My dad is a middle school teacher, and even though he always brings his lunch, he loves it when they serve chicken a la king in the school cafeteria, and always brings his own giant Tupperware container from home for them to fill up. After 30 years of this, the cafeteria staff has officially renamed it “Chicken a la [Lou’s Dad].”
I’ve prepared (and eaten) almost everything mentioned in this thread over the last year or so (except the faggots, and they sound damn good). 
Instead of salmon croquettes I fixed salmon patties. (I guess they’re just a flattened croquette.) I love that boxed stuffing, and there was a salmon pattie recipe on the box.
In the past week, I have fixed and eaten egg salad (for sandwiches) and a tuna and noodle casserole using canned fried onions.
I don’t care. I’m old. My food tastes are old. It’s all comfort food now.
I can’t get it out of my mind. Every time I see this thread title, I just feel the urge to share.
There was Hamburger Helper and Tuna Helper, may still be, but somebody, and I forget where (SNL maybe) had Placenta Helper.
There. Now I can forget it.
My mom makes pot roast all the time, and she also makes pineapple upside-down cake.
And I make salmon patties, which I guess are just another word for salmon croquettes. Heh, and so does this woman I work with. There is no nastier smell than microwaved salmon patties at 8 a.m. barf
I miss those pudding popsicles. They aren’t a dish, but they were so delicious when I was a kiddo.
OMG, my baba used to make the nastiest jello molds. The worst was with pretzels. Ick!
Tuna casserole is pretty much unheard-of these days.
Did anyone else’s mother make a giant pot of chili and serve that, and only that, as dinner? I don’t think people do that anymore – now it’s more of a soup/appetizer kind of thing. My mother used to give my father a HUGE bowl that he’d fill with chili, then proceed to take an entire stack of saltine crackers from the box and crumble it up into the bowl, effectively making the chili dry. I like adding crackers, but nowhere near that quantity.
Sadly, fondue and fondue parties seem to have disappeared, as well.
Now that I got that clog out of my mind, and considering that it’s been years since I had it, I’ll list the Dinty Moore Beef Stew concoction I used to fix a lot.
Not that DMBS isn’t okay right out of the can, heated up obviously, but I found that I could make it special by adding varying amounts (never did measure) of:
Tabasco
Worcestershire
Vinegar
A-1 sauce
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Oregano
Lemon Pepper
and probably other things lurking in the spice cabinet
Cheese (usually cheddar – sharp)
Sour cream
It was good, and I feel like eating some right now.
Does anyone eat blancmanges anymore? Anyone have a recipe?
We did that once in a while, and I’m a huge chili fan so I prepare it for myself quite a bit as a main course. I almost always serve my chili over pasta, though… that’s what we called “Cowboy Spaghetti” in my house.
My mom still makes a big pot of chili and calls it dinner, although I think she might serve sandwiches with it nowadays.
Scary but funny. :eek:
Heck yeah! Chili is damn good comfort food in cold weather. A big bowl of chili over macaroni with shredded cheddar on top - color me happy!
Ahh … chili two ways or “two-way chili,” a Cincinnati tradition.
Oh, I’m quite familiar with Skyline Chili, having eaten at two of the very rare Florida locations. My chili is very different from Cincinnati-style, but Skyline is a rare treat. I actually put shredded cheese, beans, and onions in mine, so that’s a five-way, right?
Yup. That’s a five-way.
Looking through those 1974 Weight Watchers cards, it occurred to me that even though it’s just an ingredient rather than a whole dish, pimiento might be an appropriate item to add to the list. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone eating one in 25 or 30 years.
What the hell ARE Chicken ala King and Chicken Divan, anyways?
Mom makes a damned good pot roast, with the carrots and potatos cooked in the pot. That’s a pretty simple dish, I can’t see it going the way of tuna casseroles and liver and onions.
Let’s see, she also makes-
-Big pot of chili
-beef Stroganoff
-meat loaf (which I hate)
-chicken pot pie
-beans and weenies
-halupkis (stuffed cabbage roles. BARF!)
When I was in high school, for a friend’s sweet sixteen, her mother made all these various jello-marshmallow-fruit-mayo salads. Ambrosia, anyone? I thought they were okay, but I’d rather just have plain old fruit.
Heh. I just made a batch of pimento-cheese spread yesterday!
Oh yes, every once in a while she’d serve it over spaghetti noodles, too. We called it Chili Mac, though, even if it was over spaghetti vs macaroni noodles.
And speaking of macaroni, she also used to make huge casseroles of macaroni and cheese. The really cool thing about her recipe was that she managed to find really, really long macaroni noodles, like 12" long! She’d bake it until the top layer was crunchy and our favorite part was scraping the blackened bits off the glass dish. YUM. I can hear my arteries clogging just typing this. 
IIRC, the grownups’ favorite side dish with this was stewed tomatoes soaked up with white bread. Blech!! Thank goodness they didn’t make us kids eat any of that nastiness.
Martha Stewart’s magazine had a recipe for it sometime within the last five years. It is not on her website, though, so I wonder if she decided it was a mistake.
One of my lunchtime staples is pasta and canned tuna, spiffed up with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. I guess it’s kind of like tuna casserole. Well, okay, not really.
You can find my chicken divan recipe here. I actually still like it, though I can see why it would’ve gone by the wayside.
Chicken a la King is basically an inside-out chicken pot pie.