Food your parents fed you

I mainly remember meals thru the 80's. My mom was an army brat with 4 siblings and brought us up on a wealth of easy meals. Anyone have SOS toast or baked beans on cheese toast for dinner? My kids think I'm crazy when I make the bean toast....

 

My mother was casserole queen in the 80’s. Hot dog and bean casserole and tuna noodle casserole every week.

 

Malt O Meal magic muffins. 100% still eat those. Got my daughter hooked on them also.

 

Think back to just how good I really did have it, oatmeal alot , or cream of wheat , and toast. Alot of SOS , and LIVER and onions, still love that taste, and stews , and casseroles, once in awhile pizza. Always had good food and deserts. Even tho we never had much it was still plenty. You talk about all the salt and sugar back then , but we need to remember , back then it was all REAL, now it's all artificial , even salt and sugar have extra junk in it. They ALWAYS SEEM TO BE TRYING TO MAKE SOMETHING BAD TASTE LIKE A STAWBERRY, OR SOMETHING GOOD, yet it's just soy or ground corn with a ton of additives for flavor. Also fried bacon and then put the eggs in a ton of bacon grease . REAL BACON, AND REAL EGGS, Oh ya and we even had pancakes for supper some times.

 

They're handy when camping.

 

Another thing that I ate back in the 60s growing up were Fritos, I always thought those were a delicacy because we never got them, sometimes my mom would put a bag in my school lunch and I would like suck on every little chip savoring the flavor, all the salt intake, holy geez…. Haha

 

Peanut butter on Eggo waffles with maple syrup.

 

Breakfast..
Cream-O-Wheat
Pop Tarts
Thomas’ English muffins with Peanut Butter and Bananas
Pork Roll , Egg, and Cheese on a bagel.
Lunch…

Hard Roll with Yellow mustard about once a week.
Dinner…
I remember Sundays and Wednesday’s at my grandparents. My “Pop-pop was 100% Italian so my 100% Irish grandmother would make great Italian dishes…

 

My mom, god bless her soul passed away in November of last year and was the best Italian cook in the world.
I grabbed all her cook books when the boys and I went through their things. (my brothers didn't want them, boy are they gonna be sorry)
Her cookbooks were hand written!
Her tomato sauce and meat balls were worth fighting for and for years we did as boys.
One year when my youngest was recovering from a bad virus, (he was 4 years old) he's 30 now.
Anyway, he lost a lot of weight through this thing. My mom said, "give him to me for the weekend".
She put 3 pounds on that boy and he acted like he never was sick.
He ate her cooking 3 times a day and to this day he tells me it was the best food he ever ate.

 

I had this shit in my sandwiches when I was a kid. I had baloney too. I didn't know any better.

 

“I didn’t know any better.”

You’re not kidding…. I can’t remember the last time I ate that stuff.

 

It was bad enough to remember since that was nearly 50 years ago for me.

 

I just remembered this one. Good god, what was my Mother thinking making these for me, thank you Mom, Love you.

 

My mom passed a year ago last April so I know how you feel my friend, I was just curious about your mothers meatball recipe, I’ve always been looking for a killer recipe, I was told that there’s three types of meat used, lamb, beef and pork along with other spices, is that correct?

 

In elementary school I ate baloney and ketchup sandwiches. For some reason I liked them. I can't remember the circumstances now, but a few years ago I was somewhere that had baloney in the fridge and I hadn't eaten one since then so I decided to make one...I think I made it about three bites before I gave up lol.

 

I’ve always made my meatballs with pork and beef…but lamb in there too would be amazing.

 

Yes, that's one of the typical ways to make them.
The big thing with my mom was that she would put a pinch of this, then taste, then go and do something else.
She said sometimes the meat wasn't "right" and she would adjust the receipt.
But the stuff she fed us was the best I've ever had and that includes all my Italian relatives back east.
Even my uncle (her younger brother who's still alive) told me my mom could cook as good as my grandma back there.
I remember telling my mom that if I could bottle her sauce and meatballs we'd make millions.

 

Neat thing about those I only learned recently is in addition to the salt all there is in them is corn and veg oil, pretty simple compared to the chemistry sets in a bag sold in the same aisle. All in moderation haha.

 

Growing up poor we ate a lot of Government cheese,Powdered milk and Pork in a can.
Thankfully my kids haven't had the luxury of dining on anything that delicious!
Last night was fresh sockeye salmon from a nice fishing spot about three miles from home.
My wife was the only one lucky nuff to land one.lol

 

In the winter when I’m working and want hot food I put things to eat on the prime mover of the lead locomotive in my consist. Newer GE’s have pretty decent spots to stick a can of soup in between cylinder heads (each cylinder has an individual head). EMD’s are a bit tougher being a 2 stroke with no clearly defined cylinder head sticking up, but I’ve found the turbocharger after cooler box (air to liquid) where it meets the inlet impeller housing works pretty well. At least until you blow up a turbo and your lunch.
My can of chunky soup got shredded by this one when it blew up, not sure how since the little shelf you can put soup on is to the left behind the impeller housing. Then again I didn’t think a turbo compressor impeller could let go with enough force to grenade a 1/2” thick steel casting that makes up the housing.

 

Back on topic my mom didn’t go back to full time work until my brother and I were both in about 1st and 3rd grade respectively. So breakfast was usually scrambled eggs and toast with milk. Not expensive, easy, quick, and she knew we’d eat it.

After that it was about the same even when she went to work full time for the state agency she retired from. Once we were over age 10 or so breakfast wasn’t a thing during the week, at least not consistently. My dad always went in to the lab early so he could be home by 16:00 or so leaving us only about 30 minutes to raise hell by ourselves after school. Then mom got home at about 17:15.

Once we were teenagers we didn’t eat breakfast and I still rarely eat breakfast at the appointed time of day. We make sure my young son does though. He has the breakfast habits of an old man (minus the coffee): eggs with a runny yolk, bacon or sausage, and toast; or better yet breakfast potatoes. If that’s not available he’s a solid yogurt and fruit kid.

 

I throw some jelly on as well when in feeling fancy.

 

If you don’t have lamb (I’ve never tried it in them either actually): bacon. Cut it up small, keeps everything juicy and adds good flavor.

 

now I know why I liked you... my grandma was from a small town out side of Napoli.... same thing with her, hand written cookbooks and her meatballs and ragu sauces still had her 'touches' that we could never replicate. She's been gone for some time so we're slowly trying to figure it out.

 

Wow what an explosion! You’re just damn lucky you didn’t go there when that thing decided to grenade or you would’ve been wearing it along with the chunky soup,
Hopefully no one was hurt

 

It was pop tarts a lot for us before going to school. Typically with milk or some OJ

 

Definitely made me rethink retrieving my warm food while still putting the engine under load. No injuries, the Diesel engine is a ways back from the cab of the locomotive. You have the nose/toilet, control cab, electrical cabinet, air filter compartment, alternator or generator (depending on traction motor type), and then the prime mover (diesel), cooling water tank and pumps, dynamic brake grids (at least on that engine they’re at the rear), and air compressor.

Pulling a pretty good hill coming out of a mine with a 19,200 ton loaded coal train at about 02:30 a few years ago. Full throttle the whole way with only 3 locomotives just beating on the equipment. Loud bang and a sudden flash of light, sudden immediate loss of load, and then smoke rolling out of the long hood. Good times.


Opened the door to find broken parts falling out.

 

A chunk of the main impeller, the rest of it turned into tiny little bits and probably got blasted into the intake manifolds to the inlet ports on the cylinders.

 

Cream of wheat with dark brown sugar for breakfast. Hot cocoa and peanut butter toast. chicken croquettes (my favorite). Mom's homemade macaroni and cheese. And fluffernutter sandwiches or homemade strawberry jelly and peanut butter sandwiches.

 

My mom got a recipe for a casserole from a friend in the 90s called crowd pleaser. I told her it was more like crowd killer. I never saw her make it again.