Sweet n sour weinies, which may have been my dad’s method of introducing his daughters to adventurous foods. Mix 2/3 cup ketchup or BBQ sauce, 1 can of chunk pineapple, 2 green pepper and 1 sweet onion cut into large chunks, pack of hot dogs cut into bite sized pieces. Simmer until vegetables tender and serve over rice. Sounds disgusting now, but my mouth is watering. Very tangy, and made the transition to Chinese buffet easy for picky little kids.
“Spanish Rice” - white rice with a jar of home-canned tomatoes dumped over it.
Taco salad - some ground beef browned, mix with a head of iceberg lettuce shredded, a little shredded cheddar cheese, catalina dressing, and a small bag of Doritoes. To feed a family of six.
Sunday night was popcorn while watching Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney programs. A special treat would be rootbeer floats.
My mother was a very good cook and always had a garden no matter where we moved. We didn’t get many luxuries but we never went hungry.
My specialty is that I can casserole anything with some “cream of” soup, and have it turn out delicious.
Fried leftover pasta. When I was a kid it was always spaghetti because that’s all there was, as far as we knew. Fried in butter until brown in spots and doused in Maggi sauce. You can use any pasta, but spaghetti is still the best.
My odd food dish is called cabbage balls by the family but it is not exactly the dish that usually goes by that name. Mine is: mix lean ground beef with onion soup mix, form into 1 1/2 inch meatballs, place in the bottom of large heavy pot, add 1 head cabbage cut into chunks about 1 to 1 1/2 inches, cover this with several potatoes peeled and cut into chunks. ALL AMOUNTS VARIABLE! next add another envelope onion soup mix and 1 cup water and cover and cook until all is done. Serve by dishing out some of everything on a plate and adding a spoonful or so of the juice. Dig in! Not a pretty dish but my whole family loves it!
We fried leftover pasta too, but for some reason it was called “refried” spaghetti in our house. And it was breakfast.
My mom’s version of everything-in-a-pan was called “mish-mash.” It rarely had the same ingredients more than once.
French toast with cheese. Cook one side of the egg soaked bread and flip. Place cheese slices on top - works with process cheese, but is much better with a nice cheddar. As the other side cooks, the cheese melts. Slide off the pan and serve. Do not add syrup.
I had never eaten French toast any other way until I was well into my adult years. People looked at me like I was crazy when I told them about it. Thanks Mom. Now I like FT with either maple syrup or cheese, depending on whether I want sweet or savoury for breakfast. Either way goes equally well with bacon.
These are great! My mother would serve seashell noodles in a bowl of tomato soup. Or plain white rice with milk and sugar.
Creamed beans: make a butter/flour roux and pour in a can of pork & beans, stir til thick, serve over toast.
<show of hands> Who called weenies “tube steak” and baloney “Kentucky round steak”?
Egg noodles, still warm, mixed with cottage chesse and cinnamon-sugar. Yummy.
A bowl of piping hot pinto beans cooked with garlic and bacon, topped with a scoop of cottage cheese.
Bagels with both cream cheese and a slice of regular cheese, usually swiss, heated about 30 seconds in the microwave to soften or partially melt the cheese without ending up with a flaming hot sticky mess.
When I was a kid our family put cinnamon sugar (mix) on waffles before putting syrup over the top. I still do it, and keep a salsa jar with some mixed in the cupboard. Don’t hear of too many people doing this.
I used to cook up a blend of refried beans (black bean or both kinds together), hamburger and melted cheese with chili spices, and then eat it with chips for dinner. Haven’t done that in a while now. Maybe this fall when it gets cooler.
Hell, pour a few scrambled eggs and some cheese in the pan and you have a classic dish of frittata di spaghetti.
My SO’s childhood comfort food: potato soup. Peeled, cubed, and boiled a ton of potatoes, chopped onion and added bacon and cheddar. Nope. Roasted garlic and smoked gouda: no, not even close. Chunks of ham, onion, celery, and American cheese? Nope. Exasperated, dumped a bag of freezer burned hash browns into boiling water with a cube of chicken bullion: bingo. Best since Granny made it for him.
Reading these postings reminded me of another meal-stretcher my mom used to make - creamed ground beef. She’d brown the beef then add a white sauce of some sort, and serve it over toast or mashed potatoes. I don’t know if she or Dad liked it, but the five of us kids inhaled the stuff.
Imagine the unpleasant surprise when, years later, I tried creamed chipped beef on toast. No one warned me it was so salty!!! :eek:
My father had a dish he liked to make for himself, because he was the only one that would eat it!
He would crumble cornbread into crumbs, add diced onions, then pour buttermilk over it all until it was the consistency of soggy cereal and eat it with a spoon. I tried it a few times and it was horrible, he claimed it was a recipe his family would make as a child.
Dishing this thread up at Cafe Society. From IMHO.
My family would make cheese blintzes with no sugar or other sweetening ingredients whatsoever. We’d make huge batches of them every December 25th when there’d be absolutely nothing else to do.
Now it’s always a disappointment when I get them in a restaurant and they’re loaded with sugar. They’re supposed to be savory!
I don’t know how we arrived at it, but my mother once mixed cooked rice with crumbled, browned ground beef. We called it Snowy Mountain and requested it all the time.
I recently found a recipe based on this but with the addition of sauteed onions and spices. I believe some beef broth was added then simmered. It was called Egyptian Rice and dang it was good.
We had this. Called it “creamed hamburger on toast.”
My father did this, too. Or just plain white bread torn up in a bowl with buttermilk poured over. A girlfriend’s father ate this, too, and it always struck me as kind of a rural-country-farm thing.
You just made me realize I’ve made dirty rice a bunch of times, and it never dawned on me that snowy Mountain was just a less Cajun version. :smack:
My mom and my grandmother both used to open a can of corn niblets, drain it, and dump it into the pancake batter. Fry pancakes as usual.
Apparently, there was a lot of corn around and not so much blueberries or anything else you’d normally put into pancakes. I was in my mid-20s before I realized that my family are the only people who make pancakes with corn in them. I still think pancakes are just “wrong” without corn in them.