It’s funny, everyone I know who remembers government cheese is fro red state America.
We had powdered milk when I was a kid, too, and I expect it probably came from the government, too (I seem to remember it being in very bland packaging). But my sister and I refused to drink it after we’d tried real milk, so Mom had to give up on that one. In the span of a week or two, we went from “Mom, the milk at the babysitter’s house tastes funny” to “Mom, the milk at our house tastes funny”.
EDIT: madmonk28, I’m from Ohio, about as purple a state as you can get, and most of my family, including my mom, has always been fairly economically liberal.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had it. I think processed cheese has a worse reputation than it needs to. I’ve made some myself. But like the OP, I’d like to have some for comparisons.
When my dad was laid off in the early 60’s, we got some cheese, powdered eggs, flour, butter, peanut butter, and other staples at the union hall. As I remember, the cheese was in big blocks.
We got it for a while when my son was small. It tasted like Kraft deluxe and made really good grilled cheese sandwiches.
The government was buying up all this dairy stuff to keep the price of milk up so dairies wouldn’t go out of business. Are they still doing that?
The version I remember was nowhere near as bland as American normally is. It was had that cheddar or Colby twang, even though it was distinctive.
This was what was used in schools, and my grandmother (who worked in the cafeteria) always told me it was government cheese.
My father-in-law used to get it, a pound a month? I think? And it was really good cheese. He also got a pound (?) of flour. He brought it to us, because what was he gonna do with all that cheese and flour? In return we fed him whenever. I recall the cheese as being moderately sharp and not at all like Velveeta (not that I’d know from Velveeta).
He also got large cans of orange juice. I guess it had vitamin C, otherwise it in no way resembled orange juice.
So that’s a win on the cheese, a fail on the juice, and flour is flour.
When I was in graduate school, some of us went camping and one of us had gummint powdered eggs, perfect for camping. The best they ever tasted was when I was cooking and accidentally spilled the whole shaker of pepper into them. The reason we tasted them was, of course, we were camping, so what else were we gonna eat? It wasn’t like we could go shoot a nearby rabbit. But it turned out a snootful of pepper actually improved them. I have no idea how they compare with non-gummint powdered eggs, if there is such a thing. (And there shouldn’t be.)
Huh. I thought it was delivered on a government mule.
mmm
My grandmother was a widower raising her 5 youngest children and two grandchildren on a social security pension, you better believe we ate gummibit cheese. I remember it being super salty.
My grandmother ran the elementary school cafeteria. I remember the big blocks of yellow cheese used there. Seemed like “regular” cheese to me.
The comment about red states wasn’t meant as a dig, but I have two colleagues, one from Oklahoma and one from Nebraska who were reminiscing about that cheese when another guy from Texas joined in. I remember talk about Reagan giving away cheese, but everyone I know who remembers it was from red states. Was it primarily distributed to rural Americans, or part of an effort to shore up GOP support in House elections?
There was nothing wrong with the cheese; a lot of it was produced in Wisconsin, in the same factories and identical to their ‘non-government’ cheeses. It was just excess production that the government bought up (dairy supports, y’know).
I was on the staff of a Boy Scout summer camp in rural NE Ohio in the Eighties and we had gummint cheese, too. It came in big blocks, almost a foot on a side IIRC (although I didn’t work in the dining hall) and, as others have noted, tasted a lot like Velveeta or Kraft singles. I agree it was pretty good in grilled cheese sandwiches.
I don’t think anyone’s been saying there was anything wrong with it. There seems to be a strong consensus here that it was pretty good.
Unless you’re just weighing in as the resident cheese expert to register your agreement? What’s your opinion on the government marmite and the government neutronium?
madmonk, I don’t think it was specifically targeted at rural areas, just at the poor. The urban poor got government cheese, too.
Strongly opposed to both except under careful security controls.
Given the choice I’d eat the neutronium.
I remember those big blocks from the news reports at the time. I think the cheese came in five-pound bricks. So did they just give each family five pounds at at time, or did they cut up the bricks? Because I imagine it’s going to take some time to consume that much cheese.
Single 5lb brick in our case.
So how long did it last? And how big was your family?