Here's What Nuclear Families Ate in the Postwar Era
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- In the years after WWII, Americans became more affluent than they had been in previous generations. Veterans were going to college and buying homes in droves, the population boomed, and cities around the country grew rapidly.
As Americans enjoyed greater prosperity, their day-to-day habits changed due to new innovations and technologies. They wanted to be able to come home after a long day of work, put on their favorite 1950s TV show, and enjoy a quickly cooked meal with their families. Refrigerators were more accessible to the average family than ever before and they soon came to change the American palate.
#1950s #NuclearFamily #WeirdHistory - Розваги
I'm a Boomer, smack in the middle of the demographic. My family was white, lower middle class, in the American south. I ate plenty of ridiculously sugary cereal, drank plenty of soft drinks, and GALLONS of that good old sweet tea. On the other hand, I never saw a TV dinner, except on TV. My extended family had farms and huge backyard gardens, and my diet was replete with fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. That being said, meatloaf RULES!
I grew up much the same way. Canned food and homegrown pork and beef and chicken. I never ate so well or healthy as when we were poor in the 70's and 80's.
I grew up in the 70s, my dad in the 50s. We're Midwestern, so, yeah, garden. Also, foraging. My mom grew up in the US Southwest, so beans were a staple with a little cheap smoked pork for seasoning along with delicious cornbread or spicy rice.
But a weird US cheap meal we had was Swanson frozen pot pies served over rice. They were like 35 cents each and rice was incredibly cheap as well. It's a nostalgic meal I still have occasionally, filling, cheap and tasty.
Born in '70, parents divorced by '80, here in nyc it was tv dinners all the time bc I could make them myself. Btwn the sugar cereals and an Irish mom with a heavy hand in the butter, 70s and 80s food was horrible and so damn tasty. 😂
Meatloaf does, in fact, RULE.
Or upper lower class like I was.
I was born in 1958. All five members of my family lived in a 8'wide, 30' long rented mobilehome. Meatloaf, or beans or potatoes were staples. We were poor but, not hungry. Mom is my hero.
Please, read both of the comments I wrote RE: growing up very poor but happy.
That 8 foot wide, 30 foot mobile home had indoor plumbing, heat, a toilet and a shower. We are talking luxury compared to what hundreds of thousands live in in the 1920s and '30s! And as you said, you were financially poor, but you ate and you were not hungry. The 1950s, post war years were an unimaginably dramatic period in American history. A time when America's Greatest Generation was raising us boomers, probably some of the worst citizens this country has ever seen.
NYU
Born in 58 also. We had a lotta meatloaf and steaks as dad was a cattle rancher. Dad would shoot a 600 pound steer and have it processed. I remember complaining, " t- bone steaks again"? Wow.
Nuclear families are families in the truest sense of the word. Everything else is a fucking sham.
@@davidh9844 We had No indoor plumbing, toilet or shower indoors. We hauled water. I was a senior in high school before we had indoor plumbing. Our water was heated using a small propane tank, kept outside the backdoor. We were the 3rd “family of renters” that lived in the mobile home. It had been stripped of appliances and bathroom fixtures. My dad was frequently hospitalized (with schizophrenia/+ bi-polar) I was 6yrs old and my little brother was 4 and my mother never worked due to her spina bifida.
I was born in 1955, first generation Italian. My dad was seriously injured on his job as a commercial fisherman in 1957 & didn’t work for 5 years. I have no idea what we did for money…my mom was a housewife, never worked outside the home…but my parents made gold out of straw. We always had Christmas & Easter, we always felt like we had enough. My mom was a fabulous cook…could make anything taste good, no matter what..and most of our meals came from whatever dad grew in the vegetable garden or picked up from his fisherman friends, or what mom could finagle from other friends & family. I have some pretty special memories from those times.
My dad was first generation Italian. During the Great Depression, my grandparents had great survival skills. My grandmother would get bones for free from her butcher to use for soup making. She'd get free vegetables by getting permission from the farmer to pick whatever was left out in the field after harvesting. She picked wild herbs. She had 4 sons with big appetites and a large husband with the same. At dinner time, she'd first bring out a big pot of homemade soup with homemade bread. (Her soup was delicious. I had it many times.) The soup and bread (also delicious) cost very little to make. Then she'd bring out bowls of steamed vegetables that she'd gotten for free. Everyone got a large bowl. Then when her menfolk had their appetites dulled, she'd bring out the main dish. Had she put it all on the table at the beginning, everyone would have dived for the meat. This way made it stretch further. Meanwhile my grandfather had his own set of skills: He could cheat at poker, which he played downtown, and he could make beer and wine during the prohibition. The Chief of Police in their small town would come over every weekday to enjoy a fee glass of beer with his lunch. But they were also generous. Bums would show up regularly at their door. They had some kind of pipeline to let others know where homes were that would give them food. My grandmother would always give them a sandwich with her homemade bread on the back porch. My dad also had a friend who always managed to be there when it was time for dinner. He was not only welcomed every night at the dinner table but was encouraged to have seconds. As an adult, he expressed great gratitude because there hadn't been enough food at his home.
God bless you for sharing. I was in college (first in my family, which i paid for myself) before I realized that not only were we poor, but everyone else was as well. Never went hungry, cold or naked. Always had respectable clothes, always had a warm bed.
My folks married in 1945 one week after he got back rom Europe in WW2. He had saved up most of his pay and they bought a little house. He went to college on the GI Bill. My brother and I had a great life compared to Mom and Dad who grew up in the Great Depression. Thank you Greatest Generation!
And we were probably the first ones in our family to attend college, thanks to that generation.
I think most of this is what Middle class city folks had. My mother (she has 3 siblings) was a low class Southern farm girl. She said they didn't eat Wonder Bread. It was too expensive so, my grandma made their bread. I had a Super Grandma who could do anything. They ate mayo sandwiches (Mayo on a piece of bread) sometimes when times got real tough. Cornbread was a staple in their meals. My grandma made their jelly and preserve their fruits & veggies. My great grandfather cured all their own hams. They did eat treet-meat sometimes. Grandma grew & slaughtered & cooked her own chickens too. She also made their clothes too. Yes, she even knew how to weave rugs & make quilts.
My mother said that every Sunday, they got half a 7-up and a bag of popcorn (Grandma grew, dried, & popped the corn herself) and watched the Wonderful World of Disney.
I remember eating a lot of mayo sandwiches! Though sometimes when we had lettuce, we'd have that in there too -- But a fresh tomato sandwich was a special treat!
We didn't have much money -- My mother kept an empty tin can on the stove to save 'drippings' from when we'd have bacon. She used that to flavor beans or fry slices of bread in it --- or cook eggs in it. Made everything taste better.
Never had sugary cereals -- Too expensive. Though I recall my mother buying bags of puffed wheat cereal sometimes.
When my mother got seriously ill and couldn't work, we took in laundry - washing it by hand and ironing it, to make enough money to pay rent. We also got a box of 'commodities' every month -- this was long before food stamps. It would have the basics in it: flour, lard, dried beans, a few cans of veggies, sometimes canned fruit, peanut butter in a can that needed to be stirred as it would separate --- best of all was when they'd included cheese and or butter and their version of 'Spam' --- It wasn't fancy but you could make a lot of meals from those basics.
@@gulfgypsy My grandma kept a can for bacon drippings too. My mother still does it. My mom agrees the tomato sandwiches were a summer time treat when she was growing up. She still likes homegrown tomatoes. She doesn't like store bought & I agree. Homegrown tastes better.
I remember my dad told me grandma made all of their clothing; flour / rice bags came in especially handy since they were soft, and they had plenty of them. Imagine an entire family of children wearing the same whitish clothes with the occasional rice company label lol
That last part made me tear up, dang
Mayo sandwiches still get me through tough times. though admittedly those are when my depression gets really out of hand and I cannot really manage to feed myself well. it’s a decent way to get something energy-dense in. I totally get it!
I was born in 1953 and I remember badgering my parents to buy a frozen dinner because they looked "cool". They gave in. I tried it - and was never so disappointed in my life. My Mom and Dad's food was SO much better. Ah, the power of advertising!!
I got the fried chicken, corn, mashed potatoes and a mini brownie tv dinner and I was in heaven!
I must say it looks amazing!
I know a guy who is a food photographer. He takes the photos that are used in the advertising. He sprays shellac on the food to preserve it under the lights & a lot of it isn't actually food at all, it's spray painted play doh or cement.
@@ajcarr1965 Also ice cream is often mashed potatoes because they don't melt under the hot lights.
Christine Darrock so funny..I was born in 1956 and I too thought the TV dinner was so cool and to have one was a special treat. 😂😂 Good times!
man this gotta be the worst era of food
I love the comments sections on these videos. They’re a treasure trove of stories from back then. Thanks to you all for sharing your history! 😊😊😊
I was literally thinking of posting a similar comment when I found yours 😂😂
They forgot to mention the milkman! Ours came around armed with a handful of dog treats to ward off any trouble. He delivered milk in glass bottles to the tin box we had on our front porch. But he also had a variety of dairy foods like sour cream, and the best treat: popsicles. I miss the milkman. 😀
LOL! There's ready-made joke there about missing the milkman but I just won't do it! LOL! I too miss the milkman but because of the fudge sickles. Wait.. ahhh... that's even worse than the first joke I was thinking! 😉
Our milkman came with a pickup truck full of ice, and the glass bottles popping up all in the ice. We could hitch a ride on the side board from my Grandmas house around the block to my house too . Good memories. And yes, that Galvanized milk box served as a great seat on the porch too.
So did your mama! JK
We had fresh milk from the cows on the farm.
"I am the Milkman. My milk is delicious."
I used to work at Walmart. Spam sold alright. Shortly after the area I lived in got a huge influx of Pacific Islander immigrants we were regularly sold out of spam. Took some time for our store to adjust to the higher demand. Same thing with cornmeal when our area got a huge influx of immigrants from East Africa. Cornmeal went from only one facing one brand and size on a bottom shelf to taking up nearly an entire four foot section in the baking aisle with multiple different brands and sizes. I always found it interesting to see the changes with demands and supply happen in the store I was in.
I was in Cambodia a couple of years ago. This one neighborhood in Phnom Penh that was big with expats had one of the few groceries in the country where you could find an assortment of cheeses. Like most south East Asians, Cambodians generally don't like cheese, so it took expats from the west moving in for a store to start carrying it.
Cool
Any chance your walmart is located in Arkansas?
That’s quite interesting!
@@rumrunner8019 15 years ago we moved to Louisiana for work and it was near impossible to find decent domestic or foreign cheeses in their grocery stores. I asked a grocer if they had feta cheese. He walked me over to the cheese section and pointed to them saying: "We have yellow cheese, American cheese, white cheese, sliced yellow cheese, chunk yellow cheese , shredded yellow cheese and mozerella." pause "Nope, don't see no fedder cheese nowheres." Shortly before we moved away ten years later they had "fedder cheese" but the cost for it was obscene.
I was born in the middle of WWll and grew up on a farm. Our food was home grown vegetables, fresh in summer and canned, later frozen, for winter or stored in the basement. Eggs or Oatmeal with plenty of milk for breakfast, sometimes pancakes and our own sausage or bacon. We raised Chickens for eat & eggs, cows for milk, our own beef cows to sell & our meat, hogs for our meat & to sell also. We had an orchard for fruit and honeybee hives in the middle of it for honey. About the only things we bought were sugar and coffee, baking powder, baking soda, salt & cocoa. We ground our own flour, cornmeal. We even made our own butter, ketchup, horseradish mustard, cottage cheese and Farmers cheese, pickles and relish. No soda/pop in our house. On Sundays in the summer we made our own homemade ice cream in a hand cranked maker with us kids doing the cranking. Fresh strawberries from the garden went in the ice cream. We drank water or mil at all meals. Our food was so much different from city kids and I am thankful for that.
I was born in 1991, and grew up relatively poor. My mom was single for many years and we lived with my grandma, who would always make meatloaf for us. When mom met my stepdad, he introduced to us my all time favorite meal: Tater tot casserole.
I am responding to this super late. But I am moved from the south to the midwest because of my wife. Tater Tot casserole has become one of my absolute favorite meals.
Same
We serve meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy and a vegetable every Thursday for lunch at our Italian restaruant.
Where is your restaurant located ? If near me you have a new customer !
Cheers !
@@Deutschie Luigi's in western Pennsylvania.
@@mynamejeff2006 cool iam next door in Ohio I'll look it up iam always looking for restaurants to try esp Italian it's my favorite
I always use peas as a side to meatloaf which I make at least 3x a month
My mid-western Grandma who lived through the Depression, Dust Bowl, and her husband being sent overseas during WW2 ... She made meals out of everything she could get her hands on and she reused things out of habit. She was an amazing cook. Her go to recipes were meatloaf, potato dishes, casseroles, chick fried steak, a lot of home made noodles.... I miss everything except the god awful jello desserts that were filled with fruit and other mysterious things.
My grandmother would put marshmallows in those jello and fruit mixes 😅
Haha, my grandmother from South Dakota makes some sort of green jello and cottage cheese dessert.
Homemade noodles are great! And so cheap and easy to make!!
My mother made cherry Jello with canned cherries and sour cream in it that was very good (she was an excellent cook). Once, however, she didn't realize she'd bought unpitted cherries until the Jello was already made. We ate it anyway and just spit out the pits!
"And other mysterious things" made me giggle.
I lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood with doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners as my neighbors so I know I was especially blessed. My grandmother ran a very popular restaurant in the Cincinnati area which she started from scratch after WWII. She would make some of the best dinners in the country. I think it was her experience and love that made it so very good.
My mother would purchase those Swanson's TV dinners in the aluminum trays (heated up in the oven -- before microwaves we're popular in the home) and afterwards we might get to help pop Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove. Do you remember the sound it made while you slid it back and forth and the cool pop sounds while you mother watched over you so you did not burn yourself or ruin the popcorn?
Or, burn the house down.😉
I remember that awful sound of metal rubbing against metal, then when I got married, my husband taught me how to make popcorn in an aluminum pot. Best popcorn ever!
I grew up in the 50s in Ft Wright KY, just across the river from Cincinnati. My dad operated a very successful drug store which also sold cigarettes and liquor. Many people would come across the river to buy it from us. I wonder if I knew your grandmother's restaurant...
That your parents could afford Jiffy Pop says a great deal about their finances!
I was born in the late 1940’s so I remember very well how things were during the 1950’s. We were a middle class family with 5 children. My mother was very health conscious so we never drank soda pop and didn’t eat sugared cereals. We always had some sort of salad with dinner and ate very few desserts. Both of my grandmothers were wonderful cooks. One came from a family of 13 children and the other cooked in logging camps and restaurants. Here are some of the foods we ate: oatmeal, cream of wheat,Zoom, tuna, baloney, peanut butter and jam, fried egg and meatloaf sandwiches. For dinners we had homemade soups,stew, lentils or beans with sausage, spaghetti, salmon loaf, tuna casserole, Swiss streak, meatloaf, and a variety of hamburger casseroles. We rarely ate bacon but sometimes we had pancakes or waffles for dinner. We always drank milk. My mother and all our relatives canned fruit in the summer. The best treat was walking to the Dairy Queen in the evening for a 25 cent soft ice cream cone. What a wonderful, simpler life we had. By the way, Mom would tell us about trading their homemade bread sandwiches with the “rich” kids Wonder Bread sandwiches during the Depression. Go figure.
This is exactly what we ate. Us kids also loved buttered noodles for lunch. We had a food cellar and we stored lots of apples in it. My Dad was really big on having us eating fruit and drinking milk. If we had pancakes for dinner we called it the upside down supper. I am 72 years old now and still make some of Mom's comfort meals.
What are zooms? I love reading all these comments from the older generations, it’s so cool to read peoples personal experiences on these videos. Thanks for sharing! 😊
Spam is the most popular meat dish in Hawaii, where it has the highest consumption, per capita, in the whole US. This is due mostly to the fact that it was pretty much the only accessible meat available to the tiny island nation during WWII, introduced by American GIs.
I used to love spam when I was kid. Cold Spam sandwiches mayo. Yummy.
@@jxchamb I like fried spam sandwiches with mayo, and tomato.
Miracle Whip and the Treet brand is the key IMHO. Cold or fried. Yum!
The bad neighbors in hawaii lock up the canned meat
When I lived in Lahaina the gas station up the street from my house sold spam & egg 'sushi' rolls. Greatest drunk food ever
"it's digestible" is the worst tag line I have ever seen.
I grew up with all these foods. Another thing about the 1950s and 1960s was that people thought nothing of eating the same thing every day. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a knock-off Wonderbread, with Campbell's chicken noodle soup every single day for lunch until I was in middle school and started taking hot lunch at school. My mom made us oatmeal with brown sugar and milk every morning with cold cereal reserved for Saturday and pancakes or eggs and bacon on Sunday. And dinner was most often a chicken, meatloaf, or a roast of some sort with potatoes, carrots, and celery alongside. My friends had a variety of casseroles, but my father didn't like them and meals catered to his tastes in our house.
How did you not get burned out?
I’m a younger millennial but I definitely don’t think anything of eating the same thing every day either, mostly because my mom couldn’t give us a variety of options for lunch 😂 crazy, my little brother is gen z and he really didn’t like eating the same thing every day
Growing up listening to the stories of the depression and rationing during the war I have always been thankful just to have food and to be able to afford to buy itThe lessons I learned from listening to those stories are the reason that now in my dotage I can afford to buy the food I want
@St. Therese we only had tv dinners if it was just mom and me for dinner and I considered it a treat. That cranberry and apple dessert that came in the turkey dinner was good!
@@st.therese1856No need to insult her. When I was young, I would occasionally stay with my older sister. I always looked forward to a frozen chicken tv dinner. We didn’t get tv dinners, soda, and junk food at home. And, we didn’t know that a frozen meal wasn’t good for you. We were kids.
my Polish grandma grew up in the 40s/50s and her cooking really shows it. all her meals are a mix of southern/polish dishes, with portions to feed 6 cows. it's crazy how an era can impact living style so much, despite being in it for only about 10 years or so
Lol my grandma was a Polish too but living in PA we had a mixture of Polish and PA Dutch foods like pierogis, galumpki, chicken pot pie and scrapple😊.
Cows eat grass
I've eaten them all, but since my mother liked to cook and we were farmers who butchered our own meat, I never had Spam until well into the 70s. Store-bought cereal was a summer treat. In the winter we ate good old fashioned oatmeal or cornmeal porridge. As far as TV dinners go, I never had one in the 50s, but, of course, we didn't get a TV until the 60s.
I've tried to swallow Spam, and just cannot do it. They love it in Hawaii, or anywhere with a large Hawaiian ex-pat community. However, Spam kept Britain alive during WW2 - it was about the only meat they got, and lord knows, they were grateful for it. For years, it was easy to laugh at British cooking, an entire generation that went without any local food or local expertise. Eventually, once Britain finally was able to turn around its economic mess, they rediscovered just how good their local meats, cheeses, vegetable were, and what they could do with them. Same story for the Irish. I might not eat it, but I look at Spam from an historical perspective, knowing that was the ONLY meat available to a lot of families, and a lot of kids in very dire straights, that I never had to endure.
@@davidh9844 Spam is good eating 😋
Never ate a TV dinner. Mom and Dad made everything home made and we would eat KFC once each summer.
I was born in 1963. My mom was a fantastic southern cook but she had tv dinners once a week lol said it was her night off 😂
@@davidh9844 I can't eat Spam unless it's fried, or cut into little chunks & cooked into a rice or macaroni casserole.
I'm mildly disturbed that the slogan for Crisco was "Use Crisco, it's digestible!".
At least it was honest
Women used crisco to fry chicken, and pie crusts was delicious
Because crisco was originally a candle wax and someone had a bright idea that people could eat it.
Loved this walk down memory lane! I was born in 1950! You might want to include the history of
Kool-Aid… All summer we drank it out of anodized aluminum glasses!
We always had a pitcher of Cherry Kool-Aid in our fridge during the summer months!
grape. and at grandmas house we drank it out of glasses that came in the laundry detergent boxes.
@@janicesmall2933 I remember the carnival glass plates and bowls that came in detergent boxes, too.. That dishware is very much sought after bycollectors. It was a goldish color, very shiny. I was raised by an extremely health conscious, natural foods, ahead-of-his-time father, so we never had any of these food items in our home. I appreciated his wisdom all my life, as I have accordingly been blessed with great health.
@@janicesmall2933 Being allowed to help Grandma make the pitcher of Kool-Aid was a treat for us as kids. She only had it on the weekends when we kids were there; otherwise it was sweet tea.
Still love the kool aid, extra sugar 😫 don’t come at me 😬🥰
Accurate.. I was a young mother and housewife in the 50’s ..sugar and fat ruled! I was a casserole queen 👑
Apparently, I eat like it's the 50's...😂 Meatloaf, cereal, casserole, SPAM, etc
How’s your health though?
Hopefully not a meatloaf spam cereal casserole! 🤣🤣🤣
I didn't know it went out of style. We still eat most of the same things but use olive oil instead of Crisco for frying. More oats instead of boxes cereal. Lots of fresh home grown veggies. Meatloaf a couple times a year. Spam gets rotated out once a year. Gotta have an emergency can of spam and a jar of peanut butter in case you get snowed in. Lol
My grandfather always said "Eat white bread and you'll be dead."
He knew even back in the 30s that it was pure crap.
Eat wheat bread and your taste buds will suffer. That's what I say.
@@jxchamb a good whole wheat tastes great 😋
Me who’s gluten intolerant(which bread usually contains): yes that is accurate
My grandpa called white bread "cake bread", cause real bread was brown and whole rye in his eyes
@@elisabethandersen1102
Real rye bread is so good.
It's what I usually buy.
I was born in the late 90s and most of these foods were staples on the weekly menu. It's comforting to know that decades seperate generations and there's bickering but at the end of the day, we're all just trying our best to get through life with enough to fill everyone's bellies and make everything a little special
My grandmother grew up in the late 20s and into the 30s and I never saw her ever waste anything when it came to food or anything else...she had a Tupperware dish under the bathroom sink in the cabinet where she put the pieces of soap that were too small to use then when it was full she would add a little water and my brother and I had liquid soap for bubble baths! It was way cooler than buying a bottle of bubble bath! She grew her own vegetables and her homemade bread put wonderbread to shame! I sure miss her and am grateful that she taught us the value of a dollar and how to make ends meet with pennies❤
YES❤️❤️,I remember the my grandma putting the soap pieces in mason jars with a little water , she always use the Dove soap Yes and it smells so good. And we each had our own jar., You have wonderful day, and God Bless You and your family. My name is Yvette.and I'm using my friend's phone and I just subscribed to you
She sounds like an amazing women
My former uncle in law, grew up during depression. He had a small bin in his garage labeled "strings too short to save".
There is a special place in heaven for all Grandmother's
Your grandmother sounds lovely
Was born in 87 but spent most of my childhood with my grandparents who were a pilot in the army and a nurse during the tail end of the war. Grew up with a lot of these, but thankfully avoided savory gelatin concoctions.
My grandmother hated the savory stuff. She believed it to contribute to her colon cancer as ciggys did to her lungs
88 here and, much the same for me.
I've had multiple talks with my mom about the food history of our family, and was interesting to find out how much of my own favorite childhood foods were influenced by her own parents meal preferences.
But did you have the pink and green variations of ambrosia?? Oof. It haunted me as a kid.
I love aspics. They're delicious. Not sure why Americans seem to hate them. They're delightful starters for the summer.
@@GabrielleduVentIt's because of what we've been exposed to.
If we see fruit in Jello, we think of sweet and citrusy flavors. A summer treat.
If we see meat in aspic, we're reminded of the gunk that surrounds canned meats. Low quality assaults on the palate.
Did anyone here ever eat fried baloney sandwiches in the '60s? I used to cook myself one after school everyday in elementary school and eat it while watching "Felix the Cat" 😭😭😭
My little grandson makes himself those. So cute.
Fried spam sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise.
Ahhh fried baloney “poor man’s steak” my dad used to call it….Need to make one with American cheese.
I did 🤤
Just had one for lunch today! I also enjoy fried baloney with white rice or fried spam and white rice with some good kimchi!
My mom told me about how her family (they lived in Charlottesville in the 1960’s) couldn’t even afford a loaf of bread. They had to hunt for food every other morning to get enough food for the week. It is crazy how much it differed for life in then rural Charlottesville, VA versus modern day Urban Charlottesville, VA where that is a lot less common.
Born 1946. Mom was a working gal (unmarried) who, besides me, took care of my Nana & Grandpa.
Even tho her life was a busy one she rarely used convenience foods. I thank my adventurous pallet for her from scratch meals.
No canned spaghetti, no gooey Campbell's soup casseroles, and no 'cheap' foods.
Luckily she introduced me to: frog legs, braised rabbit, garlic laden whole leg of lamb, grunions, grilled steak, lamb shanks in sauerkraut, sausage and root veggies hash, brains and scrambled eggs and fried liver and onions.
At lunch in grade school, when other kids had pb&j or bologna sandwiches I enjoyed sliced tongue with brown mustard or creamcheese & jelly sandwiches.
Thank you Mommy. What a good cook. 😋
This sounds so odd. What nationality?
@@lorirudel8689 Not odd at all. In Europe (or Germany at least) we still eat a lot of those things, I can go to my grocery store right now to buy a whole rabbit, pork tongue, chicken hearts etc.
@@lorirudel8689
Dutch ✌
Palate
Mom grew up during the Depression. Grandma made peanut butter *or* jelly sandwiches. They couldn't afford to put both on one sandwich.
My father was born during the depression to a very poor family, he and his sisters ate bread with lard on it, sprinkled with a little sugar.
I grew up in the 70's in Kansas..we were so poor we had to make our own peanut butter and jellies. Who knew that would be considered fancy 50 years later.
@@dianasoto7011 we did that too ate that up good as the butter melted and mixed with the sugar, it would relax me to swirl it with my finger I can still recall it was so nice on a cold winter day and sometimes we took cinnamon & sprinkled a lil on top 😋
Which is why the white bread - mayo sandwich was so popular in the South. We in the early phase of the 21st Century simply cannot comprehend what hunger really is.
@@dianasoto7011 My granny (born in '37) used to eat "bread n scrapin" which is the what the British called the exact same thing.
I grew up in the 1950s, and loved my mom's meatloaf! It contained ground beef, crushed soda crackers as a binder. She used Heinz Chili Sauce as the covering. Baked it in the oven in a rectangular pyrex container, and then after it was removed and sliced, we added more chili sauce to our own taste. Good served fresh, but even better as the meat in a cold sandwich....wonder bread, Miracle Whip, lettuce and slice of meat loaf!! Yum, so better sandwich!
My Mom made the loaf like hamburgers…. With onions and eggs… seasoning….cooked off the
fat in hamburger… drained it…. Then
half a can of tomato soup for 30
mins…in oven….. then the second half of can w/ a little water… made
a wonderful gravy or sauce……
I mix in diced onion, a cup of All Bran cereal, & a can of tomato paste (not sauce, paste) as a binder for my meatloaf. Then pour a can of tomato sauce over the top & bake it.
Sounds real good to me . Grew up in the 1950,s also . There was never any whining about leftovers at our house, or I don’t like this , or I don’t like that . You either ate what my my mom cooked , or you went hungry . That’s that !
@@richardcawalla1148 Clearly you've never eaten lutefisk. My Scandinavian parents loved it; it's cod that is preserved in lye (yes, lye!) It had to be rehydrated and drained several times--think "fish Jello." (These days, it comes in a boil-in-the-bag form.) I love fish, but I just couldn't get past the texture as a child. I would've starved before I would've eaten that.
Mike H
Heinz chili sauce IS THE BEST over baked meatloaf. So much better than Ketchup or yucky tomato soup. 😊 😋
My grandparents were born in the 30s and my grandma always cooks roast meat, potatoes, carrots, peas, etc not much processed. Although she also has a habit of saving nonperishables for years past their expiration date and insisting they're still good no matter how stale they are.
My grandma was allergic to many skin products and used Crisco as lotion, and for chapped lips. She despised spam and jello as a dinner. She made us sweet salad. Raisins, carrots, apples, pears, walnuts, tossed with lemon juice. It was amazing. Sugar cereals were only for Saturday, and we got half a cup each, with dried fruit mixed in. Dandelion salad, lentils and dandelion stewed with tomatoes. Meatloaf was made with any stale bread. She taught me to cook, and I can feed our family without many premade products. I also grow most of our veggies.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane,had completely forgotten about “sweet salad” my gr aunt used to make that. Loved it.
Hey i do that too! Not with crisco, just with reg animal fat tho. I knew i wasn't crazy lol
Ovaltine was my favorite drink growing up. I was born in '83 but my mother in '56 & her folks in the '30's.. Ovaltine was always a staple in our cabinet. 🙂
We ate a lot of chop suey when I was growing up in the 80s. My mom would brown some ground beef and add a big can of Chun King or La Choy mixed Chinese vegetables and a packet of sauce mix, and then serve it with rice. It was one of my favorite meals growing up!
I remember eating when I was young and loved it. When we moved back to California in 70 and going to real Chinese restaurants, it disappeared. When I went to college, decided to pick some up because I remembered how much I liked it when I was 7. Made it up one bite and it went in the garbage - was it ever bad compared to real Chinese food.
Born in 1950, East Texas, ate very well. Mom canned and cooked from scratch. We loved hamburger but usually had roast beef, steak, or chicken. We didn't get tv dinners or casseroles. I'm the only person among my friends who never had tuna noodle casserole. My dad, a WWII vet, wouldn't allow Spam or hash in his house.
East Texas is the best part of the state , I was born in Lufkin in 51 . Spent most of my younger years in Tyler . My adult life has been in south Tx. and I really miss the beautiful trees , the rich dirt that will grow anything , the water that tastes great out of the tap , the rain , the purple hull peas, all my cousins ... ❤
Meatloaf is timeless. It is one of my daughter's favorites. She was born in late 2008. I never had it growing up. I loved it so much started to make it for my family. We have it all the time. And casseroles save so much time for those long days when work and practices leave limited family time for dinner.
Or disability/chronic pain make it damn near impossible to make anything else.
I'd like to hear about the various New Year's Eve "lucky" foods around the world and their history.
Great idea, I only know about black eyed peas in the Southern US
In the South in the U.S., you are supposed to eat black eyed peas for luck and greens for wealth in the New Year.
Thanks for the reminder, I need to get some black eyed peas.
@@mascara1777 in Texas, some people used black eyed peas in salsa. There was also a restaurant chain called Black Eyed Peas in the 90s. We went to one near a Funco-Land
You sir have the mind of a UA-camr, silly ideas like these make the best videos
I’m 64 years old and grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s eating 🍽 many of the items described in this video. What a reflection in time from then until now. A TV dinner verses a microwave dinner 🍲. The dry cereals which now offer high grain, nuts, dried fruits and berries. SPAM, something I ate in the Army in the 1970’s now is a major prepper food for the hard times that we will soon be facing again.
Born in 1956 with both sets of grandparents and parents being farmers, most of what we ate was grown, harvested and shared. My mother never spent more than $10 at the grocery store and that was for salt, flour, sugar, toilet paper, MW, dish soap, soap for the washing machine, shaving cream, razor blades etc. TV dinners were bought 5 for $1.00 as a Sunday night treat once in awhile. Hot dog or tuna gravy on toast was a Saturday night meal. All the women were good cooks and bakers. Meatloaf was a Sunday midday meal along with, creamed corn casserole, fresh green beans or peas, mashed potatoes etc.
What in the world is tuna gravy?
@@DominiqueGarofalo I'm also curious
@@ohio72213 I'm still trying to imagine. The closest concept in my mind is perhaps the cream sauce that comes with a tuna noodle casserole.
@@DominiqueGarofaloyeah I think "good cooks and bakers" might be a relative term here, as hots and tuna gravy doesn't sound that appetizing.
@Welfare Kid I think those were the throwaway, easy meals for the week because the Sunday dinner was usually so involved and the ladies had been busy cooking all week. They didn't have the takeout options we do now.
I still wish someone would answer my original question about the tuna gravy!
I was born in 1948. So often when I read about life in the 1950s, it's a romanticized version and not the reality. This video is very accurate. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
My mother's family lived through the depression. Her father had a farm and all the children lived well on the farm. We were not rich in the 50s but my parents had a bungalow and we had a yard to play in. We always had food. My father became a restaurateur later in the 50s thru 80s and we always had good food. I never knew we had been just making it at times. Food makes a difference between feeling poor and feeling like you have enough. People can make their own happiness otherwise.
I also was born in 48. My dad, a WWll vet worked hard to provide for his growing family of 5 boys.
I remember when I was about 8 or so, my best friend stayed for lunch and mom made PB&J's for us kids, my friend Aimee had never had 1 before. My mom talked to Aimee's mom to ask why. Aimee's mom was a very young child smuggled out of Nazi Germany and in England, the kids were given PB in ice cream cones as there wasn't much else. Her mom swore her kids would never eat it!!! She was a sweet woman who made it through a very hard childhood.
Now THIS was a trip down memory lane..! I ate all of these, and still do many of these, as a '47 Boomer. Meatloaf is still my ultimate comfort food and is realizing a resurgence in popularity. OMG, I've got to go find Chop Suey again. Loved it..!
@Harry Parmley - 😂
I worked hanging tobacco a few years ago for an old couple in their 80s. Every day his wife would lay out a spread for us for lunch. If there were fewer than 20 items on the table every time I would be surprised. Always bread and butter, pickles of all kinds, cold chicken, macaroni salad, jello salad all kinds of stuff. She told me her mother taught her to cook back in the fifties.
My mom grew up in the 50s, so many of these things were still on our table when she was the one doing the cooking. Meatloaf, casseroles, and Jell-o salads were often found at our home. We didn’t eat spam, but she told me that when she was a teenager, one of her favourite sandwich fillings was spam, grated on a box grater, then mixed with mayo and chopped pickles…I never could see the appeal of that. Today meatloaf remains a favourite in my own kitchen, as one of my 9 year old son’s most often requested dinners. It has a 21st century spin though, now being made from ground turkey, with sautéed onions, fresh thyme, seasoned Italian bread crumbs and even a bit of Parmesan cheese…and cooked free form, on a sheet pan, so it gets lots of delicious brown crust, rather than boiling in its own juices in a loaf pan😕
Thankyou I need this as I’m cooking for one 😊
I grew up in the 50's in a family of 6 kids. My Dad liked to cook and made stuff like chicken caccitori, spaghetti, what is known as shit on a shingle and,at least once a year a big ham and turkey. The big problem was we ate ham or turkey until it was just bones and then he'd make soup in a pot big enough to feed an army and in that pot went the bones and any scraps. After I left home potato soup or bean soup was off the menu for years. I like them now however. Funny how our tastes can change. The other problem was he obviously never read the lable on the jar of chipped beef and he never rinsed the beef before cooking it...makes for a salty dinner. My mother made some things wonderfully and other things not so wonderful.I would have preferred having an enema than eating her liver but her homemade mac and cheese, scalloped corn or her meatloaf was great. In such a big family we had more than our share of potatoes,pot pies, tv dinners and spam...but,ya know, my mom always cooked sweetened yams with the spam so we didn't mind spam too much. When either the Jello Co. or the Cool hip Co. came out with the jello and cool whip recipe she made that alot but she also was good at baking. Many people liked her apple sauce cake but I don't think anyone has ever topped her peach pie....my mouth waters just at the thought.
Reminds me of my parents, both of them cooked. My dad made chicken cacciatore, mostaccioli, ravioli, eggplant Parm, and S.O.S. my parents both liked that but I wouldn't touch chipped beef with a ten foot pole (probably because it was in a cream sauce or gravy and I hated both). My mother made liver and I wouldn't touch that either. She also made all the roasts and meatloaf and things like chicken wings. She made the best mashed potatoes in the world and the best fudge. She was also a wonderful baker. Great pies (lard in the crust) and all cakes and cookie from scratch. I was so fortunate and I didn't really know it at the time but I sure do now.
Grew up in Northern OH, mom was from the South, stayed at home, supper with Family around the table every night, lots and lots of Sweet Tea, brewed hot, with fresh lemon, poured over ice. It was so good that my cousins would ask for a gallon of it as a birthday gift! Wouldn't trade those memories for anything.
I always love the selling feature of Crisco being "it's digestible!" I have fond memories of TV dinners because we got them when our parents were going out. Either for an evening out or if my mum had to go to a meeting (my dad worked nights). So I remember they were 75cents and, while horrible, they were exciting. Still love SPAM but not cooked.
They were still better than TV dinners of today.
@@tomvanetteger6581 That's what I have thought, that TV dinners aren't as good. The only veg offered now seems to be corn. I remember peas, carrots, green beans, green bell peppers (diced), squash. And there are no desserts now, where before we had apple "pie", berry "cobbler", or some sort of brownie. And the sizes seem so much smaller. More sauce, less stuff to be sauced.
But I've also wondered if it is my memory at fault.
I still make meatloaf❤and my kids love it. My Mom was born in Tennessee during the 30's and she made our bread, chips and crackers as well as pies, cakes and cobblers from scratch. I was born in Alaska during the 70's and I ate all of it. My Mom made some of the best moose, bear and caribou with a Tennesee twist. Wonderbread was a treat and nothing went better with bologna and cheese than Wonderbread. RIP Momma❤I'm still cooking from scratch.
Me too. I make meatloaf often
I am a 1946 Boomer and had a home cooked meal every day. I came from a Blue collar family and never ate a TV Dinner until I was on my own. We also drank a lot of milk and peanut and butter sandwiches as snacks.
Must be nice home cooked meals are holiday events now sadly
@bronchoped1 people get busy. They also grow up eating western diets witch is about fast easy food. So if there parents eat like that more than likely you do to.
Most of the foods listed were well-liked with our family, except for the aspec-type dishes. We did eat Jello from time to time though. Mom always had big bowls of salad with every dinner, either green salad or fruit salad she made with any fruits in the house, topped with mini marshmallows, and splashed in orange juice or 7-Up, my favorite. I just made some for my husband and I tonight.
My dad was Air Force, stationed in Ismir, Turkey with the NATO forces, and we couldn't get our American bread over there, so we ate many a PBJ using graham crackers instead. I love them to this day.
Spam walso a hit with us, but we used it as lunch meat when sliced, and never cooked it, as I've seen in some recipes.
I remember my sister sprinkling Ovalteen on top of a dish of ice cream.
Did you try the local Turkish breads and cuisine?
Aspic sounds gross.
I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the food they describe is practically identical to what I identified as being mainstream back then, save the diet soda they were talking about and maybe the gelatinous food, but even with the latter I think I saw stuff like that when I was very little at my grandmother's house. So this could almost, for me, be about food from the 1970s.
@@doomposterior1900 You are about right regarding those points in general.
So glad that I stumbled across your channel, that walk down memory lane was very enjoyable! As a boomer myself this brought back a ton of memories all leaving a smile on my face! Keep up the good work, we all need some brightness in our lives right about now.
My mother made lots of meatloaf and casseroles. She really liked casseroles. But I don’t remember her ever buying Wonder Bread, Crisco, Ovaltine or Spam. She never made aspic as far as I can remember, but she made plenty of jello molds. We never ate chop suey. On the rare occasions that we went out to a Chinese restaurant, we had authentic dishes because we lived in Los Angeles, where authentic Chinese cuisine has always been readily available. And I don’t remember ever eating TV dinners until the late 1960’s, when my parents went out on Saturday nights almost every week. My mother was a typical postwar American housewife; She always put an emphasis on cooking good, nutritious meals made from scratch, but liked to take advantage of prepackaged products such as Campbell’s soup and Bisquick to save time in the kitchen.
You did not have authentic Chinese. What they eat there they do not have here. Not just China. Many countries do
@@maggiemae7539 In Los Angeles we have authentic Chinese cuisine.
Ditto. I am 60. My Mom got a Bachelors degree in Home Ec, everything was from scratch and she refused to buy Wonder bread saying it was junk. She did make meatloaf and casseroles I loved. I suspect many American families still eat these.
@@amyfisher6380 Most Chinese restaurants in America serve Cantonese/Hong Kong dishes. And even then, they tend to be fairly Americanized due to the western palate and ingredient availability.
As someone who spent several years living in China, I can objectively say that it is difficult, if not downright impossible, to find a lot of my favorite Chinese dishes here in the states.
No Rou Jia Mo.
No Biang Biang Mian.
No Cong You Bing from streetside vendors.
Be glad we don't have to deal with the smell of Chou Doufu.
Chinese food in America just isn't the same.
LA might be a big city, but China is much much bigger, and has TONS of regional dishes (40+ distinct cultures worth of menus). What we get, no matter how accurate, is nothing more than an appetizer.
Lot's of casserole indeed
I have eaten all of these foods and most are still eaten today. Frozen dinners and aspic are off my list of enjoyable foods. Jello is, however, just fine.
I have meal trays from heb called meal simple that I put in the oven from the deli which are nice.
My dad was born in 1950 in upstate New York, on a farm. I'm 21. I grew up with meatloaf, and he'd always tell me how lucky I was I could have sour cream with my black beans and rice 😁😅. He spoiled us though even though we were homeless half my childhood.
I grew up in the late 70's and the 80's, we still consumed most of these even then. I still love meat loaf and casseroles.
Nothing wrong with meatloaf. It can still be found in diners and many restaurants. I make it at home, usually with ground turkey so it's healthier. Leftover meatloaf makes great sandwiches. As for the other food, I stopped eating cereal years ago, the same goes for diet sodas. I always hated PB&J sandwiches as a kid. As a grown up I realized that what I really hated was the bread, it became a gooey mess and stuck to one's palate. I now have the occasional piece of toast with PB for protein for breakfast. We never ate Spam, aspic dishes or TV dinners growing up. My mother was a gourmet chef, I took the best lunches to school. 😃
I make meatloaf with beef because it taste better not worried about healthy
meatloaf Is awesome
I love meatloaf with mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas. 😊
When I grew up every family I know had a cereal cupboard or cabinet that contained several boxes, usually one or two healthy ones in the back with a bunch of sweet ones in the front that were never sealed quite well enough to keep them from going stale or had the cereal dumped directly into the box out of the bag in order to get the prize that was always at the bottom.
And I still love Spam, but the sodium wrecks me for a day.
When I grew up in the 70's we were poor..so all we had was bagged cereal like puffed fucking rice. Bleah.
We ate oatmeal to save money. But I didn't mind. It's good mixed with different jellies, jams and creams.
We ate oatmeal with margarine, salt and pepper. Stop bitching.
@@baylorsailor me too or farina
@@pbmccain What's with the F bomb? Another post war food: washing mouth out with soap.
Meatloaf was definitely a favorite in my childhood house.
On some Friday nights Mom would serve us TV dinners to eat while watching the CBS Friday Night Movie.
Tuna casserole was another favorite. There was this tuna casserole flavor packet Mom used, which I really liked.
@Pamela Mays...Tuna Casserole is one of those dishes you either love it or not.
I was raised Catholic, so before Vatican II, Friday nights were meatless (which was viewed as a sacrifice). We always had fish (which I love). But when I talked to someone who was raised in Texas, he said they always had cheese enchiladas on Fridays! I asked him, "What the heck kind of sacrifice was that?" Enchiladas are no sacrifice!
I remember every Sunday mom would cook a chuck roast. Always cooked it in a presser cooker back then. We had mashed potatoes with gravy, corn or green beans, homemade dinner rolls, and a home made pie. Coconut creme, chocolate creme, butterscotch, banana creme, lemon. Every Sunday it was a different pie. We would go to church Sunday night, and come home and eat the roast beef on rolls. Mom was such a good cook, and housekeeper that was a stay at home mom. Those were the real good Ole days.
Born in '57, was in a college Physiology class in the late 70's where my professor (who was probably 65-75) told us that the greatest thing ever invented was Crisco. He grew up on a farm and the lard bucket could be very disgusting at any time, but especially so in the summer. Crisco changed that as it would not go bad in the kitchen cabinet for a long time.
It’s all relative...they say.
It actually is an amazing product. I still use Crisco (and butter) in my pie crusts because where I live is very humid and Crisco is a more stable fat than just butter. I have used lard, but yeah, it stinks! If only it was actually a healthy food and not so heavily processed 🤷♀️. But it's pretty miraculous.
I loved Swanson TV dinners! We had them every Saturday night. I wish the frozen dinner companies still made the great tasting dinners we had back in the 60s and 70s. I also still eat La Choy canned Chinese food from time to time with those hard rice (?) noodles.
Saturday dinner was the one of 2 meals my brother and I looked forward to the most. TV dinners were the best meal she could cook. My brother and I would carefully pick out what what we wanted. It was amazing. The other was Friday. We would have fish sticks and frozen fries an spaghettios when they came out. Fish sticks were so much better back then. The rest of the time it was pure survival.
My fave tv dinner was spaghetti and breaded veal. Of course it took half an hour in the oven! Ah the good old days!
My dad and mom were born in 49 and 52, respectively in small-town south Texas of Mexican descent. They had lot of siblings and fairly poor. They ate lots of rice, beans and flour tortillas and very little meat. My mom and dad ran off to Dallas, TX in 1972 and my mom says that was the first time she had ever tasted a pizza. She still remembers watching my uncle coming in to the shared apartment with a frozen pizza in his hand.
Rice and beans or beans and tortillas make a high quality protein meal. No meat is needed.
@@sharonhoerr6523 but it becomes very bland to eat after awhile.
Trust me I know I've done that
@@kevinmatta9262 You are correct that good nutrition need not necessarily TASTE good.
I remember when my grandma came to visit us (born and raised in a small town in Mexico, no English at all). My mom made rice beans tortillas and steak (thin cut Mexican kind) for lunch.
I was going to eat, but first, I got up to cut some avocado and eat a piece with my food.
Grandma: you’re not supposed to eat avocado with your food.
Me: why?
G: because in Mexico, you only have either avocado or meat once a week.
Me: well, this is America, and we can afford to have both everyday!
Mom wasn’t too happy with me afterwards!
@@sharonhoerr6523 Back in those days kids attend to be more respectful. I mom she is 72 and she told me all my grandma had to do was give her the look when she misbehaving. Now people allowed kids to just walk all over them no respect all.
Growing up in the south, we had a lot of garden grown food. Only had TV dinners at my Grandparents, my Mom refused to buy them. They were actually good then, taste like crap now. Meatloaf rules, although my family didn't top it with ketchup. Mom cooked it surrounded by a tomato paste sauce, that she would baste the meatloaf with as it cooked. She always used lean ground beef, the tomato sauce was used as a beefy tomato gravy to top the meatloaf and mash potatoes when serving. We always had this with garden peas and carrots, with homemade rolls, Delicious.
I’ve eaten (and still eat) just about everything on this list except the aspic. Although there was a jello salad my grandma used to make for Christmas with pistachios, pineapple, and I think cream cheese.
Mom made ours with cottage cheese evry Christmas, lime jello, pineapple, and we 4 kids called it toxic green stuff, because the whipping of the footage cheese made it all bright green. Tasted good, but looked garish!
Another Boomer here (b. 1961), and basic Corn Flakes was a breakfast staple. Add the obligatory tablespoon of sugar, and it was perfection. Drinking the milk/sugar combo after the flakes were gone was the BEST! Regarding Spam, still love it to this day. Perfect side with eggs. It was also the meal of choice for Vikings (per the famous Monty Python skit at least).
I think scrapple is, but that's just me. Lol all my great grandparents ate it, lived well into their late 90s.
My mother in law once made her kids meatloaf and instead of bread crumbs used Cheerios. When one of her boys asked her why there were Cheerios in the meatloaf she lied and denied doing that. Had she crushed them up she might have got away with it but they were whole and round.
My mom told me essentially the same thing....but her father said NO to sugar in her cornflakes! Truly a rough childhood.
KenRT14
Sorry pal. You can not claim Baby Boomer hood. REAL Boomers were born 1945 to 1957. You can PRETEND to be a Boomer but you are not!!!
Maybe the beginning date was 1944. But definately ends in '57.
I was raised on everything up until the aspic, which I had never heard of until I watched “Julie & Julia”. I was the last kid of six, born in’74. My family is of Mexican origin, but my Mom had struggled enough to know how to be successfully frugal. She was a homemaker and she helped my dad build his business, so there was the occasional TV dinner. She also used to put spam into salad and I have to say it was amazing.
That being said, it’s kind of amazing to see how post-war also meant the birth of so much unhealthy food.
We're of Irish and British origin in the Ottawa Valley of Canada. Every holiday always included tomato aspic. None of us kids ( siblings, cousins) serve it anymore. Good riddance. It was awful!!!You dodged a bullet.😅🤣😁
Well, war time was full of ration and compromise. So people were excited to return to excess
Tks for sharing this information with us ☺️
As a millennial with boomer parents this video is pretty much what I ate in childhood, minus the jello concoctions, white bread (We had wheat or sourdough bread), and diet sodas. Dad did all the cooking. Every Sunday we'd have a full breakfast with french-toast, sugared fruit (Peaches were my favorite), eggs, and either fried spam or bacon. Sometimes he'd make S.O.S or chipped beef on Toast instead. But on weekdays it was either cereal (Usually Raisin Bran) or brown sugar and Oatmeal for breakfast. He bought me school lunches about half the time and sent me with milk money, PB&J's and carrot sticks/ celery sticks/apple slices the other half of the time. So I didn't get to be the cool kid with lunchables or chips or junkfood ^-^' Dinners were more varied. Once a month or so we'd have "Taco Night" which was basically home made Taco Bell, but dad loved cilantro and Lime so we'd always have that. During the summer we'd often have burgers and hotdogs on the grill, sometimes steaks or ribs, usually served with potato salad and baked beans. In the fall, if the catching was good there would be grilled salmon, smoked salmon, and Salmon Chowder made in huge batches. Grandma cooked up a whole roasted turkey with all the sides every thanksgiving, and super good homemade pumpkin pie. But mostly I remember a lot of meat and potato dishes, casseroles, Soups, Pastas, and grilled sandwiches. Meatloaf or Salisbury steak with mashed potato's and frozen mixed veggies, Pot Roast thrown in a croqpot with potato's carrots onion and celery, Texmex casserole, Tuna Casserole, Casseroles I forgot the name of, Lasagna, Spaghetti, Mac and Cheese, "Chili-Mac", Fried Spam Sandwiches (Usually with fresh picked tomato), Grilled cheese with tomato soup, Tuna Melts, Patty Melts. Big pots of home made chili, Split Pea, and chicken noodle soup usually served with warm bread. There was also always a big bowl full of fresh fruit to snack on (Apples, bananas and whatever was in season). And yeah Ovaltine. Dad always thought it was healthier so that's what we had for chocolate milk/hot cocoa mix. Sodas were something we had to buy ourselves unless we were at a restaurant. When we ate out it was usually at Denny's or ihop or a Chinese Buffet, every once in a while a Mexican Restaurant. The Fast Food of choice was usually DQ, KFC, or Pizza delivery. But eating out was like a once a month treat. I was actually kind of envious of the kids who got McDonalds every night.... but I miss all the home made meals now... besides tuna casserole... thankfully I never spent enough time with grandma to be force fed liver. I've heard the tales.
POTATOES
Not say that I’m a dilettante. Meatloaf made with ground beef, onions, garlic, an egg, S&P, and perhaps even a bay leaf. Remains a wonderful infusion of taste In conjunction with mashed buttered potatoes featuring nutmeg with an in season veg.
All of the spice wars, I am become benefit.
What people ate in the 50's: pb&j on Wonder and meatloaf.
What I ate last Tuesday: pb&j on Wonder and meatloaf.
😊😊 thanks for the chuckle.
Let's take the moment to appreciate how much effort he puts into the content for us ❤
He is great,very informative from England vx
He is likely an entire team of people.
My mother-in-law made something called tomato aspic it was tomato juice and strange vegetables in a jello base- it was a main dish not a dessert and just remembering it makes me queasy!
I absolutely love Weird History! He always brings well researched content.😘👏👏👏
I’m a Millennial and I had a lot of these foods growing up and still do to this day. Our meatloaf had BBQ sauce instead of ketchup and my favorite casserole is one made with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, tater tots and green chili peppers.
That sounds so good haha
I always love when I see a notification from you guys. Best channel I'm subscribed to imo.
I was never too keen on chop suey, but my mom made it because it was a good way to use up the last of the celery bunch every week. I miss her beef tongue with Polish mushroom gravy, but that's way too expensive now. The 60s food fads like Swiss steak and Swedish meatballs could never replace her pierogi and stuffed cabbage, but I suppose they were faster and easier to make. She really was a wonderful cook.
I am a millennial who grew up with almost all of this food. My grandmother cooked a lot of it. Most of the people who cooked at all in my family were making older recipes and not very willing to change. At least I avoided the gelatin shaped food! Pretty sure I have several recipes for it, though.
Food you make yourself is far healthier as you know what goes into it. There are trusted brands that you know what goes in but making your own is best.
My mother in law still makes a jello salad every holiday - Christmas and Thanksgiving. She just does them in a casserole dish though, not a mold. They're always a big hit, so much so even the foreign students she hosts go back for seconds 🤣. I guess enough whipped cream makes all wierd foods more palatable 😎.
I didn’t grow up with them but occasionally ate most of the dishes mentioned in the video at family gatherings. Chop Suey got to be the worst white American invention. It’s just horrid. The family recipe was passed down to me, but I never made it 😂
Thanks for sharing.
Who knew food could be this interesting
If you like history and food, check out "Tasting History" on here. It's a fun channel
I don’t know what I would do without Meatloaf... The food or the musician!
Really great info. Brought back a lot of memories.
My mom was born in the 50s, and when she and I moved in with my grandma after my parents divorced, I ate a lot of these foods -- though TV dinners were a Saturday-night treat, because they were pricey. Lots of meatloaf and different types of casseroles, and Ovaltine before bed. I also grew up hating vegetables because the only way Grandma and Mom knew how to cook them was to boil them; I didn't discover steamed and oven-roasted veggies until I was an adult and doing my own cooking.
My folks grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, during WWII. My grandfather on one side was the only veteranarian (Sp?) in the city and my other grandfather was a purchasing agent for one of the 3 or 4 (?) of the largest steel mills in the country. Grandpa C. used to help out the farmers for free or for free and was 'paid' in fresh meat, bushels of eggs or baskets of fresh vegetables. Grandpa B. had a meat locker with his brother where they kept the sides of beef that he was given as gifts for doing 'business favors' for other companies in the steel market. Amazing my folks didn't grow up to be little fatsos, considering all the good food to eat while the rest of the nation lived on rations. The C. Animal Clinic still exists in Youngstown today. 🙂
Cincinnati here , if I had a choice over Youngstown or starving, I'd have to choose starving.. 😆😅🤣😂
Narator: "Gone were the days of making a meal from scratch."
*A single tear rolls down face*
Love thos view of history!! Good job!!
I LOVED the TV dinners in foil. Not only were the portions bigger, but there was something different about the taste. Especially the mashed potatoes, I don't know why. Mashed taters have always been and still are my favorite food. THe aluminum added something to the taste of the taters. Loved those!
Been a lot of food episodes lately.
To the writer who is clearly on a diet... I feel ya.
Hahahahahhahahaja 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I can feel it too
OMG haha so funny😝
I was raised in northeast Ohio in the 60s and 70s. There were no exotic foods at all. Cereal for breakfast, meat , potatoes or other vegetables all boiled. We had dinners on ocassion with a family that made real Italian food. The wife was Italian. We never grilled out and I didn't know anyone that did. We had our own meat and vegetables from our farm and garden.
I was born in the late fifties. We did eat cereal but not too much of the really sugary ones. We had spam once in a while but also the canned corned beef for dads sandwiches for work, casseroles like chipped beef on toast. Wow, we sure ate a lot of salt. I remember Grandma making a tomato aspic jello salad one Christmas. It was so gross that she never made it again. Ah, good times.
To this day, I ( am 63) feel guilty if I waste food. We were taught to eat and appreciate the food on our plate. There were dishes that I know our dogs ate fairly well on but I remember that ground beef or chicken was special. My dad hunted , us kids gathered wild summer offerings and having spaghetti for birthdays was a treat.I still love goulash, my son adores meatloaf. Oh the days of wine and roses. It was home brew actually lol.
Im surprised Campbells soup wasnt mentioned. "Soup and sandwich, soup and sandwich" the song went. It was cheap, filling if you added crackers, and tasted great (to a kid...).
Great video with lots of memories.
So true. Grilled cheese sandwich with soup was a common lunch
That was fun to watch! Thanks!
Just a blast from the past! Thanks!
My grandmother did all the cooking in my family as she lived with us also, and made mostly homemade meals until her arthritis got so bad she couldn't stand long enough to cook. Then my mom took over and she, like myself, relyed on recipes from cookbooks. Once in a while though my parents would pick up Chinese for a treat from our local carry out restaurant and it was always Chop Suey and egg rolls. Always. I hated both of those things so much so I never ate any, opting for bologna instead. I always wanted to try something else from the menu but no, they were stuck on chop suey. Later on in life when I met my now ex husband who is Chinese, I discovered that chop suey is not a Chinese dish at all but very American! If you notice, it is rarely,.if ever on a Chinese menu these days. I grew to enjoy egg rolls but don't think I would like chop suey even now if offered to me.
People used to be able to afford food ????? Stuff at the Grocery Store has skyrocketed since the Pandemic started (if you can even find the item you are looking for)
Upbringing in Canada is almost exactly the same at least for my family. Its amazing how much of our own culture we have because of American influence.
Hey, 95% of the Canadian population lives within 150 miles of the (virtually) open, 2500 mile long US border, and ethnically, the two countries are about as homogeneous as you can get! No surprises here. (And I dare say that 95% of the US population is unaware that Canada is a separate nation... Won't go any further on that one.)
@@davidh9844 I was told "Canada is the best part of our country" by someone in New York.
@@cijmo I rest my case.
I live in Windsor Ontario across from Detroit, we are an auto town. We actually sound more American than Canadian😂
I would say Canadians still ate a Britush based diet mostly until.the 1970s or so. The only " fast food" available in 🍁 until the 1960s was fish and chips I heard!
This was terrific!!!! More consumer food history!!!!!!
All (or mostly) familiar to a middle-middle-class kid growing up in the 1950s. Especially meatloaf and casseroles.
After those cans of Crisco made it into the housewives' kitchens, they all had a piece of wax paper folded into a square stored in them, for spreading the Crisco on cooking surfaces.
Often the cereal premiums weren't in the boxes themselves - you had to send in the boxtop to get the prize.
Wonder bread was touted on commercials as having "red, yellow and blue balloons printed right on the wrapper".
The photo at 7:40 is what dinners really looked like.