Pat and I have been challenging ourselves to try and remember our dinner menus growing up. It is interesting how much we DON'T remember! As we've talked, it seems there was a change in what the family ate when mother started outside employment in the 60s. I seem to remember more from before she started working than Pat does, which makes sense because I would have been older, had more years of experience and am just more likely to remember because of my age at the time.
Dad hated pasta (BAD experiences with it in the Army) so we really didn't have much. Salads were generally a wedge of lettuce with bottled dressing -- tossed/chopped salads didn't come into fashion until the 70s. Veggies accompanying the main dish came out of a can: corn, green beans, peas, or beets.
So, what do you remember we ate? I'm counting on the olders -- LuAnn, Charlie and Cherie to help fill in the blanks here.
Frequently ate -- like weekly:
fried hamburgers, Saturday nights during Lawrence Welk
hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes
toastwiches, cheese and/or tuna sands toasted in the frying pan
fried chicken (frequency fell off after mother started work)which started with a whole chicken cut into pieces so someone got the back, two individuals had to make it meal with a wing each, same with the legs. Breasts and thighs only came two to a chicken. I don't ever remember having baked or roasted chicken. Did we?
breakfast for dinner (I remember French toast but did we also have pancakes?)
Pork and beans with hot dogs, or weiners cut up and heated with the beans and served over a slice of white bread
Maybe once a month:
roast with potatoes, carrots, onions and the resulting goulash (I think roast beef was the preferred Sunday dinner so we probably had it more than once a month but I don't think we had it EVERY Sunday.)
fried hamburger patties with tomato gravy
baked spaghetti with meat balls (Charlie's favorite)
scalloped potatoes with ham pieces cooked with them
meatloaf
Swedish meatballs (meatballs with rice incorporated, cooked in a mushroom soup sauce)
creamed tuna over toast
fried pork chops
Swiss Steak
Every once in a while:
pigs-in-a-blanket (cabbage leaves wrapped around little rolls of hamburger, cooked in a watery liquid)
corned beef and cabbage -- Dad loved this, but either mother didn't like to cook it, it was too expensive or kids wouldn't eat it (although I don't know if this is possible)
I definitely remember Chili for Halloween but how often did we have soup? And what kinds of soup did we have besides chili and chicken?
In the fall/winter we frequently had squash -- several different kinds but I most remember Hubbard, which we had to cut with the hatchet to prepare it for cooking.
I must be forgetting. This can't be all we ate!!! Please help -- what do you remember?
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Not sure where .... but somewhere along in my childhood I came to love Beef Stroganoff.
ReplyDeleteI think that someone should make a recipe book containing all the recipes from Betty and Larry. That way we can try and preserve some of these thoughts and tastes. As for me, I can't really add much except I grew up eating cubed steak a lot (I assumed it came from my dad and his childhood) and chili casserole.
ReplyDeleteHarrison and Katie. Your dad does love beef stroganoff and cube steak. The first time I ever ate beef stroganoff was when I was a senior in high school and we were dining at the Rogerson Restaurant. I thought I had died and gone to heaven -- it was so good. I think we did then come up with easy ways to make this at home, but for my growing up years it was not something we ate at home. Cube steak is another Mike Armga favorite. We probably did eat it -- Mike needs to comment on this. But if so, it wasn't very frequent.
ReplyDeleteChili casserole I learned to make in my "Life Management" class as a senior. I did alot of the cooking at home when I was in high school. So it makes sense Michael would remember this from growing up, but in my mind it wasn't something mother made and not something I ate as a child.
Oh, I'm remembering that we ate Swiss steak on a fairly regular basis. I should add that to the 'maybe once a month' category.
Love ya!
From Bruce:
ReplyDeleteTuna Casserole when I was in HS.
Stuffed green peppers
You forgot Fish with cream of mushroom string beans topped almonds, with rice a-roni.
Soups – absolutely – when I was older. Dad would prepare.
Meatloaf
Stew (or dad’s thicker version of soup).
Didn’t mom try turnips every once in awhile, claiming they where potatoes?
Can’t forget ham sandwiches, or peanut butter.
The occasional beef stroganoff – after Cheri introduced them to it (if my memory serves me correctly).
From LuAnn:
ReplyDeleteYou forgot the neck of the chicken, even less meat than the back and that was the piece I usually got.
Mike loved the Rice-a-roni with chicken on top.
We also ate Spam -- usually on Saturdays.
I used to make cabbage with hamburger because I really liked it. I discovered that the traditional way to make this is with a tomato sauce rather than just water.
Dad's favorite soup was chicken with rice. He frequently made this when we were growing up. Dad loved to take bread and sop of the grease/fat in chicken soup.
Dad always cooked the turkey for Thanksgiving.
We had alot of chicken on Sundays. I primarily remember eating friend chicken.
Spareribs -- mother made the best. I don't know if we had these as children or if she started doing them when we were adults.
more later . . .
Man, ya'll are good. I can barely remember what my Mom would make.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Katie that an Armga Cookbook would be super fun. I know I have a lot of the recipes you've mentioned, but it looks like I am missing some. I would love a Beef Stroganoff Recipe!
Boy, when I started to think about it I couldn't come up with anything...but then my memory came back to me...well a little!! Do you remember all of us sitting around the table, cramped in the little kitchen. Dinner was a fast race. Everybody got a first helping and then the race started. If you finished, you got seconds, and if you were slow you got nothin because Larry and Charles ate everything that was left!!! LuAnn always sat at the pull out bread board and I thought that was a privlege untill I had to sit there. My memory says we had...mashed potatoes alot but with just butter. And I remember when I had advanced to chef at the Ripe old age of twelve(Luann had deserted us and gone to college) Mother was working and it was left up to me to make dinner. I was to bake a chicken. When I opened the package it smelled off to me. I called Mother and questioned how fresh the chicken was. She assured me it was fine and to go ahead and make the chicken. Of course no one got sick so my fears we for naught. Of course there was more chicken for everyone else that night because I wasn't about to eat that rotten chicken. I can remember watching Dad's face to see if he thought it tasted off, but no,no reaction.Lets see....
ReplyDeleteHamburgers every Friday night
Lemoney Spare Ribs
Baked Chicken, peas, barbequed potato chips
Tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches
Grilled tuna sandwiched
Chile
Stew
Pork chops
Tuna cassarole
Swiss steak
Well I have to keep thinking about it maybe something will come to me....I do know that turnips in the stew wasn't mothers idea, it was Dads.. he loved them.
I just remember that it wasn't pasta Dad hated just macaroni..so we had spegetti with meat sauce and meat balls in a cassarole that we baked.
ReplyDeleteI dont know what was cooked in Mike's house growing up, but as for Harrison: he will eat nothing. His diet consists of hamburgers and pizza with either french fries or fried potatoes. He will have tacos or enchilladas too. He is the pickiest eater I've ever seen. But I know Mike can cook... so whats up with Harrison's eating habits?!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it from my mom or dad's side, but "new potatoes and peas" was something we had from time to time growing up (and for the record, I would almost cry everytime. I am NOT a fan).
ReplyDelete