Stuff Your Mother Never Made You

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When she felt like it,

my Ma was a fabulous cook, so my sister and I didn't miss much. We considered some boxed things to be school night items, for Ma taught....

For a while, she had a heavy flirtation with Betty Crocker potato mixes. We had Rice-A-Roni, only the Beef flavor, once a month.

However, most weekends she cooked from scratch. That is, when she wasn't testing recipes for various classes. If we disapproved, she knew her students would as well.

I'm almost (almost!) embarrassed to say it, but Ma never made Hollandaise sauce often enough in my opinion.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
Uncle Ben's Rice.  Mama liked Comet Rice and she liked her rice cooked down all mushy and gooey but I've always enjoyed my rice fluffy.  I would ask Mama to make Uncle Ben's rice but she would look at me and ask"Wouldn't you really rather have good rice?"  Bless her heart.  Mama was a wonderful cook but I hated her sticky rice!  The only memory I have of my paternal grandmother was when I was probably 5 or 6.  We went to Brookhaven, Mississippi to visit my dad's mother and she and I walked downtown to the A&P Store where she bought a frozen apple pie!!!!!  I was so excited because Mama never bought a frozen or store pie...she always made hers from scratch.  I don't remember eating any of the frozen apple pie but I remember how excited I was when she bought it.   Mama told me she remembered when we came back from the A&P and how excited I was over a silly apple pie!  
 
It didn't take much....

Didn't take much to excite us then. My mother used Uncle Ben's exclusively. I remember her telling me her mother used Comet and something about rinsing it after it cooked. I can't believe I'm from the south and don't know what she was rferring to. I'll have to ask her the next time I see her. My best guess is it was to rinse off some of the starch so it wouldn't clump. Oh and I always wanted my mother to buy Redi-Whip and she wouldn't. She always made her own whipped cream in her Mixmaster. I didn't know how good I had it.
 
Since I am a bit younger, and grew up in the 80's and 90's, my mom worked on and off. Even when she was in between jobs, she didn't cook a whole lot. She did have her specality receipes that she would make, and did real well. To this day, I can't find a meatloaf as good as hers. She would also make a Hamburger pie(like sherpards pie, but with different stuff). My dad would also cook every now and then too. I do remember eating a lot of fast food and a lot of the boxed meals. I prefer the home cooked from scratch meals.

In regards to mac and cheese. As a kid I never really cared for it(homemade or the kraft). Then one time my grandmother fixed it and wouldn't let me leave till I ate everything. By the time I got done, I was gagging on it. To this day, I will gag if I even smell it. That is about the only thing I would refuse if I were eating at someone elses house.
 
Product Alert!

My friend worked as asst. mgr. for a supermarket here in the Garden State. Things to avoid: Uncle Ben's ANYTHING! This was the first stop for County Weights and Measures=ALWAYS short-weight! Next thing, those "fireplace logs" that are wax-infused. They deteriorate with shelf life. Again, short-weight.

Be enlightened!
 
Macaroni and cheese and rice!

Until I was grown I never knew there was any other kind of mac and cheese but Kraft Deluxe, as for rice my Mother used Uncle Bens and I hated it, I use old fashioned Comet, then add 1/2 stick butter and Carnation milk and cook and stir until its about like oatmeal!, if you want fluffy rice, you sure wont like that!!LOL!
 
Growing up in the 60s and 70s...

... prepared or packaged foods never made it into our house - with the exception of "baker's bread" (always the Marhoeffer brand and always white), condiments, Campbell's condensed soups, Jell-O, puddings, tomato paste, and spaghetti sauce (canned, though there were always packets of McCormick spaghetti sauce mix - for what my mother called "quickie spaghetti," made on days when, for whatever reason, time was tight).

My mother was an excellent cook, and having grown up on a farm during the depression ("we may have been poor, but we were never hungry," she oft times said), cooked from scratch. As a kid, we always had a large garden. Veggies were used fresh, in season, and canned or frozen through the rest of the year. Meats were bought on sale, then my father would portion them out and wrap them in white freezer paper, in preparation for storage in the "deep freeze" in the basement. Jelly was always homemade, and always elderberry. It wasn't until I began visiting friends, that I discovered that there were other varieties like grape and apple.

My mother cooked what she grew up with, and tailor made her repertoire to my father's tastes (steaks pan fried to a shoe leather consistency, no shellfish - "they eat dirt," a few Slovak specialties, and mashed potatoes at almost every meal). Again, I was in high school and eating at friends' houses when I realized that mashed potatoes were considered by some to be a treat. For variety, she would consult her collection of "Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers" cookbooks - my grandmother was the cafeteria manager at the local junior high school, and no doubt purchased the books from home ec. teachers at the school, then gave them to my mother as gifts.

Even after my mother went back to work, a hot meal, from scratch, was always on the table in time for my father's arrival home from work, around 3:30 (I was shocked to learn that a lot of folks ate "late" - between 5:00 and 6:00 in the evening).

It wasn't until I was in college, that I "learned" how to eat things like shrimp, crab, the dreaded and dirty clams and oysters, and...liver and onions (something that I really enjoy, but only eat a couple times a year, and always at a restaurant.

Joe

[this post was last edited: 5/26/2013-09:48]
 
Mom was a great

basic cook and more so really a baker. She would venture into French with success her sole meuniere was deelish! But at her heart a terrific Scottish baker! Her shortbread would crumble like sawdust on your tongue and then suddenly melt away. Her apricot squares were the envy of my entire Dorm at BU. One of my favorite dishes ever was her "scottish stew" which really wasn't a stew at all. She would take the butt end of a roast of beef cube it , cube potatoes, cut carrots and onions and pile it all together in a glass baking dish DRY! Then cover and bake for an hour or more and when it came out WOW! The beef was double cooked ,had steamed and was tender and crunchy & all the vegetables had steamed together and everything had this wondrous flavor infused all through! 
 
Jon:

"She would take the butt end of a roast of beef cube it, cube potatoes, cut carrots and onions and pile it all together in a glass baking dish DRY!"

This is intriguing! Was your mother using the butt end of a roast that has already been cooked, or was she using it raw?

I can see how this would be very hearty and good. I'm willing to bet its origin was a magazine or newspaper recipe - this is exactly the kind of labor-saving thing that '50s housewives doted on.
 
I would be afraid that putting everything in a dry glass baking dish would result in it exploding. Liquids in recipes like this help distribute the heat. Since we have a lot of glass cookware I was always told to use some kind of water or broth when baking in those.
 
Mom is a very good cook and my dad as well, although my dad leans more towards fritters and desserts. There was always prepackaged/frozen foods at home as far as I can remember. Mom ran the office at my dads appliance store so sometimes she was just too tired to cook at the end of the day. A few times a week it was take out or home delivery for dinner. "Don't cook tonight call Chicken Delight!" was one of my favorites. I was always a real picky eater and would only eat it if I really liked it, sooooo, I ate a LOT of frozen foods. Breakfast was almost always cold cereal, Quisp, Alpha-Bits, Trix and so on. For lunch, I usually had a hero and a Pepsi or went out to get a slice of pizza. I never ate the cafeteria food at school, I couldn't stand that stench.  When I got home from All Saint's I'd fix myself a snack, a Buitoni Toaster Pizza (those thing's could give a lethal 3rd degree burn to your mouth if you weren't careful.
smiley-surprised.gif
) or a Kellogg's toaster pastry (cinnamon sugar) and a big glass of milk, then sit down to see what was Barnabas up to on Dark Shadows. Depending what was for dinner, I'd either have a Swanson's Kid's Meal, or a regular Swanson's or Morton's frozen entree with a Pepsi Light.
 
Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese wasn't made at my house until I was a teen, and Rice a Roni was never prepared, despite it being heavily advertised on TV back then. Mom always made/makes some great dishes, Manicotti, Lasagna, eggplant/veal parmigiano, spaghetti with ground beef or sausages to name a few, oh and tacos! Beef was the meat of choice back then, followed by chicken and pork. Fish was featured once in awhile, and of course during Lent.  Fast food was something we had a couple of times a month, We only had McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and White Castle near my home in those days. For take out/delivery, chinese, pizza and Chicken Delight.
 
A side note on Rice A Roni, I started making it about 6 years ago (Creamy 4 Cheese) for hubby, it may not be appetizing to look at, but he sure likes it. I regularly send some boxes to Barcelona for my mother-in-law. She's so hooked! LOL!
 
Chicken Delight radio spot:
 
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 [this post was last edited: 5/26/2013-19:15]
 
call Chicken Delight

LOL..that ad brought back some memories...our family ordered from Chicken Delight - once or twice - there was place on Woodward, in Royal Oak, Mich. Thanks for posting.
 
I grew up in a family of cooks. My Mom is Mexican so of course we had plenty of Mexican dishes through out the month, and with my Dad being okie white, we also had an equal share of southern cooking. Even with all the good cooking in our house, we always had a pantry full of Stove Top, Rice a Roni and Pasta Roni. Vienna Sausages (my Dad's favorite) SPAM, mine and my brothers favorite along with Underwood Deviled Ham or Chicken Spread, and we ALWAYS had Kraft Mac and Cheese on hand. There was only one thing really my Dad absolutely HATED to see in the freezer and that was T.V. Dinners. My Mom on the other hand, loved T.V. dinners as did I. With my Dad being in construction, he would sometimes have to work far out of town and would be gone all week and come home on the weekends. So during the week, Mom and I would run off to the grocery store and get a few T.V. dinners. We always had so much fun cooking them up and eating them while watching a T.V. show or movie. Another thing that was a rarity in our home was fast food. We weren't totally deprived, but we knew when Dad was in a good mood when he'd say "I don't know about you, but I'm having a Big Mac attack." Mom and I would go to McDonalds with everyones orders and bring them home. Once in a while it would be "How about something from the Colonel?" Meaning a night of Kentucky Fried Chicken. But the real treat was when we went out for pizza, or on the majority of occasions we would pick it up and bring it home. This was before home delivery had become the norm. And it was always a combination from Round Table or Me N Ed's. For those of you not from or in California, Me N Ed's is THE place to go for pizza. People who once lived here then moved away and come back for a visit, always make Me N Ed's their first stop. But anyway's back to the subject, there was really no limit on what we had in our house when it came to food.
 
I know it's off topic but...

<span style="font-size: medium;">Does anyone remember these products?</span>

 

<span style="font-size: medium;">Cheeza, Wyler's Funny Face drink mixes, Morton's frozen cream pies and sticky buns, Patio Mini Tacos and assorted Tex-Mex TV dinners, Buitonni Toaster pizzas and square frozen pizza, Tree Tavern frozen pizza, Graham Cracko's King Vitamin, Quake cereals, Sunshine's Golden Fruit Biscuits and Lemon Coolers, Burry's Fudgetown cookies, Kellogg's Danish Go-Rounds, Nabisco's Toastettes, Hormel's Tamales...I better stop, I'm getting too nostalgic. </span>
 
One item that seldom appeared on our dinner table growing up was Hamburger Helper.  I like the pizza and bacon cheeseburger varieties, but not too often.
 
When I was in college I bought a box of Hamburger Helper "Beef Stroganoff" flavor.
I made it at my apt that night. This was about 1972 or so.

An hour after consuming it I couldn't believe what bad shape my stomach was in. By the next morning I was afraid to go more than 3 feet away from the toilet. The food didn't taste bad, but boy did it do a job on my stomach. I wonder what was in it that made me react that way? I've never had it again.
 
Whirlcool: sure sounds like you had bad hamburger or whatever you added...if it only happened once, you got tainted meat. Otherwise, spices, preservatives(fondly named Natural Flavors by manufacturers) and Godknowwhatelse probably attacked, if you never ate it again.

Ultramatic - omg, I just gained a 100 pounds reading your post, lol.

ovrphil++6-7-2013-14-58-44.jpg
 
I think it may have been the MSG in the Hamburger Helper. Later on I found that I was sensitive to it. So when we go to Chinese food places I only go to places that advertise that their food is MSG free. And a lot of the restaurants around here are like that.
 

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