it's any consolation, my sister loves southern US food like no other! And for good reason - it's delicious. :)

[mojoeater]

I'm jealous of you for growing up with truly homemade anything! My mom wasn't much of a cook, and neither was her mom who came over on a boat as a child. Lots of pre-packed items or boiled meat. Yum (not).

[mariacarmen]

me too! i went out with two iranians (separately), when i was about 19-25, and i not only ate a lot of the things you describe, but then also worked in a persian restaurant, AND learned to make some of these dishes. one of my faves was beef chunks sauteed in oil, then add celery, then tomato paste, then let the whole thing stew for hours until the meat was tender (or used the pressure cooker as we did) - i don't know what it was called . . . do you? and of course the crusty-buttery-bottomed rice! with a grilled tomato on top? oh man, i may have to go make some tonight!

[Janet from Richmond]

My family is originally from Tenn & WV. The things I remember from childhood.

My grandmother's fried chicken, biscuits, fried cabbage and peach preserves

From my Aunt Lena....fried apple pies and apple cake and fried chicken

From my Aunt June...butterscotch cookies, noodley casseroles (not tuna, but generally chicken or beef), and wonderful coconut cake

From home....my Dad's pancakes, fried egg sandwiches, root beer floats

my Mom....London broil, fried chicken, pinto beans with my Aunt June's homemade chow-chow, green beans, mashed potatoes, Appian Way pizza on Saturdays, cabbage rolls, vegetable soup

my brother...lasagna, German chocolate cake, fried rice

[hotteacher1976]

Traditional soul food + standard American fare + traditional Philly regional food!!!

[tinymango]

*soft boiled egg with buttered toast "soldiers"

*pasties from the local bakery, it was a once a week tradition for my father and i to walk down and get a steak or sausage pasty.

*cornish cream icecream, ohhhhh, those were the most mouthwatering icecream truck bells ever.

*mashed bananas and sugar- my father, who grew up in ww2 england always considered this a very special treat as when he was growing up, both of these ingredients were never heard of.

*steak and kidney pie, made by my nan

*sheperds pie- made by my uncle, i dont remember using ground beef for it though, more like stewing beef.

[Diane in Bexley]

Grew up in kosher Hungarian household. My grandma lived with us till I was 6 and she did the majority of the cooking, we rarely went to restaurants and everything was made from scratch. My kids & DH wont eat any of the ethnic specialties, which I really miss:

Cheese blintzes with raisins
potato latakes
potato kugel
homemade gefilte fish
homemade gefilte chicken (essentially quenelles!!)
stuffed cabbage
stuffed peppers
stuffed veal breast
pickled tongue
potato salad
cole slaw
1/2 sour pickles, deluxe delight
marinated sour cherries in liquor
apple or cherry strudel
poppyseed or nut pastry rolls
cheesecake, which was more like ricotta cheese
pot roast
dried out salamis always hanging in the kitchen (yum!)
tuna noodle casserole
tuna patties with mushroom sauce
spaghetti with no cheese!!
kosher hot dogs with baked beans
KFC chicken (OK, we weren't orthodox, we ate this on paper plates!)
cold cherry soup in the summer

[geg5150]

Both of my parents are good cooks, but they both worked and we did use some convenience foods. Dad was home before Mom, so he probably did more cooking than most dads.

Red beans & rice
Gumbo
Lots of rice a roni as a side dish
Meat loaf
Hot dogs & beans
Keilbasa, kraut & beans
Spaghetti with meat sauce, always with a side salad and this was the only meal that we were allowed to drink Coke instead of milk with dinner
Chicken & Rice casserole always with peas
Broiled fish
Scottish dish -- Mince
Hamburgers
Once a month or so, we'd have breakfast for dinner, that was a treat!
Stuff on the grill -- chicken breasts, steak, burgers, etc.
Baked chicken breasts
Pot roast
Beef stew
Split pea soup
Mom's great homemade chili

So many good memories. All through high school even, we sat down as a family every night and had dinner. I loved that!

[vvvindaloo]

i have limited my list to my definitive childhood homemade foods that i think shaped the way i experience food today in so many ways... it is sort of a composite of my mother's and both (italian) grandmothers' cooking and my swedish childhood home (complete with spanish babysitter), with some british school cafeteria mixed in:

swedish pancakes with lingonberry jam
pasta e fagioli
roasted chicken with crispy rosemary potatoes
gravlax on toasted rye with danish butter and dill
paella made with crayfish, squid, tomato, pepper, mussels, chicken...
croque monsieur under the broiler with a slice of tomato added between the ham and cheese
cocos bullar
chicken livers with bacon in a wine and butter sauce
spaghetti al pomodoro
tortellini in brodo
fried chicken cutlets
pot roast with mashed potatoes, peas and onions
baked risotto with tomato sauce, mozzarella, mini meatballs and hard-boiled egg
baked polenta
homemade pizzelle dunked in coffee
mortadella
bangers and mash with ketchup and mustard
blood pudding
salty licorice
swedish waffles with forest berries and cream
veal scallopine
farina with butter and salt
egg yolk blended with sugar and coffee (breakfast drink courtesy of dad)
french toast made with wonder bread (i made it myself!)
shrimp salad in a ketchup/mayo/leom juice dressing
swedish fishball soup
swedish cheddar cheese
homemade roasted peppers with potatoes, onions, and italian sausage
aunt olga's thanksgiving turkey stuffing
and the sole non-homemade food on the list gets mentioned for the fact that it was my favorite childhood food for several years running....
count chocula cereal with ice cold whole milk.

this was fun!

[purple goddess]

Australia in the 60's"

Vegemite toast.
Vegemite and kraft (Velveeta) sammies.
Lamb roast and veggies.
steamed pud.
Mater Beige's Cats' Vom stew.
chops.
sausages and mash.
Steak and kidney pie.
Tripe with white sauce
Smoked cod with white sauce.
barley soup (sometimes flavoured with Vegemite)
fairy bread
tick-tock biscuits
Tim Tams.
Chocolate Royales.
"Chow Min" (basically cabbage, mince, a packet of chicken noodle soup and a splash of soy sauve, all boiled up and served over gluggy rice)

In about 1970, an Italian family moved next door. The taught my mum to cook Bolognese sauce... but, in the immortal word of Mater Beige "Your great grandmother didn't live to 103 eating strange "foreign" food", so she **ahem** adapted the recipe... took out the garlic and all the herbs, missed browing the meat. So Mater Beige's "bolo-naise" is mince, tomato sauce (ketchup) a packet of dried french onion soup and a sprinkle of nutmeg boiled for a couple of hours.

I used to climb thru the hole in the fence, behind the lemon tree and sit and watch Mrs Arstoni cook. She'd feed me things like ragus and crostolli and zuppa and pizzetti and brodo.

Mrs Arstoni, my family thank you.. **bows head gratefully**

[Jeanne]

You poor thing! And what in the world is "Mater Beige's Cats' Vom stew? I can only imagine!

[Nuray]

Just a few that comes to mind...All Turkish home cooking....

Yoghurt - always plain
Many types of local cheese
Green and black olives
Grilled cheese toast
Menemen - eggs, tomatoes, hot green peppers and spices
Open face cheese and herb sandwiches as snacks
tahini and molasses mix in winter mornings
Mint- yoghurt soup with orzo
Red Lentil soup
Tomato Soup
Chicken soup with orzo or vermicelli
Green lentil soup with fresh pasta
Shephard salad
Various fruit compotes
Mucver - fried zucchini patties
Kofte and cacik - Grilled minced meat patties and accompanied with yoghurt w. grated cucumbers
Stuffed vine leaves/cabbage/chard with ground lamb, rice, herbs and spices
Spinach or purslane with ground beef cooked in tomato sauce
Zucchini and veggies cooked in olive oil
Chickpeas or cannelini beans cooked with cubed lamb in a tomato sauce and served with rice
Various eggplant dishes hot or cold
Grilled or steamed local fish
Grilled, broiled lamb always served with rice and grilled veggies on skewers
Bulgur Rice - cracked wheat rice with herbs and spices and chillies
Kisir (like tabouli), many sweet and savoury pastries made from scratch for Tea Time
Manti for special occasions (steamed homemade dumplings filled with minced meat and spices and served with yoghurt and a really hot pepper based butter sauce)
Kadayif - in a syrup
Gullac - paper-thin layers of pastry dough soaked in milk then rolled with chopped walnuts or hazelnuts and served with pomegranate and milk flavoured with rose water nd sugar
Asure - barley, chickpeas, white beans, chopped apricot, sugar, and other many more ingredients cooked together served in bowls with pomegranate, fnely chopped nuts etc. . my favourite dessert

So much more but can't remember everything....

[monalisawoman]

Dinner:
spaghetti with ketchup
noodles with butter
lipton onion soup burgers
potato blintzes
greenbeans & spaetzle
brisket
meatloaf w/ketchup glaze & hidden hardboiled egg
roasted chicken
london broil
muenster cheese omlettes
meatballs & spaghetti with ragu
croissants with melted american cheese baked inside
tv dinners
joe's pizza

Breakfast:
french toast
salami & eggs
bagels & lox
pickled herring
pop-tarts
cinnamon toast
cookies & tea

[gatun]

ceviche
empanadas
johnny mazzetti
my dads grilled flank steak

[piccola]

Off the top of my head:

pita bread with zaatar
baklava
caprese salad
ratatouille
banana or zucchini bread
cream cheese and jam sandwiches (on baguette or French rolls)
crusty bread of all kinds
crêpes
fresh figs
fagiolina
chunky applesauce
pasta with eggplant or broccoli rabe

[ArikaDawn]

Spaghetti and side salad from a bag
Grilled Chicken breasts and side salad from a bag
Boneless Ribs and side salad from a bag
Tacos from the kit topped with shredded lettuce from bagged salad
Frozen Lasagna with side salad from a bag
Noticing a pattern? haha
Those were our staple dinners punctuated at least twice weekly with fast food or take-out. Also, the last couple of years I lived at home my Stepdad insisted we had garlic texas toast available at every dinner. I stopped partaking after the first couple days and will probably never be able to go near the stuff again. For breakfast and lunch we never had meals. My siblings and myself typically just ate whatever whenever we were hungry. It was typically toast, cereal, ice cream, or Subway whe we could drive. It's a wonder we're not all as big as houses haha.

[Emme]

Seeing as my mother didn't really cook or bake, she had a few staples, and then I have a few things I associate with my nanny as well...

Egg Noodles with Butter and Parmesan
Chopped Broccoli (well done) with butter and parm
Turkey Meatloaf
Sweet Rice --made w/ milk and sugar in the rice cooker so the bottom formed a nice brown crust
Rice Cakes topped w/ apple butter or apricot jam
Vanilla or Marshmallow frozen yogurt w/ rainbow sprinkles (local Yogurt Zone)
Pastina (star noodles) cooked in chicken broth, then stirred with parmesan and butter
Campbell's Tomato Soup
Grandma's Chicken Soup with Lokshen
Ice Cream soda w/ Vanilla Ice Cream and Shasta Diet Grapefruit Soda
Mini-Oreos
Apple Chips
Rice Krispy Treats (homemade)... the batter after school still warm right out of the bowl
Push-ups
Mrs. Stahl's frozen potato knishes
Chicken Divan
Sliced tomatoes and slices of cheddar cheese drizzled with Italian Cheese dressing
Canned Corn (only at my dad's mother's house)

[FoodieKat]

I loved egg noodles with butter as a kid! I've currently rediscovered these, started eating them again because of a restricted diet. They are so comforting, yummy.

[bulavinaka]

Your GF thinks you're/this food is wierd? It's part of the vast tablecloth of our country! I think your current mission in life is to open her mind to things outside of what seems to be a narrow comfort zone... Good luck!

[mojoeater]

2nd Generation Irish American:

Boiled Chicken
Unseasoned Roast Beef
Parsley Potatoes
Spaghetti w/Jarred Sauce
Kraft Mac 'n Cheese
Iceburg Lettuce = Salad
Boiled Frozen/Canned Veggies
Wonder Bread
Oscar Meyer Bologna
Ball Park Franks
Pre-Sliced American Cheese
Hellman's Mayo

[RemyT]

I could just copy and paste your list. We put "Catalina" salad dressing on the lettuce. I tried it as a sense-memory exercise as an adult and found it to be all SUGAR! My mother (still) boils food. (third generation!). YIKES. The first time my spouse had her food he marveled at how she
was able to get every food group the same shade of gray. This is a funny thread. Food is so primal to our memories.

[goodhealthgourmet]

Catalina was my favorite dressing when i was a kid! several months ago i passed a display of it at a supermarket so i grabbed a bottle out of curiosity to read the ingredients. i could do without the soybean oil & artificial colors, but i was surprised to see that sugar wasn't the first ingredient on the list, and that Kraft actually still makes it with sugar instead of HFCS!

now i'm craving it...i may have to whip up a homemade batch.

[firemyars]

Mine is like yours and TonyO's, only my mom had a few back surgeries, so that meant dad cooked, or fend for yourself. Dad could grill meat, but that was it. After a few days of that I caught mom up, and no longer sedated, but in a "permissive" state of mind, and a asked if I could make some chili, or spaghetti, or anything really. I was tired of burnt, dry, buttery chicken breasts, and burnt, dry, A-1 soaked steaks. It is the unseasoned Roast Beef that I blame mostly for my vegetarianism. I do miss Banana Pudding. Nilla wafers, the boil-kind of JellO pudding and fresh bananas. It is good, trust me. The waiting day was horrible. It's always better on the second day. Here in Kentucky we had something similar to Catalina (which I like as well), but it was a local restaurant's (Jim's Spaghetti House, in Huntington West Virginia) locally traded, and changed-a-million times, recipe that everyone just called "red" dressing. God, that stuff was so SWEET. Like candy on lettuce.

[MIss G]

l like to think I grew up on some "unique" stuff to San Francisco....namely Polly Ann's ice cream shop (where my best friend and I got bubble gum flavored ice cream almost weekly) and Eagle's Pizza. But being part Belgian, there was alot of beef burgundy or stewed pot roast with carrots and onions. Mom still makes killer fried chicken, bbq ribs, and pasta with an alfreddo sauce that has peas, bell peppers, and pancetta.

[NeNePie]

At Grandma's:
Creamed asparagus on toast
Creamed chipped beef on toast
Milk toast
Leg of lamb chopped in lamb gravy on toast
Red lettuce, cucumber and green onion salad with cucumber dressing
Corn flakes with half-and-half and strawberries
Vegetable soup with V-8 in the broth

At home:
Romaine salads with tomatoes, green onions, and fritos with lemon/oil dressing
Porcupine meatballs
Stuffed peppers
Spaghetti with meat sauce that had a carrot and a celery stalk in it
Prune whip
Floating island
Baked alaska
Chocolate angel pie
"Dunking Platter" cookies
Waffles with peanut butter, maple syrup, and powdered sugar, cut into squares and then reassembled as if they were never cut

[revsharkie]

We mostly ate standard regular midwest-to-southern fare. But there were a few standouts:

My mom had a best friend growing up who was Greek and so she has a couple of Greek cookie recipes, including sesame seed cookies, the dough of which is like less-sweet sugar cookie dough, shaped into twisted ropes, brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with sesame seeds before baking. They are still my sister's favorite.

We had Korean family friends, so I grew up eating jap chae and these amazing little egg rolls on special occasions. Mrs. Han could bring over a hundred of those egg rolls and they'd be gone within minutes.

Fish fried in cornmeal after being caught from the lake where we had a cabin by my grandpa, an uncle or my dad. Usually largemouth bass, but occasionally there were crappie. Served with hush puppies, fried potatoes, and pickles & onions (chopped dill pickles and chopped onion, mixed together--that's what passes for salad at an Okie fish fry).

Turkey and dressing nearly every Sunday after church at my dad's cafeteria.

My mom's roast was always braised chuck roast in the electric skillet. She would cook potatoes right in the skillet with the roast. My dad would mash up a bunch of those taters on his plate, put the shredded roast on top, and dump gravy over the whole mess.

About once a year my mom would go get ten pounds of ground beef and a #10 can of crushed tomatoes, and make chili. She used her grandpa's recipe from his butcher shop, which had been passed down and changed by every cook who ever made it. (Grandpa Marshall used ground chuck, never drained it, put oatmeal in to soak up the grease, no onions, just tomato juice, and some weird purple peppers someone grew for him, and sold it by the pound at the butcher shop. Gram left out the peppers, drained the meat, and skipped the oatmeal filler. My mom added dried onions and garlic powder and uses crushed tomatoes instead of tomato juice. I use fresh onions and garlic and sometimes add chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.) She'd freeze it in mini loaf pans, and then we'd eat on it all year long. She made big batches of vegetable soup that she'd freeze in a similar way, minus the potatoes, which were added when it was reheated because she said they'd disintegrate in the freezer.

We had Springfield-style cashew chicken at a little place called The Fortune in Bartlesville, about 45 miles away--when for some reason we didn't go to Murphy's for hamburger steaks, french fries, and that amazing brown, brown gravy.

My aunt Edna's escalloped asparagus at all family gatherings: drained canned asparagus topped with sliced hard-boiled eggs, cheese sauce, and buttered bread crumbs and baked. It's the only thing that I'll eat canned asparagus in to this day.

We would have beans and ham about once a week. The ham was a big ham hock with lots of meat and a thick rind (why can't I find a big ham hock like this anymore??). This went with corn bread and fried potatoes. My mom would put ketchup on her beans; my dad went with Tabasco. I like those green peppers that are pickled and in a bottle with a sprinkle top so you just shake the vinegar out onto the beans. If my uncle Galen happened to show up at suppertime, he'd eat the rind off that ham hock. If he wasn't there the dog got it, because no one but Galen would eat it.

Whenever we had a cookout at my grandparents' house, they would cook some hamburgers and some "dinner franks" made by Fanestil's out of Emporia, Kansas. These are stubby, fat hot dogs with casings. When you cook them on the grill the casings split and sizzle. Then we'd slice them in half lengthwise and eat them on hamburger buns with hamburger toppings (ketchup, mustard, mayo, dill pickles, onion, tomato, lettuce).

Starting the summer between fifth and sixth grade, we had Japanese house guests several times. I didn't know anything about Japanese food but discovered immediately a wonderful cold noodle dish called somen. A few years later I got one of these guests to show me how to make it. Now I have the local liquor store special order me a bottle of sake from time to time--not to drink, but to make the broth for the somen.

[ekammin]

My mother's family was from Romania, and, as a result, we had Romanian tenderloin steak at least once a week, if not more.

Also, my grandmother had an excellent pasta sauce recipe she had obtained from an Italian neighbour, and my mother made it frequently. I got it from her, and often make it myself.

[TonyO]

You can tell there are a wide range of ages responding to this thread ! Here goes one from the "born in the 1960's crowd":

t.v. dinners
Banquet fried chicken
chicken and dumplings
shake and bake
a certain pasta in the can (they were mini shells in what I remember to be a good tasting sauce, maybe Gondola brand )???
grilled cheese sandwiches
fish sticks
the complete line up of Campbell's soups
pizza on friday nights
bologna and cheese on Sunbeam bread
Freihoffer's Chocolate chip cookies
Twinkies and Suzy Q's
Adventurous Chinese food like Moo Goo Gai Pan and Lo Mein
Manwiches
Sloppy Spaghetti (spaghetti tossed with canned tomatoes)
stuffed peppers
rootbeer floats
Tang
Koolaid
homemade hot cocoa (milk not water)
english muffin pizzas
pigs in the blanket
celery stuffed with cream cheese
Ho Jo's mac and cheese and fried clam strips

Ahh the memories !

[thenurse]

Both my parents were born in Canada, originally of English descent (grandparents) so my list isn't that interesting compared to some.

homemade Macaroni and Cheese (tomato-ey, not creamy)
homemade scones and preserves
roast beef and potatoes and/or yorkshire pudding
too many green beans
Kraft Dinner
homemade pizza
grilled cheese
baked beans (canned and homemade)
steak, lots of it
caesar salad
homemade cookies
zucchini cake
saltines and pb
meatloaf
chili (never spicy :(
lasagna
spaghetti
applesauce cake
homemade granola
french toast
eggs and bacon
lots of homemade soups and stews
deer, pheasant, partridge, fresh fish - my dad hunted
hot dogs when my parents ate liver
liverwurst sandwiches (ugh! - could never trade them!)
pancakes for lunch
homemade 'shake n bake'
sloppy joes (from a can)
tacos (from a mix)
stir fry (not spicy)
'popcorn fish' (later learned this was fresh pickerel with lots of salt and butter, hence the popcorn flavour)
mincemeat pie
Christmas fruit cake
butter tarts
tourtiere (on Christmas Eve, and other times)
way too much ham and scalloped potatoes

[mariacarmen]

My family is Bolivian, so some of the things i ate seem odd:
liverwurst on toast for lunch or good french bread for breakfast
sardine and mustard sandwiches
fried tuna patties
apanado - breaded steak (pounded thin as paper with a coke bottle), with a fried egg on top, and white rice AND fried potatos
avocado/tomato/onion salads
saltenas - a type of turnover/empanada kind of thing, but much jucier - a golden slightly sweet dough, kind of football shaped, with a stew inside of minced beef, peas, potatoes, olives raisins, carrots, hard boiled eggs. Hard to find in the bay area.
Anticuchos - Peruvian dish of skewered grilled beef hearts marinated in tarragon vinegar and dried chiles.
Papas ala Huancaina - another peruvian dish, served cold of boiled potatoes in a rich cheese sauce with hard boiled eggs and olives as garnish.
artichokes with a dipping sauce made of mayo, mustard, oil, vinegar.
Plato Paceno - a typical Andean dish of fried white cheese (kind of like feta), fava beans, corn on the cob, and boiled red potatoes, served with spicy bolivian chile - Llajwa ("Lya-hwa").
bananas with sour cream and sugar (when my grandmother would visit.)

[Tal]

oh, this is fun.

chinese food every friday night and on christmas
bagels and lox and whitefish and creamed herring every sunday morning
cheese blintzes
brisket
matzah ball soup
matzah cake (on passover- sheets of matzah soaked in red wine and layered with chocolate and nuts- delicioso)
chicken fricasee (hungarian specialty)

[wrj]

Fried fish (particularly good...crappie) with hush puppies and coleslaw.

We'd catch the fish after breakfast...fried eggs, redeye (use black coffee in lie of 1/2 of the milk) gravy, and thick cut smoked bacon from a place called Coursey's in N. Arkansas.

Leg of lamb...drove my sister to distraction to consider the horror. "Did they scream Clarise?"

Warm rice with sugar and cinnamon for breakfast w/toast.

My mom's fried breaded sauerkraut/meatballs with sweet mustard for dipping.

BBQ at any time of the year. God intended food to be cooked over an open fire. And PLEASE. Charcoal only. Don't blaspheme with gas.
After a hard day working in the Texas sun my dad wouldn't hesitate to let us "hard working young men" of 10 or so have a cold beer to cut the sut. ALWAYS immensely better with a couple of dashes of salt on top.

[Rick]

This is a fun thread.

Lasagna with meatballs, every year for my sister's birthday and for parties

Meatball soup, always with too many meatballs b/c mom buys the 3lb. bulk ground meat and just must use it all!

Potato Salad

Tacos

Meatloaf

Chili Cheese Dip

Chili

Pork roast

After School she'd sometimes make me a sweet potato with brown sugar and marshmallow, I loved it.

I loved turkey sandwiches and then turkey bagels during shcool. Don't care for them much any more!

[wrj]

My favorite treat was (IS, but as a native Texan now living in NJ you can't get it) Chili fritos in a bowl with ice-cold whole buttermilk poured over it. Use a spoon. I can imagine the cringing, but try it first. NOTHING about it good for you, one of the reasons it's so damn good!

[cheeseonastick]

Oh man, this thread is bringing back memories!
My mom can bake up a storm, but she got into certain food ruts, where she'd make the same dish the same way several times a week for months at a time. These are the things I remember but was never very fond of:
- Hamburger Helper (of ANY KIND)
- Baked chicken breasts (she baked them so long they got dry and gross)
- Hamburgers, also baked too long, with liquid smoke in them. *shudder*
- Eww Stew. Enough said.

But one of her kicks was homemade pizza, which was just fine with me!

Other various foods...
- Kraft spaghetti from a box (I still am overly fond of the seasoning in those things!)
- Mac and Cheese, of course.
- Homemade buttermilk and sourdough breads
- Biscuits and white gravy
- Rice and white gravy (this was an entire meal for me - no wonder I was such a pudgy kiddo)
- Frito pie
- Buttermilk pancakes, eggs and uber-crispy bacon for dinner
- Pound cake (my mom makes awesome pound cake, I'll give her that)
- Egg salad sandwiches
- Jalapeno cheese cornbread
- Fried catfish and hushpuppies (my dad's an avid fisherman and we had many a summer fish fry)

[MSK]

Yodels, Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and the occasional Yankee Doodle.

It was years before I realized that my mother didn't actually bake!

I'm on the West coast now and fortunately retain possitive memories of these products. If I actually had access to them I would probably realize how gross they really are............. so please don't ruin for me!

Oh yeah.....there's Mallowmars too but I knew my mom did not bake those!

[Justpaula]

My father made pasta with meat sauce (sauce from a jar added to meat - Aunt Millie's brand) every Monday. I think he still does. I almost always check their fridge first thing when I go over and am excited when I see leftovers of that in there!

Hand-packed hamburgers, broiled. With baked beans and Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes.

Baked chicken breasts with broccoli and Rice-a-Roni

Not to adventurous or arduous to make. But they both worked and it reminds me of comfort and being a kid, so it is all good. :)

[k_russkij]

Pirohi (pierogi)
Holupki (cabbage rolls) - the ladies at church always fought over whether to boil them or bake them
naslesniki - pancakes made from grated potatoes, an egg and a little onion
Cheregi (in Polish, hrushchiki)
Nut/poppyseed/lekvar rolls
kolbasi with kapusta (Polish sausage with sauerkraut)

[jenniebnyc]

you just named each and every dish we will have next weekend at my mom's annual polish xmas dinner which she makes for our extended family and friends each year. oh, one addition is cheese babka.

we made 115 handmade potato, cheese and onion pierogi yesterday..........people begin to come out of the woodwork when they find out these delicious little items are finally made.

can't wait to dig in next week!!

[RiJaAr]

just to name the comfort foods and staples of life growing up:

chili and corn bread
lots of lamb
homemade dark molasses bread
moms homemade pepper sauce and salsas
roast chicken
zuchini chocolate cake
pumpkin cookies
yorkshire pudding
scrambled eggs that to this day i can't duplicate

i honestly never tasted processed or prepackaged foods until i moved out of my parents place, everything was homemade from scratch, chickens and lambs straight from our farm, fresh eggs, vegetables from the garden, and my mother went to a great cooking school, so everything she made was spectacular.

[Dio di Romanese]

zuchini chocolate cake huh? now thats something id like to try

[Dio di Romanese]

veal ragu with pappadelle

stuffed artichokes

baccala salad

slow roasted pork with apples

porter house steaks with a garlic/sage rub

butternut squash ravioli's

grilled lamb chops with artichoke sauce

elbow macaroni with fresh tomatoes and grana padano and romano
cheese

Haddock or Cod with a pistachio butter sauce

ill think of more later all this stuff was homade by the way

[Dommy]

A lot of stews, called Guisados...

Lots of rice and beans

Lots of salads

Nothing too complex. I was a sweet kid, my mother would ask what I wanted, I would say, whatever... that WASN'T what she was looking for was she wanted desperately to be inspired. When I started cooking on my own, I realized that and now am the opposite, I am always thinking of new things to cook. Luckily SO is a willing guinea pig to all my crazy whims (Ask him about last night's stab at Indian Stew... LOL! :))

--Dommy!

[NotOurCrowd]

I had a sad culinary experience as a child. My mother worked (1950s) and everything we ate came from cans. I thought Franco-American was spaghetti. When I was 10 I had real spaghetti at a friend's house and was in awe. Peas were LeSeur from the can.
My mother made tuna "delight" by combining a can of tuna, peas, and cream of mushroom soup served heated over toast. Yummy!

[RemyT]

We had the tuna on toast. The vernacular term is &^%$# on a shingle. I can not eat canned vegetables to this day.

[yumcha]

I remember eating a lot of pot roasts as a kid from the english side of my family. Bleh.

But the good stuff:
Nana's mashed potatoes
Yorkshire pudding
Shrimp Rice Rolls
Har Gow
Beef and Bean Sprouts, mixed with white rice
Peking Duck
Fresh Bread

[chocokitty]

My mom's a fabulous soup and stew kind of cook, so it's typical for her to make Chinese (as in Cantonese)-style stewed chicken and beef probably every month. Every week she makes soup from the traditional chicken soup to the medicinal soup (I can't recall the name) that smells really funky and bitter. Sometimes she makes a pot of soup that is American, as in a tomato based soup boiled in a pork shoulder bone with potatoes and carrots - a meal in itself, really.

My father makes the best Chinese roast pork (once a month, on a Sunday) in all of NYC. I tried many restaurants and nothing can compare to his ribs and pork. Oy, I'm craving for some now. Also, he makes great dumplings from scratch (every 2 weeks) - skin to filling (grinds his own meat, chops all the vegetables and flavors the stuff, too).

So, to sum it up it's basically:
Dumplings
Stir-fried vegetables and chicken (practically daily)
Steamed fish (once a week)
Sauteed fish (ditto)
Stewed meat
Dad's famous roast pork

[fara]

when i die, i want to be re-born in a cantonese household. one that can cook really well. damn.

[Caserta44]

another great thing my mother made which she served me, my gf and the rest of my family on a visit last night is her honey glazed marsala pork chops with baked stuffed shrimp it was deliscious

[niki rothman]

I think it's about time for you to start carefully writing down your parents recipes and posting them on the chowhound home cooking board. PLEASE!!!!

[katp]

Fried chicken
Spaghetti
Pot roast
Gumbo
Red beans & rice
Baked chicken

[KevinB]

My mom was a competent, if basic, cook, but a fantastic baker. If she'd had an entrepeneurial streak, Debbie Fields would never have had a chance.

Once I reached university, I would stay in Toronto for summers, while Mom and Dad went to our Quebec cottage. When Dad was teaching summer school, he would return each Sunday night with four or five apple pies (we had four apple trees on the property), brown betties,and a bunch of chocolate chip cookies. That's how I knew my Mom was still alive!

She really cared about her pastry - on two crust pies, the bottom crust was always strong enough to hold the piece together, while the top crust (lightly dusted with sugar for an amazing caramel effect) was flaky enough to cut with a fork. I remember her actually crying when she felt the pastry wasn't up to her standards. Didn't happen very often though!

I've had good apple pie since then, but no one has ever come close to the perfection of Mom's.

[fara]

Polish side:
kruschiki- aka angel's wings, incredibly light fried dough w/powdered sugar. bubbe would make a huge container at holidays.
stuffed cabbage w/a stick of melted butter over the top.
coffee cakes from bundt pans.
chicken fried, then baked w/ cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, fried mushrooms and onions and seasoning. served w/egg noodles.
egg noodles w/cottage chese and butter.
stuffed blintzes w/cottage cheese and fruit.
and my mom made a lot of "stir fries," her specialty was adding curry and orange juice. good and healthy actually.

Italian side:
penne w/potatoes, peas, and pesto from our garden.
chicken cutlets.
asparagus fritters.
fried squash flowers.
homemade meat sauce w/pork bones and beef or braciole.
linguine w/fresh clam sauce. (the absolute best - only garlic, olive oil, wine and fresh clam juice in a blender - cook down and add parsley and clams)
Nanni's baked ziti
biscotti
ricotta cheesecake
baked eggplant and peppers
fresh mozzarella (only cow's milk, i didn't have buffalo till my dad went gourmet), mortadella, salami, and later prosciutto. good italian bread.
homemade pizza.
my dad also made a lot of lamb chops, fresh steamed corn, and raspberries w/cream from our farm. nothing better than home raised lamb, and the sheep were harder to bond with then the cows so I didn't feel as bad.
pork chops w/garlic and parsley.

[chef chicklet]

Mariland Fried Chicken
Pepper Steak and the best ever mashed potatoes- I have the SECRET for the very best mashed potatoes. And you will never guess what makes them so fluffy, and creamy.....and it is not a a dairy product.
French Vegetable Soup with French breead
Salmon Cakes
French Apple Pie- Really wish I had the recipe, been searching
Spaghetti(Vermicelli - never thick nooodles) with meatballs
Pepperoni Pizza - homemade
Stuffed Bell Peppers
Fried Chicken
Waldorf Salad
Navy bean Soup with french bread
Meat loaf with ketchup for the glaze
and chocolate pudding oh and Ice Milk - gallons of the stuff in the freezer - because my parents were watching their diets!!!
Steak with potatoes in their "Jackets"
Chili
Macaroni and Cheese - made with velveeta
Ham and Scallop potaoes
French Toast for dinner sometimes
A dish that my dad made- That had navy beans, pork, sourkraut and mashed potatoes- sounds bad, but I loved it I forget the name that he gave it...I think it is a german dish
Fresh tomato soup
Oyster stew
Chop suey- My Dad's version, he was a Navy man stationed in Japan, and the Phillipines
Kilbasa and sauerkraut

[TexasToast]

Well you have to tell us now!!!

TT

[chef chicklet]

Sorry I missed this!

Best Food Mayonaise - add a Tablespoon and watch the magic happen before your eyes, they get very fluffy!!!

[prunefeet]

Early on I had the tuna noodle, kraft dinner etc. stuff in addition to much better stuff like roasts. But when I was 7 my older bro turned veg, and everything changed after that! My mother really matured as a cook and we all learned a lot about food. I hated much of it at the time! I didn't begin to really get interested in food until I had my first korean food, when I was about 17...but I do remember also a lot of good pork chops or roasts, uncle ben's rice in pilaf form, baked chicken breasts, kasha, rattatoille, good macaroni & cheese, and a fair amount of reasonably good takeout (since I grew up in manhattan, there was no shortage of decent indian and ok chinese in the neighborhood).

[royal bisquit]

- Tuna Noodle (not casserole - mom never bothered with the baking step)

- Spaghetti with Spicey Italian sausage tomato sauce (this was my absolute top favorite meal as a kid, and I always had a glass of milk with it - wierd)

- Hungarian Beef Goulash (from the Betty Crocket Int'l cookbook)

- Keilbasa with Egg Noodles (but when I was a kid I had to eat it by cutting up the keilbasa into little pieces and having them with lots of noodles - didn't want to eat it the keilbasa on its own)

- Grilled Cheese sandwiches made using mayo instead of butter (I've never seen this done anywhere else - is my mom the only one using this method?)

- Grits

- never steak, ever

- Dad made the deserts; brownies or milkshakes

[FlavoursGal]

Traditional Jewish Cooking:

From my Bubbie, who came to Montreal from Lithuania as a child, in the early 1900's:

Cabbage Rolls - aka "Holishkes";
Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls, Rice, or Egg Noodles;
Helzl (the skin from the neck of the chicken, stuffed with a mixture of flour, schmaltz, and I don't-know-what) - utterly delicious!;
Sweet-and-Sour Meatballs;
Pea Soup with Flanken (short ribs);
Cabbage Borscht with Flanken or Meatballs;
Savoury Lokshun Kugel (made with fried onions);
Potato Kugel;
Chicken Fricasee - meatballs, fisslech (chicken feet), gorgels (chicken necks) and pupiks (chicken stomachs) in a tomato sweet-and-sour base;
Carrot Tzimmes (carrots, prunes, white potatoes)
Taiglach (little pieces of cookie dough filled with raisins and boiled in honey and ginger);
Honey Cake;
Brownies with Raisins;
Cheese Knishes;
Mun (poppy seed) cookies.

I can still taste everything as if it were yesterday!

[Caserta44]

where you for there were alot of lithuanians in my old neighborhood, along with alot of lebenese and italian

[Missy2U]

Dad always grilled on weekends - it either was bratwurst, flanksteak (marinated in French Dressing overnight), hamburgers and hot dogs, chicken, or porterhouse steaks.

During the week, my mom cooked - staples were pot roast, rump roast, shake and bake, tuna casserole, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese (Kraft - with hot dogs and frozen spinach), porcupine meatballs, pork chops (smothered in cream of mushroom soup and cooked for at least an hour), stuffed pork chops, lasagna, spaghetti - your general midwestern comfort food I suppose you'd call it. My grandmother lived with us, though, and because of health issues, nothing was real spicy or anything - I just remember "warm".

Oh - the nights they'd go out and get us a babysitter we always had a Swanson TV Dinner.

[andlulu]

Shake -n- Bake.
Tuna Casserole.
Campbells chicken noodle soup.
Beef stew.
Plain grilled chicken.
White rice mixed with american cheese.
Salmon loaf. =x
Spaghettios.
Fish sticks.
Chocolate pudding pie.
Peanut butter pickle sammich.

As you can see, it was wild and fascinating.
I do not eat ANY of that, haven't in years, except the occasional PB&P.

..and my children will certainly not experience such blandness.
I was just glad I had a roof over my head during my childhood though, so it weighs out.

[macca]

Roast beef dinner every Sunday- with gravy, mashed potaotes, vegatables and moms cabbage salad. Delicious

Fish on Fridays, with sliced pototo rounds fried in oil

Saturday was hot dogs, beans, brown bread, and home fries. Mom and Dad had steak!

liver and onions- I always loved it- but I grew up in a house with 7 seven kids, and you can imagine the groans when this was served!

grilled cheese with your choice of tomato or chicken noodle soup

bread pudding served warm with a lemon sauce-heavenly. We loved it when we saw the big yellow bowl in the counter before school.

American chop suey- hamburg, tomatoes, onions and pasta

Loved a breakfast of hot chocolate, toast with cinnamon, and fresh fruit dipped in honey.

Moms mac and cheese

I'm sure I will think of lots more!

[rHairing]

Apple Dumplings..both dinner and dessert.
Chicken potpie(more of a stew-flat broad doughy noodles)
Frikadeller and red cabbage(danish style-no apples)-my mom still has to double the recipes because we snarf it all down so quickly.
homemade rhubarb sauce
chef boyardee pizza
Johnny Marzetti-does anyone remember this? loved it!
frozen peas-it seemed like we had these with every dinner
SOS-cream chipped beef on toast
creamed spinach-still love this!!!
Campbells tomato soup and Velveeta grilled cheese sandwiches
Liver and onions-I liked the calve's liver...won't go into The Great Chicken Liver Revolt of '75...
Homemade danish butter cookies at Christmas-nothing in a tin comes close!
And finally, the one thing that almost turned me off of any type of Asian food whatsoever....drumroll..Chung King boil in a bag chicken chow mein..even the dog would not eat it.

[bitsubeats]

I love this thread, it's great to see how other people used to eat or still eat.

I am half korean/half american (mix of alot of european countries). I grew up eating more korean food and my grandparents on my american side live in a town that's heavily populated by amish & mennonites so I ate alot of pennsylvainia dutch food

-like 30 different types of kimchi
-lots of banchan (fiddlehead ferns, sweet potato vines, seasoned potato, perilla leaves, bell flower root, and a ton more veggies whose name I don't know in Hangul or American)
-bulgogi
-samgyupsal (grilled pork belly)
-sashimi (korean and japanese style)
-bibimbap (rice w/ mixed veggies, meat, egg, and hot sauce)
-kalgooksu (literaly knife noodles)
-sam gye tang (chicken stuffed w/glutionous rice, ginseng, jujubes, and chestnuts)
-bi bim naeng myun (spicy, mixed, buckwheat noodles)
-mul naeng myun (buckwheat noodles with cold broth)
-sea weed soup
-yaki mandoo & regular mandoo (dumplings)
-donkatsu (fried pork cutlet)
-ramen
-uni
-ojingo bokeum (stir fried spicy squid)
-ojingo twi geum (tempura squid)
-soon dae (korean blood sausage)
okay, there are like 5 million more dishes, too lazy to type (:
there isn't a korean dish I won't try, except for boon dae gi (silk worm pupae)

pennsylvania dutch

-hog maw (pig's stomach stuffed w/sausage, potatos, & cabbage)
this is usually served for the holidays
-pickled eggs and beets
-sauerkraut
-apple butter
-watermelon rind pickles
-shoo fly pie
-chicken pot pie
etc

[Caserta44]

a couple of my too best friends who are brothers are Japenese and their father owns a sushi bar in chinatown and a noodle bar in newton, He has taught me so many great recipes over the years he's like the mr. miyagi of cooking lol

[bitsubeats]

newton, mass? if so where?

[Caserta44]

I forget where but I can find out if you want

[bitsubeats]

that would be great, thanks!

[choctastic]

this is a sweet combination of parents to have. i'm so jealous bitsubeats.

[Caserta44]

what kind of restaurant did they own?

[wanderlustre]

It was a cafe/diner on Hollywood Blvd called Shelly's Cafe after my mom. They sold it a few years ago, I miss the croissants straight out of the oven. That's also where I first learned how to cook anything really (Hey, you've got to start somewhere).

[wanderlustre]

My parents owned a restaurant during my childhood so they only cooked a couple times a week, but my favorites are:

Ox-tail Stew

Hot Pot with Chinese bbq sauce and raw egg for dipping

[wanderlustre]

Oh, I forgot to add:

Homemade Dumplings

Zhong-zi, Glutinous rice stuffed with pork (or red beans if it's sweet) mushrooms (I'm not a huge fan of the HK style with egg yolk and detest when peanuts are added) and wrapped in bamboo leaves.

[phant0omx]

first time i've heard zhong zi with egg yolk and peanuts HK style. i too grew up with zhong zi, made them with my mom. i used to only put in the cured chinese sausage and pork belly. i've made a one where you needed two hands to hold it and tons of stuff inside. oh, i also like mung bean in them

[jenniebnyc]

Our usual dinners were a lot more gourmet than this, but you asked for comfort foods ......

Meatloaf baked with slices of bacon and ketchup
Pierogi (potato,cheese and onion)
Potato Pancakes
Stuffed Peppers stuffed with tuna, bread egg, onion, The tomtato sauce had chopped up bits of the green pepper in it.
Lots of pasta made all different ways
Baked Chicken with raisin pilaf
Russian Meatloaf (elbow mac with ground meat, peas and tomato sauce)
Fried Rice with cabbage
Shrimp with Lobster sauce

So I am Italian, Ukrainian and Polish. And my mom studied asain cooking when I was about 2.

[Melanie]

wow...there are so many good ones (er...at least they were good in memory)

breakfast
-poached eggs and cut up pieces of toast all mixed up together in a bowl
-french toast
-a fried egg with two pieces of toast cut into triangles
-cinamon toast

lunch/dinner
-my dad's pesto (truly spectacular to this day)
-baby hamburgers
-tater tots
-tacos from 'la taqueria' on mission street in San Francisco
-dungeness crab with melted garlic butter (I still remember the poor things writhing when they were put in the steaming water!)

dessert
-ice cream soup (ice cream with chocolate sauce in a pool of milk. Sometimes with baby marshmellows if I was lucky!)
-homemade egg nog

[Caserta44]

wow great lists I thought of some more

Crespelli's(sardine and ricotta stuffed fritters that you dip in a pea and sirloin marinara my grandma would make)

Raw Kibbee and baked kibee on thanksging and easter

Goosa - lebanese stuffed peppers and squash

bone-in Prime rib and mashed potatoes sooo good, my mother latley twisted this take and made poscuitto mashed potatoes which were amzing

Roasted lamb with roasted potatoes and eggplant fritters on Easter

and as for my gf no she is not a hound but I am trying to convert her and she does eat alot of stuff I eat latley, but some of the stuff she will never touch such as lamb which she despises and I love

she is french and I dont like to eat alot of the stuff she does when we go to her moms house, but my saying is you dont have to like it you just have to eat it. And believe me it is a RARE occasion when I dislike a food!! LOL

[WineWidow]

Despite being a horrifically picky eater as a child (the times I sat in front of a cooling plate of green beans until bedtime are too numerous to count) there are some foods I grew up with that I will love 'til the end of my days.

1. "Bratenbrot", which was black (rye) bread spread with butter and fried, then sprinkled with sugar and eaten hot.

2. "Milk Noodles", leftover plain pasta from the night before, warmed up in milk with a bit of vanilla sugar sprinkled over it.

3. "Griesbrei", which is semolina cooked thick and served kind of like pudding, with a happy face of home-made jam dots on its surface.

4. meatloaf

5. cabbage rolls -- my mother's version just had meat stuffed into the leaves and then the rolls were browned and braised. I know the sauce would contain a wee bit of ketchup, but hers were not as tomato-y as the cabbage rolls I ate at friends houses, and they never contained rice.

6. hamburgers, which weren't so much hamburgers as very very herby meatfists, which my mother served on home-made whole-wheat buns. The burger would stand about a handspan high and I don't think I ever managed to finish a whole one, they were just too much. But so good!

7. "Turkey goulash", was the name of leftover turkey meat warmed up in the leftover gravy (to me any meat in a sauce was goulash). My mother's turkey gravy is a thing of beauty, rich, dark, herby, flavour heaven the at thanksgiving dinner but even better the next day as Turkey Goulash.

8. Stinky Feet Noodles, basically fettucine alfredo, but my mother's featured home-made fettucine and an incredibly extravagant cheesey sauce filled that stank to high heaven of cheese and garlic. I have friends who still ask if my mother will make Stinky Feet Noodles and fedex it to them.

9. "Fly Shit Cake", which was my brother's friends name for my mother's poppyseed cake. The poppyseeds were ground, I think, with lots of sugar and then enrobed in a sweet yeast dough. A very simple eastern European cake that just wasn't seen in my very waspy (at the time) home-town. My brother unwrapped a slab of poppyseed cake in his high school cafeteria one day and was asked what the heck he was eating, "fly shit?". The detractors soon changed their mind when they tasted it though!

10. Shoo Fly Pie. Still my all time favorite pie (though I am a friend to all pies), thank goodness for Edna Staebler's Food That Really Schmecks cookbook for introducing that recipe to my mother!

[swsidejim]

meat and potatoes with every meal. That may be why any meal I have has to have a meat of some kind, otherwise it is a snack to me.

any type of roast (eg. Pork, Beef, Roasted Chix)

Corned Beef and Cabbage

N.Y. Strip Steaks

Fried shrimp & scallops

salads

[niki rothman]

With a fine list of favorites like yours I'd love to see you post the recipes on the home cooking board. Your girlfriend must not be a chowhound if she thinks those delicious foods you love are "weird"! My own list is Jewish and Italian - the relatives Jewish, the neighbors Italian. So I love a good pasta ragu and a pot of chicken noodle soup with matzoh balls.

[jilli42]

I was constantly on the move as a child...

Maw & Paw's
Vegetables fresh from the garden
Always a dessert, cheese pie was my favorite !
Fried Chicken
Corn, lots of fresh corn on the cob
Boiled peanuts
Hamburgers
Mashed potatoes - she makes the BEST mashed potatoes

Mom's house - when she cooked
Chef BoyArDee Pizza - I still love these !
Baked fish with butter sauce
Creamed chipped beef - LOVE it !!
Pot roast with horseradish
Canned vegetables - canned asparagus UGH !

Mom's house - when my stepfather cooked
Chili
Spaghetti
Broiled scallops
Oysters
"Salty" bread - garlic bread
Grilled steak and baked potatoes

Dad's house- when he cooked
Fried pork chops
Fried shredded potatoes with onions and garlic
Shish kebabs
Burgers on the grill

Dad's house - when my step mom cooked
Lasagna - nothing beats Peg's lasagna
Spaghetti
Mashed potatoes
Pork chops
Fried potatoes - no garlic or onions, my brothers didn't like them...

Of course there were many other things that got cooked, but those are the standouts..

[morebubbles]

tortillas
bean soup, fried beans
fried plantains
pupusas
tamales
avocado
crema
boiled yuca with chicarron and curtido
atol de elote
lots of fresh fruit
plaintain empanadas (the outside is made with mashed plantain then filled with fried bean paste or custard)

[melly]

Meatloaf
Tuna casserole
Pot roast
fried chicken
Swiss steak
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Stew
Goulash
Good mashed spuds
baloney sandwiches
chicken noodle soup
ground meat sandwiches
oatmeal (ugh)
eggs and toast
tons of fresh vegetables
canned (preserved) vegetables
preserved chokecherry jam (we picked em)
Spaghetti (favorite)
tuna salad sandwiches
tomato soup
liver and onions (love em)
Navy Bean Soup

Hardly any sweets and no boxed cereals (except oatmeal)

[bhh]

cream cheese and green olive sandwiches
rice krispy coated chicken with honey
american chop suey
strip steak
mashed potatoes mixed with wax beans
my grandmother's raspberry pie

[antrobin]

My mother still makes "chili" i.e. hamburger and tomato soup with pinto beans.

She also made the worst spaghetti, featuring way too much hamburger, canned tomato sauce, and a weird spaghetti seasoning packet. (well, not as bad as my Dad's, which included liquid smoke.)

[twh1475]

Hi Antrobin,
Was the weird spaghetti seasoning called, "Spattini"? My mom had it in the cupboard all the time, but she never used it for spaghetti sauce, she put it in her meatloaf, go figure.

We usually had pot roast on Sundays. Fried fish or mac and cheese w/stewed tomatoes on Fridays...NEVER meat on Fridays!
Mom with the help of us kids, did quite a bit of home canning, so we always had tomatoes, pickles or relish, fruit preserves, peaches, pears, applesauce to go along with whatever was the main course.

[prunefeet]

I remember the adds for spattini spaghetti sauce!!!! Never tried it though...probably better off in meatloaf I would think...

[twh1475]

Mom never used it for sauce, only in her meatloaf, which is still my favorite!

[al b. darned]

For my Mom, Spatini was the basis for spaghetti sauce. I never knew there was anything else until I went to work in a diner during summers in high school.

[Scampi]

I lived with my grandmother until I was six, then stayed with her every summer thereafter. When at her house, I had:

Green beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and other veggies out of her garden,
Country ham, sausage, streaked meat, pork roast from the hogs she raised, (homemade biscuits for breakfast every day).
Fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, from the chickens she raised.

Our heaviest meal was called dinner, but we ate it at what we now call lunch time. There was homemade cornbread every day at dinner, but usually meat only at Sunday dinner, except for fat back. Grammy would cook a big pot of pinto beans, or green beans, or some other veggie, and fry or stew potatoes.

For supper, we ate leftover biscuits with tomato, or cornbread and milk, or whatever was left over from dinner.

After I started school and moved home with my mom, we ate canned veggies, fried potatoes, pork 'n beans with weiners, cereal, soup, and sandwiches. For breakfast, we ate butter toast with bought jelly.

You can probably guess which meals I preferred.

[jfood]

My childhood meals

Lunches - Beef-a-roni, frozen beef patties with a slab of butter in the middle, tuna fish, egg salad, bolgna and salami sandwiches, a can of soup.

Dinners - liver and onions; shrimp salad; potato pancakes; flank steak; spaghetti and meatballs; Italian sausage and mashed potatoes; fried flounder and baked macaroni and cheese (made with Velveeta cheese), hot dogs, veal parmesan, salmon croquettes with a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup on top, meat loaf with Campbell’s tomato soup on top; Sweet & Sour Meat; balloons (open faced grilled cheese from the toaster-oven) there was always an argument over who got the white versus yellow American cheese. Everyone wanted the yellow and no one wanted the white; Chicken Marengo; Baked Halibut; Beef Eye Round cooked in the basement in an electric rotisserie; Pepper Steak with sauce Arturo out of the can; Pot Roast; Beef Stew; Roasted Chicken; Spaghetti and Meatballs; Lasagna (always asked for this dish as my special “birthday” meal); Virginia Ham with the diagonal cuts in the top and cloves, Hamburgers, Minute Steaks, Swedish meatballs, Stuffed Cabbage/Peppers (I ate the cabbage), Salmon Croquettes with a can of Campbell’s Mushroom soup on top, hot open faced Turkey sandwiches with Franco-American Turkey or Giblet gravy on top.

[Anne H]

My favorites were pot roast, oven fried chicken, spaghetti every Friday (because it was my father's turn to cook, and this was all he knew how to make-- sauce out of a can, slightly doctored, and I've learned to make better of course, but I still crave pasta once a week). A treat was fried chicken livers, one of my father's favorite things.

We had a family friend who was an early health food fanatic (from my mother's college days in the 40s) and so we ate brown rice and whole wheat bread, herb tea, etc.

My mother (and my father for that matter) grew up in a small town with a vegetable garden out the back door, so we had lots of veggies, fresh when possible, tossed salad with homemade vinegrette every night, asparagus, artichokes-- if I was shopping with my mom and we saw a fruit or vegetable we were unfamiliar with, it was taken for granted that we would buy it. (This was a time when new things only appeared occasionally in central Ohio.)

In the late 60s, we had lots of homemade bread, homemade yogurt, homemade granola, etc.

My children don't believe me, but ethnic restaurant meant vaguely Italian, vaguely Greek, or very bland Chinese.

I was in college the first time I ever had (or even heard of!) refried beans. We had a homesick exchange student over for dinner. He told my mom what to buy, and then he cooked us a fabulous Peruvian dinner.

[TexasToast]

So man foods, so little space, but here are some highlights:

Home-made yougurt

Mint

Lamb meatballs

Mustard pea and potato salad

Cream Crackers with cheese spread

Ham Sandwiches

I think I tried an avocado once, but it was YEARS before I got used to them. Ditto with olives.

TT

[Will Owen]

Pot roast

Pot roast hash (I was convinced this was WHY we had pot roast!)

Tuna-noodle casserole

Baked corned beef hash and eggs, always with spinach on the side

Fried chicken

Baked stuffed chicken

Porcupines

"Goulash" made with hamburger, bacon, kidney beans and tomato soup

Swiss steak - not tomatoey, but with flour and dry mustard pounded in, then braised

Fried liver and onions

Meat loaf

Braised rabbit and squirrel that my dad shot

Fried fish that my dad caught

Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on snowy days - yum!

Pancakes with homemade fake maple syrup

My mom's potato salad - the best!

Scalloped potatoes with ham

Baked hamburger casserole - two slabs, spread with mustard, with sliced onion and carrots between the layers, served with baked potatoes. I don't know why, but we all loved this.

Mom's "chili" was hamburger and tomato soup, and her spaghetti was Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, which she pronounced "Boy-Ar-DAY" because that's what you did with foreign names...

[RemyT]

LOL Ar-Day!

[ziggylu]

I come from a greek family so all the expected greek items:

feta cheese
yogurt(always made by mom back then!)
olives
spanokopita
lamb in any form
dolmades
avgolemono soup
skordalia
keftedes
stuffed tomatoes and peppers
pastistio
fasoulakia
and piles of all the greek pastries at all appropriate holidays and parties

[Candy]

Tacos
Tamales
Enchiladas
Pinto Beans
Corn Bread
Fried Chicken
Potato Salad
Pork Roast
Potato Pancakes
Pork Ribs and Kraut
Grits

I'm sure I will think of others but those are a few that come to mind.