Canned veggies and fruits were cheaper back in the day (I also grew up during the 70s/80s). For families living on a shoestring, as mine was, you purchased as many foods as you could in bulk, and things that would last a long time, in case money wasn’t available the next time you wanted to go shopping. And in a family of milk-drinkers, powdered milk (usually cut into whole milk) is a lot cheaper, and goes a lot farther when the family consumes more than a gallon a day.
My mom is a good, if uninspired, cook-- very much of the variety that comes home from work exhausted and just wants to get something nutritious on the table in as little time as possible. She makes quite a number of FABULOUS dishes, can bake like a dream, and is pretty creative. But.
Her pork chops. She cooks them in the electric frying pan until you need a buzz saw to cut through them. These are served over plain white rice, and it’s all topped with “gravy.” The gravy consists of a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (did I mention I actively hate mushrooms?) whisked into the fat and bits of charred meat adhered to the bottom of the frying pan. Usually this was served with undrained canned green beans on the side. Ugh, ugh, ugh. For years I was mystified that anyone would order a pork chop at a restaurant.
The worst, though, was leftover gravy, heated and served on top of unheated, untoasted bread. BREAD. I took one bite and spent 5 minutes battling against my gag reflex. I lost.
My mom is universally acknowledged to be an excellent cook, so rarely if ever did she make a really bad version of some normal dish. But occasionally, she made recipes that were just too, umm, let’s say sophisticated, for my young palate.
The most infamous was Babootie, a bizarre african dish which (I just googled up a recipe) includes onions, garlic, curry powder, tumeric, meat, bread, apricot jam, raisins, a cooked apple, a mashed banana, wine, gravy, and bay leaves. I hope I’m not the only one repulsed by that.
There was also the infamous Welsh Rabbit, which, upon googling, just seems to be a spiced melted cheese sandwhich of some kind, but the memory of which still makes my stomach turn.
Once (I was about 6 yrs old) my mother was cooking green peas and allowed all the water to boil out of the pot. Peas subsequently got scalded and were black where they touched the pan. She served them to me and I complained that they were burnt. She screamed at me to eat the “black-eyed” peas because they were good for me. They tasted awful as you can imagine.
Years later I found out what black-eyed peas really were and now I actually like them.
My Mom is an awesome cook…but I still had two complaints:
fried eggs: My Mom could not fry eggs without making a ring of brown crunchy horror around each egg. The texture is repulsive. The worst part is my wife does the same thing! (even though I’ve told her I hate it and explained why it happens…must be a “mother” thing).
Shake’n’Bake Chicken Legs: Normally I would have nothing against this, but for about 5 years in my middle teens, we ate this at least 3-4 times a week. With plain boiled potatoes and either carrots or beans. I just got soooo sick of it, took almost 15 years before I would even try it again.
My Dad…now there was a master of bad cooking. I suppose it was due to the 5 years of Shake’n’Bake Chicken Legs, but he got into this “let’s have something different for a change” mode that saw him produce these timeless classics:
Kidney Lasagna (retch)
Pork Hocks in Black Bean Sauce (took about a week to get the stench out of the house)
Liver Stir Fry (ughh)
Anything with fish…
Needless to say, I took up cooking around this time (survival instinct kicked in). I just hope my kids aren’t posting bad things about my cooking 25 years from now!