Mustard steak. Didn’t have it often, but it was some kind of steak – probably just a round steak as it wasn’t a choice cut. It was slathered with mustard and set right on the hot coals. Another thing I had very rarely was fresh pick-your-own strawberries. Could only get them in June and were much better than store-bought nowadays.
Chocolate is a given, but at a fairly young age, my absolutely favorite dinner was liver and lima beans. Still love it and I’m glad that the local diners have liver on the menu (though I have to have lima beans at home).
I think the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich is pretty standard kid food in the US. It is one of my brother’s favorite foods [along with apple pie.]
If you like the fried bologna sandwich, you should try getting mortadella cut half an inch thick and grilling it on a foreman grill and cutting it into 1 inch chunks as a sort of hors d’oeuvre on toothpicks with a mustard for dipping.
As to my favorites? I am torn between the absolute classic Thanksgiving of roast turkey, stuffing cooked outside the bird in a casserole dish, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry from a can jelly, frenched green beans almandine [not the mushroom soup shit] and pumpkin pie or the classic corned beef, cabbage, potato, carrot, onion, celery boiled dinner with apple pie for dessert. If it is something lighter, I like a pair of lightly poached eggs with toast and a half grapefruit with coffee light and [splenda] sweet or eggs benedict with proper hollandaise sauce. If it has to be one single thing, then no question - all the whole globe artichokes steamed and served with drawn butter or italian dressing I can stuff down my throat!
Of course being diabetic, I can rarely indulge myself in all of any given thing I want to eat. I suppose I could eat all the artichokes I want as long as it was dipped in herbed vinegar with restrained amounts of olive oil as the dressing …
Fried chicken. I always got the wishbone and the neck to nibble on later while I read.
I might have said pizza but we didn’t have that when I was growing up. It wasn’t available and now I can’t remember when I had my first one.
One Saturday morning while watching Circus Boy I realized I could never go to a foreign country because they might not have potato chips.
Something we’d have occasionally was a big round of baloney on the rotisserie, scored like ham and slathered with mustard while it crisped.
All of that can now “get into mah belly!”
Mine was our typical Tuesday dinner: fried pork chops, black beans, rice, and cornbread. I fix it about twice a month, in a more adult version: jerk seasoned broiled pork chops, black beans, rice, cornbread with jalapeno mixed in, served with Moscato.
If you asked my siblings, they would say my favorite was liver and onions, which I do like, but they remember it that way because they hated them and blamed me for not presenting the united front that they think might have gotten them off the menu forever. 
Wow! That sounds incredible. Especially the adult version.
Roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy. And my Nana’s fried chicken. Nothing compares.
I never had pizza till I was about 23 years old, because I DO NOT like cheese. When I was in the Air Force stationed in Germany, we all hung out at a pizza place on base, and that’s all they served, so I had to eat pizza or nothing. I kinda nibbled.
Wow purplehorseshoe, That sounds so Freaking good & simple, too. I’m off to the store tomorrow !!! Thanks, realmarine
Pshaw. No homemade recipe can match the grandeur and majesty of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from the blue box. “Real” cheese simply cannot compare to day-glo orange cheese powder.
I assume by “kiwis”, you mean the fruits, not the birds. Or the New Zealanders.
(Of course, if said New Zealander was cute, “eating kiwis” could be quite enjoyable as an adult too…)
A rare, special treat that I adored was cream cheese and peanut sandwiches on soft white bread. You had to be careful that spreading the cream cheese didn’t tear the bread, and when you had a nice, thick layer, you pressed salted peanuts into it - as many as it would hold - then top it with another slathered piece of bread that you mooshed down till you could see the peanut bumps! My classmates would stare at me at lunch as if I was insane, but oh, how I loved those sandwiches!!!
Second choice would be date nut bread with a dollop of cream cheese and a cashew on top - my mom still makes those as appetizers on occasion. Heck, I’d just eat little cubes of cream cheese - loved that stuff!!!
Hot dogs. They were nearly always available in the places my family ate at, maybe because restaurateurs anticipated picky eaters.
My mother’s fried chicken and homemade, baked mac & cheese. I can do the mac & cheese to perfection but never did master her chicken. 
I have to add this (my mom’s version) to my list of favorites.
My (and my baby sister’s) favorite was always the carrots from around the pot roast. As we got older, Mom substantially increased the proportion of carrots, since the two of us would make them our main course.
A few other things that I absolutely loved were eggs poached in milk over toast , grilled cheese sandwiches and mayonnaise cake.
You’ve piqued my curiosity; do you have the recipe for mayonnaise cake?
(One of my sons roast favorites is the celery. Who eats that? lol But I use a lot, for him.)
Peanut butter and jelly - I remember the last day of grade school before I went to a school with a cafeteria and my mother gleefully making my last peanut butter and jelly sandwich and saying, “Good - I never have to make another one!”
Then cheeseburgers.
And in the Midwest, pork tenderloin sandwiches - man I miss those!
Me, too! Do you have a recipe for it that you can share with us???
<Wipes drool from chin>
It’s around here somewhere. I haven’t made one in years. Essentially, it is a rich, dark chocolate cake that uses mayonnaise for part of the fat. It has always been a family favorite on Mom’s side.
If you are truly interested, I can get out the recipe files and pm it to you.