What was a special food that only your family ate?

We had oyster dressing for christmas every year. Delicious!

Wife Saver Casserole

8 slices Bread
8 slices Ham
8 slices Cheese
6 eggs
2 cups milk
¼ cup butter
Directions:
Remove crust from bread. Put bread into a greased 9×9 pan. Cover bread with ham, then with cheese. Put rest of bread on cheese. Mix eggs and milk together. Pour milk and egg mixture over the bread, ham, and cheese in pan. Refrigerate overnight. In the morning, pour melted butter over the ingredients in the pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. Let sit ten minutes before serving.

We had it on Christmas and Easter morn..

And, my Grandma would make homemade Christmas pudding with a brandy caramel sauce. To die for..

Eierkuchen… which I mentioned in another thread a while ago (that I still haven’t tried to duplicate now that I’m not eating carbs)... but it’s a German savory crepe, made with bacon (and the grease) in the batter, fried, and then we ate it with maple syrup.

Also, what we called “Grandpa’s Slop”... because the man never threw anything away, he came up with it once and everyone loved it. It was fried potatoes, onions, eggs, hot dogs, and cheese all in the same pan. We usually put ketchup on it. My goodness but I would kill for some of that right now.

My family has passed down a coffee cake recipe that’s pretty basic, but it makes 16 coffee cakes. It will rise until it fills the space. (My aunt once set a bowl in the bathtub to rise and forgot about it over night. When she remembered the next morning, it had filled the tub). I’ve never seen it recreated, and my mother makes it for everything.

When I was in grade school, my mom would make an onion bread. It took her all day to make it. It was SO awesome. There was nothing better than coming home from school & smelling it in the house. I’d hardly be able to let it cool. I could have eaten the whole loaf. I have her recipe. I should make it one of these days. :-/

@jbfletcherfan: I have a small love affair with onions… I would love the recipe if you’d be willing to share :)

Pick-a-Crust

Is it OK if I use someone else’s family dish? A friend of mine said, when they were growing up things were tight. If they ordered pizza, they would save the discarded crust. For the next meal, mom would bring out the pizza crust, put it on a baking sheet, spread some cheese on it, bake it, and presto! Pick-a-crust!

@valdasta: AGH!! No way! I couldn’t eat that… I’m very particular about pizza crusts. If they’re too crispy, every time I try to eat one, I get a sore spot on the roof of my mouth behind my two front teeth. That makes me feel that sore just thinking about it. lol

@jbfletcherfan that sounds awesome, I might like to try that recipe, if you are willing to share.

My mom used to make the best crab meat spaghetti sauce. There would be some big sections of crab body in the sauce with the legs off and the nasty part gone -so like the ⅓ section near the legs on each side. You’d pick it up with your hands and suck the juice out of the leg holes before cracking it open to get the rest of the meat out. It was great and messy.

We had moved to New York in 3rd grade before I realized that not everyone had spaghetti this way.

I grew up eating matzoah dipped in chopped liver as an appetizer before most dinners.

I’m a veg now, and thinking back about it gives me the heebie jeebies. But damn. That was YUMMY.

My father in particular was very creative in the kitchen. He invented “Chicken Glop” (this involved either canned chicken or leftover chicken, Maggi and yogurt served warm over rice or noodles), “Brown Sauce” (a soy sauce-mayo mixture to serve with grilled beef or broccoli), “Spam-cakes” (pancakes with Spam in them), “Chicken Gut Spaghetti” and avocado soup (ripe avocado, chicken broth and yogurt in the blender), among a number of other dishes.

He also discovered interesting foods and brought them home. These treasures included Nucita (a South American version of Nutella), Schelvislever (haddock livers canned in oil and served spread on warm buttered toast with lemon), Guasacaca (a Venezuelan avocado-based steak sauce), Vegemite (yes, he loved it), Maggi, Halvah (still a major preoccupation on my part), and fish sauce.

He also introduced me to caviar sandwiches when I was very little.

My mom used to serve Sukiyaki before Asian food was considered cool, and despite living in California, steadfastly prepared her dishes that irrevocably tied us to her Southern heritage. In college I finally got to go to a “Soul Food” restaurant, only to discover it was just what my Momma served at home

Then my grandmother loved to serve Pastel de Choclo (a Chilean dish) and a meal that involved hot dogs, creamed Spinach and mashed potatoes.

We were also the only family I ever knew that routinely ate kippered herring and Steak and Kidney Pudding.

@cindyh – And as far as that Crab Spaghetti goes, that was commonly served at our house, too, largely because we lived near San Francisco, where Cioppino and spaghetti were both common foods, and good, fresh crabs were always available.

oh, and my dad used to cut up turkey hot dogs into spaghetti sauce. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it… I adored it as a kid.

@poofandmook – We ate hot dogs cut up in macaroni and cheese (and always put olive oil and red wine vinegar on it).

@Darwin: My dad cut up hot dogs in mac and cheese all the time, but added mixed veggies and no other stuff

Microwaved Rice (with nothing else except rice and water in a bowl left in the microwave for a few mins). To make it special, my mother added grated cheese on top. My dad ate it because he’s been through German occupation as a child and would eat anything, and the rest of us were too young to complain. For the first couple of years anyway.

We always had French Toast for breakfast, which was actually pretty good, despite being overfried a few times.

I have a false one. My family always told me this desert we made was a secret family recipe. It is so easy and I loved it, everyone did. Not until years later did I realize it must have not been so secret as it was out in all the stores, lol. Anyhow we call it Bubble Loaf. It is little pieces of dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar then put in a pan with the hole in the middle. Then topped with a sugary cinnamon hot sauce and baked.

Also culturally we made Frybread and Indian Tacos. Frybread is like elephant ears except without the cinnamon and sugar (of course you can add it on if you want). And Indian Tacos are like tostadas but made with frybread.

@poofandmook – Actually, we did all sorts of things to modify mac and cheese, mostly because we ate it several times a week (my parents had little money). We ate it with peas and carrots added, with tomatoes layered in it, with Spam in it, and made with different types of cheese. But we always put good olive oil and a nice wine vinegar on our servings.

We also used the leftover mac and cheese to serve cold as part of a “salad,” with chunks of mac and cheese tossed with lettuce, tomatoes, cold left over vegetables, bits of ham or tuna, and a vinaigrette dressing.

mom would use leftover pie crust. she put cinnamon butter and brown sugar on little rounds, roll them up and bake them. we could have these right away!

I used to love it when my grandmother made me rice with milk, sugar, and cinnamon for breakfast. so yummy.

@RedPowerLady reminds me of Phoebe’s (from “Friends”) secret cookie recipe from her great-aunt Nestle ;)

@faye – We did that, too. It was sort of like the pie version of “licking the spoon.”

lol

@Jack79 lol! I remember that :)

@Darwin: My family was from the gulf coast in Texas. I always thought that was just a Cajun thing.

@RedPowerLady : Your Bubble Loaf was what we called Monkey Bread. And Indian Tacos are really popular in Arizona. We used to get them in Northern Arizona after skiing and heading into the lodge. In Southern Arizona there’s someone making frybread outside of most old missions and you can get them fixed various ways including as a tostada, with just beans, or with the cinnamon and sugar mix.

You guy just reminded me of Kathy Griffin’s “Cake Soup”. Wow, just thinking about that makes me need to go work out. Cheers!

We make what we call “cinnamon rice”, it’s just cooked rice with (regular) milk (not so much to drown the rice) and cinnamon and sugar mixed in.Everyone always looks at me very strangely when I tell them I like to eat this.

@hug_of_war – Actually that sounds like something they serve here in South Texas for breakfast in some Mexican restaurants. I think it’s great but my husband’s Japanese heritage makes him frown on that particular combination.

@cyndyh That’s right it is commercially known as monkey bread. So much for the family secret, haha.

You are a lucky gal to get frybread all the time, here we have to pull teeth to get someone to make it, hehe.

@RedPowerLady : I don’t live in Arizona anymore. Easy access to frybread is one of the things I miss about the place. Okay, I’m having bad carby-bready thoughts now for real. I have to go workout! Yikes!

@poofandmook & @Psychedelic_Zebra Absolutely, I’ll share. Let me go get it. Look for a PM this afternoon.

yellow cling peaches (canned in their natural juice) + either cubed cream cheese or cubed gouda cheese…. yum! If you chill the peaches ahead of time this is a lovely light snack to have on a hazy hot humid South FL type of day….

Well, there’s my special brownie recipe that everybody loves that came originally from Phoebe’s Aunt Nestle, too.

We had what we called corn fritters for dinner sometimes. Which are basically pancakes with corn in them…. tasted amazing though.

My dad likes to eat bananas with cheese or mayonnaise.

Thought of another one – my Dad use to make cauliflower latkes out of (wait for it) leftover cauliflower. Sort of like potato latkes but with…. cauliflower.

Yes! My sisters used to boil elbow macaroni, add tomato juice and lots of munster cheese. It is the bomb…but not fun to clean up.

My wife’s mother used to make potato-cakes: Left over mashed potatoes, mix with onions, and fry em’ up in a skillet…not one of my wife’s favorites.

@mcbealer – Wow, never met another who’s family had canned peaches with cheese. We had shredded cheddar on ours. Lurve!

Kool Aid…
Then we put on these nifty purple robes and crawled into our bunk beds….

egg gravy and taco mountain. Both are legends to anyone who has come to our house to eat.

@forestGeek ~ uncanny!! with Gouda is my favorite :)

@mcbealer – actually, literally canny! ;)

We ate a lot of freshwater fish, including river sturgeon and eel when we could get it, as well as buffalo patties fried in oil (the fish, not the land mammal).

@Psychedelic_Zebra We eat the real buffalo, hehe. :)