Do you cook the same style meals you grew up eating?

[Julie's Haircut]

My father insisted on having some type of meat at every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the meat had to be well done. Mostly boiled potatoes, sometimes mashed. And mushy canned vegetables. Like someone above mentioned, the only fresh vegetable was corn on the cob half a dozen times in summer. Sometimes even the potatoes were canned. The absolute worst was canned Veg-All mixed vegetables. You could taste the metal from the can.

Ethnic food was limited to spaghetti or canned La Choy chow mien. Occasionally there was a frozen boil-in-bag Chinese meal. My mother did make a good spaghetti sauce, but there was rarely any other type of pasta, just thin spaghetti. And it had to be served with meatballs or sausage.

My father died when I was 15 and my mother did expand her repertoire afterwards. Fresh or frozen veggies, meatless meals, etc.

Someone mentioned BBQs. Many men in my father's era probably couldn't boil water in the kitchen, yet were expected to grill the burgers and franks outside.

In my junior high school, all students, even boys, were required to take at least one quarter of home ec. So I learned to make some simple things and eventually developed into a fairly good cook. (Girls were required to take at least one quarter of shop, or as they called it, Industrial Arts.)

 

[Keli]

No, not really. But then from what I've noticed, my mom doesn't usually cook the same types of food now that she cooked when I was a kid. It doesn't come up in conversation that often but every now and then I happen to run by their house at dinner time and the foods she has prepared have more variety and are healthier versions than the dinners of my childhood. But she has less budget constraints and the overall focus on healthy eating has probably had an impact as well. I know I tend to fix healthier meals now than I did when my daughter was young, and probably for the same reasons.

 

[Kitty 34]

The only things I cooks that are similar to my Mom's meals are various roast beef dinners. Otherwise I wasn't a fan of a lot of her cooking choices.

 

[Hikergirl]

No I am a much more adventurous "chef" than my parents ever were.

 

[justafigment27]

No. My Dad loved to cook & to experiment with food (and was very good at it) and my Mom was/is a great baker.

I hate to cook, so our meals are nowhere near as nice or varied as the ones I grew up with ...

 

[nene0182]

Nope. We ate a lot of processed and convenient foods (like hamburger helper, instant mashed potatoes) We also ate a lot of deer, fish, pheasant and other things my dad hunted. I cook from scratch mostly and we rarely eat red meat. My husband grew up with a lot of different hotdishes. I make a type of hotdish maybe once or twice a year. Of course those are the days he’s super excited for dinner.

 

[Wishing on a star]

Aimee, Nene, your descriptions of the boxed processed foods just makes me cringe!!!!

Yes, we cook and eat differently than we did years ago.

I am from the South, and I was raised on southern foods. Many things fried. basic foods like beans and potatoes.
I did, not long ago, make a nice southern fried steak (ground steak) and gravy. Hadn't done that in years.
OMG it was so good!

My husbands mom was not from the South... she was the basic, 1950's, pull the beef/pork/meat roast out of the oven and serve with potatoes... right at 5:30, EVERY night.

Both of us had limited culinary experience. My husband's was like really, really, limited. My husband had barely even had Mexican or Italian!

 

[ronandannette]

I need to eat tuna casserole at least once every two years. I have to make myself a tiny one because no one else will eat it lol

I never had stuff like that as a kid; it always sounded intriguing but I wasn't even really sure if it actually existed or was just a cliche. My DH (for God alone knows what reason) made one once. It was boiled macaroni, undrained canned tuna and frozen peas all held together with cream of chicken soup. So gross I had to swallow it without chewing. Our little DS was game for it though because having his Dad cook was a real novelty. His assessment: "It tastes OK but why does it smell like cat food?".

 

[RedAngie]

I never had stuff like that as a kid it always sounded intriguing but I wasn't even really sure if it actually existed or was just a cliche. My DH (for God alone knows what reason) made one once. It was boiled macaroni, undrained canned tuna and frozen peas all held together with cream of chicken soup. So gross I had to swallow it without chewing. Our little DS was game for it though because having his Dad cook was a real novelty.. His assessment: "It tastes OK but why does it smell like cat food?".

He forgot the most important ingredient in tuna noodle casserole: the crushed potato chips on top.

I still make it once or twice a year.

My mother was a fairly decent cook, but her repertoire was limited. I make meals and use ingredients I never knew existed when I was a kid and teen.

 

[mumto3girls]

He forgot the most important ingredient in tuna noodle casserole: the crushed potato chips on top.

I still make it once or twice a year.

My mother was a fairly decent cook, but her repertoire was limited. I make meals and use ingredients I never knew existed when I was a kid and teen.

I loved tuna noodle casserole as a kid. We ate it fairly often on Fridays during Lent and occasionally the rest of the year. I usually requested it for my birthday dinner. My mom made it with whatever pasta she had—typically those wide egg noodles that come in a bag, but sometimes macaroni, cream of mushroom soup, drained tuna and crushed Ritz crackers on top. No peas—never heard of that until I was an adult. We ate peas though, just never in tuna noodle casserole.

My mom was an excellent cook. Her biggest downfall was that she hated grocery shopping and only went every other week. Sometimes the end of that second week was a bit rough. Fortunately we had milk delivered back then and my parents always had a huge garden and we grew a lot of what we ate and froze a lot, canned a little. She took a lot of ethnic cooking classes back in the early 80’s and subscribed to cooking magazines and traded recipes with other family members who liked to cook. I cook similarly to her, but my husband is picky so I cook around what he will and won’t eat and oldest DD is vegetarian so that adds another limitation. Basically I try to do some type of meat/chicken/fish; a starch—noodles, bread, potatoes, rice; a cooked vegetable and either a plate of raw veggies/salad/maybe fruit. Everyone then gets to eat the stuff they like and can ignore the rest. One pot type meals don’t work well here.

 

[CdnCarrie]

My Mom was and still is a great cook and baker. She was a SAHM for the first 10-12 years of my life so had time for meal prep. She also was a farm girl that was into gardening so lots of fresh veggies.
I wouldn't say she cooked much in the way of ethnic cuisines as she from a Anglo-Saxon roast and potatoes farm family.
The most ethnic thing she did cook was a few Polish dishes that our neighbour taught her - cabbage rolls and perogies.

She did some great casseroles like tuna and Shepard's pie. Lots of roasts, mashed potatoes, etc. Then would use the leftovers for hash or something.
Always a salad and veggies at every meal. Sometimes canned like corn but not that often.

I cook very similar but I don't enjoy it like she does. I'm a lazy cook.

 

[jsmith]

My mother was both an excellent cook and later in life a registered dietician. We did eat some things based on processed and boxed foods because of either budget or distance/storage. After the Army my father worked for the Forest Service and we literally lived out in the sticks with limited refrigeration which limited fresh foods. Grocery shopping was once a month. And she fried some things, primarily fish and chicken that I usually do not.
My mother in law was the child of Belgian emrigee's and had somethings in her cooking style that were distinctly northern European.
While I still have some comfort food dishes that come from our past ( sausage with 'fried" ( actually sautéed in butter) apples, my mothers unique tuna casserole and my mother in laws cabbage with sausages). I generally cook much more fresh veggies and much less meat. We eat fish twice a week and beef generally once or less. I also don't think there has to be both a bread and another starch, or even any starch at all, with every meal. Protein source and veggies is good enough and sometimes the protein source is veggie. We generally eat lighter and I cook a lot of 20 minute things during the week. However cooking is a form of recreation for me and I am a life long sourdough baker so come the weekend I do much more complex dishes.

Also the "healthy" thing changes from generation to generation. I saw an earlier mention of replacing LARD with coconut oil-lard has fewer calories and less saturated fat than coconut oil. sooo healthy can be relative.

 

[Ellie008]

We don't cook the same types of food that we ate growing up. My parents actually don't eat the same types of food now that they cooked when I was growing up either. I think DH's parents eat fairly similarly to what they used to, but not totally sure.

 

[disykat]

I make tuna casserole MORE than my mom did. It's my ultimate comfort food and my family loved it too. I probably make it every month or two.