crunchy peanut butter.
Shoo-fly pie. Chicken corn soup with doughballs. Chocolate coins wrapped in foil. All my childhood memories seem to be fattening.
Oh yeah…
Corndogs here too, although I wouldn’t eat one on a dare these days.
I grew up in New England, and there is a sandwich spread called Marshmallow Fluff that is popular there. You spread it on white bread with peanut butter, and you get what is called a Fluffernutter sandwich.
I don’t know if this stuff is available outside of New England, I’ve never seen it in a Mid-Atlantic grocery store. But it definitely brings me back to grade school.
Lucky Charms Cereal - What Happened to the Original Lucky Charms Marshmellow, like Gran-Gran used to have?
Chocolate milk. My parents insisted on making us drink regular two percent milk most of the time, but we got to have chocolate milk on our birthdays. 
When I was a kid we’d visit my maternal grandparents one Sunday afternoon a month. Grandmother would always make a traditional “homestyle” meal to die for and then afterwards the men folk would crank a churn of homeade ice cream out on the front porch. Grandaddy had this habit of pouring a bottle of flavored pop into the ice cream mix - grape, strawberry, orange, what have you, to lend a little extra flavor to the standard vanilla mix. I remember the first time that Grandaddy told me I could pick and pour a bottle into the ice cream, a duty usually reserved for the men.
Grandaddy died in 1971 and so did that little homespun tradition. We still make the ice cream, with a motorized maker, usually on the 4th and we always fondly recall Grandaddy’s method.
Marshmellow creme, Spam, and Tang…
We weren’t too well off when I was growing up.
We had oatmeal six days a week for breakfast until I was in junior high.
Made with powdered milk.
It was disgusting.
It is funny because now oatmeal doesn’t remind me so much of having to eat it every day, but rather of how much I used to look forward to Sunday breakfast because we would have eggs or pancakes.
Miabella, I second you on the Marshmallow Fluff. When I lived in CA, my mom used to send me Fluffernutter Care Packages.
When I was little, mom used to make graham cracker Fluffernutter sandwiches, and bring them to us out in our snow forts, along with a Thermos of hot cocoa (which also had a big spoonful of Fluff in it:))
“Fluffernutter” sounds like a very specialized technical occupation in the porn industry:D
Frikadeller, and I made them for some friends just last night. They are a Danish style mixed ground beef and pork, fried meatball that is just heavenly.
I went full goose bozo and did the mashed potatoes, sautéd onions, brown gravy plus steamed broccoli and scratch cheddar cheese sauce. The meatballs were some of the best I have ever made. My friends went nutso and I was transported back to my Copenhagen born grandmother’s kitchen in the Berkeley hills.
Other childhood memory foods:
Peanut butter and Mayonnaisse sandwich
Fishcakes in tomato sauce
Fried chicken hearts
BLT sandwich
Cold cooked brocolli with 1,000 island dressing
Avocado slices with Mayonnaise
Potato chips with California dip
Poached eggs on buttered English muffins
Shrimp cocktail
Sunstone, would you actually put the cornbread in the buttermilk? I’m a fan of cornbread and buttermilk separately, but together? Interesting. I had forgotten all about buttermilk until you mentioned it. My grandma would always have that on hand and I used to love it! We would drink it by itself or she would sometimes add a dollop of sour cream to which we would dip one of her Ukrainian creations called…and I’m spelling this phonetically because I have no idea of the actual spelling…Peddleheays…which I’ve come to know by the more popular name of Perogies. Who would have thought I’d one day be able to buy them in the grocery store. Grandma’s were, of course, so much better. Mmmmm…that was some good eatin’.
Tiger’s Milk bars. These are energy bars you can find in a health food store. Yes, I realize this is kind of weird, but when I was a kid, the only grocery store we could walk to was a health food store. Also, my mom is a diabetic, so I grew up in a mostly sugar-free household.
Anyway, I used to love the Frances books. They’re kids picture books about the adventures of Frances, a hedgehog. There was one about how Frances bought her friend a Chompo Bar for his birthday, and then she ate it. I was very young, and for some reason, I decided that Tiger’s Milk bars were Chompo Bars, and would beg my parents for one whenever we saw them in the store. I still call them Chompo Bars, and they’re still a treat for me.
Also, yogurt-covered raisins, which for some reason no one remembers, we called chicken pox.
I still eat most of the stuff I ate as a kid, since I learned how to cook from my mom. One peculiar thing that always makes me feel like a kid is eating a slice of cheddar cut off the block using the same knife used to chop garlic. This only occurs when I’m making a taco/enchilada dinner. As a kid, I’d stand by Mom while she cooked, waiting for the moment when she was done making the Spanish rice that required the garlic and would move on to shredding the cheese, because she’d always slice off a piece of the block of cheddar for me (still my favorite cheese ever). I did this once shortly after moving away for the first time, and I very nearly crumpled up on the floor crying from homesickness.
Holy moly. I loved those books, and totally forgot about them until I read your post.
You know those little candy dots that are stuck to the long rolls of paper? Those bring me right back to my younger years, which now that I think of it was not that long ago…
-foxy
Mmmmm - I’m waxing nostalgic right now. Broken down by relatives:
Dad
*Liverwurst and red onion sanwiches on Jewish rye bread - Saturday lunch after the cartoon glut.
*Extra sharp New York cheddar cheese and Ritz crakers - he would (and still does) stack them up and jam about 5 layers in his mouth. Still cracks me up.
*Scrambled eggs and hamburger - don’t ask - this was pretty much all my Dad could cook, and I was just so tickled when my Mom wasn’t home and he would make dinner just for ME.
*Rainbow sherbet - summertime dessert.
Mom
*Grilled cheese and tomato soup made with milk (and a touch of half & half) with cracked black pepper on the top. Rainy day favorite.
*Ellio’s frozen pizza
*Stouffer’s frozen macaroni & cheese - still how I think mac & cheese should taste
*Buttermilk pancakes and Bob Evan’s sausage - cut in wheels. Sunday after church staple.
Nana
Roast beef and mashed potatoes - she made the meanest -
Creamed cabbage from Moe’s on Frankford Ave in Philly.
Heavenly hash ice cream - always had this around, without fail.
Tollhouse cookies - she always made them with jumbo egges (as a kid they looked like freaking OSTRICH eggs to me). So they would come out thinner and crispier - practically dissolved in milk. Scrumptious.
Grammy
Homemade pieroges - to die for. I won’t eat any but hers. She fried them in salt pork - so so so bad for you but so so so good. She would give me the cracklings after they were cooked. Yum.
Homemade keilbasa - from Old John around the corner - lovely dark sausage, very spicy.
Guwumpki (sp?) (stuffed cabbage) - stinky but delicous.
Clam boil - food of the gods. Clams, corn on the cob, deli hot dogs, onion, potatoes, and sausage (linguisa - Portugese sausage) all in a back spackleware pot cooked on a gas stove.
Hungry?
Cheerios with sugar. I stopped putting sugar on my cereal years ago but every once in a while I’ll throw a spoonful on a bowl of cheerios ( about 1/6 the amount my sister and I used to use.) And for reasons I cannot explain, although we had cereal every day I now associate this breakfast with Saturday morning cartoons.
I’m not out to stir up controversy but I’m pretty sure Frances is a badger.
Fresh sweet peas from the garden. My granddad had a fantastic wild garden out back, down in Wilmington, NC, and the rows of peas were my favorite. I would graze them, snarfing pod after pod. Nothing like it in the world.
Whole wheat crescent rolls. My mom made them for special dinners, and they were buttery and sweet with honey and dark and lovely. I’m a good baker, and I have my own holiday bread recipes, but I’ve never been able to get her crescent rolls just right.
Raw cheese sandwiches: orange cheddar cheese on squishy whole wheat bread, no mustard, no veggies, no grilling. Brings me back to childhood.
Daniel