What did your Mom always have on hand, that you NEVER do?

[coney with everything]

Looking at my mother's Xmas cookie recipe the other day, and I always get a kick out of her listing 1 cup butter (oleo) as an ingredient. I don't think I've had "oleo" in my fridge for at least 20 years, whereas my mom for either economic or "health" reasons only rarely had butter.

And when I wanted to make banana bread today, the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook recipe has shortening as an ingredient, which I almost never have on hand. Mom always used it instead of veg oil to fry chicken, as well as for baking.

So my list of "what Mom always had around, but I never do" includes:

margarine
shortening
instant rice
cake mix
jello
garlic salt
celery salt
onion powder
Lipton tea
nondairy coffee creamer
canned fruit cocktail

Anyone else? (Of course I have a list of what I have around that my mother never did, but that is a different subject!)

[taos]

In the case of the spices, my mom still has the same jars from, like, 1962

Garlic salt
Onion salt
Celery salt
And all sorts of spices that were so old as to be useless
Freeze dried onions
Parmesan cheese in a green can
Artificial vanilla extract
Iceberg lettuce
Sachharin tablets
Frozen concentrated orange juice

She was definitely from the better living through chemistry generation.

[Steady Habits]

<<She was definitely from the better living through chemistry generation>>

LOL, taos. Ah, those were the days... not! Ugh. Saccharin. My father used it in his coffee, so he could have pie for dessert. (Much like my girlfriends who always make sure to have in their wallets packets of Sweet 'n Lo and Splenda, which they whip out whenever we meet for "coffee and".) That Saccharin. Nasty NASA-jet-fuel stuff. Ever taste it?

[TampaAurora]

Spices and the rack possibly bought when she got married in the 70s. Including celery salt - I didn't know anyone else used it. I was not allowed to "clear out" the old stuff, so it ended up taking over shelves in the pantry!
Parmalat
American Cheese
Tomato Sauce making trifecta - canned puree, canned paste, canned crushed
Canned veggies - especially corn and peas from Publix for dad and me since she wouldn't touch the stuff
Fixings for SOS in case I spent the night at a friend's house
Fake syrups
Pink packets of Sweet n Low
Totino's Pizza Rolls or Bagel Bites
Shaker of Mom-made Cinnamon Sugar
Canned stuffed grape leaves
International Creamers
Jug of white wine - maybe opened once a year
Fluff
Matzo - year round but less often during passover somehow

[cycloneillini]

Celery salt! I have that - you can't make a good bloody Mary without it!

[TampaAurora]

Bloody Mary's aren't on my list of drinks. I'm glad to know it's useful to someone.

[amazing grace]

God save the celery salt. Cycloneillini, I bet your Mary's are sensational. Mine are.

[alkapal]

celery salt is good in tuna and potato salads.

[Orchid64]

Yeah, I use celery salt in tuna and egg salad as well.

[alkapal]

and thus, deviled eggs, natch!

[saycheez]

But now there is celery seed which can be used in all those good Bloodys, tuna, chicken, potato and egg salads - allows you to use more celery/less salt.

[gridder]

Strangely enough, celery salt is good on cottage cheese.

[cosmogrrl]

I like to rim my Bloody Mary glass with celery salt. And I don't care about my sodium intake in a case like this, I'd rather do with out.

My mom always had frozen chopped onions on hand. She rarely cooked with freshly chopped onions, ever. Not much else is different in our pantries, she usually tried to make everything fresh.

[MaineCook]

Ha! My mother swore by onion salt -- never powder, which I find actually flavors some things better than fresh onions. I only remember fresh onions used by her in beef stew. Whereas I keep fresh onions on hand, but usually reach for the frozen onions when I'm in a rush or making things like chili or a dish where I don't feel like dicing fresh and it won't matter.

She still has all the different salts and uses them when she cooks (not often as she is almost 90 and can't taste anything now). I use garlic powder, onion powder and celery seed. Strictly for nostalgia, I have many of my mother's and grandmother's spice tins from when I was a child in the 50s and 60s that I either 'inherited' as a bride in the 70s, or confiscated when my parents downsized a few years ago... :)

[KailuaGirl]

I use celery seed in albondigas.

[kamdraft]

You also need celery salt for Chicago dogs. It's tradition!

[boyzoma]

You mean like the one I'm having right now! There is no substitute for it in a Bloody Mary! No celery salt would be like saying having no Tabasco sauce in the house either!

[nosurndr]

No spices with "salt" in the title even though I use all those spices: garlic, onion, celery straight. I buy ground celery seed for bloody mary's, use quite a bit in mine, love that taste - wouldn't be right without.

[RiJaAr]

caesars!!!

[MamaCrunch]

Margarine- I grew up thinking it was butter and butter went on *everything* They still keep a large tub of it on the table at every meal!

Packets of Carnation Instant Breakfast. We called it chocolate milk and if we didn't like what was served for dinner we had to drink it.

The whole sale club sized containers of Peter Pan peanut butter. My dad calls it "survival paste!"

[MaineCook]

My brother and I used to melt saccharin tablets on our tongues back in the '60s. Kind of like beating your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop...they tasted so awful it was great! (Probably accounts for why we are the way we are now.) :)

[John E.]

My parents have friends that to this day go out of their way to find little bottles of those tiny saccharin tablets to sweeten their tea. I think I asked them once why they don't use NutraSweet or Splenda because they are both much better than saccharin and I really don't remember their responses. It's a little weird.

[alkapal]

my mom would use just a couple of those saccharin tablets in a big pitcher of tea. she also used the lipton powdered tea. (remember when it was taken off the market for a while?).

now my aunt billie made tea the right way, with real tea bags and lots of sugah! ;-).

[Athena]

Way back when I was kid and food got to this little rock in the Atlantic by boat pretty much everything was in cans or frozen. Even butter came in cans from NZ. We are some 600 miles off the coast of the Carolinas, but for some reason butter was shipped from the Antipodes. But I digress.
In my mother's kitchen:
Tins of evaporated milk
Tins of Nestle's cream for trifle
Canned vegetables (spinach was the absolute worst)
Canned fruit
Cans of corned beef from Argentina (which I found terribly exotic at the time)
NZ cheddar aka 'rat cheese'

Bird's custard powder

[c oliver]

Cooks Illustrated did a blind test and artificial vanilla extract rated as high or higher than the "real" kind. Icebert lettuce is my choice for BLTs and lettuce cups and also a wedge salad. Isn't celery salt used in Bloody Marys?

[Sam Fujisaka]

c, please join me in a Hound movement to reinstate iceburg lettuce and frozen orange juice concentrate to their rightful places - up there with anything else given appropriate use.

[BerkshireTsarina]

At last my husband has two potential recruits for his organization, F.O.I.L.
(Friends of Iceberg Lettuce) He will so happy --- he's felt really lonely for a long long time.

[roxlet]

My husband will be a happy founding member for F.O.I.L. He uses iceberg to make Greek salad, and shredded on sandwiches. I will confess that in the summer I have been known to order a wedge of it with blue cheese dressing.

[amy_rc]

Sign my dad up--you can't have a "combination salad" (as my Grandma calls a simple tossed salad) without iceberg. He actually gets grumpy if you try to sneak something "greener" in. And there's no other way to eat combination salad than with five tablespoons of Catalina dressing.

[BerkshireTsarina]

Amy, what is Catalina dressing?

[amy_rc]

It is a Kraft product-- my dad calls it French. It's thick and tangy and loaded w/ HFCS. Not good or good for you.

[BerkshireTsarina]

Thanks, Amy. I guess I'll stick to home made Thousand Island on a wedge: The Classic! (Kraft French? Ouch!)

[ksmith51432]

may not be 'good' for you, but is wonderful on canteloupe and seedless green grape salad -
and Iceberg should only be served with Thousand Island ! to somebody else!!

[forstton]

oh man! catalina dressing with crumbled blue cheese makes any salad, even iceburg, sing.

[alkapal]

a checkout lady told me this one time.

[plantfreek]

what does HFCS stand for? I love Catalina dressing altho I am normally a totally organic freak-we grow almost all our own food and all of our fruit-apples, blackand blueberries, red and black raspberries, strawberries, pears, sour cherries, grapes, etc and I do all of our baking from scratch and bake for my catering customers as well as bake for customers who have gluten allergies. I developed a bread that actually tastes good instead of like cardboard for my celiac/gluten people. But I am addicted to that red catalina-) I make my own vinaigrettes etc and my own 1000 Island and Blue Cheese but can't give up my Kraft Catalina. lol. Does anyone know where 1000 Island Dressing got it's name? The man who built the castle for his wife Louise-he loved her madly-his chef invented it-and the castle is built on one of the Thousand Islands. It sat empty for years after his wife died and he ordered it closed but now you can tour it. Crazy castle. The islands are an archipelago that straddles the US-Canada border in the St. Lawrence river. It's a cool story if you want to look it up. Gorgeous area. Well that's my 42cents for today-)

[coll]

High fructose corn syrup, I hate abbreviations of words myself. If you eat everything else healthy in your life, it won't hurt to have one "bad" thing you love (not that HFCS is the most evil thing in the world you could eat).

[malibumike]

He has at least 3 now, iceberg is my favorite, hope my wife doesn't read this, she likes all the yuppie lettuces.

[cycloneillini]

I grew up in the midwest, and my mother always had Western salad dressing in the fridge - it was our favorite red French - similar to Catalina. I live in Texas now, and it's hard to find a restaurant that serves any type of French dressing. We have 10 differnt kinds of Ranch but no French. Every place up north still has it. Still my weakness - I love a good red French (I know that's an oxymoron for some of you) with crumbled bleu cheese.

[Firegoat]

I'm with you. Grew up in the midwest and like that sweet french. I'll sometimes put it on a baked potato.... just because. Never really learned to love the Ranch.... but even iceburg tastes good with some French. I'm just north of you now in Oklahoma. I can usually find French on the salad bar, but it depends.
My mom always had some sort of weird bastardized french/ranch/russian, heck i don't know what it was... but still has it.. martha Gooch I think is the name of it. Had some on some salad at xmas dinner.

[greygarious]

My mother always combined half-empty jars and bottles of same-category foods. Apricot/strawberry/raspberry jam, for example. French/Thousand Island. Most of them were okay. I didn't like spinach so she smashed the boiled potato on my plate, mixed it with the spinach, and doused it with gravy. My father combined cans of paint. For a while, the asbestos shingles on the second floor of the brick-clad house were lavender-gray. Maybe that's why they kept their mouths shut during my elementary school phase when, having learned about the GI tract, I cut up all my food and mushed it together on the plate!

[TampaAurora]

Better than my more sensitive students who, after dissecting a chicken wing, announced they wouldn't eat chicken anymore. At last count, one wasn't eating chicken flesh 4 months later. Chicken in some variety is ever present in my kitchen. The quintessential white canvas of the kitchen. I still apologize to those moms! Emergency vegetarian recipes are always a "pleasure" to a cash and time-strapped family.

[Whosyerkitty]

Chicken weirded me out in my 20's. The little arms reminded me of people arms. The little legs reminded me of people legs. It took years to get over this.

[TampaAurora]

Hahaha. I had a few boys in the class who kept parroting a line from an animated movie - a T-Rex complains "I have a big head and little arms." Between them and the kid who snuck out a bone (everything was soaked in bleach before even coming to school) to show his old teacher down the hall who was known for her her no-nonsense style. Getting kids to understand what they consume and their impact on the world was one of the great perks of teaching.

[Whosyerkitty]

Ah, yes. But I know that movie, and it's a great movie.

[Caralien]

I didn't eat chicken after dissecting it in 7th because of the smell--they must have left those out unrefrigerated for who knows how long. It also coincided with the release of Angel Heart and adolescence.

By the time I hit 25, I was eating everything again, including frog legs, which look like Barbie legs. :)

[MARISKANY]

It's great that your mother and father found each other.

[cycloneillini]

OMG I love Martha Gooch french dressing! I haven't had that for years. Definitely can't buy that in Texas.

[Firegoat]

I just had some Martha Gooch last time i went up to Kansas and saw mom!

[mandycat]

If I ever run across "Martha Gooch" dressing, I'll buy some on the strength of the name alone. It's one of those names that evokes a time, a place and a long-lost way of life: Scarlett O'Hara. Toulouse-Lautrec. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Martha Gooch.

[nosurndr]

Another recruit reporting for duty sir! I know it isn't as healthy as real green lettuce, but I still buy it all the time. One, no other lettuce works as well in sandwiches (romaine in a sandwich - yuck), two, still a kid pleasure that remains an adult treasure - a wedge of ice cold iceberg, a thick slice of tomatoe, blue cheese dressing, blue cheese crumbles and some crumbled crispy bacon. Come on, how isn't that good?? I can't resist ordering it at Mandina's in New Orleans even though they don't add the bacon. Lastly my Mom was a "health food nut" growing up in the 70's and iceberg wasn't allowed in the house. So in the normal perverse way of humans, I craved it more than any other vegetable.

[EWSflash]

I LOVE romaine in a sandwich- it has such panache when it's in its prime, but it's gross when it's all pale and boggy, but it's better than nothing- I love my basic lettuces..

[gentlyferal]

I only have one use for iceberg lettuce: when I'm jonesing for homemade egg fu yung and there are no fresh, clean bean sprouts to be had. Thinly sliced iceberg lettuce makes an admirable substitute in terms of flavor and texture, but I believe the nutrient profile is different.

[c oliver]

Only if we get cool tee shirts - or maybe tatoos?!? I grew up in Atlanta in the 50s/60s and I'm sure iceberg was our only choice in lettuce. But just because our mothers (or fathers) used it, doesn't make it bad. Now that canned spinach she served.... :(

[BerkshireTsarina]

DO says No to tattoos --- he's considering baseball caps.
Canned spinach, wow, I haven't thought about that in years. Repulsive! I don't think my mom did that. Or not much. Or I'm blocking ---

[c oliver]

After "cooking" the canned spinach, it then went on a plate with sliced hard-boiled egg!!! I think that was 50s gourmet in the south perhaps :)

[BerkshireTsarina]

Perhaps. Sort of "Fifties Florentine"?
In the 50s (and 40s) in the north gourmet spinach was the creamed variety at Horn & Hardart's Automat. In truth, I could still go for that, too bad there are no Automats left. Did you ever know of them, or perhaps even go to one? There's some retro stuff that would still find a welcome today --- mac 'n cheese, baked beans, apple pie. Course it would no longer cost a few nickels ----- (sigh)

[EllenMM]

Ooh - the Automat!!!! H & H had a restaurant in Yonkers - Cross County. For special treats my mother would buy their Boston Cream Pie and rice pudding.
The Automats were more fun, though.
Less work for mother.....

[BerkshireTsarina]

Less work for mother.. just lend her a hand...
Commercials of yesteryear.
And the Automat rice pudding---
YES YES YES

[pine time]

My mother added 1/2 can of water to the canned spinach, ala Campbell's soup. Just inedible.

[dratlover]

Canned spinach...yuck. I only had it once when I was about eight. My brother and I were big Popeye fans, and begged my mother for months to get some canned spinach so we could be like Popeye.
I am thankful that our mom didn't make us clean our plates that night.

[Shrinkrap]

Can't sleep......wondering how a response to a new post will appear on a year old thread.

"French salad dressing"

http://www.priceninja.com/american-wi...

Thinking about how enamored my mom seemed of "London Broil". I was not quite as enamored in college. I looked up recipes, finding one that said "marinate in French dressing", which at the time, meant to me, some orange stuff in a bottle. Still not sure what the recipe had in mind, but I think I used the orange stuff, SEVERAL times, waiting for an epiphany.

[MaineCook]

London Broil...such fond memories! Can't say my mother ever marinated it before broiling. And, having looked it up (as I never cooked one because hers were so tough, even cut on the diagonal), I discovered you NEVER broil or grill them unless you marinate them a long time first. Ours came labeled as London Broil, but they were likely round cuts of some sort rather than flank steak based on my recall. We always had the oily version of French Dressing instead of the creamy. I wouldn't go near it after I hit my late teens. How about Green Goddess in a bottle or jar??

[DavidA06488]

This is not about what I wouldn't ever have in my kitchen, but you need to marinate top round for at least 3/4 hr to 1 1/2 hrs before broiling/grilling. It can be very tender that way. It needs some sort of acid, like lemon juice, red wine, sushi vinegar,etc. The orange stuff has never done it for me as a marinade or a salad dressing.

[MaineCook]

Back in the early-to-mid '60s (when I was in elementary and jr. high) I don't know if most home cooks in our area (suburban MA) had ever heard of marinade. So many of those in my age group are products of post-WWII abundance of 'convenience' foods that we didn't learn how to cook from scratch, and with true knowledge of what we were cooking and cooking with, until we were in college or beyond. My late sister-in-law (a decade plus older than I) consistently coated steaks, potatoes and bread with Hidden Valley powdered salad dressing mix to create 'gourmet' flavors...then doused the side salad with the mixed version. I shudder to think of the salts and artificial ingredients we consumed as kids.

[Shrinkrap]

Yes, oil and acid is probably what the recipe had in mind. I wonder how that orange stuff came to be called French dressing.

And what I had growing up was definitely not flank steak. Don't recall mom marinating it either, but she was a sort of an adventurous and from scratch cook.

[Will Owen]

I like canned spinach, just heated through and not swimming in juice, with or without HB egg and/or a dribble of vinegar (Tabasco, nowadays). I don't think of it as SPINACH, but as an item all its own. Canned peas I have little use for, and canned green beans are disgusting unless re-cooked with plenty of bacon and onion. Corn, on the other hand, is to my taste improved by canning.

Iceberg lettuce: I think I've mentioned this here before, but I once read a piece by James Beard in which he said that if iceberg lettuce were hard to grow, hard to ship and expensive, then it would be the darling of every gourmet and food snob.

[vjgower]

Regarding canned vegetables, with a quote from Eleanor Perenyei's awesome old book, "Green Thoughts" : "...I'm sorry to say I like canned beets better than fresh ones...I used to think this a secret vice until the fussiest gastronome I ever knew, who kept a legendary table, tersely told me that of course canned beets were better. Everyone knew THAT."

[alkapal]

that quote needs to be on my canned beets thread. ;-).

[EWSflash]

Oh no! I've converted so many beet-haters with roasted fresh beets, I cant believe a person would not like thgem fresh roasted- INCONCEIVABLE.

[hill food]

oh go pull that Wally Shawn shtick elsewhere.

roast anything properly and you can even win over toddlers to the cause. this Spring a neighbor dropped off a bag of turnips and I did em up with potatoes, apples, onions, garlic and cheese (I didn't call it a gratin as that would have put some off)

score.

[EWSflash]

Right, Sam, good iceberg is sweet and crunchy and delightful in its own right.

I hate reconstituted frozen OJ, but in its concentrated form it's quite a palate-waker-upper, esecially mixed 50-50 with vodka or tequila. :^)

[Chuckles the Clone]

Iceburg sliced into wedges and served under a pouring of bright orange "french" dressing a Just So Incredibly Tasty.

One very nice thing about frozen orange juice concentrate is that you can open the container and leave it in the freezer and make oj one glass at a time over several weeks. Or open oj plus a couple of other flavors and mix-n-match lemon-orange-berry, pineapple-orange, etc.

[kubasd]

or the quintessential iceberg wedge salad.... topped with diced tomato, bacon, blue cheese crumbles, and blue cheese dressing. I can't help but love it!

[cgarner]

This is my all time favorite, old school "salad"
there's a Morton's near my office and we entertain clients there on occasion. I never hesitate to order the iceburg wedge (center cut iceburg)

I like the name because I hate calling even a salad, because it's so far removed from anything you'd consider healthy and salad is after all Healthy right?

[Sal Vanilla]

I cannot eat braunschweiger without iceberg lettuce, white bread, mayo and onion. Mainly it is the iceberg. Plus there is "lettuce alone" joke.

[Will Owen]

Funny - I hated HB eggs when I was a child, unless they were buried in potato salad, and then one day my grandpa Kuntz made me a sandwich of braunschweiger, swiss cheese and sliced egg, dotted with plenty of mayonnaise. He must've known something about my taste that I didn't, but I almost swooned with delight, and to this day it is my perfect sandwich.

[Glencora]

braunschweiger?

[pikawicca]

Yum! Smoked liverwurst. We have a roll of Nueske's in the fridge that we've been working on, and I must say that it's mighty tasty.

[Will Owen]

Ours was always Oscar Mayer - I didn't know anyone else even made it for many years. Can't have it very often these days, but every so often I'll indulge. Grilled liverwurst and cheese is another guilty pleasure, first discovered at a drugstore lunch counter in Anchorage, Alaska - talk about exotic cuisine!

[somervilleoldtimer]

My parents still eat Braunschweiger, unashamedly!

[Passadumkeg]

Oh, man, Braunschweiger on french toast w/ Maple syrup for breakfast. Our childhood treat, now my kids love it!

[somervilleoldtimer]

Whoa -- Braunschweiger with maple syrup? It will take a little while to get my head around that, I fear. On the other hand, it's not such a distant journey from my favorites of breakfast sausage with syrup, or bacon with grape jelly on the last piece of toast, so who am I to be critical!

[SD_Livin]

Brings to mind a Monte Cristo - I first had it served w/Maple Syrup - and ALWAYS miss the syrup when it's served as a savory dish

[cosmogrrl]

That is one of my favorite sandwiches! My Mom's too (thus no diff in the pantry area). Most people think I'm odd for liking it though....

[greygarious]

I bought the imitation after reading that. I do not think I have all that discerning a palate, but to me the artificial tasted awful - I used it in oatmeal cookies - and although I HATE wasting food, I threw it out.

[Steady Habits]

Defintely shortening, coney, just as with your mother, and I'd say, canned soups and bacon.

The only other thing I can think of is ice cream. She always had a couple of flavors in the freezer; we hardly ever buy it for the house. (We solve urges by going out to an ice cream place and treating ourselves to something truly shocking.)

My pantry is definitely better stocked than my mother's, with a wider array of goods from far away places, which I think reflects the difference in our generations and how certain ingredients that weren't available to her peers are now staples for us. Because there's really not a significant difference in the way my mother liked to cook and the way I like to cook. It's more about *what* we're able to apply our methods and food philosophies to--e.g., today's accessibility to ingredients from all over the world, and a wider array at our grocery stores.

[dolores]

Really? I couldn't live without Crisco. She taught me to bake, and her pie crust with Crisco is the best.

What she had, though? Morton's pies (don't buy them because they have been shrunk), somebody's frozen pot pies (don't buy them because they have been shrunk), Swanson tv dinners and Rice a Roni, just yuk on the last two.

Otherwise, I pretty much follow her branding theme, if the brands haven't shrunk their goods and left the same price or raised it.

[Steady Habits]

Shortening pie crusts and I knock heads, dolores. I can't make them worth a fig. (Well, now, every now and then, one might turn out well, but that's by random accident, not due to anything I happened to do right.) This despite everybody's efforts to give me hands-on lessons. But I do pates very well--pate sucree, pate sable, pate brisee and, if you happen to be in the mood for an eclair, yes, pate a choux.

I wish it weren't so, because, if nothing else, I love American pot pies, and I would love to be able to make a decent, shortening based crust for that. But I've accepted that I'm not going to win a blue ribbon, or red, or puce, or any color, for my pie crusts, so I rarely have Crisco here.

[dolores]

Turnabout is fair play, Steady Habits. Pate a choux scares me. I can make it, but it never comes as high as I'd like.

And still, I love baking more than cooking.

[c oliver]

Rice a roni is one of my comfort foods :) 'Course I fix it with some sauteed red onions, capers and cheese at the end on top. But I always have a box on hand.

[JennaBean]

I haven't had or even thought about Rice a Roni in years. I think I may have to have some soon just to remember that crazy processed salty flavour.

[jmckee]

Oy. Now I'm going to be hearing the jingle in my head all day.

[John E.]

The Long Grain and Wild Rice variety is actually not too bad. It has less salt than the others and doesn't actually have any pasta in it. I don't make it often because it still has excessive salt and I prefer to cook regular wild rice and mix it with other grains.

[nvcook]

Slightly off topic - but the ice cream reminded me of the Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds movie where the mom (Debbie Reynolds) had the ice cream with the "protective layer of ice crystals" on it.

[hill food]

"Mother" was the name of the movie

the frozen salad.

on trips home I assume the role of cleaning out the rancid, freezer burned and pointless bits from the fridge and cabinet after they're asleep. I leave the old spices as 1. they won't use them and 2. if they do they want them flavorless anyway.

[lifespan]

hill food - do your folks even notice that you have tossed the food-stuff? lol

[hill food]

not that I'm aware of, as a test I left the opened pickled herring for a while - that went 3 years and a house move. before I axed it. It was probably still fine (just more pungent), but....

when a good sized fridge is SO packed that 12 things need to come out in order to reach a small thing wrapped in foil at the back...

thank god they don't like cats or they'd be a special episode on Animal Planet.

[lifespan]

that's too funny.

[16crab]

And the frozen hunk of cheese she uses an electric knife to cut!

[grampart]

A can or two of fiskeboller (Norwegian fish balls). Definitely, not my thing then or now.
http://www.nrk.no/contentfile/file/1....

[Passadumkeg]

Fiskeboller er den beste! I used to have cans on hand bought at the fish packing plant until Bumble Bee bought the company and no more fish balls. I wrapped a can once for a high school Christmas grab bag and the kids all knew it was mine. Go figure.

[mojoeater]

American cheese (or Velveeta - yuck)
powdered garlic (never had fresh as a kid)

Here's the big one for me that probably nobody else will mention: FLOUR. I have no interest in baking and flour makes such a mess that I don't keep it around.

[adamshoe]

No FLOUR!!?? Poor mojo...you'll never know the joy of roux! Or making a "bound breading" (flour, egg and breadcrumbs or panko) for cutlets. Couldn't get by without my happy red sack of King Arthur AP flour. Adam

[mojoeater]

I can make a roux. I just borrow a tiny bit of flour from a friend. No need for a full bag!

[greygarious]

You should keep a canister of Wondra flour in the cabinet. It is "instantized" so it pours neatly and dissolves smoothly, making it perfect for roux and for thickening in liquids and cooked fruit.

[MissMichal]

My MIL always kept (still does) a canister of AP above the stove and kept a tea strainer inside for making gravy. Her method: Pull the turkey (or whatever) out of the roasting pan, put the pan across two burners, whisk in the flour, and serve.

[Glencora]

The funny thing about my parents is that they were stuck halfway between the post-war love of convenience food and an interest in crunchy, hippie food -- so my list would include Bisquick AND nutritional yeast; garlic salt and onion powder AND granola and wheat germ.

A few more:
frozen peas, corn and carrots. (They grew up eating canned.)
evaporated milk for their instant coffee or postum
jugs of white wine
fake pancake syrup and margarine to go on the Bisquick pancakes

[catzen]

Lipton Noodle soup with chicken
Cheez-Whiz with saltines
canned green beans
lard
a jar of cinnamon sugar
Wonder bread

I remember the canned beans having a horrible consistency - somewhere between wax and much. The lard was for making donuts. Cinnamon toast and noodle soup were constants.

[pikawicca]

Canned green beans in Mom's pantry, but not in mine. Blecch!

[Lewes17266]

My mom always had the canned green beans too but she also always had a saucer of bacon grease to season them and everything else with. Bacon grease sat on the counter by the stove always.

[gridder]

Ugh - me too. I hate canned green beans with an unbridled passion. And vegall.

[cuccubear]

I hate them too, but the dog loves them. I buy a can of the big fat green beans and chop them up for her. (I call them Mambo Beans, don't ask me why.)

[kubasd]

the only canned veggies i eat are the delmonte summer crisp corn, asparagus for the relish platter, and the rare can at the bf's that i doctor (when he's not looking) with sriracha

[Passadumkeg]

We have to put netting over our bush green beans in the garden or our Choc. Lab will graze on them.
I can't eat green beans from a can either.

[lynnlato]

-Alfalfa sprouts which she grew in a mason jar covered with a sock
-shortening
-International Coffee mixes
-Shredded Wheat
-Cream of Wheat
-canned fruit
-Mcintosh apples
-Wine in a jug
-frozen oj & grape juices
-evaporated milk

[Glencora]

Oh yes, my mom did sprouts, too.

[manraysky]

Oh yes, International Coffee mixes! I thought those were so glamorous as a kid!

We always had Jell-O, and Jello-O pudding in the house. The pudding was the kind you cook, not instant. I remember my mom spending a lot of time at the stove stirring pudding.

[HillJ]

Oh that is so funny about International Coffee mixes! My friends & I thought we were so "worldly".... I can't even tolerate the sugar level now...but then...well we were hot sh*t.

[Caroline1]

Little square cans with the round metal lid like cocoa! I bought a can of International Coffee in a red, white and blue container. Forget what the flavor was called. I tasted okay, but the artificial creamer in it gave me what felt like terminal indigestion! That made the can last about three years before I finally threw it out.

[lollya]

haha. i went though this too. as a kid this stuff was the top of the line...i bought a can a few years back for nostalgia and ended up using it as a fake creamer added to my own coffee. wasn't half bad.

[thursday]

This is still what my parents drink! Suisse Mocha all the way!

Unless my husband, who works for a coffee company, sends dad a free half-pound of Kona. Then he drinks the real stuff...;)

[lulubelle]

my friend's mother has a biscotti recipe that uses this, and they are oddly tasty.

[greedygirl]

Stork margarine
Tinned hotdog sausages

That's about it. The main difference between my mother's house and mine is that my cupboards and fridge are always filled to bursting, while hers are half empty.

[LaLa]

Thats the only difference here too.Mine are filled; hers have what seems like nothing yet she can always pull a meal together. She actually told me when she visited last week that I have enough food for a year!...AND i WAS THINKING i NEED TO RUN TO THE STORE.lol!

[FriedClamFanatic]

I take it you mean besides an extra $20 (or in your case, 20 quid)? She always seem to be able to come through in a pinch.

On a food level, She always had some Tang around in case we ran out of Orange juice. You might not be familiar with it as it was something NASA invented for astronauts to drink. Semi healthy powder, somewhat nasty taste. The other thing was a can of pressurized cheese just in case we had unexpected visitors for drinks.

[ccbweb]

NASA didn't invent Tang. NASA sent it on some of its Gemini flights. It was created by General Foods. Apart from vitamin C and a bit of calcium, no particularly redeeming nutritional value to speak of. That said, it's always in our house because it helps my wife feel better when she is sick.

[miss margie]

it was not General Foods that developed Tang but the home-ech department at Texas Womans University

[Chuckles the Clone]

While it pre-dates Sputnik, it didn't come from Denton either:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411...

[Caroline1]

I remember when Tang was first introduced to the public. I bought some. I mixed a glass of it. I tasted it. I poured it down the drain and thought, "Well, if I was way way way up there far from earth, it might taste better, but while I'm here on terra firma, I'll stick with fresh squoze oranges! " And I have. Pretty much. Well.... Is frozen OJ freshly squeezed?" Surely it must be at some point! '-)

[soupkitten]

when i was in college i'd drink "tanq&tang"s how ghetto is that?!? LOL ;-P

[EWSflash]

Try mixing it up double strength- tastes much better.

[Caroline1]

LOL! Either twice as good or twice as bad.... '-)

[amethiste]

My dad keeps Diet Tang on hand. He likes to drink a 50/50 mixture of Diet Tang and OJ instead of straight OJ to cut calories

[somervilleoldtimer]

When I was growing up, for a while we made a kind of instant "tea" out of Tang. There was a recipe floating around; Tang, cinnamon, cloves, etc., and then you mixed it into hot water and drank it. Kind of a Tang hot toddy.

[jessleigh]

We had that. I think we called it Russian Tea....might have had iced tea mix in it? My mom always kept it mixed up in one of her orange Tupperware containers ;-)

[lulubelle]

The kind my mother made had Lipton's Lemon Iced Tea mix as well as Tang and a bunch of spices. I remember it as being wonderful, although I am sure I would gag if I had it now.

[hill food]

my mom also calls this Russian Tea, must have made the rounds of Better Homes and Good Housekeeping in the early 70's.

[alkapal]

YES!!! russian tea. remember how one would get it as a holiday "present" and then one wouldn't drink it, and then one would find it a year later hard as a rock, and then one would think "well, maybe i'll want it someday..."?

[somervilleoldtimer]

Yes! It DID have iced tea mix in it! Thanks -- I couldn't figure out what was missing.

[ChristinaMason]

yes! we made this at school when I was little. it was tolerable, but not great.

[FibroLady]

What Tang IS good for: Cleaning your dishwasher. Really. Just fill the detergent cup with Tang and run it through a cycle. Nice shiny un-gunked dishwasher. It also works on toilets, sprinkle it all over the inside of the bowl, after you make sure the bowl is damp all over, let sit overnight and scrub with the brush. It removes the mineral build-up if you have hard water. I wouldn't put it in my body though!

[hill food]

interesting. anyone told the marketing whizzes at Kraft?

[alkapal]

citric acid, fine. tang, however, is a little pricey to clean my toilet.

~~~
ps. good one -- hill food -- on the marketing *whizzes."

[GodfatherofLunch]

Every manner of fruit and vegetable that came in a can. Cool whip, Fluff, pop tarts.
Pot cheese, farmers cheese. Real american cheese - not cheese food. Kraft grated parmesan cheese. Saccharin sprinkled on a half of grapefruit. Chicken fat with rendered onions. Frozen waffles. Frosted flakes.

[lynnlato]

Your mom was way cooler than mine, GFL. At least to my then 11 yr old mind. I used to go to friend's houses and pillage through their pantries in search of junk food. If I found Hawiian Punch I was giddy! My mom wouldn't allow the stuff in the house.

[GodfatherofLunch]

I forgot about Hawaiian Punch. We also always those cool old seltzer bottles.

[linguafood]

Dried Parsley. Canned mushrooms. Both of which I consider crimes against food.

[pikawicca]

Back in the day, it was either canned mushrooms, or no mushrooms.

[linguafood]

Really? No fresh 'shrooms in Germany in the 70s? Well, perhaps not. Obviously, I wasn't doing the shopping as a kid, so you might be right '-)

[steakman55]

Exactly what I was thinking........little cans of "B in B" mushrooms (I think it meant broiled in butter) but generally tasteless

[beth1]

My list is much like yours, coney. The margerine, jello, Lipton, and such, but also the tin of ground black pepper, the green can of "sprinkle cheese," perch, cube steak, ground beef, potato chips. And about the green can of "sprinkle cheese"-- I had no idea Parmesan was good until I bought a wedge after I moved out. That was 13 years ago, and I still can't get enough of it.

[canadianbeaver]

So weird! My mom called this "sprinkle cheese" as well!

[HillJ]

For some reason Mom had a jones for Strawberry Quik mix..still never got the story on that one.
Kraft yellow American "cheese" singles
Whipped butter
Cadbury chocolate bars (which she "hid" in the back of the frig)

[lynnlato]

We always had PDQ chocolate milk mix (Pretty Darn Quick). It was little freeze-dried chocolate flavored crystals. It was the ONLY chocolate milk I would drink and I was obsessed w/ chocolate milk. I used to pour chocolate milk on my blanket and smell it as I drifted off to sleep. I know, it's disgusting and to this day I don't understand why I did it. :)

[HillJ]

lynnlato, I'm sharing your chocolate milk memory with Mom later in the week...maybe it will help coax the Strawberry Quik story out... ;)

[lynnlato]

Ha! Well, please report back on what you manage to get out of her. Inquiring minds wanna know! :)

[HillJ]

Actually my younger sister just cleared up the mystery of Strawberry Quik. Our mom was a 45 year at the same job working mom with little time and a constant to do list in her head. Her idea of a quick lunch was often a milkshake and a banana. Sometimes the banana went into the milkshake. I do remember her bringing a blender to the office....according to my sister, Mom got bored with plain shakes and started adding Strawberry Quik to the mixture. That answers alot for me; especially how she managed to stay so strong her whole life; calcium.

[lynnlato]

Wow! I'm duly impressed. That was actually kind of chowish of her. Yea mom! Who else is whipping up milkshakes in the office? See, many things have a rational explanation. :)

[HillJ]

I forgot to mention that Strawberry Quik by the spoonful was more frugal than Carnation Instant Breakfast by the packful...and that would also be very "MOM" of our mother.

[condiment]

I'm dating myself, but I remember when Strawberry Quik was introduced at some national Boy Scout Jamboree in Idaho. It seemed very exciting at the time, even to a Webelo.

[HillJ]

That is too funny...and since I have two brothers...who were Scouts....I'm wondering if my Mother was introduced to Strawberry Quik thru some national "leader" speak.....funny.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Remember Banana Quik?

[coney with everything]

My God, I had completely forgotten about the existence of PDQ! We had that sometimes too...but with 4 kids and one (enlisted military) income it was a rare treat.

I'd have to add Kraft Parmesan and sliced cheese food to my original list too!

[Caroline1]

oh! oh! oh! How could I forget my mother's favorite cheese? Kraft Parmesan Cheese in the round green container with the shaker top! She used it on everything. It was her favorite TACO cheese! See? I've told you all I had a thwarted and depraved childhood!

[Kate is always hungry]

I'd like your mom's story about the Strawberry Quik. As a child, I always had regular Quik. One afternoon, visiting my aunt & uncle, Uncle George said he had somethihng I was going to love. He came back with a juice glass of Strawberry Quik in milk. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever tasted. I could not finish it then; I never wanted to see it again. I was 5 years old. I can never forget the incident.

[miss margie]

My mother didn't hide chocolate she kept them and coke in the "ice box" for all of us to have when ever we or our friends wanted. She also always had ice cream and chips on hand. She eats like that all the time she is over 90 and it seems to work for her.

[HillJ]

While catching up with my Mom this week we were giggling like crazy over Strawberry Quik, Cadbury chocolate squares and one I complete forgot....her coffee can hording. Mom use to buy cans of Maxwell House coffee. She couldn't resist the sales. She would never have dreamed of buying BEANS...and still believes I could be more frugal in my own coffee drinking...if I would switch to canned coffee. Ha!

[Veggo]

That big, cylindrical box of dried Quaker oat meal. When I could smell cookies in the oven, I always hoped for chocolate chip, but usually is was oatmeal cookies with raisins.
I appreciate them more now.

[cosmogrrl]

I still make those cookies! Except i add a LOT more spices to them. and sans nuts and raisins. They're so yummy that way. People in my office loved them! Even the guy who hated oatmeal cookies. He said I just call 'em spice cookies.

[Caroline1]

Margarine and canned white peaches for my father. He was an addict.

[Passadumkeg]

Mom was a good cook and as 1st generation American, not a lot of commercial American crap. Two things she frequently had on hand were ring boloney and veal roasts. Ring baloney doesn't exist in Maine and I can't afford veal roasts. We just cleaned out her house and she still had lots of good grub.

[soupkitten]

ring baloney-- is it like kielbasa?

[lulubelle]

Are you from Michigan? That's the only place I've ever seen ring baloney.

[buttertart]

They have it in Iowa too. Must relate to German immigration patterns?

[PJFla]

Not just ring baloney, but PICKLED ring baloney! Loved it as a kid and yes, I'm from Michigan. Another related item: Mom used to hook her metal meat grinder to the side of the pull out wooden chopping board to make ground baloney - ground baloney sandwiches anyone?!

[alkapal]

ground baloney, huh? i'm picturing that.....
just like paté, i'm sure. ;-)).

[buttertart]

Nope, that must be MI only. They make pickled ham in the Amanas in Iowa - it's great, (as I make it) just cooked cubed ham with rings of white onion and black pepper to taste soaked in a mixture of 3 parts white vinegar to 1 part water to cover. A tasty way to use up the sempiternal ham leftovers.

[alkapal]

sempiternal. what a beautifully apt word! it's rare that i see a new word to me, but that one is brilliant.

wasn't it dorothy parker who quipped that the definition of eternity was two people and a ham? maybe? or "nope", it was irma rombauer in the joy of cooking, http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/n...

[buttertart]

I love that quote, also "She was a good cook, as good cooks go, and as good cooks go, she went." (Saki, also quoted in JoC.) Do try the pickled ham, it's tasty.

[alkapal]

how is the pickled ham served? on noodles? just plain?

my mom used leftover ham by putting a large, 1/3-1/2 inch thick slice in a cast iron skillet, adding grits and water for the grits, covering and simmering till grits are done. sometimes i'll buy a ham slice just for this purpose. that's simple country cookin'.

[buttertart]

We first saw it as a cold appetizer before BIG meat and potatoes dinners at restaurants in the Amana Colonies in eastern IA, served family-style, with a big bowl of cottage cheese (they have super cottage cheese in IA) doctored up with some buttermilk, s&p, and chopped green onion. We make the appetizer a meal at our place during warm weather, with homemade biscuits. (The meals at the Amana Colonies restaurants are great, big bowls of delicious sauerkraut, German fried potatoes, smoked pork chops, fried chicken, sausages, the whole nine yards. Favorite restaurant was the Ronneburg, haven't been there in a good long while though. Just off I80 a bit in a beautiful part of IA if you're ever out that way.)

[alkapal]

pickled ham, cottage cheese with buttermilk, and green onions. that is an interesting combination of ingredients. to learn more about this food combo,i am reading about the amana colonies. quite interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Co...

germany/switzerland is the ethnographic origin of that food combo, right? is that still the way food is in germany, anyone? in general, it seems germans like "sour" food. i wonder if they like "sour" more than any other groups.

~~~~
and i'd love to try fresh cottage cheese.

[buttertart]

Yes, I haven't gotten into the history of the Amanas a lot but there is a lot of German (and Czech) settlement in that part of the Midwest. Btw husb is German-Irish, the classic combo, stubbborn as all get-out (in a good way, of course). Sour does seem to be more valued in German food than a lot of other cuisines.

[lulubelle]

I love pickled baloney ring! I'm gonna have to put in an order with my friends when I am home over Christmas.

[gfcolette]

Ring Baloney is definately one of those things from my childhood that I would like to forget. No mom, its not "just like a big hot dog".

[coll]

I have no idea what ring baloney is, but regular bologna meat IS the same thing as hot dog meat. Same ingredients, different shape. Neither is on my list of favorite things. My Mom's favorite cold cuts that I never even look at now were olive loaf and spiced ham.

[alkapal]

olive loaf! gotta get me some. i wonder if anyone makes a good quality version?

~~~~~
my mom also got a lunchmeat, something "loaf." sandwich loaf, maybe?

~~~~
isn't "loaf" a weird word?
even stranger is the aero-weiner. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/153/350752730_9507184445.jpg
that is just plain (!) wrong!
ummm, wait. it *does* get weirder. http://www.kraftbrands.com/goodmoodmi...
i'm lookin' for baloney, and i get kittens floating by in bubbles?

[Paulustrious]

I prefer Beluga to weiner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_B....

[alkapal]

i used your link, but had to hunt for it. good one!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_B...
(sometimes wiki links are strange!).

[Paulustrious]

My bad .... trailing period problem. I wish Chow would remove them. Whilst a trailing period is technically a valid url, it is almost always a user error.

[alkapal]

the beluga airbus -- wonder what the luggage hold looks like? lots of shiny round pieces of black patent leather louis vuitton luggage? http://caviar-lover.com/beluga-caviar...

[buttertart]

Another one we often had was mac and cheese loaf - basically bologna with little cubes of processed cheese and cooked elbow macaroni in it (in the same proprtion of things to meat as pistachios and lardo in mortadella). Who the hell thought that one up? Was quite good in a weird way, however.

[Blush]

My brother could have lived on mac and cheese loaf.

[alkapal]

never seen mac and cheese loaf anywhere!

[buttertart]

Is it an Ontario thing I wonder? Schneider's out of Kitchener was my mom's standby brand for cold meats.

[Blush]

Could be Ontario. We ate a lot of Schneider's as well.

[stuck in Hartford County]

Olive loaf on the kind of white bread that stix to the roof of your mouth, with lots of mayo. Oh, childhood...

[cuccubear]

Hey alkapal, Boar's Head has an Olive Loaf, although I haven't had it in years...

http://www.boarshead.com/digicatessen...

Or, Alton Brown can show you how to make your own on the FN website

and last, here's a pic of a poor, lonely loaf looking for someone who cares...

[alkapal]

oh gosh, cuccs, you really made me laugh with this one!

did you create mr. o. loaf? that's a super job. i saved the image as "cuccubear's lonely olive loaf."

thanks! {;^D.

[Erinmck]

jarred minced garlic (though I can see where this would come in handy)
margarine
cream of everything soup
american cheese singles (my siblings love eating them, I hate them!)

She still makes the best gumbo and red beans & rice I've ever had, though.

[ChristinaMason]

would love if you'd share those gumbo and rb&r recipes!

[susancinsf]

margarine, butter was pretty much a no go in our house growing up, as margarine was considered much healthier...

Powdered milk: that is all we drank. (Shudder).

And one I actually really like: Peanut butter. There was always peanut butter in the house growing up. I remember living on pbj sandwiches for two weeks when we were making a cross country move. To this day I am not sure if my mother was just trying to keep the cupboards cleaned out, or if money was tight with the costs of the move. (or both).

As I say, I love peanut butter. Unfortunately, hubby has a serious addiction to it, as in once he starts eating it he has a hard time stopping, and he really doesn't need the calories...so I've just stopped buying it. well, officially, anyway. I will admit that I did keep a jar well-hidden in a place I would never admit to on a public forum... :-)

and, for similar reasons, only with this one I am the one who can't stop eating it when it is in the house, so I don't keep it, ice cream. My mother always had ice cream in the freezer.... (well, actually, no, I take that back: she always had ice milk in the freezer; that health thing again).

So of course, what was my favorite dessert as a child? Stir a few tablespoons of maple syrup into peanut butter, spoon the entire thing over vanilla ice cream (or ice milk). Yum! The grownups liked it too, with the addition of a shot of Kahlua.

[dolores]

Funny, those two are my addictions too, susancinsf.

I had forgotten about the ice milk -- who the heck thought up that abomination? -- I hated it then, and hate everything 'light' now.

brendastarlet (do you remember Brenda Starr??), that's IT!!!!!!! Whip 'n Chill! THAT'S the product that was like the whipped dessert from a box that is now in the international aisled. That's the one she put in a parfait glass with partially chilled Jello. And if you want it now, it'll cost you $18.95 - how funny. Thanks for the name.

http://tinyurl.com/65s7qn

[brendastarlet]

My mom's pantry included:
1) Miracle Whip
2) Cool Whip
3) Whip n Chill
4) Fluff
5) Hershey's unsweetened cocoa (mixed with Fluff for Girl Scout Fudge!)
6) Cocktail sauce
7) Horseradish in a jar
8) Kraft individually wrapped American cheese slices
9) freeze dried coffee

I don't remember having a fresh herb until adulthood.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Are Whip N Chill and Dream Whip the same thing?

[coney with everything]

I don't remember Whip n Chll--was it a dry product that you turned into "whipped topping"? (or floor wax)

[cathodetube]

I think Whip n Chill was a kind of fast pudding and more aerated. You didn't have to 'cook' it. Just used beaters. Then put it in the fridge. Anyone else have Shake a Puddin or Jello 1,2,3? Dream Whip is kind of like Cool Whip from memory. Fake cream.

[meatn3]

Was Jello 1,2,3 the mix which had 3 "parfait" layers?
It was quite the thing at one time!

[cathodetube]

That's the one. So you had to pour it into a see through glass in order to admire the layers. Anyone else remember Shake a Pudding......?

[hill food]

of course it was a Tupperware detachable-base parfait cup with sealer lid if you were going to do it right..

[somervilleoldtimer]

Ah, yes. I kind of liked Jello 1,2,3. A long time after I last had that, a Vietnamese friend made me the same thing, only chrysanthemum-flavored. Pretty good, and the layers were impressive.

[greygarious]

Yes, you mixed the Whip 'N Chill packet with cold milk and beat it with an eggbeater or electric mixer until it was fluffy, like an airy mousse. I loved it as a kid.

Dream Whip was also a packet mixed with milk, that produced a fake whipped cream in the days before Cool Whip.

[coll]

Dream Whip had a unique texture, not like Cool Whip but more gelatinish.

[cassoulady]

Frozen green beans
Miracle Whip
skim mik
wheaties
margerine
powdered iced tea mix

[bubbles4me]

I Can't Believe Its Not Butter
Backup jar of Best Foods...I have it but rarely use it so I am always out when I need some
Cream O Soups
Mexican Rice Packs....Lipton maybe
Creamed Corn
Canned Peaches
Jello Pudding Snacks
Wondra
Bisquick...always had those little bugs in it because she never used much so she always bought another one.
Canned Chili
Sweet & Low
Bread Crums
Toothpicks...never have those but I should

[Sal Vanilla]

Nestea. Belecht.
Swanson Pot Pies. Double Belecht.
* My mom moves like every other year - she has been carrying around the same tin of celery salt for at least 30 years! It was the one from when I was a child.

[Sal Vanilla]

Small update: talked with my mom this morning. She got miffed when I suggested she is a spice hoarder. Then she went to the cabinet... She said she did indeed have a schilling spice box that has a metal slide top. She thought it was from maybe around the time my brother was born (1959). She also swears her 1970's nutmeg still is very "nutmeggy" and (Ah ha!) the celery seed is Astor and only expired Oct. 20 1987. "It's a seed!"

I am still trying to understand my mother's logic.

She called me later to tell me she just "discovered" a Libbyland Safari Supper (TV dinner) she bought for 60 cents back from when we were kids (so the 70's).

She scares me. LOL

[lynnlato]

LOL! This is so cute. I love it. Where on Earth did she discover the tv dinner, in the freezer? LOL

I'll admit that I have a small tin of McCormick Ground Cloves. I don't see an expiration date on it but I do know it belonged to my mother who passed away in 1982. It's quite possible it belonged to her mother who passed away in 1979. Although I keep it in with my other spices, I don't use it. It's kind of like a security blanket I suppose. Makes me feel like they are in the kitchen with me. :)

[EastBayShortcake]

That's a sweet story, lynnlato. My mother has something in her kitchen from her mother too - it's a empty can that was opened at one end and then sharpened around the open edge. She uses it as a little chopping device. I hope it's passed down to me one day.

[Sam Fujisaka]

Now that is ingenious. How did you grandmotrher and how does your mother sharpen the can and keep the "blade" level?

[decolady]

Aww. I love that. And I know just what you mean. I have a McCormick's Celery Salt jar that belonged to my great-grandmother. She taught me how to cook when i was a little girl, but she crossed over in 1965.

[coll]

I have a jar of whole cloves, in a big jelly jar, that Mom got from Grandma after she passed on ('60s), and then I got from Mom when I moved out (early 70s). Who knows how old altogether, but still plenty strong. I don't really like cloves, but I open the jar once in awhile just to smell it. I'll have to think who I'm going to leave it to.

[just_M]

I have a bottle of bitters from my Gran, who shared her love of food with me and anyone else that would sit still long enough :->. I don't recall her ever using this particular bottle, it was always just there. She did use other bitters in her cocktails. Unfortunately she passed unexpectedly, not that I'm sure I would have ever thought to ask. Now it sits in my cabinet.

[amy_rc]

My grandparents moved to their current house in 1991. A child of the Depression, grandma doesn't waste anything. Over the holidays I discovered a jar of pumpkin in her freezer--she used half a can of pumpkin circa 1986 and instead of throwing the rest of the pumpkin out she froze the remaining contents in a jar--and confirmed that it was the same frozen jar of pumpkin I remembered from her old house when I was a kid. I say if she hasn't used it by now she ain't gonna. Nothing like 22 year old pumpkin to put you in the holiday spirit.

[Barbara76137]

You're making me laugh, but I have a box of Diamond Kosher salt that I bought at the Fort Sheridan Army base for $1.69 in December of 1981. I don't know why I haven't finished it, but I seem to buy varieties of salt all the time.

[Emme]

jarred olives
garbanzo beans
feta cheese
frozen weight watchers meals and weight watchers desserts
milk (no use for it even before i found out i was allergic)
jam
multiple varieties of dijon mustard
diet coke and iced tea
coffee

on the reverse:
tomatoes (no matter the season)
bragg's amino acids
lemon juice
iceberg lettuce
TVP

[Sam Fujisaka]

Mom was a second generation great cook and baker. She studied nutrition, among other fields, at Berkeley before being thrown into the concentration camps. Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I remember her being sarcastic about the hakujin's (you guys) use of canned goods, about their over-cooked vegetables, and about their generally poor nutrition. We had a lot of fruits and vegetables, much that was home grown, had lots of fish, not that much red meat, little to no fried foods, cuisines from around the globe, and all done from scratch. So I was very fortunate and now try to have on hand much of what she used to have. And since I'm as old as many of your moms, maybe you expect me to have all kinds of canned, processed, and junk foods on hand? No way. Our moms passed down good practice to almost all of us cousins.

[firecooked]

I'm thinking I can figure the Mom's ages by the lists! (and always worry that some of this stuff is in my cupboard)

[MrsT]

My mom always had frozen Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers frozen dinners in the house
along with garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano, LaChoy soy sauce, a tub of Crisco that was several years old, Diet Coke, and microwave popcorn. The only reason I have the soda in my house right now is because I had a party.

[Justpaula]

In my house, my Dad did the food shopping.

Margarine (for cooking)
Whipped Butter (for toast)
- I just buy stick butter to cover both!

Rice-A-Roni - I think I ate this ate least once a week while growing up. My Mom's idea of being a "cook" was to put broccoli in it. I don't think I have ever bought it for my own home

Coffee (both instant and drip) - I have never had coffee probably never will, and SO only drinks it out of the house

Tropicana OJ - both my parents still drink it every day. I bought a small one at the bagel store a few weeks ago, and my boyfriend looked at me oddly, because in four years he had never, ever seen me drink it. But, you know? It was pretty good.

Skinless Chicken Breasts - Eaten at least once a week with previously mentioned Rice-A-Roni. Also, in baked chicken parm, and...well, it was pretty much the staple protein. I just don't like those dry, tastless things!

Also:
Nestle Quick powder OR Fox's U-Bet Syrup
Canned Fruit
Hungry Jack Instant Mashed Potatoes
Frozen Blintzes
Bottled Salad Dressing (of which there were always about twenty varieties)
Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Entenmman's cakes (ok, once in a blue moon I buy the All-butter Loaf to have with strawberries and whipped cream!)

[Justpaula]

I will add, that while we never kept kosher, the whole margarine thing was because both of my parents had Eastern European Jewish parents (my grandparents), and, they just did not cook with butter. Because, even though the did not keep Kosher, there was still "that thing" about cooking meat with dairy. Which, I think is kind of cool and okay in that heritage kinda way.

[susancinsf]

it could be part of the issue for my mother as well, even though she always claimed it was health reasons...we never kept kosher but pork was almost unheard of in our house: I can remember my father begging her for pork chops and her suggesting he should cook them or go out...

Crisco was a no go, but I think that was her perception of health issues.

[Potrezebie]

Chicken Fat, of course. (My father was the one who got the jars of Postum). Also can't get No Cal cola or saccarine, probably for the better.

[BerkshireTsarina]

Yes, chicken fat!
My mother was most posters' grandmothers' generation (as I am of the mother generation). So it's a long time remembering back, but I'm pretty sure she had Spry instead of Crisco, because Crisco wasn't kosher. (Of course, maybe I've got it backwards! )
In any event, I don't Do Shortening. I don't make Southern Fried Chicken either, maybe because it really demands shortening!

[maplesugar]

Bottled spices on a lazy susan that date back to 1960 something
Campbell's Cup-o-Soup in packets
Cheez-Whiz
Crisco shortening
Fruit Cocktail
Jello & jello molds
Kraft Dinner
Kraft Parmesan Cheese
Le Seur (sp?) canned peas <---why I hated peas as a kid
Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup
Maxwell House Coffee
Minute Rice
Miracle Whip
Mock Chicken
Red Rose Tea
Velveeta
Wonder Bread

[Sal Vanilla]

Mock chicken? Foul and sarcastic?

[maplesugar]

http://www.olymel.com/en/products/our...

Mock as in fake - Deli slices that were pinkish in colour and orange on the edges. I'm sure Mom would deny the mock chicken and the KD with hot dogs but I remember them as childhood staples.

[FriedClamFanatic]

It's appropriate here to mention that McCormick's put out and ad a few years ago that if you have any of their spices in cans or ones that list the company in Baltimore, they are AT LEAST 15 years old (so now it must be 17 or 18). Throwing them out and getting new ones (stocking stuffers?) might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, if they have lasted this long, she may not really need them!

[Firegoat]

Crisco
A jar of bacon drippings
Cheez Whiz
Milk
Dried Beef wafers
Bologna
Pickle Relish
Coffee

[pikawicca]

What is a "dried beef wafer?" Sounds nasty.

[Firegoat]

They came in a foil pouch. Sliced of dried beef. Then she'd make dried beef gravy with it. Like paper thin slices of dried beef. I didn't like gravy so I'd make a sandwich with it occasionally. Kind of like eating roofing paper.

[soupkitten]

roll 'em into little tubes stuffed with cream cheese and horseradish-- if you can, let them sit overnight or a couple hours in the fridge, then eat. my fave 1950's cheap-o HD, courtesy of my grandma gladys. delicious!

[latindancer]

Dried beef and chipped beef were used during WW2 for the soldiers in different parts of the world....it was part of their food 'ration'.
It packed well and was used with a white cream sauce and served on toast.
Many soldiers, like my dad who returned from overseas, were used to it and continued eating eat when they came home. My father referred to it as 'sh*&t on a shingle'.
However lamb. and my father's disgust of the smell because of his experience during
the war and how they prepared it, was not allowed in our home.
My mother had one of the most remarkable fruit/vegetable gardens I have ever experienced to this day...but we always had that 'chipped beef on toast' once a week.
I really liked it because my father liked it.

[Firegoat]

that's interesting... we never had lamb either.... in fact I never even tasted lamb until I was in post grad school. Yet, the dried beef gravy was a regular.

[latindancer]

That is very interesting. I didn't know what lamb tasted like until I was in college, on my own, and a friend took me out to dinner. I had broiled lambchops. My mother would sneak them into the house when my father was at work, all of us were at school so I'd never be able to sample her's, and she'd air out the house before my dad came home from work.
But, wow, she'd have in the oven some of the best rib roast I've ever eaten in my life...roasting on low all day with fresh vegetables from that garden of her's.
She loved to cook and bake on a very low budget but the lack of money didn't seem to matter....

[Barbara76137]

I'm another one who never tasted lamb until I was probably in my late 20's. My mother never made it. We always had lots of beef and pork, and sometimes chicken. Seafood was fried halibut on Fridays and occasionally shrimp.

[cathodetube]

My dad loved the creamed chipped beef too! Some company did a frozen versions of it and my mom used to keep it for him.

[kmcarr]

I just recently spent a week in San Francisco and stayed at the Marine's Memorial Club & Hotel. (Yes, it really is affiliated with the Marine Corp). It's a very nice hotel and they provide a nice, complimentary breakfast every morning. While the menu varied somewhat from day to day, one constant was a big pot of S.O.S.!

[krisrishere]

Margarine
Canned Vegetables - frozen vegetables were forbidden and looked down upon, but fresh
were always available.
Coffee Syrup
Ring Dings and Peanut M&M's by the boatload - my mom had some cravings :)
Condensed Tomato Soup
Cup of Soup

[Eatin in Woostah]

Coffee Syrup - hmmm....were you from Rhode Island or southern Massachusetts?

[charlesbois]

Cream of tartar
garam masala
Kitchen Bouquet

And the big one, yeast. My mom could bust out a loaf of bread or pizza dough at the drop of a hat.

[firecooked]

Kitchen Bouquet was (and still probably is) in my mom's kitchen! LOL it's probably the same bottle, used one teaspoon every Thanksgiving.

[Orchid64]

Mmm. Cream of tartar for snickerdoodles!

[Eatin in Woostah]

My mom, too. Kitchen Bouquet, and Liquid Smoke.

[CeeBee]

Canned Clams and Bottled Clam Juice
Gravy Master
Garlic Powder
Iceburg Lettuce
Pepsi
Log Cabin Syrup
Wonder Bread
Grape Jelly
A jug of Chablis

[condiment]

Catsup

[cyberroo]

Tang
Powdered milk (and I wonder why I don't like to drink milk)
margarine
American cheese and bologna
Chips - cheetos, doritos...
Budweiser and a box of white.
Bisquick
Lipton Noodles & Sauce

[pikawicca]

"A box of white?"

[maplesugar]

Only guessing but I think cyberroo is referring to a box of white wine.

[laliz]

Whole milk by the gallon
Maxwell House Instant coffee
Cream of Wheat
Margarine
Canned vegetables ~~ peas, spinach, creamed corn
Canned fruit ~~ fruit cocktail, canned peaches
MInute steaks
Cube Steaks
Instant potatoes
Frozen pot pies
TV Dinners
Chef Boy ar Dee Spaghetti Dinner
Canned Sardines
a can of bacon grease
Crisco
Artificially flavored maple syrup
Pancake Mix (Aunt Jemimah)
Sunbeam Bread
Miracle Whip
fake cheese in the green can

[BeaN]

canned chow mein - what an abomination
crisco
cream of X soup
canned fruit cocktail or peaches

[alissers]

I didn't even know there was such a thing as canned chow mein -_-

[Caroline1]

Talk about good luck! Count your blessings. '-)

[latindancer]

margarine
half a beef in the freezer...each piece wrapped in butcher paper .
chipped beef in those little bags...do they still make that stuff?
hamburger patties, formed by her, stacked in between waxed paper and placed in freezer 'ready to go'.
cans of clams for clamchowder...
canned tuna packed in oil
wonder bread
lunchmeat
folger's coffee

[Sam Fujisaka]

Parece que soy tu mama: "hamburger patties, formed by her, stacked in between waxed paper and placed in freezer 'ready to go'." Y por que no hagas lo mismo?

[Barbara76137]

'half a beef in the freezer...each piece wrapped in butcher paper '

Ditto here, along with an entire pig cut up into chops & roasts and whatever else you do with a pig.

[latindancer]

Almost forgot (this is a fabulous thread by the way....I'll be talking to friends about this for days)

Ovaltine...we had to drink it everyday
Tang

[lulubelle]

I make a smoothie out of frozen bananas, vanilla yogurt and Ovaltine almost every morning for breakfast.

[meatn3]

Canned:
Asparagus
Creamed Corn
Peas
String beans

Miracle whip
Frozen Donald Duck OJ
Frozen Stouffer's spinach souffle
Sugary cereals
Sunbeam bread
Carnation instant breakfast
Pop tarts
American cheese
Canned Chinese meals/mixes
Canned pastas (Chef boy-r-dee, etc)
Grape jelly
imitation maple syrup
beef bacon

[dexters]

Five Alive juice
saltine crackers
big can of crisco ( i used to eat it with a spoon, straight out of the can. *shudder*)
condiments galore: 5 kinds of mustard, 24 salad dressings, 8 types of pickles, etc.
bisquick

I'm always laughing at her because she has 2 fridges (w/ 2 freezers), plus an additional deep freezer stuffed FULL of food. And a huge pantry bursting with items. And it is only her and my dad living at home now, so they don't need that much food.

[dolores]

>>big can of crisco ( i used to eat it with a spoon, straight out of the can. *shudder*)

Nooooo, really? Wow!

[amy_rc]

I kid you not, I'm convinced my parents are food hoarders. They have a refridgerator/freezer in the kitchen, two in the attached garage and one in the detached garage (my dad's haven/beer fridge) and a full size deep freeze. Really, do two people need all that refrigeration capacity? Last year my dad cleaned out the freezer and found pork chops from 2001.

[im_nomad]

are your parents a product of the depression era? I often wonder if that's why my parents are food hoarders....if Mom finds something on sale, she'll buy loads of it, including bread and eggs. at one point last year, they were boiling eggs every time I called home !

They are two in a small bungalow....and have a full fridge and cupboard, deep freeze and pantry...plus stashes around the house.

[amy_rc]

No--my mom's parents were products of the Depression, though, and instilled those values. My dad is from a family of nine children, so I think they always had enough food..but just enough and one one morsel more.
Mom will go anywhere for a sale. I live in a city 20 minutes away and last week I bumped into my parents at my local grocery store. She came over because milk, eggs and bread were on sale. So she saved $4 or $5 but what did she spend in gas and time to get to the store? But, if it makes her happy I'm not going to burst her "saving" bubble.

[EastBayShortcake]

My mom gets the sale ads together every week and goes to each store to stock up on the sale items that she needs. When I would come home to visit in my early 20s (and sometimes now), she would pack up the items from her pantry to send home with me. Shopping at Mom's stretched more than a few paychecks for me.

[Sam Fujisaka]

That is really lovely! Please give your Mom a hug from me!

[Barbara76137]

My parents were born in '33 & '34, so products of the depression. It is just the two of them, and my father is in ill health, yet they still buy like they are feeding an army every night. I last visited them in August 2010 and they had food piled up all over the place. The refrigerators and freezers were all full and they still buy Costco/Sam's Club quantities of everything!

[msgenie516]

I have to laugh at your last comment. I am also guilty of having two large refrigerator/freezers (one in the garage) plus an additional large upright freezer (also in the garage) and LOTS of pantry items in the house. It is only my husband and myself living here and I'm always worried that we are short on some kind of food. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't buy more food until I cleared a lot of this stuff out but it seems that there is always something that I want that I don't have. So it is not only your Mom and Dad!

[Shrinkrap]

New show! Food Hoarders on Cooking Channel

http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recip...

[coll]

Do these people really have all their food sitting on the counter like that? If it was all put away it wouldn't be so weird, at least to me. Good to know I only have one of the food hoarder characteristics...I like to acquire food, but I also like to organize, keep lists and use it up! And I do occasionally throw something out, even though it annoys me. Whew!

[hill food]

coll, meet my mom. mom this is coll. the two of you have nothing in common whatsoever.

but a cool show even though it hits close to home.

[coll]

Think I'll have to watch it sometime, even just as a cautionary tale. Luckily (?) we are both not working right now and I have been working through my stock on a daily basis. I knew there was a reason I had a little bit of everything! So weird to be able to reach in the freezer and get to the back without anything falling out on my foot.

[MaineCook]

hahahahahahahaha! Just two of us and we have a large Amana side-by-side and a 1952 GE fridge/freezer (we are the second home it has lived in) in the main house, and a 5 cuft freezer in the barn. We'd have more, but don't have the floor/wall space. AND we have a second home where I add to our 'needs'. Aren't we just the funniest people? We didn't grow up in the Big Depression, but it trickled down to us through our parents. (Nice to know we aren't alone.)

[ns538bmk]

Cadbury's milk chocolate bars
Pickled beets
Spam
Canned salmon
Potato Buds
Instant coffee
Instant creamer
Those peppermint candies with the red/white swirl
Spatini

[lagatta]

No tinned salmon? That is part of my Great Ice Storm pantry. If you buy the red kind (when it is on sale) it is actually rather good.

[JungMann]

Canned Kraft cheese
Inexplicably brown coconut jam
Potted Meat Food Product
Ovaltine
Banana ketchup
Holland House cooking wine

[soupkitten]

mine would be same as many others', but i'll add malt o' meal, i don't think i've seen it yet.

[Jeri L]

Oh, great...snowed in, and now I want Malt 'o Meal. My mom, when I was younger, always had Crisco, Cool Whip and Coffee Rich. She was extremely sensitive to milk, so I grew up knowing exactly which products were non-dairy.

[hill food]

alum was the one I never understood. is it really used for anything but practical jokes in old WB cartoons?

[Caroline1]

Your mom must have made her own pickles. An alum soak makes the pickles crispy. It's also an important ingredient in baking powder, so if you ever make your own biscuits or cakes or anything else you use baking powder for, you're using alum. Toxic in large amounts, safe is small. Not recommended as a gargle. '-)

[hill food]

that's the funny part C, she's been reminiscing about home-made pickles lately from her childhood, but never made them as far as I'm aware, maybe just thought it was something required for a kitchen.

[Caroline1]

Ahhh... Sounds like the alum is a security blanket that links her to her childhood. My guess is she's still looking for cucumbers that match her childhood. Me too! And NOT just cucumbers! '-)

[lcool]

asparagus in a can
Heinz chile sauce
clover honey
colby cheese
My mother used the above very regularly.I don't like any on the list,then or now.Clueless
to what they could be good for.

[vtnewbie]

Clover honey and colby cheese are for eating. The rest I don't know.

[lcool]

But so very bland,in need of a supporting cast unlike cheddar and wild flower honey

[maplesugar]

Asparagus in a can because it was probably either impossible or impossibly expensive to get fresh.

[lcool]

I wish you were right.My mom was French but had some odd salty,slimy and mushy
personal foods.
None of us would touch any of the above.(children/siblings) She would not eat fresh or frozen peas,asparagus or mushrooms.My father was the keeper of the kitchen,
garden and meat.His tastes and teachings were very different.

[laliz]

when I was a kid I would only eat canned asparagus. what did I know?

Heinz chili sauce -- mix with equal ratio of Welch's grape jelly and melt. Stir in frozen (prepackaged) meatballs. Cook until meatballs are heated through. Refrigerate overnight (sauce is absorbed by meatballs) and reheat to serve.

[lcool]

My problem with Heinz Chili Sauce is a "salty" taste.I realy don't like salt or salty food.
Welch's grape jelly is completely unknown to me.The juice never took hold here either.My kids did not sweet stuff even when little,nor do the grand children.

[Firegoat]

Welch's grape jelly is lovely. I got on that sauce as a litle kid... i want no other grape jellies but that

[EastBayShortcake]

Meatballs or little cocktail franks in that sauce - we always had that during the holidays

[cosmogrrl]

I actually made a soup from canned asparagus at my Dad's place. Canned asparagus, can of cream of mushroom soup, and chicken stock, and maybe some milk too. All pureed together. It was actually quite tasty!

[im_nomad]

there are a few recipes out there for an asparagus dip that's made from canned asparagus, and it's surprisingly good !

[EWSflash]

Chile sauce with a big spoonful of horseradish and a bunch of fresh lemon juice is what you dip the shrimp in when you have an American-style shrimp cocktail.

Well, I think it's good!

[lcool]

I'll bet it is.I doubt my mom made any,she was shellfish fussy.Ate crawfish and other hard shell bugs,but not shrimp,oysters and mussles not clams and scallops.

[PJFla]

Oh yeah! The Heinz chili sauce was a must in our house. I remember my mom making a "salad" that consisted of iceberg lettuce leaves, a big dollop of homemade Thousand Island dressing which was really Miracle Whip mixed with chili sauce - yech! There was a nother version of salad that was iceberg lettuce with cottage cheese and either sliced peaches from a can or pineapple with the ever present dollop of Miracle Whip and I'm just about gagging thinking of it. Another item I haven't seen mentioned yet: Kraft (I think) pimento cheese in a small glass jar. The empty glass jars ended up being our stock of juice glasses for many years. And one more: Chicken A'la King (in those frozen bags that you thawed in boiling water) on top of toasted Bays English Muffins, an all time favorite!

[emilief]

canned crepe suzettes.

[Whosyerkitty]

Margarine for cooking "it doesn't burn like butter", but always butter for eating, because it was some point of pride during the Depression (that FIRST one) that you were too poor to afford butter.
Canned veggies--I hate 'em.
Libby's Fruit Cocktail
Carl Buddig Chicken, yuck, yuck, yuck
50/50 Pop. Do they still make this?

[Caralien]

Garlic salt, onion salt, seasoned salt...
Green tubes of parmesan
Tins of spices from Holland--circa 1965 or so? Plus other tins from trips, some decades old
MSG of all sorts--tubes, bags, whatever
Non-dairy creamer
Tofu
Canned fruit in heavy syrup
Frozen orange juice
A freezer so over stuffed with food that you had no idea what was what, or how long it had been there (and had to step back when pulling something out and were barefoot)
Cream cheese
Coffee nips candy
Durian

[16crab]

One of the recipe cards I inherited from my grandmother actually says 1 tsp of monosodium glutamate...written out like that. I couldn't believe it!

[hill food]

there's a restaurant in Daly City, CA that has the unspoken reputation and following precisely because they use un-godly amounts of MSG

[Barbara76137]

Anyone else remember "mom" having a jar of Accent? Pure MSG.

[soxchik]

Canned green and wax beans
Canned cranberry sauce
Lays potato chips
Wonder bread
Vanilla ice cream
Unidentifiable frozen meat

[FoodChic]

Canned fruit, canned vegetables, and spam.

[Kinnexa]

Potato flakes to make "mashed potatoes"
Scalloped potato and au gratin mixes in the rattly little box
Giant can of Crisco
Giant jar of Tang
Chow mein in the two-part can with canned crunchy noodles
Peanut butter (my dad's recourse after one of Mom's really bad meals)
Dried beef in a jar - always for "creamed dried beef" - my ex-Marine dad taught me to call it 'sh*t on a shingle', which seems much more appropriate
Postum...every afternoon with her favorite soap opera
Canned vegetables
A whole drawer of little spice tins that she never ever put in the food
A sugar bowl on the kitchen table
Velveeta
Miracle Whip
tons of junky kids' cereal
Minute Rice
instant coffee
Oscar Mayer braunschweiger

[Barbara76137]

'Potato flakes to make "mashed potatoes"' You mean Potato Buds?

[califhsmom]

Oh my....what memories this post has brought back. I can remember the following items in our house when I was a kid... it's amazing what I used to eat and actually like!

Olive loaf lunch meat (square shaped slices of lunch meat with olives and pimentos)
Puffed wheat in a bag (unsweetened)
PDQ Chocolate Milk Crystals (mamma also bought the eggnog flavor)
Space Food Sticks (chocolate and peanut butter flavor, mmmmm)
Instant milk (mamma said she always mixed this up after we went to bed, or otherwise we girls wouldn't drink it if we knew it wasn't the "real" thing)
Potted meat food product (oooo, enough said, but my sister still loves this stuff)
Vienna Sausages
Watkins Pudding Mix in a can (for pudding and pies)
Dream Whip (Little packettes of powder you mixed with vanilla and milk, whipped up and ended up with something like Cool Whip)
Kitchen Bouquet Browning Seasoning
Fizzie Soft Drink Tablets
Choo Choo Cherry Soft Drink Mix (Similar to Pre- Sweetened Kool Aid)
Otter Pops
Sandwich Spread (pink mayo with sweet pickle relish mixed in ??)
Maypo
Deviled Ham
Circus Peanuts (orange "marshmallows"?? shaped like peanuts....a special treat)
SPAM and Treet (YUCK) canned meat
Canned Roast Beef in Gravy and Canned Corn Beef (mamma shredded/smashed the meat up and made gravy out of these and we ate them over slices of bread we had pulled apart into pieces. I also liked to watch mamma open the corned beef with the key as she rolled up the tin strip at the top of the can)
Canned Corn/Roast Beef Hash
Canned Tamales in Chili Sauce
Blue Dutch??, Royal Dutch??, Dutch Girl?? (Dutch something) Ice Milk
Velveeta Cheese for Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Morton House brand Brown Horseradish Mustard (we never had the regular yellow stuff 'cause daddy like this kind)
Canned Sardines
Canned Oysters and Salmon for soups
Tuna packed in oil
Pot Pies
"Boil In" bags of sliced turkey, salisbury steak, bbq beef, and chipped beef to serve on toast
Shredded Wheat (The big ones, not the bite size ones)
Appian Way Pizza Kit in a box (the crust was WAY hard to spread out on the cookie sheet and it always stuck. Mamma never bought mozzerella cheese. She always sprinkled the parmesan cheese in the green can liberally over it)
Ragu Spaghetti Sauce (glorified tomato sauce)
Little Frozen Tubs of Chicken Livers
Dixie Fry and Shake n' Bake Chicken Coating

Boy, we ate some unusual stuff, but then again, what I wouldn't do to be able to sit down for one more meal with my daddy. Even if meant I had to eat canned corn beef gravy over white bread pieces.

[lagatta]

I rather like some of yours. Good mustard for one.

And you don't like tinned sardines? Some can be very good indeed. Your parents sounded as if they had elements of interest in good food, for the time.

[Chowpatty]

Space food sticks and Fizzies? You must be over 50 or so. I remember both of those, and Maypo too.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Fizzies! I made myself totally sick eating Fizzies straight from the package! And does anyone remember Chipos potato chips, in a box?

[Whosyerkitty]

OMG! I forgot about those "boilin' bags"--guess they weren't that memorable. Those were always on hand for "emergencies". Chicken Ala King!

That was also way before microwaves in homes. I don't know if they still make that stuff, either.

[kivarita]

Deviled Ham!!! Thank you califhsmom - I read this far down and was surprised no one had mentioned it yet.

It was my grandma who always had it -- horrible, horrifying stuff, that. I think she mixed it with mayo and slathered it on white sandwich bread.

[Firegoat]

I went home for Christmas to my parents and while Mom was cooking christmas dinner in the kitchen I told her about this thread. ... and that I suddenly noticed that she no longer had a can of Crisco by the stove. Apparently "Pam" has replaced Crisco on my mom's shelves. We also talked about the packets of dried beef..... and yes..... there was some in the refrigerator and she had just made dried beef gravy earlier in the week.

BTW mom made a 15 pound rolled rump roast for dinner and it was magnificent. You couldn't slice it.... it just fell apart.

[chef chicklet]

I can remember my mother telling me to make sure I bought Kitchen Bouquet to make gravy with ( I think that is all she used it for). Although our refrigerator had Velveeta, and Miracle Whip (she hated butter and mayonnaise) and other items I see posted, the best meals came out that kitchen. I adored her dressing, and French Apple pies.

[TampaAurora]

Ha! I forgot about Kitchen Bouquet! The first "real meal" I learned to cook was beef stew. My mom would make it with whatever wine she had open (or bought for that meal - they only drank a few times a year) and Kitchen Bouquet. As a kid, I was loathe to cook with something I wasn't allowed to drink so I made it with Cherry Coke - my secret recipe. I don't keep either in my house now.

[cuccubear]

This was tough because I still buy and use many of the things my mother had in the cupboard, but here are a few things I never have around:

Kitchen Bouquet
Instant Coffee
Powdered Lemonade
Cool Whip or the like
Cans of Deviled Ham

Now, I’m sure I do have half a bag of the cheapest hot dog buns on the market stuffed in the back of the freezer, just like mom always did. But I, instead of serving them toasted with butter and garlic salt as dinner rolls, will turn them into bread crumbs.

[swsidejim]

margerine - vile
butter beans
lima beans
Accent - MSG

[1sweetpea]

Ubiquitous "Italian Seasoning"
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Canned pitted California olives (blech)
Tomato trifecta (paste, sauce and whole)
Sweet sliced pickles (she uses the pickle juice in tuna salad)
Hellman's Mayonnaise
Yellow mustard
Pam
Corn Oil
Matzo ball soup mix
Goodman's Onion Soup Mix
Manischewitz Soup mixes (they come in sausage-shaped packages)
Microwave popcorn
Canned soups
Raspberry jam
Margarine
Matzah (year-round)
Canned parm cheese
Shredded Wheat (for my dad)
Diet Coke/Pepsi
Coffee
Cream (10%)

[TampaAurora]

I think we were raised in the same house....I never heard of someone else with the sauce trifecta!

[Antithesisofpop]

I was raised with a slightly different trifecta - paste, diced and whole. I still keep diced and whole on hand and use them all the time in soups and such.

[TampaAurora]

Hahaha, I just picked up a can of diced tomatoes at the store along with canellini beans for a soup.

[swsidejim]

I forgot one... Velveeta...

[Sam Fujisaka]

Once again I'm going to step back up to the plate to give tribute to, rather than express loving bemusement at, my Mom, my aunts, and their generation. Mom cooked all Japanese, including sushi. She also did very good Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Armenian, some Filipino, and some German. On top of that, Mom was famous for her cakes, tortes, cream puffs, cookies and more. She and the aunties all did perfect “American” including full holiday meals. All from scratch all of the time. She canned peaches, apricots, and nectarines. She made fruit leathers. We all had home made umeboshi and tsukemono and kim chee and more. The back yard produced oranges, grapefruit, kumquats, Japanese pears and apples, pecans, walnuts, grape leaves, mint, tons of avocados, pomegranates, and – get this – lots of fresh, young asparagus year after year. The folks gathered watercress from the foothills of the Sierras, took clams from Pismo, and abalone from Cayucos. Meals were sit-down, with all four of us at dinner. Mom didn’t have and wouldn’t allow the stuff that many of you have listed. We ate out at independent good and varied types of restaurants. It was the age before chains. We never had fast or prepared foods. Although our ingredients (Mom’s then, mine now) are now remarkably similar, I wish I had her skills and culinary sense. Of course, my dad provides a good lesson: I always thought him a bit out of it for his really short-cropped hair and for his funny hats. Now I’m the one with the short-cropped hair and funny hats (Mexican Stetson-styled in my case for fishing and trail riding).

[FriedClamFanatic]

Sam, if your mother ever comes around again, tell her I'd marry her in a second and make her very happy!

On the other hand, I'm sure your father was more than wonderful to her, so i don't stand a chance!

But....those descriptions have my mouth watering

[lagatta]

sam, what a loving tribute to your mother - and father!

It is also making my mouth water.

In general, my mum was also a cook of "real" food, with Italian, Québécois/French, Irish and generic North American influences but a bit of weird 1950s/1960s food product inevitably slipped in there. We didn't have access to your cornucopia all year long, and we didn't have much money to put it mildly.

I had no idea there was anything but a sit-down meal with the family, even after my dad died when I was 15 (often I was the one cooking it as I got back from school before mum got back from work). I'm sure my mum endured some rather painful experiments, but I did learn to cook.

There is some even stranger food out there now. When I go to the (small) supermarket near me rather than the farmers' market (usually because I need non-food staples) there are always people waiting at the cash with something called "bowls" - a frozen pre-packaged mix of cooked pasta or rice, veg and a protein. The kind of stuff I'd whip up from leftovers or deliberately prepared chicken etc - and the aforementioned "bowls" are not cheap at all.

As a lad, were you ever jealous of classmates who had more weird pre-packaged food and junk?

[Sam Fujisaka]

FCF, and they fried those Pismos (and made chowder and pounded and did abalone sashimi).

lagatta, we grew up poor; and that probably helped. Being Japanese American after WWII [during the advent of TV and war movies in which one GI killed 3000 bandy-legged bucked toothed bespecktacled "Japs" all waving Nambus, katanas, and shooting Arisakas yelling "Tonight you die"] gave me enough issues to have to deal with besides food. I did have my first BigMac at the age of 40 in the Philippines; and now have come to appreciate gas station corn dogs, Chef Boy- r- Dee ravioli, Whoppers, and BigMacs - albeit now and then when I go work in the US.

[Lewes17266]

We are nicer and more civilized now. We are getting better, aren't we? We only know what we know until we know better. I was so happy and proud with this election and how far we have come as a country.

I am reminded of my grandmother and mother and aunts every time I see Paula Deen and hear her butchering the English language and hooting and hollering. I cringe even though I love her but I hope I don't sound like that. Her food is what I was raised on in South Carolina.

[Barbara76137]

Sam, could you either adopt me or marry me? :)) Your mom sounds like an amazing woman. As for your hats.....I'm pretty picky about the crease on a hat.

[cathodetube]

Sam died a while ago. He is very much missed.

[pikawicca]

I was thinking about Sam today as I leafed through my new copy of the "Eleven Madison Park" cookbook. Have to think that he would have given this tome a big raspberry. CH needs another strong voice to drag us back from the precipice of preciousness.

[hill food]

I am NOT that voice (big shoes, big shoes, well likely met6aphysically...) but collectively we can all give a "pffffht" ish Bronx cheer that might speak as clearly.

[PDeveaux]

What a walk down memory lane reading all of those was! My mother always had:
Miracle Whip (learned to like real mayonnaise from my grandmother)
American cheese slices
Vienna sausages
frozen orange juice
Kool-Aid packets
grape and apple jellies
Spam
Peanut butter (not because I don't like it - because I like it too much!)
Saccharin tablets
evaporated milk
canned veggies (agree with whoever said spinach is the worst)
Braunschweiger
iceberg lettuce
white bread
margarine (I only use real butter in sticks)
Milk
Canned fruit - peaches, pears and fruit cocktail

[FriedClamFanatic]

I don't think I've bought a head of iceberg lettuce in about 15 years, but I do remember getting a slice of iceberg with some Russian Dressing drizzled over it when my mother was alive

[smr33]

Iceberg lettuce.
Bacon grease

[amy_rc]

Miracle whip
Iceberg Lettuce
Jar of bacon grease
chips, chips, chips and crackers (An assortment but ALWAYS Doritos so my dad could snack on Doritos with Old El Paso HOT taco sauce while she prepared dinner)
Old El Paso Hot taco sauce
Sour Cream dip for chips
Ice cream
Soda (my grandpa worked for Pepsi)
Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (she starts every morning with chocolate milk)
Mrs. Dash
Oscar Meyer chopped ham
Hot dogs
Whipping Cream
2% milk

[bouffe]

Different brands of tea probably over ex. date
White Castle Sliders in the freezer
Jars of pickled peppers
Anchovy Paste
Cheetos, tons of cheetos and even the other "lesser" brands from Trader Joe's and generic
Diet Squirt

[free sample addict aka Tracy L]

None of your moms had instant Sanka? I love these lists -- though we could chalk it up to the generation it seems like we are related. The frequent mention of "jugs" of wine is really funny.

[Caroline1]

How about Nescafe? And here's a perfect chance to mix in a little food history along with talking about food! Maybe the mods will let this one float.

Instant coffee -- at least passable instant coffee -- was introduced to the world in 1939 by the Nestle Company, just as World War II was beginning to "rock and roll" in Europe. The U.S. didn't enter the war until December of 1941 (practically 1942!) Letters from family were flying between our home in California, and close family members who lived in many parts of England. And someone mentioned food shortages, so my mother and grandmother began sending food packages to Cousin George, in Manchester, for him and his wife to redistribute to the sprawling family as they saw fit.

Lots of things were rationed in both England and the U.S. during WWII, but my mother was wily and managed to skirt a lot of issues by buying beef, coffee, sugar, shoes and other rationed goods in Mexico, which was about six miles away. And that enabled her and my grandmother to buy a small can of Nescafe instant coffee in a round tin with their ration stamps and send it along to Cousin George. Along about 1943, this was the equivalent of sending someone the crown jewels!

So now skip forward from 1943 to 1957. At age 23, I accompany my elderly grandmother back to England, to visit family one last time. First stop, Cousin George's. And about three days into our stay, Lina, George's wife, asks me (after dinner) if I would care for a cup of "American coffee" instead of "all this English tea?" I wasn't really a coffee devotee at the time, but Lina offered it with such excitement I couldn't bring myself to say no. So she popped into the kitchen and proudly brought forth the unopened can of Nescafe instant coffee my mother and grandmother had sent in 1943, explaining they'd "set it aside" for a very special occasion!

She then popped back into the kitchen and proceeded to empty the entire can into a saucepan, added double the amount of sugar and about a pint of milk, which she then boiled for two or three minutes before presenting it to me in a truly lovely porcelain cup and saucer. Well, the bottom line is that it really doesn't matter what sort of container you pack fecal matter into, it remains fecal matter. And that was the worst coffee I have ever suffered in my entire life! But I did manage to down the full cup of it and compliment her on her kindness and good taste. She was sooooooo pleased with serving it to me!

So no Sanka memories from my mom's kitchen, but wow, do I ever remember Nescafe!

[FriedClamFanatic]

Great story!

[Caroline1]

Thanks! As I say in my profile page, it's the yucky stuff that stays with you longest. '-)

[Caralien]

Nescafe is still very popular in Europe and other parts of the world, and I keep a can on hand for making strong iced coffee or flavouring drinks and baked goods (the US version tastes more like Sanka than the type from Mexican, European, or Middle Eastern markets, which has more of a dark chocolate flavour).

[lagatta]

Yes, it is worth picking up the darker kind for cookery purposes; there are also little sachets of "frozen espresso" in Italian markets.

[vickib]

Instant Jell-o and pudding
Jiffy artificial blueberry & strawberry muffin mix
Kraft singles
Diet sodas - coke, fresca, weird off brands, shasta - by the case
Splenda in everything
Sugar free ice cream
House brand coffee
microwaveable hot dogs, sausage biscuits, you-name-it
Fresh local Tennessee tomatoes, which taste a million miles better than the best heirloom organic California ones, even what I can grow myself. It's terroir.
Duke's mayonnaise and Bunny Bread for tomato sandwiches.

Mom and Dad have always been afficionados of the latest artificial sweetener because of weight and diabetes issues. When I was a kid, it was saccharin, then nutraSweet, now Splenda. My dad drinks diet sodas all day. He also loves the microwave, and buys (to me) the oddest microwaveable foods. One of his treasured possessions is a microwave rack for bacon.

Two summers ago, my (then) 18 yo son declared Mom's green beans (again, Tenn. terroir), cooked until soft, with bacon, to be far superior to my lightly sauteed organic Cal. beans tossed with fresh garlic, parsley, olive oil, and lemon. Whaddya gonna do?? But my kid thinks all the artificial sweeteners and sugar free foods to be frightening Franken-foods.

And when we visit, the coffee is horrible. Weak, watery cardboard. But, I always have many, many tomato sandwiches.

[EWSflash]

Wow, what a trip down memory lane!
My mom was usually a really good cook, but it being the '50s and '60s, she did have some of the worst "foods' of the times-

Those boxed dried scalloped potatoes that you put in a casserole, covered with the enclosed orange powder, poured on some milk and dotted with butter and cooked in the oven until the milk got absorbed
canned green beans (or frozen- they don't do well either way)
Canned tamales (gag!)
Canned ravioli
Appian Way pizza- a box full of pizza ingredients so you could 'make pizza from scratch'- hah!
A can of chicken that never got used
Sugar cubes

[mtngirlnv]

My mom thought it was the HEIGHT of sophistication to make the Chef Boy Ar Dee pizza-in-a-box....and adding a half a can of the Kraft Cheese in the Green can "to dress it up." Sigh. No wonder it wasn't until high school that I discovered there was more to the cheese world than Velveeta and Cheese slices. In my defense, I'll add that it was Nebraska.

[Barbara76137]

'Fresh local Tennessee tomatoes, which taste a million miles better than the best heirloom organic '

I so agree!!! Back in 2007 I was managing a cutting horse ranch in Collierville, TN. The trainer told me 'just wait until you taste Bill's tomatoes!!!!!' Bill was our neighbor and that summer the tomatoes were just amazing. They had even a better flavor than the tomatoes of my childhood in northern IL. I'd make a meal of just a tomato, crumbled gorgonzola, balsamic and s&p.

[amy_rc]

Margarine or any type of butter-type spread.

[jmckee]

Margerine or "the other spread" (as Mrs. Child would say) of any sort.
Kraft Parmesan cheese
Miracle Whip
Skim milk
"RealLemon" lemon juice

[coney with everything]

Forgot about the RealLemon. No actual lemons were ever harmed in my house when I was growing up.

[Lewes17266]

I just read an article by Mark Bitten in The New York Times called "Fresh Start for the New Year: Let's Begin in the Kitchen" and was reminded of this thread. I thought I would pass it on for others to read and enjoy.
Google this: NYT Bitten Fresh Start for a New Year.

[Caralien]

my thoughts exactly:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5858...

[BaltoPhilFood]

Lemon Juice, Rose's Lime, Poultry Seasoning, Maraschino Cherries, Wondra Flour, Celery Salt

[malibumike]

Mom always had Real Churned Buttermilk on hand, you cant find that now at least on the west coast.
Oh mom and grandma, as so many others of that era, 1950's, always had a jar of Bacon fat to cook with.

[lifespan]

My MAMA was down-home country. She always had a freezer full of butter beans, corn and ocra that had been grown by kin folk (and there were many), fresh homemade sausage from pigs raised and slaughtered by her daddy.

Also, there were:
home-canned tomatoes
cornmeal
grits
martha white self-rising flower
crisco
fat-back (salt pork from the back of a hog carcass)
chow-chow
pickled ocra
pickled beets
karo syrup
marshmellows
canned peaches
Bunny bread (white)
chipped beef
a jar full of drippings

duh-duh! oh, the good ole days!

[hill food]

i would (and sometimes do) have some of that - okra, corn and tomatoes cooked with fat back? drippings? have both in the fridge right now. but I'd pass on the beets thanks.

I'd love a taste of your mother's sausage. - post on the recipe board if you have it. just found casings in my neighborhood.

[alkapal]

my aunt martha always had a ton of frozen field peas. please pass the corn pone....(and texas pete pepper vinegar sauce http://www.texaspete.com/product_pepp... ). i sure miss her!

and fresh homemade sausage? there is nothing better, especially to rub around in some good fried eggs!

[firecooked]

So, what processed foods do we have in our cupboards today that our kids will be laughing about in 30 years or so?

Soymilk
Cliff bars
EVOO
6 kinds of vinegar
3 kinds of mustard

[Plano Rose]

I'm afraid it won't be our processed foods that our kids will be laughing about thirty years from now but all pupose flour, baking powder, cornstarch and anything else one has to process to eat.

[vorpal]

Those were my thoughts exactly :D. I was thinking salsa and sriracha sauce might also make the list :-).

[Amuse Bouches]

I don't know if it says something about my generation (I'm 30) or my mother, but I can't think of any one thing she usually had that I don't. Maybe Baker's chocolate and bouillon cubes. And tonic water. I never have any on hand. And saccharine.

[IndyGirl]

Definitely many of the same ones you list!

Cake mix
jello
instant rice
margarine
bottled salad dressing
jimmie dean's sausage
steak sauce
Bisquick
american cheese
creamette pasta
shortening
green can parmesan
fake maple syrup
Lipton tea
garlic and onion salt
garlic powder
Durkee fried onions
stouffer's stuffing mix

[Deenso]

There was always a container of schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) in our refrigerator when my mom was in charge. This was back when you bought your chicken from the butcher, not from the supermarket, and my mother rendered the chicken fat herself. Of course, those were also the days when tv ads featured a doctor who recommended smoking Parliaments if you had a scratchy throat. Back then, there was no correlation drawn between what we ingested and our health.

I miss the old days.

[SusieS]

I love this thread! Okay, here it goes:

canned zucchini (with tomato & onion)
frozen veggies....never fresh
canned corned beef hash
canned fruit cocktail
frozen breaded veal cutlets (awful!!)
Banquet pot pies
margarine
cube steak
space food sticks
shake-a-puddin'
tab; complete with cyclamates!

Keep 'em coming....this is too fun!

[alkapal]

vienna sausages
potted meat

[lifespan]

oh yes, I forgot all about vienna sausages in the family larder. alkapal, did you grow up in the south too?

[alkapal]

yeah, buddy! those staples were *de rigueur* for family road trips, pre-interstate. isn't potted meat like the poor man's pate?

i grew up in florida, and remember vividly the concrete picnic tables with concrete canopies adjacent to the roadways up and down the state. mcdonalds? huh?

they were served with saltines, of course. usually mom and dad's beverage was coffee from dad's thermos. i don't remember how many of those red plastic thermos cups went flying off the roof of the car when dad pulled out on the road. (those and sunglasses -- whoops!) i can't remember what i drank. it wasn't from a juice box, i know that! ;-).

[cuccubear]

Of course, in my part of Virginia they call them "Vy-enna" sausages, not Vee-enna! Hee haw!

[alkapal]

my mom, too!!!!!!! LOL!!! she also says sal-mon. (she was from the florida panhandle, but had a sister with ties to virginia).

[lifespan]

Yep. "Pappy" (mama's father) referred to them as "Vy-enny" sausages (NC). Those little so-called sausages were the nastiest things in the world - I knew this even as a child. What on earth do you suppose was in them (pork products, of course...but there's no telling what part of the pig...)? For some reason, they were a delight to pappy, a man who raised and slaughtered his own hogs and who was a sausage snob. Go figure.

[cuccubear]

I don't know what is in them and don't want to know. Personally, I think they are disgusting. My SO loves 'em and will even augment his arroz con gandules with them. Brrrrr! ech!

[nvcook]

They're handy for sneaking a pill into for a dog that won't take his medicine

[alkapal]

yes, i suppose that vy-enny odor masks the medicinal scent.

[pine time]

Ohhh, potted meat. We "fancied it up" with mayo and diced dills, then slatered it on our white bread. Pure gum paste!

[jmckee]

I could have said Vienna sausages up until about six months ago. My 16-year-old son likes a can of them now and again in his school lunch, to break up the monotony.

[AmyH]

turkey roast: bits of turkey stuck together into a log, doused in gravy with loads of salt, available in your grocer's freezer.

succaryl: liquid saccharine. Actually pretty good dripped on grapefruit halves and sprinkled on cottage cheese/cinnamon toast.

canned vegetables, especially green beans, peas and creamed corn

cans of sardines

big logs of hebrew national salami

iced tea mix

diet cream soda

[Janet from Richmond]

Sanka
Kraft Parmesan Cheese in the can
Good Seasons Italian Dressing
Iceberg lettuce
Cool Whip
Cream of Wheat cereal
Canned asparagus, green beans, and spinach
Instant pudding
Jello
Bacos (sp?) bacon bits

[jules1026]

My parents visited my place for a few weeks this summer. My Dad asked for Bacos. I just looked at him and handed him the bacon out of the fridge.

[Janet from Richmond]

I forgot canned fruit cocktail, canned peaches, pears and pineapple.

[mandycat]

For heavens sake, were you people raised in the wild by wolves? I don't see a single reference to that classic 50's salad: iceberg lettuce cut into thin slivers then topped with a canned pineapple ring, a maraschino cherry and a big old glob of Kraft mayonnaise. That, my friends, was Betty Crocker Chic.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Or green jello with fruit cocktail and chopped celery inside, with a blob of mayonaise. Even as a child I was aghast and wouldn't eat it.

[tonina_mdc]

This type of thing has shown up at every potluck dinner I've ever attended. I made myself try it once. I really wish I hadn't.

[cathodetube]

Or the jello salad with the marshmallows and miracle whip on top. Thankfully my mother never made that but it was often served at pot-lucks in the neighborhood.

[Barbara76137]

My great aunt Charlotte was always so proud of her jello salads that she would bring to every family occasion. I think I hated the lime jello concoctions the most. Thank goodness it didn't make me forever shun limes or margaritas :)

[Passadumkeg]

I look at this Crocker Chic stuff and remember it at my friends' houses. Mom was the daughter of a Russian immigrant coal miner (all 4 grand parents were Russian immigrants). We either had really fine Russian peasant fare, which embarrassed me to no end, or really quite good food for the time. Mom was an early disciple of Julia Child, Craig Clairborne (WQXR, the Station of the NYTs was always on) and James Beard. Raising children to be doctors and lawyers (She failed) started w/ good food and proper reading material.

[Sam Fujisaka]

No, no, no, keg. You have to get into the spirit of this and other threads (e.g., what foods did you introduce your parents to). The objective is to show how clever you are and what food morons your parents were. They have to have eaten only Miricle Whip, Cool Whip, Jello salads, steaks and potatoes; while you - in spite of them - became an international, well educated diner and cook.

You grew up like I didi. We're not supposed to join these threads.

[coney with everything]

Disagree completely, Sam. I am the OP. I posted last year because I was making my mother's Chrismas cookies in her honor, as she died last June. The mention of "oleo" in the recipe made me laugh and cry simultaneously.

I, and I believe almost everyone here, do not intend to belittle their mother's memory or cooking by posting these. It's been a hoot to read the responses. And what a time capsule of the last 40 or so years of (mostly) American cooking.

So if you were lucky enough to have interesting food as a child, and your food cupboard is pretty much the same as your mother's was, great. Obviously a lot of us weren't that lucky!

[Sam Fujisaka]

c with e, then we have to agree to disagree. I don't mean to pick on this thread or on you. But there are so many threads that pop up periodically that really take our parents' and granparents' generations to task. People also throw parties with 50s, 60s, 70s, or even 80s themes in which the objective is really bad wine and lots of crappy "food". A number of us didn't grow up that way. I'm a good cook; but not as good as my mom and some of the aunts and some of my cousins were/are. I just get weary of the overall gist that WE are the clever generation, being the first to discover good food and drink. People in my family and the people we associated with were scratch cooks, no junk or processed foods, no Miracle or Cool Whip. We grew lots of fruits and vegetables, canned, hunted, fished, gathered, and were always giving and receiving foods and recipes. A lot of hounds are the same - but just don't get irritated like I do.

[linguafood]

But Sam, don't you know it is ever generation's privilege to look down on the previous and following generations? '-)

[Sam Fujisaka]

Really!

[hill food]

personally I post on threads like this with a wistful fondness and any regret is that there are a couple of generations (and I know it continues - don't get me wrong) that were steered away from the 'scratch' not realizing it really doesn't take that much more time or clean up than if it's out of a box (confession: I have bean n cheese burritos, Char Siu Bao and corndogs in my freezer, OK there's only one dog left)

[pikawicca]

Hi Sam,

I've bragged repeatedly on CH about how great a cook my mother was, as have numerous others. I think most of us posting here are having a laugh about some of the things that posed as food when we were kids. Growing food technology made possible an amazing variety of really dreadful food items, but we were all entranced by their novelty. (Fizzies and Tang are great examples.)

And even good cooks were sometimes seduced into trying new products such as instant potatoes and Rice-a-Roni.

[Passadumkeg]

Sam, she introduced me to the simple American pleasure of a BLT and a Coke. Her last request was for a BLT and a glass, no a bottle of wine!

[somervilleoldtimer]

That's not fair. It's not necessarily that we are laughing at our parents, or at least I'm not. My mother's parents were eastern european, and we ate some fabulous food in that house, and that's basically how my mother cooked, which is how I knew that the lime jello salad with mayonaisse was not Good Food, when I came across it! Can't have one without the other. I just spent a day or two with my rather aged mother, and cooked for her, instead of the other way around. Wonderful roast chicken with pasta, just the way she taught me to make it! But she and I together laugh about how she used to make "Chinese Food" by cooking celery and onions together in a pressure cooker until it was mush, to serve over rice. Even as a young child I refused to eat it, and I never refused anything! It's good to be able to laugh with, not at, one's parents, since after all, they want their children to go farther and know more than they did.

[Sam Fujisaka]

You and I agree with each other.

And I have to admit that many people (not including you and me) are convincing me that they did grow up in homes of food horror.

I just don't agree with the smug attitudes of a number of threads that imply that we/our generation and time invented and are the first to appreciate good food.

And you've given me one more thing to think about: How can people who cook delicious eastern European food end up cooking celery and onions in a pressure cooker in an attempt to make "Chinese food"? I tend to think that people who know how to cook something/anything are less like;ly to murder food - even of unfamiliar cuisines.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Well, I used to wonder the same thing, but it never occurred to me that she perhaps had never had real chinese food, which was indeed the case. Her parents (the eastern europeans) never, ever went out to dinner. As my grandfather said, why should he spend money in restaurants when he could get such wonderful food at home! (Of course, he didn't participate in the cooking or cleaning up.) So my mother had never had Chinese food. At some point, experimentally, she had purchased La Choy canned something, and then tried to imitate it, thus the celery and pressure cooker. I didn't find all this out until I starting going out, in my late teens, with a boy who took me to Chinatown for the very first time. The veil was ripped from my eyes! So then I took my mother, who, bless her heart, was entranced to find that the vegetables were still crisp and the food was delicious! I can't get my father to move past beef and broccoli, but my mother is pretty adventurous, and my daughter, who was taught to fear no food, went out with a Chinese young man for a while and had some wild things at dim sum -- fish stomach soup, etc. His family admired her willingness to taste anything! It was simply a matter of inexperience.

[Sam Fujisaka]

What an absolutely wonderful story!!! Thank you!!!

[gridder]

I think if one grew up in a family with mother who liked to cook, it may be different than those of us who had mothers who cooked only from necessity and therefore used as many modern conveniences as possible to make the task more palatable. (pun).

I think it is fascinating to look at American food trends (from sacchrine tablets to margarine to meals-in-a-box) and it makes me feel far less alone that others were also eating things that now I/we would never choose to eat when they were growing up.Some people just don't have strong, positive food associations from home.

I don't mean to diminish all the work that these moms (mainly) did, but I am glad I do not have to pretend to like cream of mushroom soup and I can share a chuckle with others about their food memories.

[soupkitten]

some people were raised by dads or grandparents who cooked (mom being dead, mia, or not caring about food at all). sorry freud, it's not all about mama. if you love food, you will gravitate toward the relative who loves to cook-- regardless of what's cooked, ime. let's not forget the adventurous aunts, uncles and cousins who take you (as child or adolescent) on your first dining and shopping adventures out of your nuclear family's comfort zone! these are the early influences that turn out to be critical. many people who are now adventurous eaters once needed to have their hands held by folks willing to introduce them to new culinary frontiers.

[pine time]

I don't see it as we're holier-than-thou--as someone wrote upthread, our own kids will rewrite this list about us in another few years. My parents grew up poor as the proverbial church mice, eating all home-grown/cooked foods, and the "new and improved" convenience foods available to them as young parents were an exciting and affordable (and less back-breaking) trend. We've gone full circle--I now grow my own vegetables and fruits, but I also honor Mom's canned fruit cocktail experiences.

[malibumike]

I forgot, along with real churrned buttermilk mom and grandma always had a block of salt pork and would sometimes fry that up in place of bacon.

[Caroline1]

I've been trying and trying to think of things my mom had in her kitchen that I never have in mine. Well, besides margarine. And I finally thought of it! My DAD...!!! He never cooked. His greatest culinary feat was stabbing a toothpick into a Vienna sausage. (Yuck!) But he could kibitz, even when he didn't have a clue. Always did his best to prevent my mother from putting anything on the table he didn't like. String bean, Brussels sprouts, egg plant. But he did mysteriously always always always stay out of the kitchen when I was visiting them and making ratatouille. He LOVED it! Ate it by the bowls full, all the time swearing that there was not and could never be one bit of eggplant in a ratatoille. He belonged in my mother's kitchen. Not mine! '-)

[Firegoat]

LOL great memory!!! This xmas my sister and I both came to my parents with our spouse or bf. I brought one puppy, she brought 3 large dogs. The parents have one dog. Mom was cooking. I was in the living room keeping the dogs amused, when I was asked to do the usual set the table. I asked... do you really want me to come in there, knowing the dogs would follow. Dad got right up and started setting the table. Mom said he had never set the table before in some 40+ years of marriage... she was astonished.

[EastBayShortcake]

Sweet N Low packets, taken from every restaurant table in town
Vienna Sausage, canned
several varieties of canned veggies - most in her cupboard have to be at least 10 years old
many jars of Best Foods mayo - our family eats it on, or mixed into, everything

[thursday]

Having such fun reading these, here goes my list:

-Velveeta
-Vienna Sausages
-Jugs of Gallo Burgundy for making pasta sauce
-Crackers, crackers and more crackers! Saltines, wheat things, triscuits...I don't know what was up with all the crackers, except that there were five kids and innumerable friends always underfoot and it was an easy snack...? But no flavored crackers or cheese to go on top--just dry crackers eaten right out of the box.
-Frozen peas, carrots, and corn, or the trifecta of "frozen mixed veggies" (shudder) To this day I can't stand any of those guys, frozen or not
-Marshmallow cream for making fudge
-lots of dry cereals
-International Coffee tins
-Jars of minced garlic or other pre-prepped spices
-Maraschino Cherries
-Picked Herrings in sour cream
-powdered Hidden Valley Ranch dressing
-Crisco
-Nestle Quik
-condensed campbell's soup by the shelf-full, especially Cream of Mushroom for daily casseroles
-Uncle Ben's long rice (I'm a sticky rice girl, if ever)
-feta cheese
-diet 7-up
-maple-flavored syrup made from corn syrup
-a jar of instant coffee "for guests"
-canned chopped olives
-grape jelly
-garlic salt
-a shaker of homemade cinnamon sugar
-Oscar Meyer deli meats
-a bag of chocolate chips and a box of brownie mix, always, "just in case". And whenever she'd make brownies, the next day, bam, new box in the cupboard. Just in case. Just in case of what? A brownie emergency? But again, I guess with five kids, brownie emergencies occur. =)

Stuff she always had that I keep too:
-always had butter on hand, a habit I can't break even if I'm not using it often
-evaporated milk for sauces and soups
-iceberg lettuce--went through a period of hating it when I became a foodie out of protest for the lettuce of my childhood, only to discover years later that with a nice steak and a good pinot noir, nothing beats a wedge of iceberg with ranch or blue cheese dressing =)
-rolls in the freezer
-a full sugar bowl on the counter
-baker's chocolate or powdered baking chocolate--just in case =)

[lagatta]

Why no feta? Good feta is delicious in salads and many other things.

[ratgirlagogo]

Paper napkins
Margarine
Cool Whip
Velveeta (for me- I refused to eat any other kind back then)
Parmesan in the paper can
Karo syrup (for my dad)
Diet soda
Low-fat milk
Hostess fruit pies, Dolley Madison cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Ho-Hos, etc. from the day-old bakery
Roman Meal Bread
Van De Kamp's baked goods
Oscar Meyer Smokey LInks

The big thing, though, that was ALWAYS in my mothers kitchen and is never in mine is a little odd. During the Cuban Missle Crisis in 1961, my mom freaked out and went shopping a few days after everyone else had cleared out the Safeway, apparently, because what she came back with was three GIANT, maybe 50 gallon cans (seriously, these cans were like small oil barrels, about half the height of a person) of 1)pork n' beans, 2)popcorn, and 3)cling peaches in heavy syrup. They stayed there until I was in college in the seventies - they may still be hidden away somewhere in the basement, I don't know. Jesus Christ! Thank god they never dropped the Big One after all! Can you imagine trying to survive on that??!!

[ratgirlagogo]

Forgot these:

Fresh fruits and vegetables from the backyard - avocados, lemons, oranges, pomegranates, apricots, loquats. Boy do I WISH I always had these in my kitchen.

Ants! You couldn't leave food out more than half an hour without it being covered in black ants. Never lived anywhere with ants like back home.

Rock and rye in the bottle with the fruit in it. I don't think they ever opened it. I wish I could buy a bottle today.

[ratgirlagogo]

OK, this is the last one, I promise - our landlady downstairs just phoned and tried to give us a leftover container of Cool Whip she got for a party! Is she psychic?

[MARISKANY]

Bosco

[Demented]

margarine
instant rice
cake mix
Jello pudding and gelatin mix
celery salt
garlic salt
Onion salt
nondairy creamer
canned fruit
Parmesan in a can
Artificial vanilla extract
Sweet n Low
Canned fruit
Kraft cheese
White bread
Shredded Wheat
Cream of Wheat
Miracle Whip
Cool Whip
skim milk
iced tea mix
Bisquick
Bread Crumbs
Frozen concentrated juice
frozen Pot Pies
frozen TV dinners
frozen battered fish
frozen pre-fab burritos
Rice-A-Roni
Minute Rice
Cup-o-Soup
maple flavored Syrup

[MissMichal]

Grocery day was chili dog day at our house. My mom bought Wrangler hot dogs, Wonder hot dog buns, and Nalley chili with no beans. We were in heaven. If it wasn't chili dogs, it was frozen dinners: Banquet turkey meals in the trays, and one enchilada meal for Mom.

Other stuff we had on hand:
Banquet frozen pot pies
#10 cans of Crisco
Wonder Bread
huge bags of puffed wheat breakfast cereal
Nestle Quik chocolate milk mix
Krusteaz pancake mix and Smucker's boysenberry syrup
Cream of Wheat or Zoom hot cereal
Ground Folger's coffee in cans or vacuum-sealed bricks
fish sticks
lentils
lots of home-canned goods, especially apples, cherries, and peaches
at least ten extract flavors for candymaking
Gold 'n Soft margarine in the tub
Flour tortillas
enourmous quantites of potatoes, carrots, and onions
bottled lemon juice
gravy mix in envelopes
egg noodles
kimchee, if my dad was able to sneak a jar into the house
Kool-Aid in packets
Almond Roca (for mom) and Hershey Kisses (for dad)--each had several hiding places
Girl Scout Cookies--we ordered dozens of boxes and froze them

Now, I'm not saying I don't like any of these foods, just that they never have made it into my regular rotation.

[CookieWeasel]

My stepmother, who never could cook worth a #@! was never without these trusty ingredients:
Margarine
MSG (Accent)
Bologna
Pancake syrup
Chow Mein in a can
Kraft cheese slices
Green grapes

I am so glad not to have these odious things in my life anymore!

[lifespan]

Here, here...
Here's to ridding one's life of all things odious.

[jmckee]

I like bologna. And green grapes. But not together.

[chef chicklet]

Instant coffee
head cheese - always always in the fridge
fruit cocktail
miracle whip
sardines and saltines
oyster crackers
Lipton teabags
Jiffy muffin mix - I never got to ask her why she kept this, she made her own or mabe these were something when she or my Dad got a craving.
Jiffy pop - is that the one in the foil pan?whatever that is, that stuff
green stuffed olives
pigs feet - jarred
oysters in the jar
dried beef in a jar
white bread -Wonder bread
Roman Meal bread
canned biscuits
canned hormel chili
Swanson TV dinners
Ice Milk - maplenut and vanilla
Hersheys chocolate syrup
Twinkies and Hostess choclate cupcakes
mini marshmallows
so many canned fresh, peaches, pears, apricots
jars of homemade apple butter
" " apple sauce
jars of tomatoes -from the garden
jars of homemade green beans and corn - form the garden
frozen peas - from our garden ( all of these would be in my perfect world!)
frozen sliced meats - like ham and bologne - My Dad had a meat slicer, he sliced it all up
oh gosh, I almost forgot.
Boxed chocolate pudding - the kind you cook.

wow, I started to write my response coming from a place of, " I can't believe that I actually grew up eating this stuff" and now that I'm looking at my own list, I think I should go shopping. It's looking pretty good.

[HillJ]

'cept the head cheese chef chicklet. If I was down to my last meal, I'd pass on head cheese.

[al b. darned]

My list:
SPAM
Maxwell House Instant coffee
Canned vegetables
Canned fruit
Instant potatoes
Minute rice
Chef Boy ar Dee Beefaroni and Ravioli
Sunbeam Bread
powdered cheese in the green can
Condensed soup
DreamWhip
Envelopes of spaghetti sauce mix
Envelopes of French onion soup
Canned Hi-C and Hawaiian Punch
Canned cranberry sauce
Peanut butter (DW is allergic)
Marshmallow Fluff
Big blocks of American "cheese"
Appian Way Pizza Kit
Deviled Ham
Tab and Fresca
Dad's cheap beer (Nastygansette, Piels, Carling Black Lable, and the like)
green stuffed olives

But to her credit, we only had real maple syrup and the only mushrooms we used were the ones Dad foraged from the woods behind our house.

[coney with everything]

Forgot about those envelopes of spaghetti sauce mix...so very bad. And Dream Whip.

[JerryMe]

Lard
Oleo
Crisco

[Cherylptw]

Miracle Whip, margarine, campbell's chicken Noodle & Tomato soup, saltine crackers, canned parmesan, iceberg, canned fruit cocktail & peaches, canned vegetables, spam, potted meat, vienna sausage, Carolina rice, Kellog's Cornflakes & Rice Krispies; Cream of Wheat, Wonder Bread, Aunt Jemima pancake mix, fake syrup, Jello gelatin & pudding boxes, kool-aid, sliced bologna, Mrs. Paul's fish sticks, tv dinners & swanson pot pies and cherry vanilla ice cream (you can't find the same type anymore)

[pikawicca]

Remember Aspergum? My mom used to let my chew this orange-flavored chewable aspirin like candy. Can't believe she let me and can't believe I liked it.

[Jen76]

Oh I remember that stuff. Talk about a flashback! I can't believe I liked that stuff either! Ew.

[cathodetube]

I grew up in the Midwest. Our kitchen had:-

American cheese slices (yuck)
Pinconning cheese
Pre-grated parmesan and Romano cheese
Swiss Miss mixes
Fritos and their accompanying bean dip in the can
diet pop up the wazoo, mostly in the garage and for my Dad - we hated it
sloppy joe mixes
Coffee Mate
mini-frozen pizzas
peanut butter with swirled in jelly in a jar
overly sweet kid cereals like Lucky Charms
Total cereal for my Dad
Weird flavored instant oatmeal made with just hot water and not cooked in the microwave
donuts and sweet rolls for breakfast from the bakery section of local store
Uncle Ben's rice
Jello
Twinkies
Ding Dongs
Hostess Fruit Pies - these were all for our school lunches
Limburger Cheese in a jar - this was served with rye bread, raw onions, s&p and beer. I like it but can't find it over here.
Vernor's ginger ale - makes a good float!
My mom had a schizo idea of nutrition.

[hill food]

you can't find weird stinky cheese in Europe?

My grandmother loved Limburger.

[cathodetube]

The closest to Limburger I have found here is Munster cheese. I put that on rye bread with the onions. Yes there is tons of stinky cheese here; it's just the Limburger in a jar I haven't ever seen. Wonder if it is still available in the US. Ever had Stinking Bishop? I never really liked cheese until I came to live over here. Right now I am in St. Ives in Cornwall which has a lot of local cheeses, including Yarg, goat's cheese and cheddar I am doing a good job of resisting the numerous ice-cream stores. Cornwall is known for its ice-cream and clotted cream. Anyone for a cream tea with home-made scones?

[tonina_mdc]

Cream tea and homemade scones are two of the items on the menu of Heaven. :-)

[tonina_mdc]

Cream tea and homemade scones are two of the items on the menu of Heaven. :-)

[soupkitten]

yes, you can still get limburger! i believe there is just one factory in monroe, WI that makes it in the u.s. i just saw an impressive display of limburger when i ventured into western WI, cheese-hunting, this week. it was right next to an equally impressive display of german brick cheese.

apparently my dad's dad liked limburger a lot, but he had to relish his treat eaten off of a special plate, with a special knife and fork reserved only for limburger-- my dad's mom hated the smell so bad, and claimed she could never get it off of the good house plates, so there was a bit of family drama which ended with this compromise--hee hee.

[hill food]

I see it in the jar in DC all the time. Had a good chuckle when a woman asked the cheese guy if it was good for a party.

[alkapal]

hey hill food, shaogo might want to take limburger as the "appetizer" to his next swingers' party -- just in case he needs to open it and then make a quick escape!

[Sam Fujisaka]

Mixes milk and meat - can't be kosher.

[hill food]

Alka: how did I overlook this! yup at the E Market (but seen at Safeway too). was reading the Sam posts before bed.

that WILL clear a room.

[alkapal]

a year, hill food, a year! better late than never.... ;-).

yes, i miss sam, too. he's probably got a bunch of hounds learning from him in heaven, too.

[meatn3]

I like to think he has a funky little bar that you can hit just after passing through the gates...his daily specials are legendary! Eventually the lines will be incredible as CH's enter and start to catchup with him...

Almost a year, almost daily I read something and wonder what his take would have been.

[alkapal]

that's it -- sam's heavenly bar! you ain't seen tiki, till you've seen sam's. imagine the tales he's spinnin' as the bartender! RIP, sam the man.

[soupkitten]

follow up on limburger-- re: parties!!! one of our local cheesemongers apparently sampled out a large amount of limburger to the local customer base, without telling anyone what it was--- everyone *loved* it, thinking it was a new local artisan/small dairy product. when everyone was done raving about it, the cheesemongers revealed it was limburger, and it gave the cheese snobs something to think about!!! :)

[mrbigshotno.1]

VicksVapoRub

[sunangelmb]

Laughing, and shuddering at many of these delicious lists. We had a good portion of most stuff on here, but there is one key ingredient to most of my moms fancy meals missing from my cabinet. Saucy Susan! It was some ultra sweet weird apricot flavored jam. I wonder if they even make it anymore?

[TampaAurora]

They do. Look in the ethnic section of your grocery store. My aunt uses this (or something similar) for her holiday meals as well.

[Orchid64]

Since my family was poor, they didn't have as much instant food around as many families on this list. However, my mother drank instant tea (powdered) and my father drank instant coffee. Both drank their beverages with Cremora powdered non-dairy creamer. We also usually had fruit cocktail and canned beans. Besides that, there was often government-issue cheese for poor people around. I never have any of these things.

I'm not sure I get all of the contempt for things like celery salt, onion powder and garlic powder. What is it that people use when they make things like egg salad, tuna salad, or want to season a burger with a bit of garlic but not mess with cloves or fresh mince? Does everyone have all of the time in the world to work with whole spices? I make all of my own soup and use whole ingredients for it. I also make all of my own bread. So, I don't have a problem with doing it all from scratch, but sometimes powdered spices make more sense because it's expedient and works better than the real thing.

[coney with everything]

In my case, my mom had garlic powder in lieu of fresh garlic--she NEVER used fresh garlic. I will confess to using granulated garlic in dry rubs, but that's about it.

[hill food]

I use garlic powder with no shame, sometimes it's ease, others an issue of texture. my issue is with garlic SALT.

while were weren't exactly poor, I too know the fruit cocktail and actually I like the government cheese I've tasted - beats the commercial over-processed american cheese.

[tunghoy]

Best seasoning for tuna salad, tofu salad and soup is Spike (made by Gayelord Hauser). It comes with and without salt, and you can find it in any health food store or the organic section of a supermarket. It's a mixture of lots of herbs and spices.

[kittyangel]

ALL of my seasoning come out of a bottle. Life is too short to be standing around peeling and pounding a garlic bulb, etc!!!

[laliz]

I forgot, those little plastic lemons with "juice" in them; and bottled lemon juice

[somervilleoldtimer]

You know, there's a plastic lemon with acceptable juice in it. It's from Sicily. I can't remember what's it's called, but it doesn't have that nasty tang that the RealLemon has.

[mothrpoet]

Fish sticks, Fizzies, McCormick's Salad Supreme Seasoning, Bottled Green Goddess Salad Dressing, Miracle Whip, Instant Breakfast, onion juice, lemon extract, frozen XLNT tamales, bottled lemon juice, Hawaiian Punch (although it is good mixed with iced tea!), Olympia Beer (RIP). And did anyone else ever feed their dogs "Fives" dogfood? It came in a big box, and the five delicious "flavors" of kibble were each a different day-glo color?No wonder the poor devils always ran away....

[tonina_mdc]

Sanka. My father switched off caffeine in the 80s. The switch did not make him any less uptight!
Horrible kraft preshredded parm (and my father is 2nd-generation Italian! Good God!)
Spices that were kept for 20+ years, including garlic salt and celery salt. My mother still has some of the ones from my childhood.
Crisco that stayed in the cupboard for 5 years at a stretch and was only used for fried chicken.
Instant flavored oatmeal and instant grits packets.
Sweet'n'Lo
Frozen waffles, pot pies, and OJ concentrate
International coffee powder mixes (and those were cool till I was 14 and tried real coffee)
Margarine
Rice-a-Roni
Canned veggies
Cadbury cream eggs (my mother would hoard them and snack on them year-round)
Old El Paso taco mixes

[coney with everything]

I swear my mom had spices (and a bottle of Tabasco) that she'd gotten as a wedding present in one of those little spice rack dealies. Same bottle of oregano for 25 years.

[tonina_mdc]

Oh yeah. After my parents divorced, my father sold our old house and moved to a different one with his new wife. He actually moved some of the same spices they'd had since the 1970s with him. Unbelievable. Don't ask me how or why my mother ended up with some of the spices from the same time period. Seriously, who raids the spice drawer for the then-25-year-old spices when she's leaving a spouse?

I thought of a couple of other things my mother always had that make me shudder:

Vienna sausages. Ewwwww!
Disgusting bright orange kraft "French" dressing, aged at least 5 years because no one ever used it.
Wonder bread (at least in the 1980s)
Bottled liquid sassafras tea mixture. It smelled decent, but I'm creeped out by my lack of information as to this mixture's actual ingredients.

[cuccubear]

I remember that sassafras tea mix too. Here's the brand we always had...

http://www.sassafrastea.com/home/

[tonina_mdc]

Oh yeah, that's the one! I'd recognize that bottle anywhere!

[jmckee]

We tried that once. My mom always had actual sassafras tea around. The mix disappointed her.

[tonina_mdc]

What is actual sassafras tea and how is it made? I've never seen or tasted the real thing.

[cuccubear]

Don't know how "authentic" this is, but was an interesting read anyhow. The recipe is about half way down the page

http://www.southernangel.com/food/sas...

[tonina_mdc]

Interesting! I thought it was some kind of root. I didn't know the US had banned the sale of sassafras tea. Thanks for the link!

[Passadumkeg]

What a great article. I grew up on sassafras tea in NJ. We used to make it every summer. I was always chewing on the twigs, It doesn't seam to grow up in Maine. Chew spruce gum instead.

[tonina_mdc]

Oh, I have always wanted to do that, ever since I read about it in the old "Anne of Green Gables" series of books when I was a kid! I never figured out what spruce gum actually was, though (never having lived in an area with many spruce trees.) I always figured it was something like a glob of sap. So what is spruce gum, actually?

[Passadumkeg]

A glob of sap;often from a scar or at a broken branch. An aquired taste, I chew it when deer hunting.

[tonina_mdc]

I thought so. I really am going to have to try it, even if it is an acquired taste. It just sounded so cool and alluring whenever described in the Anne books. Of course, a lot of things about Prince Edward Island sound that way to me, landlocked midwesterner that I am!

[cuccubear]

As an aside, Claey's (based in South Bend, IN) has the best Sassafras hard candy that I've yet found. It's artificially flavored of course, but generally pleasing.

[tonina_mdc]

COOL! Thanks! You may have just helped me find a stocking stuffer for my mom.

[beethoven]

I still have half of a mason jar of sassafras root bark that I got from my grandmother before she died in 2001, and she got it from her brother Clyde before HE died in 1997, and it's still good. Clyde was foreman of the road crew in Juniata, Pennsylvania, and he'd wait for a thaw in February when all of the sap was still down in the roots, then he'd uproot a sapling or two with one of the town trucks and tow chains, then bring it home and whittle off the root bark. Lasts forever, and really does make a good "spring tonic."

[fmcoxe6188]

Jello! She had a whole drawer FULL of Jello- I cant stand the stuff so I never have it around- but man- every flavor under the sun!!!

[scoutmom1973]

I love this topic!
Bac-os
Five Alive frozen juice
Boullion cubes
Kitchen Bouquet
Gallo jug wine
Good Seasons dried "Italian" dressing with a special glass carafe
Kraft sweet & sour sauce
La Choy soy sauce and canned dinners
Carl Buddig chopped and formed lunch meat with the horrible gritty texture
boil n bag meals... I do miss those though

[mattwarner]

OMG! I LOVE Five Alive, and not just because it reminds me of the movie "Short Circuit." ("Johnny Five is ALIVE!") Sadly, it is not available in my region. It makes a nice mixer.

[tochowchick]

Sorry scoutmom1973, I LOVE the Good Season's Italian dressing...we can't get it here in Canada any more (could when I was a child)...I always bring it back from the US when I visit...I think it makes a good vinagrette type dressing...

[coll]

Also the mix is good in marinades, or sprinkled on roasts. Great blend of flavors.

[ChrisOC]

Velveeta
Spry
TV Time popcorn, with the corn, shortening and salt in one package

[jeniyo]

chicken powder in a can
very old meat in the freezer
frozen "seafood mix" in a industrious bag
pickled veggies, homemade
big tubs of vanilla or strawberry flavored yogurt
large vats of rice beans stored, always ready for famine, natural disasters, war etc...

[tonina_mdc]

Okay, how old is very old meat? I might have some items that qualify in my freezer....

[coney with everything]

I've got to ask...what is "chicken powder"?

[grampart]

I've got to ask...what is an "industrious bag"?

[soupkitten]

don't say that about my great-aunt hilda!

[Sam Fujisaka]

Add hot water and you get a full roast chicken.

[cuccubear]

Speaking of “old food”, I was at my parents a few weeks ago and got a 20oz bottle of Ginger Ale from under the sink. My first clue was no “pffft!” when I unscrewed the cap. I looked at the date on the bottle after spitting out the first horrible mouthful, and saw the expiration was sometime in 2006!

Also, my father asked me if I wanted a couple packs of leftover cheese/peanut butter crackers. I checked the date…October 2003! No thanks, Pop!

These are just a few of the things my mother had on hand that I never will!

[kittyangel]

That reminds me of my late grandmother. On the rare occasion she sent food over from her freezer or pantry, it was so old it didn't even have an expiration date on it! I think it usually sat around til my dad wasn't looking & then my mom pitched it!

[ec_washington55]

My parents are recent empty nesters, and I'm convinced they don't eat meals.

They DO however always have on hand:
a huge box of Morton's kosher salt (which I can never bring myself to purchase, since I move so frequently, and who wants to lug a 5lb box of salt with them?)
a bizarre number of spices (which I'm regretting not having stolen before moving out again) that are used maybe annually: pumpkin pie spice, allspice, whole cloves AND ground cloves, nutmeg, etc etc etc.
tinned tuna
Frozen salmon
jarred minced garlic
iceberg lettuce

[RetiredChef]

Funny Post,

ALWAYS on hand

Vitamin C, kept in the spice rack????? She said that is where it belonged
Sardines
Vienna Sausage
Campbell’s soups we had a ton of them.

[tunghoy]

I keep powdered vitamin C (a/k/a ascorbic acid) in the pantry, though the spice rack is a good idea. It's an excellent, all-natural preservative and antioxidant. You need only a small amount. I use it in guacamole, pesto and any other perishable food that I want to keep for a few days. When I mix it in guacamole and vacuum seal the jar, the stuff stays fresh for over a week.

[steakman55]

Little cans of B 'n B mushrooms

[somervilleoldtimer]

Alfred's (?) meat tenderizer, which I remember is/was made from papaya.

[coney with everything]

Adolph's! Mom had that too!

I'm thinking Adolph as a product name....maybe not the best choice after 1939!

[somervilleoldtimer]

Right, right -- it was Adolph's! Maybe that's why I couldn't remember.

[kswilli]

Bacon grease

[CHEFINTHECLOSET]

Dry powder milk
Lard!!!

[Sam Fujisaka]

I use powdered milk when making yogurt (along with whole milk) and I can't make tamales without lard.

[SharaMcG]

Here are a few biggies:

Canned veggies, usually Del Monte. One of the joys of adulthood for me was discovering you can buy real vegetables and cook them yourself (as opposed to heating up mushy asparagus or peas. Ugh.)

Instant coffee. I don't think my mother even remembered how to make brewed coffee after the 1950s. Maybe even 40s.

Ancient jars of spice. I presume she must have replaced stuff like celery salt over the years because we used it a lot in salads (like tuna), but there were also spices more than 20 years old.

Also ice milk, tv dinners, quart-size cans of juice "drinks" (like Hawaiian Punch), iceberg lettuce, Wonder Bread, Tasty Cakes or Ring Dings or even Little Debbie snack cake type stuff.

In retrospect I ate remarkably poorly compared to people whose moms cooked from scratch and used fresh vegetables. We did always have fresh fruit in the house, but my mother was definitely of the school that canned vegetables were freeing her from housewife drudgery. A farm was a place my first grade class visited so we could see what real cows and such looked like, none of us connected a place like it to the food we ate.

[cuccubear]

"Ancient jars of spice" - that phrase just reminded me of a running joke with my mother. She has this ancient jar of "A&P Crushed Red Pepper Flakes" that she would bring out when we had pizza. We would always fake astonishment at its age and the .40 cent price tag.

The punchline, only the jar was old. She kept refilling it with fresh she'd get at the farmer's market. She did that with a lot of spices, only she knew which ones we *really* old.

[theminx]

Shake 'n' Bake, Prego or Ragu, and Little Debbie Oatmeal pies.

[tonina_mdc]

Oh yes, Little Debbie stuff STILL shows up regularly in my mother's pantry (she gets them for my stepfather's work lunches.) She also uses Prego for sauce, which I have tried and tried to get her to stop doing, but to no avail. My father makes real from-scratch sauce and always has, but my mom just doctors up that Prego (which is usually so overpoweringly flavored that I can't imagine adding anything else to it) and declares it to be "homemade sauce." Ewwwww! Prego is a bit better than Ragu, but that's all I can say for it....

[Sam Fujisaka]

Lots of Japanese food ingredients that I can't get here in Colombia (although I have a lot that I bring back from the US and from Asia).

[RedTop]

My mom's pantry stored a small bottle of Pompeii Olive Oil that I never saw used in my first 18 years of life(today, my family goes through gallons of olive oil each year!).

Always had liverwurst. Great school lunch sandwich slathered in yellow mustard. (Was going to buy a two pound roll recently on a grocery shopping trip with my wife. Her comment: "Are you going to eat it all?" So...it stayed in the case.)

Deviled Ham (in the small tin with the white wrapper) A delicacy then. Haven't tasted it in four decades!

Mom & Dad NEVER had margarine in the house. Something about the dye used to color "that abomination." (I loves my butter).

[hill food]

I know that little bottle of Pompei - actually got used when they moved back from Spain, just couldn't figure out why the food didn't taste as they remembered.

[lulubelle]

My mother's kitchen was pretty much like mine is now, mostly fresh foods, a few convenience products, a smattering of junk food. I grew up in Chicago, but we spent two years in Berkeley in the early 70s while my father was getting a degree, and I think that being around that early foodie culture made my mother into less of a typical Midwestern mom than others. We didn't have a lot of that typical "church basement" food, although my mom's turkey tetrazzini could make a grown man cry. Things she had that I don't have are dried parsley, cheese in a can, ranch dressing packets, tapioca and instant iced tea. She was also mildly obsessed with the lemon curd and orange marmalade that come in the cream colored jars.

My grandmother's house, on the other hand, was a veritable wonderland of processed food. Miracle Whip (ugh), lunch meat (including head cheese), chipped beef, white bread from the bakery, There was ALWAYS ice cream, and Canfield's 50/50 and hamburgers fried in butter. A special treat was ordering chop suey from the Chinese restaurant in town, which was horrifically salty and one of our favorite things about staying over with my grandparents.

It all sounds so good right now!

[somervilleoldtimer]

Turkey Tettrazini! I love it! That's what I do with the leftover turkey and broth, post- T-giving! Plus it freezes well.

[mattwarner]

Passive-Aggressive tendencies.

[lulubelle]

HA!

[Ohjoy2000]

My mother always had patience in ample supply. I'll never have that much on hand. Yours gave me a laugh though.

[rHairing]

Lipton instant tea
TAB......OK I still can find it and drink it occasionally
Kraft mac and cheese..old school box variety
Campbell's tomato soup
Lipton dried French onion soup-used for dip
Velveeta
Frozen OJ
Canned fruit
Crisco
Fleschman's (sp?) margarine
Jello instant pudding

I thank God my mom never served us canned veggies...They were always fresh or frozen. I think if the canned fruit drowning in syrup and cringe.

[kanosis]

Things in mom's late1950's cupboard:
1. mixes! lots of them- sloppy joes, sweet sour chicken, taco mix, gravy mix
2. canned vegetables especially string beans and spinach mixed with eggs for burritos. Can't remember eating fresh vegetables.
3. canned corned beef for taquitos
4. spam
5. Lawry's salt with spice- put on flour for fried chicken
6. Mom was queen of ground hamburger. Can't remember eating any other kind of meat except for chicken in that sweet and sour mix .
7. Never Hamburger Helper (maybe introduced in the late 60's (?))
8. Manischewitz wine for Good Friday meals-lasted years
9. Processed kraft cheese and Oscar Mayer bologna for sandwiches
10. Grits
11. cornmeal
12. space snacks
13. lard
14. lots of flour must have been a 25 lb. sack! She made lots of home made flour tortillas with lard. Needed something to slap that ground beef and canned vegies in! Used to make doll clothes from the sack cloth.
15. white tequila that the kids took a swig every once in a while. I think we filled up the bottle with water. We told her it was old and the flavors died out. Time to buy more!
16. Spices? still must be in her cupboard!
Good memories! We never went hungry that's for sure.

[hill food]

HA!

I'll skip the fillings, but would have loved to learn her tortilla method - not rocket science, I know but there's always a deceptively simple trick in so many things.

[kanosis]

Yup, I think it was the little things that made those homemade flour tortillas so good...like pork fat after rendering the chicharrones. She also let those little balls of dough rest before rolling.

[Babyducks]

Something my mother usually had on had was a daisy ham. She used it when making greens and beans. I haven't seen that type of ham in many years. Maybe it was just a back east thing.

[KailuaGirl]

Yep, flour tortillas have to be made with lard and the balls have to rest before getting rolled out! I have a bunch of fresh lard right now and think I'll make flour tortillas today. They're so much better than anything you can buy!

[swamp]

A little tin of bacon grease that was kept by the range. Nothing like a fried bologna sandwich that was fried in a little bit of bacon grease. Now that I think about it I never have the grease, and I also never have bologna in my kitchen.

[somervilleoldtimer]

Does anyone else keep old grease in a coffee can under the sink? It's not for eating, it's just stored until the can is full and then it gets thrown away. But it's a problem that I've been buying Trader Joe's coffee and the can is cardboard, not metal -- what will I store fat in?

[cuccubear]

My mother used to do this, and thus me too when I began keeping my own house. Don’t do it anymore for the reason you gave, no more large metal cans! Now, I pour the grease outside. This might be a terrible thing to do, but the birds like to peck at it.

[hill food]

make suet (in this case lard) seed balls for the birds

[Blush]

My mom (and grandma) always used a glass jar. Not pretty, but hey, it's under the sink.

[JungMann]

I don't purchase as much canned or jarred food as my mother used to so storing used fat has been a logistical conundrum. I purchased an industrial-sized can of chicken broth when I moved into my new apartment so I have been using that, pouring fat into used freezer bags when the can is full.

[jeanmarieok]

I usually just wipe out my pan with a couple of paper towels. That's my solution to the grease storage problem. When I want to save a little bit, I just pour off the drippings into a pint size chinese food container, and keep it in the fridge. As my husband likes to point out - we don't need to store more than a pint of drippings for our personal use!

[Querencia]

Gin.

[roux42]

Salad dressing mix - it came with a cruet
pudding mix
a whipped pudding mix that was bright pink
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese - for the baby sitter to feed us
Nestle's Quik
UBet for the Seltzer
Italian Seaosning
Parkay
lunch box food - chips, hostess goodies etc...

[alkapal]

par-kaaaaaa-yyyyyy, the flavor says, "butter."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVWQYeiB6JI&NR=1

"now made with real milk" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBH5dR...

[ChristinaMason]

I remember really liking that Good Seasons salad dressing you're referring to. And the cruet seemed so "high class" to my 8-yo self.

[coll]

Good Season dressing mix was so good, my Italian MIL switched to it after tasting mine. She liked it better than scratch. I still have my cruet, but use it for homemade nowadays. I use the dressing mix for actual seasoning (meats) more than anything.

[alkapal]

good seasons still sell that cruet and their mix!
the cruet *is* handy.
https://www.wegmans.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&productId=391029&catalogId=1&krypto=QJrbAudPd0vzXUGByeatog%3D%3D&ddkey=http:ProductDisplay
http://www.gerritysdelivers.com/43000...

[coney with everything]

I remember that Good Seasons dressing was the more "gourmet" choice than bottled salad dressing!

[jeanmarieok]

I have a good recipe some place for marinated button mushrooms that you boil in a mixture of good seasons, vinegar, and a few other things. They were a great addition to an anitpasto platter. I haven't thought about those in years.

[alkapal]

i've made mushrooms a la greque, but i don't think they were as good as those good seasons marinated mushrooms. ;-)).

[hill food]

Good Seasons Italian actually makes a good marinade for grilled chicken on a camping trip

[alkapal]

italian dressing is also good for beef. my dad used to marinate new york strips in bottled italian dressing. try it, folks, before you turn up your noses (because ingredients of a salad dressing are like ingredients for marinade).

i like the paul newman's brand for quick & easy.

[lifespan]

alkapal - agreed. prepared salad dressings of all sorts make good marinades. i prefer homemade concoctions on salad greens, but the prepared stuff works well for marinades.

[KailuaGirl]

I also agree. Marinating a steak in bottled Italian salad dressing is great! I usually grill top sirloin, but the acidity of the dressing helps to further tenderize the meat. Fresh homemade dressing is better on greens and veggies.

Whenever I can I buy Paul Newman's stuff just because the profits go to charities that I support. He was such a great guy, and good looking as all get-out!

[AmyH]

I like marinating chicken in bottled Italian salad dressing and then grilling it, with or without barbeque sauce. It really improves the flavor. My mother always did this, too.

[decolady]

We used to marinate round steak in Italian dressing before flouring and frying. Been many, many years since I ate that.

[Paulustrious]

A chip pan.
Bisto

[amtriska]

My mom was steeped in bastardized French cooking from her Louisiana-born mother, so we didn't have most of the American mom staples (margarine, pancake mix, instant rice, pretty much any shortcut) in favor of using fresh cream, eggs, butter, etc.

However, she does tend to freeze EVERYTHING and insist that it's as good as fresh! Fresh-ground coffee goes straight to the freezer, ugh. Whenever I make bacon at her house, she tells me to fry the whole package and then freeze what I don't eat. Fish and meat go in the freezer for weeks if not longer. I am sure that at the very bottom of our freezer are foods that are YEARS old...!

[ChristinaMason]

This is funny. My dad always bought too many meats on sale, would pack the freezer with them, and then later pull out packages trying to determine if they were from the current year or not. We ate some questionable things, let me tell you.

[just_M]

I am trying to cure myself of this unfortunate habit but someone keeps taking my sharpies! Thankfully green chile can help make edible almost anything, either that or I'm scarring my kids for life. Oh well they are probably the sharpie thieves anyway serves them right ;-}

[tashasarena]

green ketchup (they had it like 10 years ago I think)
Miracle Whip
tapioca pudding
garlic salt

[lulubelle]

A big dish of tapioca sounds heavenly right now.

[MinkeyMonkey]

muenster cheese
boxed cake mixes
bullion cubes
canned olives
cottage cheese
mocha mix (before she found silk!)
Sanka
mocha mix ice cream
alfalfa sprouts
bean sprouts
campbells soups especially cream of celery, mushroom, chicken and chicken with rice and with stars
Mother's cookies especially English tea, taffy, vanilla creams, the vanilla, chocolate and strawberry wafers that me and my bro begged for and the big bag of chocolate chip

What a fun topic!

[lakeriedog]

Oh this brings back memories of looking into the cupboards trying to find something good to eat!

Cheeze Whiz with pimentos in a jar
Box of Matzo Ball Soup mix (not sure why, we never ate it)
Jiffy Pop Popcorn
Underwood Deviled Ham
Canned Ham
Spam
Adolphs Meat Tenderizer
Cream Horns
Instant Coffee
Wonder Bread
Prune Juice in bottle
canned mandarin oranges
cool whip

[girlrilla]

What about
Shake n Bake?
We ate it once a week, chicken, canned green beans, and potatoes.

[ike04]

My mom grew up with all this cold war NASA type food, but was also a very good cook. We grew up with a lot of canned foods, but not overly processed, ie: Tuna, tomatoes, salmon etc. It was a prairie thing, hoarding food. If my dad does not have 5 pounds of butter in the freezer he is running low. Now in retirement Mom and Dad are all about whole foods and organic. Mom worked as a cancer researcher and is worried about all the chemicals that 3 generations of North Americans put into themselves in the name of Progress

[swoll50]

Boxes of Hamburger Helper

[CarolD]

Veg-All, or however it's spelled. My God that stuff was nasty!

[sisterfunkhaus]

I can't recall if I answered this already.

Miracle Whip (I either make or buy mayo)

Cream of mushroom, celery, or chicken soup. It's easy to make yourself if you HAVE to have a casserole.

Canned veggies (I do use tomatoes and beans but nothing else)

Margarine

Old spices (10 years old some of them, hence why I buy small packets in bulk from a busy gourmet store)

I have to say that I like using mixes on the rare occasion I have cake or brownies. My mom made it that way and it's nostalgia for me. I hate baking anyway, so it's easier for me that way. I do use melted butter instead of oil, add milk instead of water, and add some really good vanilla to the mix. It helps it a lot.

[decolady]

margarine
shortening
Jell-O
instant coffee
non-dairy coffee creamer
canned fruit cocktail
Parmesan cheese in a green can
corn oil
beef, lots of beef
braunschweiger
hot dogs
bologna
Vienna sausages

I grew up in a very small town in the south. Real Parmesan cheese was not available. Fresh fruit was seasonal or home canned. Corn oil and margarine were because they were supposed to be better for my Papa after his heart attack. I have no explanation for instant coffee, cause I can’t stand the stuff. The non-dairy creamer was for guests who wanted to use it. People at our house drank their coffee black or had café au lait. And the last five on the list are probably fine for people who eat beef or organ meat, but I don’t.

My Mom doesn’t keep these things in her kitchen now and hasn’t for years. At least most of it. I think she does still buy Jell-O. Mostly we ate food from my grandparent’s garden, from the animals they raised, and milk from a neighbour’s cow. We were so lucky to actually have such fresh food and didn’t realise it at the time. Now I can and freeze my own veggies that I grow or get in my CSA box so that I can count on good stuff in the off season.

[Atlantatime]

margarine (oleo)
shortening (mom could make fantastic pie crusts)
frozen OJ (concentrate)
canned vegetables
canned fruit
Parmesan in the green can
unflavored gelatin
rabbit, pheasant (my dad used to hunt)
elbow macaroni
American cheese
chipped beef
white bread
candied fruit
fruitcake

[piccola]

I have the same food preferences and cooking habits as my folks -- just less money. So here's what they can buy that I can't:

-top notch balsamic vinegar
-cashews
-fleur de sel
-fancy oilve oil and walnut oil
-real Parmigiano Reggiano

Also, stuff they always have that I don't like/can't eat cuz I'm veg:

-sardines
-frozen fish fillets
-smoked salmon
-dark chocolate

[cinnamon girl]

lemon juice in the green bottle
parmesan in the green tin
artificial sweetener

[marneybrown]

Spices I've never heard of but never have for that 1 recipe

[french771]

Things we had:
LARD
Margarine
Loaves of bread kept in the frig --yuck
Spam
Mac & Cheese - Kraft
Cereals that would color your milk
Ice box pies
Instant coffee
Instant tea (yuck)
Instant coffee creamer
Powdered yellow cheese (you added water)
Jello
Fruit Cocktail in cans
Hostess Cupcakes
Parmesan cheese in the green foil can
Brains/eggs
Fried squirrel with gravy & biscuits
Peanut Butter

[runwestierun]

Spaghetti-o's.
Ugh.

[MCFAC]

Wow, this thread brings back memories! Powdered milk. A WALL of canned goods in the basement, where we also had our second freezer. (If we had been locked in the house for 6 months, we would have been fine!) Funky flavored individual serving sodas, and potato chips in a tin, both delivered. Margarine, never butter. Sanka. Also, my grandmother would get us to eat 3 bowls of salad in a sitting (iceburg of course) by loading it up with freshly mixed hidden valley ranch packet dressing. I must have consumed gallons of the stuff.

[stuck in Hartford County]

Interesting how similar my list is to the OP and others. i think it's a generational thing- i'm 42. Here's my list:

margerine
shortening
lard
tupperware
concentrated oj
iodized table salt
pre-ground black pepper
rice crispies
chick peas
alfafa sprouts
mung beans
revere ware
wall mounted swing can opener
saran wrap
baggies that fold instead of zipping
grape juice
chicken/turkey hot dogs
freeze dried onions
potato stix
chicken rondelets
minute steaks
eye of round (beef)
ant cheap pasta brands
vegetable oil
canned peas
jello/pudding mix
those little cheese circles in the red wax
bologna loaf
lipton ice tea
roman meal wheat bread

ummmm. there's so many more! Fun topic Coney!

[coney with everything]

Chickpeas, Hartford?

Those are on my "things I always have on hand that my mother never EVER had" list!

[stuck in Hartford County]

Yup! My mom was sort of a hippie/vegetarian type person from Virginia. Her meals were all over the place- she made many vegetarian meals w/beans, but also tried to please the rest of us meat eaters (usually by frying meat or making a "casserole") using a major amount canned items.

STRANGE. I know. I sufferred. My brother suffered. My father suffered. We both attended colleges more than 2,000 miles away from home, and actually LOVED the dorm food. There's a greater chance of finding Brad Pitt naked in my home than a can of chickpeas.

[Sam Fujisaka]

What Mom had (what I have)

Home canned necatarines, peaches, apricots, plums (I have year round tropical fruit)
Home made jams & jellies (I make tropical fruit compotes & sauces)
100 lb sacks of Kokuho or Koda Bros rice (unavailable or too expensive here)
Homemade ume boshi (commercial ume)
Tofu from Central Fish (tofu from the German hippie store)
Fresh asparagus from the garden (!!)
Sashimi from Central fish (cachama that I catch)
Game birds we hunted (dried African game meat)
Sometimes poi from Hawaii
Frozen mochi

[stuck in Hartford County]

Oooooh. I'm so jealous of the fresh fruit, veggies and fish avail. to you. Dried African game meat! German hippie store!

Actually there is probably a German hippie store somewhere near here. But...I'm still jealous of you.

[ChristinaMason]

I just love that the tofu comes from the German hippie store. Dumb question, but is there a considerable population of German extraction in Columbia?

[Sam Fujisaka]

A relatively small proportion - less than in Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Argentina, or Uruguay. I can also get good German bread and sauerkraut (and sad looking organic produce) at the German hippie store.

[woodleyparkhound]

She always had a can of bacon grease on the back of the stove. In the pantry there were always lots of cans of soup, corn flakes (for my dad - the only cereal he would eat), canned fruits and vegetables, and saltine crackers. In the breadbox was pre-sliced bread from the supermarket. In the refrigerator were baloney and or some other kind of "lunch meat", ketchup, mayo and yellow mustard, and blocks of colby cheese or mild cheddar and bacon and eggs. She also kept a ton of baking supplies on hand and bought sugar and flour by the 5 lb. bag.

[Discerning1]

Shasta diet chocolate soda.

[beethoven]

There were two sides to my mother.
On the one hand? Old-fashioned healthy meets prescient: home canned fruit, home grown veggies, homemade bread. Never any sugary cereals. Meals were monitored by color: for every brown or beige item there needed to be something bright green or orange, and Catalina dressing didn't count. Vegetables were pressure cooked, lightly, and desserts only showed up on Sundays.
On the other? Olive loaf, Miracle Whip, celery salt, Sanka, the Green Can ... same list as everyone else.
An interesting combination. Worth thinking about... good thread.

[stuck in Hartford County]

Same thing w/my mom- on the one hand organic/helalthy/farmers market, on the other margerine/Sanka/bologna/fried foods/green can under the sink collecting...grease! Must be a generational thing.

In fact, she really hasn't changed all that much. Still believes that Roman Meal bread is "100% whole wheat", fries veggies, uses cheap stand in products if possible/Sanka/takes an alarming amount of "vitamins", uses "fake" and "lite" products despite added chemicals... while at the same time shopping at farm markets (for those veggies to be over steamed or fried)/avoiding all meat except fish and occasionally chicken/beans beans beans/ and Puffed Wheat or Wheatabix for breakfast.

Bi-Polar Cooking Practices? Or just a generational trend? Ignorance? Stubbornness? It's funny, except when I have to visit home and she wants to cook...

[EWSflash]

Same here- weird boxed dried potato dishes with homemade sauerbraten and Jello pudding for dessert OR from-scratch angel food cake.

I think bipolar cooking practices is a good description. I'm sure learning to cook in the 1950s had a lot to do with it, too.

[malibumike]

Mom always had Real Churrned Buttermilk, not cultured, here in southern california but the real churrned disappeared back around 1960.

[huricaneM]

My mom was Italian and my dad a bit of a food snob, and we always had real butter, fresh grated Italian Romano cheese, olive oil (nobody called it EVOO). I didn't know what bottled salad dressing was until I went to my friend's houses... and we made real whipped cream, and had real 100%maple syrup, but many of the other items previously mentioned were definitely staples... Here's some others I remember from our 50s/60s kitchen:

My-T-Fine Pudding, the kind that you cooked and put in those little Pyrex bowls... with wax paper over the top so it didn't form a "skin"....probably got bought out by Jello.
Danish canned ham, lasted forever in the back of the refrigerator...the kind that you opened with the key. Just in case company showed up unexpectedly and you needed something fast, my mother used to say.
Beet & onion salad, vinegary, canned in a jar, so you could see those nasty pink-stained onions.
Dried prunes (simmered in water and sugar with a lemon slice and then eated cold as "stewed prunes")
Animal crackers, in the little circus boxes with the handle.
Keebler Pecan Sandies. My Dad's favorites.
Ritz Crackers were the fancy crackers.
Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink.
Schlitz beer, or Reingold, or PBR, in the steel can's you opened with the "churchkey" that made two little triangular openings on either side.
Mrs. Grass's or Lipton's Chicken Noodle soup, dried in the little packet, add water and heat in a saucepan... (preceded microwaves and Ramen noodles) Eaten with little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Saltine crackers.

Bacardi Rum Cake- a yellow cake mix made in a Bundt cake pan and DRENCHED in Rum. My mother was amused watching our "TeaTotaller" neighbor gobble up 4-5 pieces of it. Not good to abstain back in the heyday of the Cocktail Party, made you suspect.

Proper liquor cabinets were stocked with Angostura bitters, grenadine, Maraschino cherries, little pickled cocktail onions, and that weird powder that frothed up the drink when shaken... and included not only the liquor that your parents liked, but everything that any visitor might want. Straws were for soda pop and milkshakes, your cocktail was served with a proper glass stirrer. Manhattans, Gin Gimlets, Rye and Ginger, Scotch and Soda, Singapore Slings, Brandy Alexanders, Dubonnet Cocktails, Gin and Tonics, Mint Juleps, White Russians, proper Martini's made with gin and Vermouth... no "Lemon Drops" or "Sex on the Beach" ... and nobody would dream of pouring Coca Cola on Bourbon!! No one got a plastic glass, "Apperitif" glasses, old fashioned glasses, double old-fashioned glases, hi-ball glasses, 3 or 4 kinds of wine glasses...

My mom bought and prepared things like lamb kidneys, calf's liver, sweetbreads...things that only go into petfood nowadays... oh, and a sliced lunchmeat like ham, except it was beef tongue. Things left over from days before supermarkets, when nothing was wasted lest you run out of almost all food by the end of the winter and have to eat nothing but cabbage and cornmeal for a month or two...

Scrapple!
Mr. Peanut dehydrated peanuts.
Mazola corn oil.
Good Humor ice cream bars.

[weewah]

Ha ha ha ha !!!! I still make lemon pies with My-T-fine lemon pudding! Some things a person will just never give up! Makes a great pie, but these days I add fresh lemon juice! So funny : )

[buttertart]

Your mom's kitchen sounds quite like an American version of my mom's.
I remember being thrilled by the fact that you could open the animal cracker boxes in front, as if you were opening a cage.

[hill food]

buttertart - the animal crackers were in a circus train car, the brand we had also had perforations on the bottom so cardboard "wheels" popped out as well.

[buttertart]

Yes! the same. Wasn't it fun in the dark ages?

[stuck in Hartford County]

They still have these! Or at least they did when my kids were younger (14 &12 now). My daughter loves them, still, although my son prefers those iced animal cookies sold in the big bags in the "cheap cookies" grocery aisle. No fun setting those guys free.

[buttertart]

The things I've missed by never having children!

[stuck in Hartford County]

Or you can revel in your ability to go to restaurants that don't have kids menus, themes, nuggets, crayons, booths, waitstaff who get down on their knees and introduce themselves (and sometimes write their name on the paper table covers!), plastic coated menus...

Why did I have kids, again?

[buttertart]

Actually, I've never once regretted the decision and continue to revel in that ability among others!

[Emme]

are we talking the pink and white Parade animal cookies? if so, i'm not ashamed to admit i used to love those. yup.

[buttertart]

These are beige and taste like the Marie biscuits/Special Teas kindof thing (sweet and bland).

[stuck in Hartford County]

Yes! They all co-habitate and play nice together in a large shiny silver bag. I'm actually shocked they're not all bits and pieces...That pink or white icing must be like some mean glue!

[ChristinaMason]

Loved this post. Great picture of the 50s and 60s! I feel like I just got a glimpse inside Betty Draper's kitchen.

[gritsngravy]

I don't think I've bought a single bottle or commercial salad dressing in my adult life.

It's not in any way remarkable that my mother keeps salad dressing on hand at all times, but is it unusual that every time I go to visit I find three opened bottles of Italian dressing in various degrees of consumption?

Also, you'll never find canned tuna in my pantry, nor in my mother's. She keeps it (unopened) in the fridge.

[CathyWburger]

I haven't looked at anyone else replys, so there are undoubtably repeats.

like you - shortening (Crisco)
white rice
wine (I don't drink)
carribean spice mixes (she & Dad used to vacation in Virgin Gorda)
canned aspargus - I expect she doesn't use this much either anymore
canned ham spread "Deviled ham"
Oreos (not that I don't like them - but if I have them around I will eat them all!)
Doritoes (ditto)
Peter Pan peanut butter - I switched to Jif
Diet Coke (or before that - Tab!)

[hill food]

Tab and Fresca are making come-backs

[alkapal]

tab is gross, but fresca has its place.

[hill food]

love fresca now, hated it then. later read the Woody Allen short story where the protagonist delays Death by offering him Fresca and a game of cards (canasta?)

[alkapal]

i was just re-reading "without feathers." he is death-obsessed, isn't he? http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1648917,00.html
~~~~~~
"fresca and canasta" makes me think of my parents in the '70s.
~~~~~~~

seems like the game was gin..... ;-).
>>>""""Woody Allen provides an example of fraternization with death in his short play entitled Death Knocks. Here Death is no longer the grim reaper we have heard so much about but instead an awkward bumbling entity. ....... After Death loses a gin game, it hastily exits and almost falls down the stairs. The main character thus triumphantly proclaims that Death is "such a schlep." <<<<http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC13/Kle...

[hill food]

gin and fresca? may have to try that...

[alkapal]

LOL...indeed!

i'm sure that i *have* tried it. whew -- it's a bracer! ;-).

[buttertart]

That was big at our summer cottage when Fresca first came out. A nice "ladies' drink". I like Fresca a lot to this day.

[kubasd]

in college we had what we called "gin bucket" It was a cauldron of gin and fresca with lemon and lime wedges floating in it. You got drinks out of it using a turkey baster..... it tasted great, even if the delivery system was..... odd.

[jmckee]

That....sounds decidedly fascinating.

[kubasd]

It was fun, but crazy :P

[anonymouse1935]

Pork butt and some poor animal's intestines.

Not always on hand, but regularly, when the batch of Italian sausage ran out that she and my father made with the hand-cranked machine attached to the kitchen table.

[boyzoma]

When I was young, my dad and mom owned a grocery store - and our house was attached. So, she had everything at hand! LOL. So you could name just about anything as almost none of it would fit in my pantry!

[decolady]

Wow. How handy!

[Paulustrious]

When I first saw the title of this thread I didn't think of food, but equipment. I imagined second and third generation immigrants saying things like "Mama always had the pasta machine on the counter. We've still got it in the basement". Maybe a traditional mortar. Perhaps even an old fashioned clothes wringer used to extract the juice from sugar cane.

I was imagining odd gadgets like a polenta piper, pirogie moulds, sausage driers. The device we had at home was a potato scrubber. It was an enameled steel machine that looked and operated like a salad spinner, It did quite a reasonable job of 'peeling' spuds.

Electricity has replaced elbow grease. It seems a long time since I've seen an egg beater in someone's kitchen.

[alkapal]

oh, i just spied mom's rotary egg-beater (metal and plastic -- bakelite?) in her kitchen drawer. the whirling device was so fun to use when i was a kid.

[buttertart]

I loved those too. My MIL still sometimes uses hers! The other thing my mom had was a meat grinder (that I now wish I'd kept when she passed). Ground meat for shepherd's pie and other things - better than the FP by far.

[melpy]

My grandma bought me one and I really always forget I have it. I think my arm and a whisk are about the same effectiveness.

[alkapal]

actually for whisking eggs, the tool that i turn to most is one my mom gave me. it is a springy spiral and it gets the job done pronto! like this http://images.surlatable.com/surlatab...

[hill food]

that has a name, a "French" whisk maybe? all I know is it makes a good subject for a homemade holograph using glass film stock and 2 lasers with a refractor and.... (sorry art school background)

but I loved mine.

[alkapal]

"holographic whisk"!

.....cool name for a band.

[coney with everything]

My mom had one of those Universal meat grinders, which got hauled out maybe twice a year to make bologna salad! Ring bologna and sweet pickles got fed through the grinder, then mixed with Miracle Whip. God, what a treat we thought that was! Now if I crave that stuff, like maybe once every 5 years, I use my food processor.

Other than that grinder, I've got so much more equipment than Mom ever had...but she pretty much hated to cook plus my dad was in the Air Force and we moved a lot, so you tend to acquire less stuff.

[Paulustrious]

Someday this thread will be resurrected and it will be your children....

(Pardon the potential mom / dad error)

[ellabee]

:: It seems a long time since I've seen an egg beater in someone's kitchen. ::

Come on into my kitchen.. there's not only an egg beater, it's in regular use. Easier than a whisk for egg whites, for sure, and I don't have an electric machine to do that job.

[dorilou]

I love this thread!
here is mine:
U-Bet chocolate syrup (for making egg creams)
lemon juice in the green bottle
frozen swanson and banquet meals
neopolitan ice cream
Steak Ummmms
shrimp cocktail that came in these pretty little parfait glasses, we had a whole juice glass collection of those
Borscht
crunchy Chinese noodles
mixes for soup, including one for egg drop soup that was REALLY bad
cup of soup in every flavor
funny old spices, some mentioned here already, but I remember one that was vegetable flakes, like onion flakes, but with other dried veggies in there
canned succotash
iced tea mix
powdered milk (just in case of emergency) (we lived in NYC, never had a milk emergency)
matzoh balls in a jar
gefilte fish in a jar

things I always have that mom NEVER did:
olive oil
real butter
fresh garlic
good Parmesan cheese

[FriedClamFanatic]

AsI enter my 7th Decade.....andshamelessly go through my cupboard, I realise, Mom always said to be prepared,so there's:

ViennaSaussage ....what do I do with thosepuppies?
Spam.....slice it thin and fry it except I have 2 vegetarians inthe fmily
Various dried soup mixes
McCormikspices incans..what are they 20 yrs old?

I gotta clean house!

[coll]

I worked with someone who ate Vienna Sausage straight out of the can, it was one of his favorite lunches. He was from Cuba and I think it had something to do with his childhood preferences..... me, I'd just chop it up and throw it in some chili or soup, instead of sausage. Unless it's 20 years old or more, then I'd probably chuck it.

[alkapal]

mom always took them on our vacation road trips, for lunching by the side of the road (back in the day). open can, pull out sausage, eat.

[buttertart]

That brings back memories, ms a! My parents would do almost anything to avoid stopping at restaurants on road trips (they were relatively few and far between, in the late 50's and through the '60's fast food was not ubiquitous and "you never knew what you might get yourself into" (cleanliness and weirdness of food . My mom always packed sandwiches and a Thermos of tea. I particularly remember a sandwich of roast chicken on heavily-buttered egg bread with lots of salt and pepper eaten in the dark early winter evening on Highway 401 heading toward relatives in Kingston, Ont.

[alkapal]

isn't it neat the memories we keep?

our trips were in florida, on the way up to highlands, north carolina. the roadside parks had poured concrete picnic tables, benches, and canopies. they were literally roadside, and that was about all you were gonna get.

i remember the thermos, too - but ours had coffee.

dad would often leave his sunglasses on the top of the car, only to discover they'd fallen off a few yards back onto the highway.

[buttertart]

We ARE sisters. Same dad trick! When I was really little we used to drive down to the Keys in the winters in 2 days' long drives - that was a trip. Cooler packed? Dad smoking a cigar and whistling? Ready to go. From those trips I remember papershell pecans and kumquats and the incredibly wonderful smell of the Donald Duck OJ factory (a favorite traveling thing of my dad's was to visit factories on the way, he was fascinated with technology).

[alkapal]

too funny!

so, o tartlet, you know the exact poured concrete picnic tables of which i speak!

i'll bet you remember stuckey's pecan logs, too.

ps did you ever go through the town of perry in florida? it had a paper mill. p-U!

[buttertart]

Oh yeah, so comfy (not).
You know, that rings a bell - but it may just be from other trips, since paper mills are big in Canada too (yes, p-u, and a really nasty p-u at that).
Pecan logs: yes, yes! My mom especially loved them. The Canadian candymaker Laura Secord (similar to See's, Fannie May etc) made (makes?) them too, I think probably because someone had had them on a trip to FL and suggested they do so. Laura Secord's ones were better - but Stuckey's were more fun because they meant we were "away".

[eclecticsynergy]

The only use I can remember from childhood for Vienna Sausages was to make Pigs In The Blanket, to be served with peppered white gravy. Still a favorite comfort food of mine (but once a year now instead of once a month).

About those old spices- I inherited my Mom's 70s-vintage jar of McCormick Curry Powder, and it had lost potency but still tasted like curry. My present (modern) jar is spicier but otherwise similar in flavor balance. Amazing.

What I miss most is Royal Butterscotch Pudding, the real cook-and-stir kind. I bought it right up to the end when they stopped making it.

stuff she had that I don't (or won't):
canned asparagus
canned spinach
Screaming Yellow Zonkers, anybody remember those?
homemade alfalfa sprouts- same deal, made in a Mason jar
chicken stock in cans
old school gritty whole wheat pasta
Sweet N Lo - still sold today; turns out it's actually not as bad for you as that aspartame stuff!
Rice A Roni
canned carrot juice - evil stuff. Eventually she got an Acme Juicerator (which survives to this day) and I can still remember the first time I had the joy of tasting fresh juice from big sweet organic carrots!

homemade

[CBabb]

Squeeze Parkay margarine. Oy!

[stuck in Hartford County]

All the better to "butter" that "healthy" corn!

Not to mention those silly corn holders...

[jmckee]

We never had that. My aunt did. Used it to top her instant oatmeal. Lavishly.

[buttertart]

Scots or Irish? My great-grandpa used to do that with butter (on porridge) (and salt it).

[jmckee]

Kentuckian :-)

[evewitch]

margarine
powdered milk - probably a money thing because later it was skim milk
powdered coffee creamer - she has now "graduated" to soy milk
Tang, not that I remember ever actually drinking it
Russian tea mix - ditto. She still has the jar, but now it has tea bags in it
the spice rack from Holland from her high school exchange time - I've seen her use the marjoram from it
huge can of Crisco (I do have some, but it's the premeasured sticks, and I hardly ever use it)
lowfat/fat free/light everything
Accent (never saw her use it, though)
canned "Chinese" food
boxed taco kits
stollen in the freezer - she has this recipe that makes 3 loaves; Thanksgiving, Chrismas, and New Year's Day. It's horribly dry. She used to make it with day-glo candied fruit. A few years back my sister finally talked her into using real dried fruit. Growing up the freezer was stollen-free for most of the year, but now that we've all moved out they last longer and longer. She pulled some out at Easter this year, and has admitted to having them in there for over a year at times. Won't quit making it, though.
frozen juice concentrate - another money thing, I guess. Now it's regular juice, which I still seldom have
a jar in the freezer with lemon and lime slices - a recent innovation
bottled lemon juice - I think she still uses this despite the previous
dry cereal that no one really wants to eat - I buy cereal for my family, but it's the edible kind <grin> I still can't bring myself to eat it at all
multivitamins
bananas - rare for me to have them

One thing that was notably absent was any kind of snack food. Most of our kitchen horror stories revolve around us kids trying to concoct something to eat. I used to regularly mix the aforementioned margarine with powdered sugar to make a kind of frosting/candy. Or simply eating sugar out of the bowl with a spoon. My middle sister melting chocolate on the stove as the beginnings of something, then trying to hide it in the fridge when Mom came home unexpectedly. It melted through two shelves. Or the youngest doing something similar in the microwave. With a metal bowl. You would think Mom would have gotten smart and just bought some snacks fer cryin' out loud!

[foiegras]

Oh yes!! She totally had those stacked & taped together cans of chop suey. I think the fried noodles were in the smaller can? And the juice concentrate ... I remember someone having just me as a lunch guest on Sunday and serving me fish sticks with ketchup and grape juice from concentrate. I thought that was a mighty fine meal.

She was big on those pizza kits too with the mix for the dough and the can of tomato sauce. Also had that awful ReaLemon plastic lemon of juice--God, that stuff is awful.

[RosePearl]

Cake mixes. Brownie mix. Jello. Fruit cocktail. Powdered tea. Packaged chocolate chip cookies. Canned mushrooms. Canned zucchini in tomato sauce. Dried potato flakes. Stuffing mix. Wonder bread. Kool-ade. Pudding mix. Minute rice. Kraft salad dressing. Margarine. Shasta sodas, regular and diet. Spaghetti in a box mix. Pizza in a box mix. Campbell's soup. Nestle's Quik. Hi-Saf Ice milk. Ready-made cinnamon sugar. Instant coffee. Frozen orange juice. Imitation vanilla.

[jennc]

Cheez Whiz
Pop
Maraschino cherries
Cold cuts and processed meats
Pickled herring
Miracle Whip
Canned vegetables
Pre-ground black pepper (aka pencil shavings)
Spices from the 70s (as aforementioned)
Canned ham
Coffee (we don't drink it)

[foiegras]

Ditto on the margarine ... powdered milk would be the biggie. She put it in everything, as well as making 'milk' from it ... it does not cross my threshold. Oh, she also had something in envelopes that she made 'whipped cream' from. Cool Whip ... And yes to the green can of 'Parmesan.' Tang ... Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper--some dark cola was always on hand.

[buttertart]

Packaged stuff for "whipped cream": Dream Whip or wip I believe? Nasty.

[foiegras]

Yes, that's it! Horrid chemical aftertaste.

[John E.]

My mother had those envelopes too. Are you sure you're remembering correctly? The envelopes of stuff my mother used to make whipped cream was a powder that was added to the cream as a stabilizer.

[coney with everything]

John, Dream Whip is a completely different beast...actual whipped "topping" that you add some milk? to and whip...urk.

I think there is a Dr. Oetker, or some such,stabilizer that supposedly helps whipped cream to maintain its whippyness.

[hill food]

"whippyness" ???

don't get me wrong, I like it. but still heh!

[im_nomad]

awww you're ruining a childhood memory. I always loved Dream Whip, never mind the fact that it was often made with canned milk. Cream puffs never taste the same to me as they did back then.

[alkapal]

maybe about 25 years ago, i made a no-bake soufflé-dish-deep "cheescake" that included dream whip, and it was sweet overall, but really tasty, silkier and "lighter" than traditional cheesecake. i covered the top with carefully arranged halved green grapes, then glazed them. it was very popular at our international student night gathering.

[MaineCook]

My brother and I both contracted salmonella poisoning from the powdered milk my mother insisted on using one year back in the mid-60s. It was pulled from store shelves for a while, but I've avoided using powdered milk ever since. She also always tried to sneak a raw egg into my favorite 'sick bed' food -- mashed potatoes -- and what she called an orange shake. Don't remember and don't want to know what was in it...the thought of OJ and milk is bad enough; adding a raw egg is gross! I learned to tell when the egg shell was being pulled over my eyes and simply refused the offerings. Probably saved myself from more salmonella!

If I haven't already complimented you on your moniker, let me do so now...yummy!

[hill food]

"an orange shake" that's a home made Orange Julius! a staple of every trashy 70's proto food court (never tried it, maybe never will)

[MaineCook]

I tried an Orange Julius at a food court back in the day. When you're thirsty it starts out as tasting pretty good, but it doesn't last. Cloyingly viscous and sweet as I remember it. Probably to cut through the salt and fat of their hot dogs which left you needing a 24-hour infusion of liquids after consuming one.

[DavidA06488]

Sounds about right. Can't say that I ever went back for them after 1 or 2 trial tastes.

[janbo19]

Like many others, Crisco, Tang, Spam, Kraft pimento cheese (the WORST stuff ever!), margarine, and lots of really really old spices.

[ZenSojourner]

celery seed, marjoram, basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, poultry seasoning, cayenne pepper, ground mustard, food coloring, almond extract, orange extract, lemon extract, cream of tartar, various seasoned salts, Adolph's meat tenderizer

Cans and cans of condensed Campbell's soups.

canned Prunes, prune juice, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, sauerkraut juice.

canned sauerkraut, beets, spinach, asparagus, yams, pumpkin, candied beets, Harvard beets, lima beans, butter beans, collard greens, pearl onions.

canned maraschinos, fruit cocktail, mandarin oranges.

marshmallows, bakers chocolate, cocoa powder, pudding mixes, jello mixes

pimiento cheese, pickle loaf, liver loaf, head cheese (souse), some kind of animal parts mixed with oatmeal stuff that came in a brick and had to be sliced and fried (some German thing), various sausages, meat in general.

White bread, saltines, Triscuits, Ritz crackers, vanilla wafers.

Lipton tea bags (for hot tea), Lipton iced tea mix, Folgers ground coffee, Constant Comment Orange Pekoe loose tea.

CRISCO. If it had come in a 50 gallon barrel she would have made me buy it that way.

Freezer denizens such as cod, whiting, turkey, ham, stewing hens, stew beef, salt pork, or whatever had been on sale that week whether we would normally eat it or not (I once had to package and freeze about 20 lbs of beef heart, kidneys, and stuff I to this day do not truly know what it was - sweetbreads? Tongue? We never ate most of this stuff, it just gradually freezer-burned into oblivion hidden deep within the bowels of our 17' deep freezer)

Fish sticks, "TV dinners", fish cakes, frozen shrimp, pot pies, anything from Sara Lee,.

Cocktail sauce, chili sauce, tartar sauce.

Condensed milk, evaporated milk, both sweetened and unsweetened.

Dried beef for sh** on a shingle, ooo, pardon me, "creamed chipped beef".

Spam, canned ham, vienna sausages, other weird canned meats that I have mercifully forgotten.

Grape nuts, grape nuts flakes, sugar pops (I have no idea why we had this, we were not allowed any OTHER of the candy-in-a-box-pretending-to-be-cereal), wheat chex, rice chex, corn chex, Nabisco Shredded Wheat, grape nuts FLAKES, corn flakes, frosted corn flakes, cheerios, rice krispies, cream of wheat, stone-ground oats.

Barq's red creme soda, 7-up, coke, sprite. We were actually not allowed to drink any carbonated beverages, that was reserved for the adults. I can't say as I miss it.

Oh, this is a good one: Mogan David 20/20. *SHUDDER*

Dried beans and lentils.

American cheese, cottage cheese, longhorn cheese, gouda cheese. I will actually eat and enjoy Gouda by choice but I don't keep it on hand the way she did.

Frozen orange juice, frozen lemonade, all sorts of frozen veggies.

Bisquick, pancake mix, cornbread mix.

I'm sure there is lots of other stuff we always had on hand when I was a child that I never use now. My culinary choices are NOTHING like what my mother enforced when I was growing up.

[alkapal]

all those things -- you never use ANY of them?

[ZenSojourner]

Well I did recently buy some bay leaves. It's the first time in 20 years.

THe rest of it - nope.

Well, I don't count dahl with the dried beans and lentils. I guess I did buy some dried beans recently, but again that's the first time in probably over 20 years. Long enough that I can't remember the last time I bought any. (Dried beans meaning conventional stuff like kidney beans and black beans).

I also actually count "having on hand" to mean regularly stocking the stuff. So even though I've recently bought a couple of pounds of dried beans and $1 worth of bay leaves, I don't keep those items on hand but only buy them when I have a specific recipe that calls for them, which isn't typically that often.

[Hank Hanover]

The red and white can of ground pepper
velveeta
Kraft Parmesan cheese (the green can)
a little bottle of vinegar with peppers in it to put on spinach
the little soup packets that actually made soup with the little 1 inch noodles
margarine
grape nuts cereal.. my father was the only one that could eat it..if I was to eat it now, my dead mother would come back and tell me it was for my father!
Shredded wheat cereal
Orange marmalade my father liked it
Mrs Butterworth pancake syrup
Divinity candy at christmas
grainy chocolate fudge
The oval canned ham with the ham jelly in it.
Spam

[gentlyferal]

Hmm...

*Bon Vivant canned soups and Knorr soup mixes - I'm not much of a soup eater, but I do occasionally make scratch soups. Since I learned how easy it is to make vegetable stock, I don't bother with mixes or even ...
*Bouillon cubes - For a while I used Better Than Bouillon stock paste, but I'm past even that now.
*Imported German cookies; the ones I remember best were alphabet shortbread cookies covered in chocolate. Somehow they had a layer of slightly bitter apricot jam just under the chocolate. Diabetic issues. Also small-town grocery issues.
*Bacon - Nitrates! Run away!
*A much wider variety of liquor, liqueurs and wine - just never learned to appreciate liquor/wine like they did.
*Canned mushrooms - they grew up when this was about the only way to get mushrooms. By the time I came along, fresh mushrooms were everywhere.
*Durkee's Famous Dressing - the best condiment for ham sandwiches! Can't find it any more. Also, not sure it would go so well with the vegetarian dishes that dominate our diet now.)
*Log Cabin Syrup - when I was a poor young adult, I bought the cheapest pancake syrup. Then I became a health food nut and bought only maple syrup.
*Frozen orange juice concentrate. We only bought Donald Duck when I was a kid. Juice is actually an overconcentrated way to eat fruit - strip out the fiber and you have Koolaid-with-lotsa-vitamins - so it's just straight oranges for us.
*Ortega canned chilis - Come on! Fresh chilies, or dried, for the win!
*peperoncinis - just never got the hang of them. My dad used to snack on them like they were chips or something.

[eclecticsynergy]

Durkee's Famous Sauce

Yep, absolutely the best for ham sandwiches, deviled eggs and BLTs!

I couldn't find it for years, but it's still being made. Can be purchased online but one must pay outrageous shipping & handling charges.

I finally found it at a Price Chopper here in upstate NY- HOORAY!
Your supermarket might be able to special order it...

[John E.]

Not only did my mother never keep Durkee's Famous Sauce on hand, I never even heard of it until reading this thread.

My mother always had soda crackers (they had to be Premium) and melba toast in the cupboard, among other things.

[coney with everything]

Durkee used to make those famous fried onions to go on top of a green bean casserole, but they are now French's...maybe the famous sauce is around under a different brand name??

[John E.]

Durkee and French's are co-owned. I suppose they eliminated the duplicate product lines.

[alkapal]

durkee's sauce is in the harris teeter stores, by the way.

[natewrites]

Velveeta
Lipton Onion Soup
lots of her own canned veggies (grew up on farm)
2 freezers full of frozen pork/beef (our own)
1% milk
Oatmeal
generic peanut butter (ick, always tasted like there was sawdust in it)
Lady Lee brand ketchup
cream of everything soup

[jiminy]

Pretty much the only thing my mom has on hand is patience lots and lots of patience

[Breezychow]

I consider myself EXTREMELY fortunate that not only were/are both my parents fabulous cooks, but that back in the 1960's I grew up learning to enjoy Portuguese sausage & broccoli raab soup, roast goose & duck with all the trimmings, unbelievable seafood dishes (we lived by the water), while my little compatriots were eating spaghetti & meatballs, hamburgers, etc., etc. - lol!!

Frankly, I think the only thing that was in my mother's pantry that's not in mine was a canned vegetable mix called "Veg-All", which is still around today. Mom kept it around to toss into an impromptu "a la King" dish over puff pastry patty shells for days when dad was going to home late from work. But for me - except for canned beans & sometimes corn, canned veggies aren't my thing.

[fourunder]

Frozen Concentrate Orange Juice

Condensed Milk for Coffee

[hill food]

nooo! condensed milk is practically required for a decent Vietnamese or Thai iced coffee

[bytaber]

powdered milk

[crigg]

corn (freakin'!) flakes, russet potatoes! white onion(I use only red) rarely also any spices with salt added.

condensed soups, flavorless soda crackers. Lays original potato chips. :)

[just_M]

honestly you may want give corn (freakin'!) flakes another try - they are delicious w/ whole milk and sprinkle of sugar. I just tried them and I thought holy-mac, I really have missed these things!

[coney with everything]

I have corn flakes on hand to use as breading...pulverize in the food processor and add seasoning and grated Parmesan (not from the green can, LOL, which was one of the things my Mom had but I never do!). And do not buy the box of corn flake crumbs!

Use to coat pork chops or chicken, then bake.

Trust me on this.

[just_M]

Right on the money coney with everything. Corn flakes are a tasty multi-tool

[im_nomad]

I'd hazard a guess that a good many items that were in our cupboard while I was growing up are not only not present in mine, but my parents current cupboards as well. Just a lot of things they didn't have access to back then where I grew up.

Aside from the meat-dishes that I would no longer eat because I don't eat meat, I can't really think of much that was cooked growing up that I wouldn't eat now.

[Floridagirl]

Sane as your mom but add instant pudding. Plus, she had my dad.

[foodseek]

Mother's Taffy Creme cookies were her favorites.

[Sue in Mt P]

Hot dogs. In the 50's

[Passadumkeg]

Veal roasts in the freezer. I can't afford them.

[emu48]

Way back in the '50s or '60s (yeah, I'm really old) there was this product that consisted of fat soda straws containing a flavored bit of chemical fun. When you sipped plain milk through these straws, it became, in transit, either strawberry or chocolate milk. There also was a soft drink that involved dropping a tablet rather like an Alka-Seltzer, only fruit-flavored, into a glass of cold water, watching it fizz, and drinking it. Wait: It was called (what else?) Fizzies.

[alkapal]

i remember fizzies! they fizzled out as a product after a brief time though, didn't they? i've graduated to alka-seltzer: the "fizzies" for chowhounds! ;-).

[John E.]

Fizzies were discontunued in about 1969 because they were sweetened with cyclamates which were banned as a carcinogen. If sugar were used, the tablet would be about the size of a hockey puck. They have been brought back twice since aspartame was invented.

http://www.fizzies.com/

[pinehurst]

They sell this product in the Vermont Country Store catalog. Don't know if they still have the carcinogens :-0

My mom always had blackstrap molasses in the house, for cooking, a jolt of iron, or for soothing my regular bouts with croup. I miss my mom.

[John E.]

My mother too always had a bottle of molasses in the cupboard. The only thing I remember her uaing it for were gingersnap cookies. A while after she died I was helping my dad to organize the kitchen and found three unopened bottles of he stuff. We used it to make brown sugar instead of buying it. I too miss my mom (and my sister).

[pinehurst]

John E. sorry about your mom and sister. Does Molasses ever go bad? I am told that honey doesn't. Thought perhaps the sugar content of molasses would also protect it?

[John E.]

I don't think molasses ever goes bad. It might crystalize like honey can. I wonder why some honey crystalizes and some never does. My father brought home two liters of honey from Ukraine in 1993 and it has not crystalized (my parents never did use a lot of honey).

[pinehurst]

We didn't use it a lot either...on pancakes if there was no syrup, and I was dosed with it when I had croup. I think I read somewhere that if you gently heat crystalized honey container in a warm water, it liquifies.

Side note: two years ago, a friend of mine from Greece brought me a can of honey after a summer trip there with her husband. Despite the presence of honey in some Greek dishes (hello, baklava), I never thought of honey as being "Greek". Or Ukrainian! I bet the climate/plants the bees are pollinating really make a diff. Wish I knew more about this.

[John E.]

There are beekeepers on every continent with the exception of Antarctica. The Ukrainian beekeeper was married to my father's first cousin but I don't know much about the honey. My grandmother used to bring home orange blossom honey from Arizona. I remember seeing buckwheat honey that was nearly black. Honey is one if those products that you have to buy from local producers. I saw a report on television about Chinese honey. Apparently the U.S. put a block on importing Chinese honey because some of it is adalterated with corn syrup (or worse). To get around the laws they sell it to businesses in other Asian countries so it has a point of origin other than China. That's why I would never buy honey from anyone other than a local beekeeper.

[cgarner]

emu48 they have resurrected the chocolate straw. I bought a pack for my kid, because the ingredients didn't look too bad..it was definately a novelty item for her. SHe hasn't asked for them again

http://www.magicstraws.com/

[ellaf]

Wheat germ.

[timj04]

Crisco. I remember she had a giant can of it on the top shelf of the cupbard. I've never had it in my kitchen and don't know if I ever plan on having it there.

[Maggie Larkin]

tons of spices!
crisco
many vinegars
every, every time of cooking oil
tons of baking mixes

i think its a rule that all mothers most have a JAM packed spice rack. my mom also had extra everything - we never seemed to run out

[elenacampana]

Can of bacon grease, a permanent fixture on the back of the stove. At least I keep mine in the freezer...

[kittyangel]

This is a really cool discussion - unfortunately I don't have time to read them all right now. For me, definitely dry yeast. I absolutely refuse to take water's temperature! I also refused to make fudge til I got a recipe that you don't have to take the temp and it is extremely creamy. Also Lipton tea bags. I never developed a taste for brewed tea, altho I started drinking coffee out of desperation when I was around 20. (Eventually I actually grew to like the taste and now drink it black.) Also Tang and Carnation Instant Breakfast Drink.

My mother also had a cupboard full of spices but probably only used 2 or 3 of them because my dad grew up on a Mennonite farm in PA Dutch country and has a rather limited palate. I started out with basics like salt, pepper, chili powder and minced onion, but eventually started adding more like powdered garlic & onion and paprika to try new recipes. Italian & poultry seasoning were a mistake tho since I hate sage and oregano.

Iceberg lettuce is the only kind I like, altho I've found that baby spinach isn't bad, and you can add spinach to pasta dishes and not even taste it. Iceberg is great with Thousand Island but if you can find Russian dressing (the orange kind - try Ken's), that is sensational.

It never occurred to me that other places don't have ring bologna but it's probably a local thing like Lebanon bologna and potato rolls for our area. I once had a friend living in Florida and had Lebanon bologna & potato rolls sent to him for Christmas because he couldn't get them there.

[RAGHOUND]

Two things you could always find in our house - canned creamed corn and frozen succotash. I hate both of them and they have never been in my house and never will be. Uck!

[buttertart]

Oh man, me neither. My brothers adored creamed corn.

[alliegator]

Ugh, creamed corn is absolutely the worst. I hated it so much that I was given carrot sticks on creamed corn night. Some things are just too cruel to do to a child.

[buttertart]

I was never made to eat it either*, but the smell grossed me out. Canned and frozen corn corn, ok.
*It or anything else, I was completely spoiled and catered to by my mother, who would cook me something else if I didn't like what everybody was having. World's pickiest eater until I left home...

[alliegator]

Haha, you sound like my little brother! How he became a tall and brawny adult and peanut butter sandwiches and pepsi, I will never know.
It's so interesting how tastes evolve for some as we mature, but creamed corn is something I wish never wish on anyone at any age! It was always the thing I dug out of the cabinet when my school had canned food drives. I pity the recipients of it.

[buttertart]

With me it was candy and as little real food as I could get away with. Rather different when you're buying and cooking your own food. I would still never in a million years buy creamed corn.

[kittyangel]

Okay, I hate to admit this but I actually like creamed corn. We never had it growing up because we ate whatever came out of the garden. However, I like to put it on top of mashed potatoes when I prepare a meat without gravy (like ham - I just can't master ham gravy!) or on baked potatoes as a low-fat alternative to butter and sour cream.

[alkapal]

i've used creamed corn in a "quick & dirty" corn pudding -- with jiffy corn meal mix. it tastes good & is easy to make.

i "pimped" my can of creamed corn into a mexican tamale-tasting casserole a couple years back. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/535420
it was very popular.

[kittyangel]

A can of creamed corn, regular corn, sour cream and Jiffy corn muffin mix. This is so easy I can't even mess it up and so good that I have to make a double batch for all Holiday dinners because everyone want's to take home leftovers!

[jamesmasonlv]

Try Creamed Corn over Fried Ham Steak. . . .it's amazing. I'm gonna have to try it on top of a baked potato. I can't believe I never thought of this, and I'm WILD about Creamed Corn.

[alliegator]

Dear god, cottage cheese! I hate it so much that if you put a little dish in front of me and told me that if I ate it all and kept it down I could have $500, I could not do it.
In my opinion, life is just to short to eat crud like that.

[kittyangel]

I agree. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke!

[LeoLioness]

Ground mace. I'm pretty sure my mother has had the same jar of it for 30 years, though.

[kittyangel]

Another one - Accent meat tenderizer. I don't remember this as a child but it is now a staple for Sunday family cookouts with my parents. Except for me - and I hope I don't sound like a Barbarian - but I just like the flavor of unseasoned meat! (Preferably rare!)

[coney with everything]

My mom had Accent too, but I think she had the same container for about 10 years. This of course meant that it got packed and repacked many times as my dad was in the Air Force and we moved a LOT.

[alkapal]

I have a can of Accent. I'm not sure that I've ever opened it. Isn't it basically MSG?

[buttertart]

It is just MSG. My mom was a big user - it does make a lot of things taste better. The only "fail" was when she used it in a salmon loaf - a fishier taste was never had anywhere by any human being on this planet before.
I was a snobby eater as a teenager - had heard MSG was A Bad Thing - and my mom would use Accent on a stealth basis. Whenever I said "Gee those peas (or whatever) were good" the answer was "Hah! I used Accent in them!".

[alkapal]

the "sneak-accent-attack." sounds like she enjoyed that. LOL

[KailuaGirl]

We had Ajinomoto until we moved to the Mainland (Colorado) and had to switch to Accent. It was great on hamburgers! MSG does go a long way in many Asian dishes and I still use it there. No more on my hamburgers or steak, though.

[alliegator]

Haha, I have some and I use it! I'm a huge fan of Thai street food and try my best to replicate it at home. Of course, it's never going to be quite right. But a little pinch of MSG makes it a lot closer.

[eclecticsynergy]

Yah, Accent is MSG, always was. People sometimes confuse it with another product, Adolph's Meat Tenderizer, which I believe was made with papain. Might still be made.

[acgold7]

Yep, we have both at home and still use them once in a while, especially now that the whole MSG-headache thing has been thoroughly debunked from a medical perspective. We had a Chinese exchange student who lived with us for a year and the first thing she made us go out and buy so she could make us "real" Chinese food like her Mother does was MSG. Our food has never tasted so good!

We don't use a lot of it, or in every dish, but it's good to know it's there if we need it in a pinch. The whole "umami" thing you hear so much about these days? Basically the naturally occurring form of MSG.

Adolph's is pretty good too, but even the "Unseasoned" version is pretty salty. Use sparingly.

[coll]

Adolfs is the only tenderizer with papain; had to buy my replacement on Amazon recently because I couldn't find anything but Tones or McCormicks locally (don't remember if I checked Walmart though). These others seem to be mainly salt and sugar. Had to buy the restaurant sized container so it will last me the rest of my life now. It really works when you buy grocery store meat and want to make it melt in your mouth, while saving a few bucks.

I also have a little cannister of Accent that is probably 10 years old, or older? I think my beef stroganoff recipe calls for it, and sometimes I throw it in Chinese food, but ditto for lasting the rest of my life. I'm not one to throw out any spices on an annual basis in case you can't tell! But I do go through most of them quick enough. I have more than a rack, I have the entire corner cabinet in the kitchen dedicated to my collection.

Mom always had Adolfs and Accent, not sure what she used them on. I'll have to ask.

[KailuaGirl]

We always kept Adolph's on the kitchen counter when we lived at the beach. Make a paste of that stuff with water and it works wonders when smeared on Portuguese man of war or jelly fish stings. It's the papain that neutralizes the poison. Of course, if you have ripe papaya around that works better, it's just more expensive.

[coll]

We're starting to get a lot of jellyfish around Long Island lately, I'll have to remember to bring some Adolphs to the beach next summer!

[hill food]

although if caught short, urine works on stings too.

[coll]

Good to know, I usually have a ready supply on hand!

I was getting a ring sized yesterday at a classy jewelry store, and lo and behold, couldn't get my ring off. Guess what, Windex really does work. They keep a bottle under the counter.

[alkapal]

i don't think i've ever seen so many "pukers" on a chowhound thread. just keep that to yourselves, please.

[buttertart]

Definitely, TMI, TMI, TMI.

[letsindulge]

Bagoong monamon, a common flavor enhancing Filipino cooking ingredient made up of raw salted, then fermented anchovies. Once you catch a whiff of it you never forget it. More potent then fish sauce, which I use in place of the aforementioned ingredient. MSG also.

[pine time]

I'm sure this is upthread (didn't have time to read all the replies), but it's gotta be the green can of grated stuff labeled as Parmesan that tastes nothing like Parmesan. The first time I tasted the real thing, I had to recheck the label to be sure it was really labeled Parmesan.

[Terrie H.]

Miracle Whip.

[Acantha]

Spam
dried beef
miracle whip

[nhrteacha]

Hamburger Helper

[pine time]

Forgot about Hamburger Helper (do they still make that stuff?) First time I had it was in college, cooked with quite brownish ground beef on our illegal hotplate in the dorm. Awful stuff, but we gulped it down like it was filet mignon. Haven't even thought of it since the mid 1970s.

[hill food]

yup still around. loved it when I was 8 YO. by college I realized with just a few things around I could make better in the same amount of time with fewer additives etc than the box and for about the same price (broken out per serving) I felt like a cheat, but friends thought I was brilliant - that's sad. but an early food snob moment.

[hill food]

BTW pine time I saw a commercial for the stuff the other night, not only is HH still around, they're up to something like 40 varieties.

[monavano]

Margarine and 10 year old spices.

[ellabee]

Crisco
instant oatmeal
Lipton onion soup
canned mushrooms

[jmckee]

No Crisco? I don't use it a lot but I do use it....

[traveleryvette]

the shortening was Crisco. Mom always had celery in the crisper
Thank you brand fruit topping
jello non bake cheesecake mix

[coll]

I used to sell big cans of Thank You brand fruit to restaurants, and got a laugh when a customer complained "Tell your buyer, No Thank You".

[lyden]

Zarex syrup

Those little brown crocks of processed cheese product

And rolled up shirts ready to be ironed, kept in the crisper drawer

[buttertart]

Oh God that brings back memories, the shirts!!! Did she use a pop bottle with holes poked in the cap to sprinkle them too?
What the heck is Zarex syrup?

[lyden]

She used a Coca-cola bottle, but she didn't have to poke holes in the cap. She had a sprinkler gadget, like a wine cork but with a rubber stopper and perforated aluminum top (think miniature shower head), that fit into the neck of the bottle. These were sold in the local Woolworth's.

Zarex syrup was used to make fruit drinks, a sticky product in a small glass jug that you poured into a glass and mixed with water. Licking the spills off the neck of the bottle was a bonus.

[buttertart]

I remember those doohickeys. We had fruit syrups when I was a kid too, forget who made them though.

[mattstolz]

hahaha what ISNT in my mother's pantry??? she has been collecting random pantry items since like 1980... and I they've moved four times since then! dont know how she does it.

[John E.]

I was helping my father with his laundry not too long ago (my mother died a little over three years ago and my father is nearly 80). I was looking in the cupboard above the washing machine for some laundry stuff like Woolite to wash a sweater of his. I found a sample in a foil pouch with a coupon that had an expiration date of 1987. They moved three times since then. I showed it to him and he said something like, 'see, you should never through anything away". I also know there are spices in the cupboard that are also nearly 25 years old. nuts

[hill food]

so was the woolite sample still any good? sorry this is hitting really close to home, I'm going through my parents crap (and deceased grandparents, so 80 years of shit) the folks are living so I have to smuggle the clearly ID'd junk outta here. finding some cool stuff like monkeypod salad bowls from Manila in 1968 still in the box but of course "we'll use them!" (I shoulda just swiped 'em) yeah that rose fertilizer from 1972 must still be good...

[John E.]

Actually, it wasn't Woolite, it was an Arm & Hammer product called Delicare. It worked fine but it did bring about a pretty funny internet experience. Not having ever heard of Delicare, I did what every World Wide Web dependent person does these days, I Googled it. For a good laugh, Google "Delicare" (without the quotes) and check out the link 5th from the top.

While we were cleaning out my grandmother's attic over the garage we found an old can of DDT. It was a powder in a can similar to a paint can. It was army surplus because underneath an old paper label was the army green with lettering on it. My uncle said, "Let me have it, I'll use it in my garden. It will do the job on the potato beetles". My cousins told him if he did that, not only would they not eat anything from his garden but that they would not bring his grandchildren over to his house. My uncle was only about half serious about using the stuff. His kids were completely serious. DDT is easy to get rid of, all we did was flush it down the toilet ; )

[hill food]

holy cow! the antidote for Schwetty Balls!

dang I found a roll of asbestos and wanted to just bag and bury it in the woods, the Father has other ideas involving transportation to the landfill (what's the difference?) I dunno if I'd have flushed DDT, but at least it wouldn't be concentrated at that point - I know nothing about it's water solubility.

[coll]

We found a bottle of chlordane in the dilapidated shed when we were renting from a friend between houses, and my husband was like he found gold. We used it when we moved into our next house, hopefully it will not affect our life span too drastically. At least we never had termites!

[alkapal]

oh, chlordane IS gold for killing fire ants.

[coll]

Thank goodness we don't have fire ants around here. Yet.

[mattstolz]

haha gotta love stuff like that. anytime my brother or i go to my parents house, the first thing we do now is open the fridge and pantry and throw away everything that is old, expired, moldy...

they have such a awesomely big kitchen and fridge that they just loose track of whats in there! not to mention two people doing shopping means they end up with extras A LOT

[hill food]

god yes, how many bottles of the same mustard does one need? or chainsaws?

[cactusette]

Canned hearts of palm and canned artichoke hearts
Dried apricots
Canned Sardines (we never really ate them. They were just...there.)
couscous
tapioca
canned clams
oh! and wheat germ. To this day she sprinkles it on everything it seems.

[cathodetube]

Try sardine pate. Really nice.

[cactusette]

thank you I will try that. I've always liked the taste of canned sardines, just kind of never knew what to do with them!

[cathodetube]

There are a few recipes online. Pretty sure one of them is a Nigella one. Also heard about mixing them with cottage cheese in a food processor but haven't tried that. Can also do pate with canned mackerel. Add horseradish.

[dratlover]

Mashed sardines on saltines...yum.

[kathleen440]

Canned LeSueur peas. Blech!!!

[Discerning1]

Kathleen...don't belch too soon. Canned LeSueur peas are a key ingredient in a delicious vegetarian chopped "liver." It consists of lots of caramelized onions pureed with the famous canned peas themselves, hardboiled eggs and walnuts.

[alkapal]

le sueur peas are also key to my mom's pea salad -- with grated onion, mayo, celery, chopped boiled egg and cubed cheddar cheese. she loved that salad, made it for potlucks in the family, and now i make it every now and then, esp. when i miss my mom.

it should be made a day ahead, for best flavor.

[jmckee]

My mom never made this. But my aunt did. I loved it.

[MidCoastMaineiac]

Food.

[LeoLioness]

Ground mace. I can't think of anything I've ever eaten/cooked where I was like "hmm....if only I had a little ground mace".

My father hasn't been without a jar of Cain's sandwich spread since the 70s. Live it up, Dad.

[buttertart]

Mace is an oldfashioned spice but it's very good in blueberry and apple pies. Traditional spice for cake doughnuts and poundcake, too. But I take your point about it not being missed.

[coll]

I had a jar of ground mace for one cookie I occasionally make at Christmas. One day an old fellow who worked in our warehouse, who knew I was into exotic foods, asked me if I knew where to get some mace for his terminally ill wife to make her special Christmas cake as they couldn't find it anywhere. He was overjoyed when I gave him my old bottle which was almost full, but somewhere along the line I bought another one apparently. Can't really say why though, must have been in one of those spice binge moods where I want one of everything just in case. Bet it's not even opened yet.

[alkapal]

i guess everyone knows that mace is nutmeg's covering. it looks really cool. http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/kitchen/2009-10-28-Mace.jpg
i found this information on "culinary uses" interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutmeg

mace is used in my mom's family recipe for sour cream pound cake.

[bushwickgirl]

Bisquick, which I'm sure has been mentioned. Also canned shrimp, frozen broccoli, Junket rennet tablets, alum powder, mace, potted ham, Wispride port cheese in a crock, Accent, Kitchen Bouquet (although I saw it over at my local bodega last week and was thinking I'd get some, adds a nice color to beef stew.) No Spam, Jello, frozen o.j. concentrate or dried beef here either.

Note: On the o.j. concentrate, I do use it occasionally in sauces, reduces faster than regular o.j.

Thank Gawd my mom didn't use much in the way of canned vegetables, just beets and canned peas, which for some odd reason I still get an occasional hankering for.

[AmyH]

I don't recall my parents using canned shrimp, but they did love the refrigerated shrimp cocktail that would come in a glass jar with the cocktail sauce mixed in with the tiny shrimp. The glass jars made good juice glasses, too.

[lyden]

OMG, too funny ... had forgotten all about those. My folks also loved those, in our area it was the "Sau-sea" brand. You had to pry the metal cap off with a bottle opener. We had a full set of juice glasses from those. M&P would celebrate occasions like New Years Eve at home (too expensive to go out with one income supporting seven hungry mouths) by getting "special" foods like stuffed clams, shrimp cocktail, etc for them to eat in front of the TV as the ball dropped in Times Square. We kids were sent upstairs early with strict instructions not to come downstairs until morning ... took many years to figure out why they wanted their privacy ...

[bushwickgirl]

My mom never bought Sau-Sea Shrimp Cocktail in the glass when I was young, but I did have roommates later in life that lived on it, bought by the gross, I swear, and yup, we had the glasses, perfect for morning juice.

[AmyH]

Definitely special occasion food! I guess in your house the occasions were extra special...

[lyden]

Looking back, I see that my parents were just as "saucy" as their favorite foods (chuckle)

I just remembered one other thing, the brown paper bag with the flour/salt/pepper that my mother would use to flour chicken, etc. God forbid she would throw it out while it still had flour in it! It would stay on the pantry shelf until the bag itself fell apart.

[AmyH]

Oh look! I guess they still make it!

http://www.netgrocer.com/pd/Netgrocer...

[bushwickgirl]

Oh yes. I still see Sau-Sea in the dairy aisle, but sadly the glass shape has been modified.

[AmyH]

I found some in the seafood section of my grocery this morning but the glass was completely gone and they were packed in little plastic tubs. I bought a couple to try. $2.50 for a 4 oz tub. Hopefully they taste like I remember.

[AmyH]

Well, some things are better left in the past. The Sau-Sea shrimp cocktails were nasty, and definitely not like what we remembered. The shrimp were tiny, grey and hard, swimming in a sea of sauce. We couldn't eat them and just threw them away. Oh well.

[alkapal]

probably now the shrimp is from vietnamese shrimp farms and the sauce is laden with HFCS.

go get yourself some good gulf shrimp, make a great cocktail sauce and really treat yourself! ;-). http://www.ehow.com/how_6047014_make-...

[AmyH]

I know how to make a real shrimp cocktail, but that wasn't the point of the experiment.

Even shrimp from Vietnamese farms shouldn't be grey and hard like these were. The sauce itself was actually pretty tasty.

The experiment did enable me to learn something new about my husband of 26 years... that his family also enjoyed the Sau-Sea shrimp cocktails when he was young. So we were disappointed together. As he put it, "Oh, these aren't at all like I remember."

[alkapal]

nothing is like it used to be…… i still get a kick out of the name, though. ;-). those shrimp sound positively disgusting.

i'm sure that a "real shrimp cocktail" is within your cooking purview, but i was just suggesting a great taste alternative, as i have to resort to "recreations"when i think of old things i loved but which have changed character and quality. i know it wasn't a substitute, and i'm sure that you have made "the real thing" because you love it.

funny thing about what you "learned" about your husband…you can be married for so many years, and then sometimes you get a new revelation. i often say to mr. alka, "why didn't you ever tell me that before?" answer: "i don't know; i just never thought of it."

[coll]

That happened to us not too long ago: I was hungry and I took a Ritz cracker, put a slice of cheddar on it and then sliced a gherkin to garnish it. I said to my husband, my Dad always loved this as a snack (I assumed he invented it) but he said, So did my Dad, especially the gherkin slice! Separated at birth. We've been together 40 years, but still always something new to find out.

[AmyH]

You know, that's actually not a bad idea. I could get some of those tiny popcorn shrimp, cook them appropriately so they're not grey and hard, make a nice cocktail sauce, and serve them in a little juice glass! That might just erase the trauma of those nasty things in the plastic tub!

[debbypo]

This thread has made me extremely nostalgic and made me teary with missing my long dead mom (she died in 1989). In her kitchen but not in mine
Lipton Onion Soup Mix
Friendship Cottage Cheese
the little gherkins (I'd eat the jar in a one sitting binge)
Chock ful 'O Nuts coffee
Real Lemon juice
Clamato Juice..an obsession of hers in later years

[Hachidori]

My mom is not a baker, so her cupboards always held mixes - (dried) blueberry muffin mix, cake mixes - and usually the cheaper brands like "Jiffy". She also bought canisters of whack-against-a-counter Pilsbury products like crescents or turnovers, plus slice-and-bake cookie dough.

[aniGrace]

"what mom always had around but I never do..."
_______________________________________________________________________

frozen bag of peas, cubed carrots, and corn
wishbone italian salad dressing
A-1 sauce
taster's choice instant coffee
mini pasta stars and other odd mini shapes that just stayed in the dry pasta section
canned fruit cocktail and pineapple rings
jello...often this canned fruit was added to the jello
cool whip
canned tuna
corn oil
crisco
cans of swanson chicken/veg stock
knorr or maggi chicken flavor bouillion
fresh squeezed lemon juice in yogurt containers, stored in the freezer (not such a bad idea!)
pre-ground black pepper (I've finally converted her)
cubed sugar for guests
hershey's unsweetened chocolate powder
pace or victoria chunky salsa and mission tortilla chips
rosarito refried beans
imitation vanilla powder (i admit it smells REALLY good but tastes absolutely awful)
a flour sifter cup...i loved this as a kid and always volunteered to sift when she was baking a cake
orange or rainbow sherbet
frozen spinach in a box
frozen pizza
celery
laughing cow cheese triangles
marshmallows
lipton instant soup
spam and canned corned beef
raisin bran
kraft mac n cheese (i confess i eat this maybe twice a year....it takes me back in the day :)
canned pitted black olives
canned mushrooms
paper plates and napkins
a collection of plastic forks, spoons, knives and chopsticks
frozen bag of shredded mozzarella or jack cheese, shredded with her salad shooter
a stash of ketchup packets kept refrigerated, and one containing soy sauce packets

[hungryinmanhattan]

This is a fun thread.
We always had Kool-aid and another packet drink called "funny face" I believe.
Also bologna and cream cheese which she kept in the freezer until she needed it, so it was always crumbly after defrosting! And pre-made cinnamon sugar.
Also, lots of cottage cheese with pineapple.

[bitchincook]

Large "family-size" bags of frozen mixed vegetables.
Canned LeSeur peas.
Canned zucchini.
Jars of pickled beets.
Canned sauerkraut.
"Flavored" ketchup. I remember "pizza" flavor and "bbq" flavor.
Jars of pickled herring. On saltines, this was mom's favorite afternoon snack.
"Low-cal Italian" salad dressing.
Diet margarine.
Aunt Jemimah's pancake mix and Log Cabin "syrup."
Artificially sweetened jam.
Potato buds.
Canned ham.
Deviled ham in little cans.
Canned condensed soups.
Dozens of jars of pickle relish. Dad went crazy at a sale once.
Ho hos, ring dings, and devil dogs.
Duncan Hines cake mix.
Canned potatoes. Really.

[mokafeinomane]

Margarine
Lemon juice in a plastic lemon
Kraft's Singles
Any ''cream of'' can
Dried parsley (As it's a tendency here,all of her spices are easily older than me.)
Iceberg salad
Kraft's ''parmesan'' (simply smells like dried puke)
Cake mixes
Canned cake icing
Canned frozen juices
'Snack cakes'' like swiss rolls
Bottled salad dressing, tons of them
Jam jars, ton of them and nobody in my family eat it, except me, so they are untouched for at leats five years.
Bologna
Frozen fish sticks
Chicken flavouring powder, full of MSG
Bisto
Sweet drinks, lots of 7up, Pepsi and Orange Crush
Frozen pizza
Lipton's
Canned vegetables
Canned creamed corn
Canned sandwich meats
A stash of fast food places sauce packets
A stach of fast food salt and pepper packets
Shake 'n Bake
Chocolate syrup
Minute Rice
Boyardee canned noodles
White bread
Pickled veggies nobody ever eats
Instant coffee (actually I have some, but SHE gave it to me so SHE can drink it when she visits, haha)

[DavidA06488]

What a list! I think the one thing my mother had that I would never, ever (repeat five times) have is homemade mint jelly. She would put a barely visible coat of it on dry old Bond bread and a thin layer of peanut butter for our school lunches. We needed lots of water for that, and noone ever demanded to trade for our lunches.

[alkapal]

mmm, mint and peanut butter….

i've never heard of that sandwich; but think…the thais and vietnamese use mint and peanuts together. what is "bond" bread?

[DavidA06488]

Bond is a brand that no longer exists. When I was young, they delivered the bread in truck(Really). Think thinner, dryer Wonder bread. The problem was the thinness of the coatings of jelly and peanut butter, in addition to the particular bread. I haven't been tempted to try to duplicate the sandwiches, though I'll eat chunky peanut butter with a spoon.

[AnnaBaptist]

MSG
those little frozen eggrolls made by La Choy
Vita herring
Cup o' Soup
Campbell's soup
Cremora
Canned pasta

[rlb1251]

Crisco shortening

Karo syrup

Challenge butter

Adohr glass bottled milk,OJ and chocolate milk delivered to your door

Pet evaporated milk

Jello gelatin and instant puddings

Cornstarch

Baking powder

Bisquick

Hershey's unsweetened chocolate powder

Lipton tea

Bologna slices from loacal meat market packaged in white paper

Weiners

Wonder bread

Folger's coffee

Green Giant cans of veggies

Cake frosting that tasted like whipped marshmallows

SOS pads

Palmolive liquid dish soap

Campbells's chicken noodle soup

Morton salt

Sugar

Homemade flour tortillas

Tomato sauce and paste

Olives

Pickles

Shake n' Bake

Canned corn beef

Cheerios

Sugar Pops

Sugar Smacks

Rice Krispies

Homemade rice pudding

Fruit from neighborhood trucks

Helm's bakery goods

Koolaid

Pompeian extra virgin olive oii

Uncooked pinto beansrice, fideo,lasagna noodles,lentils

Wheatgerm

Safflower oil

Cream of wheat

Moxzarella cheese

Tabasco

Jalapeno peppers

Witch hazel

Pepto bismol

Fletcher's castoria

[John E.]

We have at least half of the stuff on your list right now. How do you NOT have sugar, baking powder, cornstarch, cereal, olive oil, Tabasco and several others?

[AmyH]

I was thinking the same thing. rlb1251's mother must have eaten a whole lot better than he/she does!

[rlb1251]

Food lasts much longer than before, when things used to have fuzzy stuff said it was a chemistry experiment. This is probably the main reason people get sick more. Back then didn't have preservatives+ in foods like we have today.

[rlb1251]

Not much of a cook like my mom.

[coney with everything]

OMG Fletchers Castoria! We always had that too! Loved the taste (weird, I know)

[buttertart]

Nope, not weird. Me too!

[rlb1251]

Forgot Bosco Chocolate Syrup lke Hershey's
canned cream corn

[MaineCook]

Moxarella cheese??!!?? Do tell...what is/was it? I LOVE Pompeian Olive Oil!

[rlb1251]

Meant Mozzarella,sorry for the spellong error, finger on incorrect key

[MaineCook]

Hahahaha! I was thinking it was some sort of faux mozzarella and wondered what the 'secret ingredient' was! :)

[hill food]

it would probably be similar to "provel" cheese

[MaineCook]

I had to look that one up (which shows I've never lived in the St. Louis area). Being a blend of real cheeses, it actually sounds like it would be an acceptable cheese product, as opposed to modern day American cheese which is no longer made from a blend of real cheeses.

[hill food]

oh MC, while it is a 'real' blend, it is weird and only OK if one grew up with it. (I love it, but fully understand why others don't)

[MaineCook]

I know what you mean. I'm pretty sure I'd like it, too. Sometimes there is just no substitute for 'cheese product' on certain foods (like cheese steak subs).

[coney with everything]

Like "mockolate" :)

[MaineCook]

Yes! But how do you indicate by name that the thing you think is cheese really isn't? Mock and Cheese can't be combined (sort of like the end food product)...how about LackCheese? Cheezless?

[kireland]

LOTS of things, but the following come to mind:
- cinnamon honey butter (I loved this but have never bought it, not sure if it still exisits)
- molasses (I think they were pre-war era, kept on the door of her fridge with the antique condiments and salad dressings)
- shaky cheese (Kraft grated parmesan)

[rlb1251]

Recipe for cinnamon honey butter;

1 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup honey
2 teaspoons cinnamon

[DavidA06488]

Sounds great.

[kireland]

I am sooo trying this! Thanks!

[John E.]

This is basically the honey butter served with the hot from the oven rolls at Texas Roadhouse. If you have to go to a chain restaurant for a steak dinner, this place beats Outback 100 to 1.

[Sonny_Funzio]

Things my mom had on hand that I never do?

Carob.

Underberg. A type of German truth serum. Settles childrens stomach aches and keeps them in school. If you loved paregoric, you'll love Underberg.

Brewers yeast (as a food supplement), wheat germ, bottled acidophilus culture, cod liver oil, non-fat powdered milk, ... she was a health nut ... had a wing of the local health food store named after her.

Droste's Cocoa.

Rice cakes ... she bought those puffed rice cakes the moment they came onto the market in the early 1970's. An early adopter, we would say today. One of the only snack foods that ever existed in our house (unless my father did the last shopping).

Suelze. I think just to remind us how fortunate we were to not *have* to eat such things.
My mom, and my grandmother when she would come over, would eat the stuff and apparently enjoy every bite.

[hill food]

"If you loved paregoric, you'll love Underberg" !!

maybe you should consider a career in advertising.

"it makes me feel purgerific!"

[MaineCook]

<raising hand...paregoric lover over here> Of course, I also used to lick our copper back door screen because it tasted so bad (when I was 4 or 5), and I drink my Stout uncut.

Thank God we use aliases here -- my friends would disavow any relationship with me.

[limegimlet]

"jane's k-razy mixed up pepper"

[msgenie516]

Okay, here goes…

My mother passed away last year at the age of 89, so she didn’t have many of the things mentioned. And I still like a lot of the things she gave me to eat when I was a child, so my list is not that long and also a bit strange. There was hardly any money allocated to “junk” food and our food budget included mostly “wholesome” food.

These are the things I remember Mom had and I don’t:

Breyer’s Ice Cream (one of the few “junk” food items allowed but I just don’t like the texture, not creamy)

Homemade sauerkraut and head cheese and home-canned vegetables

Cooked prunes (they were always in the refrigerator)

Canned mackerel with tomato sauce

Canned sardines

Pork brains (We didn’t always have them but we had them a lot. Fried them up and I remember them as being “yummy”).

Postum (I do have a jar of Cafix (similar drink that I bought for my Mom before she passed away). She lived with me the last 4 years of her life so I tried to find things she enjoyed.

These things Mom had but I didn’t because I couldn’t find them anywhere. I did just order them on line so I hope they are as good as I remember:

Liederkranz cheese

Limburger spread

Smoked eels

And here are some of the kitchen gadgets she had that I don’t:

Hand crank meat grinder (I do have a meat grinder but it is electric so I can eat my homemade ground beef raw)

Egg Beater (I now use a whisk and I have 2 large mixers--one old Kitchenaid that started pushing out black grease when under a heavy load, but I still can’t part with it, and a Hobart N50, their smallest commercial mixer that I bought to “save the life” of the old Kitchenaid. I also use a Kitchenaid hand mixer.)

And, last but not least, a still! Yes, the kind for making alcoholic drinks! I remember we made assorted fruit brandies. My most vivid recollection of the still is when I woke up one morning to find the kitchen stove on fire due to some malfunction of the still. They got the fire out without much damage but it’s something I will never forget!

[Sonny_Funzio]

msgenie516, was your family originally from northern Germany?

>> “Homemade sauerkraut and head cheese “

In my post above I mention “suelze” (pronounced “szooltza”) ... yup, a type of homemade headcheese.

>> “prunes”

An all purpose food with my mom. In stews, in cereal, on Fladen, even with ice cream. Not popular with her children however.

>> “Liederkranz & Limburger” (sounds like a German law firm, no?)

... in my house too as a kid ... I still like it today.

>> “smoked eels”

A very big thing at the holidays for us. Very popular. Hard to find ... so is not often in my house anymore like smoked fish in general might be.

>> “Hand crank meat grinder”

I still own her old “fleischwolf” today ... so that one *is* still in my house.

[msgenie516]

Yes, my Mom and Dad were both originally from Germany, different parts-Mom from Bremerhaven and Dad from Berlin, but both Germany. I never thought of Liederkranz & Limburger as the name of a German law firm but, yes, it sounds right! I remember cutting the Liederkranz and eating it right off the knife, not putting on a cracker or anything, just straight Liederkranz! Could do the same with the Limburger spread.

Oh, do I love those smoked eels! I hope the one I ordered on line is good, got it from a site that specializes in German food.

Funny thing, no one else in my family eats this stuff--good thing, it's expensive. They don't know what they're missing, they won't even try it.

As for the meat grinder, I really don't know what happened to Mom's and I wasn't about to replace it with another hand grinder (don't know if my table could take the beating of it being clamped on) so I bought an electric one which I am very happy with, just can't kill it.