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Dutchess_III's avatar

What were some memorable meals from your childhood?

Asked by Dutchess_III (47071points) October 20th, 2019

When I was a kid, on nice Sundays, we often had “juicy steak.” That meant Dad cooked on the grill outside (it was the ONLY thing he ever cooked) and Mom made baked potatoes with cheese sauce. We each got our own steak. If we didn’t, we three girls would be fighting like a pack of mongrel dogs over who got the bone! Man, that marrow was delicious too. We also had sweet tea with juicy steak. Every other meal we had milk (Mom grew up on a dairy farm. She was a firm believe in milk! You could never had too much milk!) And we’d clean our plates. Dad extolled the virtue of a medium rare steak. NEVER well done. If you want well done eat a hamburger.
No steak sauce. Nothing but cracked pepper and salt. Period.

Mom made a crockpot pot roast sometimes, with carrots and potatoes. I remember mashing the potatoes and drizzling the juice over them. Man that was good.

Mom cooked for Dad, who was a meat and potatoes kind of guy from Texas. She fried a lot of stuff. Pork chops, chicken, you name it. God she practically deep fried our pancakes in butter. I could eat pancakes ALL DAY LONG!!! I could eat more pancakes when I was 6 than I can eat today.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, we’d have pancakes and eggs for dinner. They tasted different when we had them for dinner!

Dad taught us how to make “syrup and soppit.” You mix butter in with syrup and use a biscuit to soak it up and eat it!

One of my favorites, and still is, is chicken gravy over bread for lunch. YUM!!!

We never had any chips or any kind of junk food around, unless it was some dessert thing for Dad (which we weren’t allowed to touch) and we didn’t get snacks. We just had to wait for dinner. When it came, we were READY!

There was only one food that I just couldn’t eat. I opted to go hungry and wait for breakfast because it was that nasty to me. It was chipped beef in cheese sauce….the same cheese sauce that was so wonderful on a potato. But with the chipped beef, oh, God. FROW UP! I hated that stuff. But Dad got it when he was in the Navy so sometimes we had for dinner. He laughed at my dislike of the stuff. He called it SOS. When I was about 13 and was sitting there with some in my mouth, trying to figure out how to swallow it without throwing up, he decided to tell me what SOS stood for….DAD!!!! YOU JERK!!! He just laughed and laughed. That was the ONLY food I balked at. I was usually too hungry to balk, but apparently never hungry enough to eat that shit.

We ate 3 meals a day, period. No snacks, no junk food, and we never, never got fat

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30 Answers

ragingloli's avatar

My parents once were not home, so they left a chicken leg with potatoes for the microwave.
So I reheated it in the microwave, and started eating.
A few minutes in, I noticed that the surface of the chicken leg was somehow moving.
On closer inspection it turned out, that the entire thing was covered in tiny maggots.
Now that is what I would call “memorable”.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Jesus. Once my oldest daughter came by and she was ravenous! She grabbed some cereal, poured it into a bowl, poured milk on it, and just started pigging out. She had eaten 90% of it when she saw something moving in the milk at the bottom of the bowl…..I don’t know how she didn’t lose it!

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

At the start of high school I had a good chicken thigh and drum attached with a fountain drink , in my locker. I forgot about it till the last day of school for that year. I tasted the chicken and desperately needed something to drink and I grabbed the year old open pop. It was moldy. I had to run to the boys room to rinse out my mouth.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Well I USED to have good memories of my childhood meals! Now y’all just grossing me out!

ragingloli's avatar

I remember when I tried to make a pizza from scratch, and it ended up tasting like soap.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@Dutchess_III Ok sorry. When I was 4 years old my mom made Cornish hens with special Teriyaki sauce in aN electric frying pan. Was perfect.

Dutchess_III's avatar

It’s OK. It’s fluther. I don’t mind.
Cornish game hens are YUM! I never had one until I was 20.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@Dutchess_III During summer breaks my grandpa would make me three soft boiled eggs and dip them in buttered toast lined up lined up like solders, for breakfast. Also lunch was cantaloupe and a sandwich, and finally a homemade beef or chicken stew, and smoked oysters for snack at night.

ragingloli's avatar

The bad meals were the only memorable ones. I remember being on the verge of puking, everytime they made something with bacon in it.

zenvelo's avatar

One Sunday after church, my mom wanted us to all go to Macy’s to look at some furniture. It was 1:30 and I was starving, and used to lunch at noon everyday at school.

My dad took me to the food court, and I had sweet’n’sour pork and a huge plate of fried rice. It was so damn good….

One time we picked my dad up at Newark Airport, and we had dinner there. I had bacon wrapped grilled scallops. Fantastic.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Snacks for watching football ( LA Rams) on the TV with my dad. He cooked about two pounds of chicken livers in a cast iron frying pan in butter with chopped onions. We ate them while on saltines watching the game. We washed them down with White Rock Ginger Ale (we always had White Rock Ginger Ale and Club Soda in the house).

anniereborn's avatar

My mom was an amazing cook. I miss it so very very much! Back before her and I both were vegetarians…she made wonderful Chicken and Dumpling soup, and Split Pea and Ham soup.
Also, the best Meat Loaf, Spaghetti, Pork Roast and Thanksgiving dinners!

anniereborn's avatar

@RedDeerGuy1 How did no one smell that? Surely after a few days it would have stunk to high heaven and everyone including school staff woulda been on that.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

@anniereborn They were sealed pretty good. I used a duffel bag instead of my locker.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

Man then hungrier one is the better the food tastes. I remember going to a new Mexican place. I was HONGRY when we got there. Like desperately hungry. Food came and I inhaled. For a few years.I claimed it was the best Mexican food ever.
Then I had occassion to eat there again at a time when I wasn’t so hungry.
The food was average. :(

JLeslie's avatar

The first time I had a grilled cheese sandwich was at my friend’s house, I was about 10 years old I think.

My grandmother’s matzah ball soup on Passover.

Breaded smelts with my dad. It’s the only thing I remember him cooking.

Nathan’s hot dogs and french fries with my dad, and then we would play games in the arcade.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

What did you think of the grilled cheese @JLeslie?

For some very, very odd reason the time Mom made.me a scrambled egg sandwich sticks in my head. I don’t know if I’d never had one or what. I just remember it.
She used to put chopped up boiled eggs in my tuna fish sammiches.

JLeslie's avatar

I liked the grilled cheese a lot. I didn’t like cheese very much as a child, just mozzarella on pizza, or ricotta and moz mix when in lasagna or some other pasta dish. I really thought I wasn’t going to like the grilled cheese, I didn’t realize the taste of the cheese would be different once melted. I hated cheddar or American cheese cold, and I still do. I remember when I told my grandma about the cheese sandwich, instead she made me an open faced cheese on bread, broiled under the flame so the cheese got brown. That was so good too.

Sagacious's avatar

Any time mom fried okra it was a memorable meal. And no matter how much she prepared, every single crumb was eaten. We all loved (and still do) it.

Darth_Algar's avatar

My mom’s pizza. I mean it wasn’t anything special, she always made it from one of those box kits that had the sauce and the crust mix in it (Appian Way was the brand she’d use), but I always looked forward to pizza night in our house.

Mom also had a ton of various recipes copied from her mother, grandmothers, aunts, etc. She’d didn’t make that kind of stuff often (she generally didn’t like to put in too much time or effort in the kitchen), so when did it was something special.

Darth_Algar's avatar

@RedDeerGuy1

I gotta be honest – you are straining the bounds of my credulity here.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

My Mom really dislike cooking. She was too impatient. She cooked everything as fast as she could!

JLeslie's avatar

I cook fast like my mom.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

When I cook it depends on what it is. When I was feeding dinner to kids every night it was ready in under 30 minutes.

anniereborn's avatar

If something I cook/bake/make takes longer than I do to eat it, not even messin with it.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

Well my kids would have starved! I fill up in 15 minutes.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

And banana bread…about an hour and a half to make. 5 minutes to eat a piece.

JLeslie's avatar

That’s something to think about, not wanting to cook longer than it takes to eat it. I would include clean up also. My husband always comments that his mom cooks for an entire day for Christmas, and everyone is done eating in 30 minutes. Then we clean up for hours after Christmas dinner. Actually, she does that daily. She spends hours in the kitchen. I can’t do it. Once in a while yes, but daily? I’d hate it. Most meals I make in less than 30 minutes, but quite a few take longer, but I don’t have to watch the pot the entire time, although I won’t leave the room usually. That’s one reason an open floor plan works best for me. I don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen just because I am boiling pasta.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

Rick watches the toaster and the microwave do their thing. I am cleaning during that.
He hovers over the food he’s cooking. He has never had to incorporate cooking with family business so I guess he thinks that’s how Moms do it.

anniereborn's avatar

@Dutchess_lll Well for baked goods, I won’t count cooking time. I’m gonna assume it wasn’t an hour and a half before it went into the oven. Also probably more than an hour and a half to eat the entire loaf.

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