Old-Fashioned Family Food Nostalgia

Each of us has a portfolio of recipes that we ate as children, but that are no longer on our adult menus. Think about your own experience. You can probably come up with a goodly number of meals that were repeated again and again, some of which you loved and some which you did not; some which you’d consider re-creating and some others – fuggedaboutit.

On a visit back to the farm in Illinois last week, I had the opportunity over dinner one evening to reminisce about our meals with my mother and my sister. It didn’t take us long to list close to 20 different dishes that frequented the Midwestern farm table back in the 1950s. They were mostly tasty and filling (at least for the majority of the family), but you’d be challenged to find anyone eating them today.

No 21^st-century American would wonder why we no longer consume that salad of lime Jell-O packed with canned pears and runny cottage cheese, or the creamed chipped beef on toast, or fried Spam. They just don’t appeal to people. And some of those forgotten dishes might be difficult to duplicate. My mother said she is unable to reprise one of my favorite childhood dishes – chicken and homemade noodles – simply because she can’t find a source for the fat old stewing hen that makes the dish a taste delight. As for some of the others, they are likely neglected in today’s households because they take too much time to prepare. But let’s admit it; some have simply fallen out of fashion through no fault of their own.

Favorite farmboy fare

Nonetheless, during my visit, my mother made me one item from the list: an egg-and-olive sandwich, a favorite from my youth that was a great lunch after a morning working in the fields. Chopped hard-boiled eggs, chopped pimento-stuffed olives, and mayonnaise – what a perfect combination of creamy fat and sour acid.

I’m also thinking about Harvard beets. Mrs. Farmboy reports that indeed, Harvard beets were one of her childhood favorites, and beets should soon be appearing at farm markets. (On her family supper table, however, the beets were from a can.) Frankly, some of the salads of that era weren’t too bad: cottage cheese and canned pears or peaches on crunchy iceberg lettuce, and even another one of my favorites: a salad of iceberg lettuce and sliced bananas with Miracle Whip. Though I will say that when my newly married sister prepared this salad, my brother-in-law later informed her, “You don’t need to make this one again.”

Some of those old-fashioned dinners might be worth resurrecting. When the weather cools off, how about scalloped potatoes and ham? Or, the next time you enjoy a baked ham, how about making ham and dumplings with the leftover ham bone? I’ve always loved dumplings, which I called “dunklings” when I was young.

Recipes to resurrect

For a cool, easy summer dessert, here’s an offering that was a favorite of mine and my sisters: graham cracker pie, made with ingredients easily available in the 1950s. Just line a 9×12” glass baking dish with graham crackers, top them with a layer of sliced bananas covered with vanilla pudding (packaged is perfectly good, though my mom made it from scratch), then repeat. Cool and cover with whipped cream. My mother topped it with chopped pecans, though my sister asked that her portion be nutless. I admit to requesting it a lot during my youth. There was nothing like it after wrestling 60-pound hay bales on a hot day.

Here are a few of the other dishes my sister and I remembered, many from recipes that my mother copied from her mother. Pea salad, every Sunday night dinner; as we reminisced, I recalled liking it, but my sister absolutely did not. Also, simple potato salad (potatoes, eggs, celery, and Miracle Whip); liver and onions; deviled eggs; scalloped corn; and yes, stuffed, baked beef heart and boiled beef tongue. We did raise cattle, after all.

I think some of these are worth a try over the next few months. What about you? Are there foods from your childhood that you miss that aren’t found at today’s table? What what’s the story behind them?

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