Do you remember eating dishes like these? ?

Question

http://www.catesgarage.com/food/why.html

I collect cookbooks from the 1950s and 60s. I love technicolor food photography. I particularly like Jello cookbooks, as I am too young to remember a world where you could bring a tuna-celery-lime Jello mold to a potluck. I love 1950s adaptations of *ethnic* food and the jolly caricatures that accompanied them (you know, a Chinaman in a hat to go with "Ah-So Easy" noodles, or a gent in a Sombrero to go with "10-Minute Tamale Pie").

Please tell me your memories of MID-CENTURY CUISINE. What fabulous, obsolete dishes do your remember eating or serving?

Answer 1

My Mother could not cook, thank Swanson for TV dinners. Oh yes the woman would s***w up Jello.  I can cook almost everything, my daughter would s***w up jello, my granddaughter has promise of a fine cook.  Maybe it's a generation thing.

Answer 2

I remember chicken croquettes, stewed chicken with dumplings, stuffed tomatoes (stuffed with tuna salad), chicken ala king on toast, creamed chipped beef on toast, "American" chop suey, etc.

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Answer 3

when my mom baked a meatloaf sometimes she made mashed potatoes and peas and carrots she called it..t v dinner nite..lol

yes jello molds are definitly an icon..

Answer 4

I still have all the 1960 cook books from when I first got married plus a Jello cookbook from that time. I can remember making a fancy jello mold for a party and while trying to unmold it over the sink it slid out and I was trying to catch it but it kept sliding around in the sink. I finally ran the hot water and considered it a goner. Now all I do with Jello is add a little vodka and make those interesting shots for parties.

Answer 5

geez im 31 australian and my mum still brings carrot n pineapple jello to the table at xmas,hehe bless her.But i must admit,my siblings and i were brought up 'oldschool'. Thank you for provoking that memory,its made me love and appreciate my parents/grand parents even more than i already do ! Thanks again xx

Answer 6

My mother would make dried beef gravy and serve it over homemade biscuits.  I thought it was delicious.  Perhaps they still make dried beef but I haven't seen it in the stores where I shop.  It was very thin slices of dried beef in a small clear glass jar, about a 4 oz. jar I would guess.  It was very inexpensive so I'm sure that's why she made it so often.

Answer 7

My granny used to make lemon jello with apples and pecans and serve it with dinner. Yummy.

Answer 8

I remember Lime Jello with shredded carrots.

Jello was served with cake instead of Ice Cream for Birthdays.

My aunt married a wonderful Greek immigrant in 1930.  I loved going to Birthdays at their house.  It was his tradition to put coins in the cake batter and bake the cake.  She would put dimes nickles and quarters in the cake.  So when we ate the cake we had to be careful not to swallow the money.

Not on our life would we swallow the money.  I'm talking as early as 1940. Wow, we could buy a lot of goodies for a nickle.

Great question.

DeeJay.

Answer 9

I remember potatoes, with bits of crumbled bacon and onion, and peas from a can, all sauteed together in a cast iron skillet. Over this, Mom poured milk, and laced it with a dot of oleo here and there.  

This was usually served a day or two before payday.

Answer 10

to stretch food mum would make a pei of anything she could get her hands on, eg Frankfurter sausages in a pie

Answer 11

My mother would find the latest fad recipe in a magazine and make it over and over again.  I remember having Baked Alaska, a meringue-covered ice cream cake treat, over and over again for months.  It was one of those magic recipes because you covered the cake with ice cream, the ice cream with meringue, and then baked the whole thing until the meringue was set and brown and the ice cream remained frozen.  

Then she found a recipe for Hungarian goulash, and again we ate it over and over for months.  I didn't like this as much as the Baked Alaska.

Then of course, there was Watergate salad, ambrosia salad, and every Jello salad known to man.  

Answer 12

We also had a household where you ate or went hungry but thank God that my mother was a good cook. Also had the chipped beef & gravy on toast ( still crave that) . Mom would make homemade dough-nuts nice and crispy, they were fried and thrown in a paper bag with cinnamon sugar and shook. Eaten warm of course. I also remember having smoked ham hocks with sauerkraut,chicken and dumplings, and something we called "sticky sketties" browned hamburger ( just 1 pound because that's all they could afford) with salt pepper and onions add 1 can of tomato soup and a bunch of cooked macaroni. It was her early creation of hamburger helper I guess.  

Answer 13

Fondue!! What a treat it was to have the pot in the middle of the table with the fancy pics that went with the avocado colored fondue pot mum had in the 1960's!

Answer 14

My Father wouldn't hear of eating like that.

We are Italian, and there was a "Standard Menu" for certain days of the week.

Sunday - #9 Ronzoni Spaghetti with Italian Sausage.

Tuesday - Rotini Macaroni with Chicken

Thursday - Rigatoni with Meatballs

The other days of the week he allowed anything (with-in-reason) to eat.

I learned how to cook because "The Rules Of The House" were you couldn't go out until after dinner.My Mother worked, and got home at 5, so I learned and had everything ready.

Answer 15

Nothing like those. Both my parents worked full time. We were lucky we got fish sticks, chicken made four different ways and spaghetti.

Answer 16

There were 6 of us. My oldest brother and sister cooked (burnt) everything pretty much that we ate after I was about 7. I do remember homemade ice cream, and fresh tomatoes cut in half-dug out-filled with cottage cheese, and fresh mint tea in tall thin frosted glasses. We didn't know what a TV dinner or canned food was. Everything pretty much came from the garden. I'm from that era.

Answer 17

We are Cajun descent and have lived in southeast Louisiana, sw of N.O., for over 200 yrs.

Growing up (1949 ---->), our meals were basic Cajun meals. Mom made gumbo with chickens from her yard, jambalaya with shrimp from her brothers, then my Dad would catch shrimp on his days off, we ate lots of things from the garden. One of my favorite meals when I was a teen was pot roasted chicken. She had a large black iron pot. She would almost fill it up with oil. She'd put the seasoned chicken in whole. I don't know how she did it, but it was always golden, crispy and so juicy on the inside! She would do big chunks of roasted potatoes the same way, and cook fresh field peas and we always had a huge pot of white rice. She either made iced tea or lemonade.

Another of my favorites was her delicious meatloaf, mashed potatoes and fresh green beans. OMG! I miss her so much. She baked bread like her Mom taught her in the 30s. I could eat a whole bread with butter and fresh coffee! What a cook she was. My Dad was a hunter and in winter she would make pots full of roasted teal with what we called in Cajun French, "Gratin sauce rouge". Of course, over rice. With fried sweet potatoes and usually white beans.

We had a big old fashioned ice cream maker. I remember sitting on it on a towel and she would turn the crank when it started to get hard. Usually cherry vanilla.

Answer 18

I remember giving my husband almost a breakdown. I cooked the large trout I had caught at the golf course creek on barbecue sausage by wrapping it in aluminium foil after spicing and buttering it. I popped it in the dish washer and put it through a cycle with no powder of course. Cooks beautifully and you can cook a large fish (or many fish) as lots of room. Saw it on TV once not my own idea but works well . Sorry not an ethnic dish but one that I specially remember-----his face ---pity no mobile phone cameras then !  

Answer 19

At the church potlucks, it always seemed to me there were an awful lot of weirdo casseroles that contained "whatever you had left in the kitchen" foods--some were good but most were, ah, acquired tastes.  My mom was not a good cook and her idea of making up her own recipe was "goulash" which mean leftovers slung into a fry pan and heated up.  Again, sometimes it was real good, other times it was "eat it or go hungry."  She didn't do any of those recipes out of cookbooks--she still will follow a recipe but if she doesn't have all the ingredients, she's just put in whatever else she does have whether it compliments the dish or not (she won't go out specifically to shop to buy ingredients for a recipe)--so instead of having apricot glaze you might end up with grape jelly (much too sweet).  She doesn't seem to care.  Maybe that's why all her kids have become good cooks.  She did and still does make good jellos (I can't make jello, never seems to set properly for me)--with stuff in it.  I love jello with stuff in it.

Answer 20

Homemade ice cream, fondue and marshmallows on a stick over a fire.Actually we still have the fondue and marshmallows but the ice cream has gone the way of most things [too lazy to make]