A Meditation on Farm Foods of My Youth

During these dog days of summer, I’m having a hard time gaining any enthusiasm for cooking a meal. Instead, I find myself musing upon the favorite foods of my youth. Food nostalgia is built into our DNA early in life, and these were the foods I ate growing up in the 1950s. When I think about them, I don’t connect them with some specific event or gathering, Instead, I think of both great taste and satiety. In most cases, those meals were primed to satisfy hearty appetites, but they also tasted great.

Writing down the names of those dishes prompted me to consider re-creating them every once in a blue moon for a home-cooked meal or side dish. I have no intention of inflicting them on Mrs. Farmboy. However, I might further consider an occasion that would allow a return to yesteryear. Or I could make them just for myself for lunch or just to enjoy in private.

Simple salads

This array of foods ranges from salads and sandwiches to cholesterol-heavy main dishes. They were the common fare of the farmland of the 1950s. The salads, for example, were easy to make back in the time when ingredients were not as diverse – for example, simple cottage cheese topped with a cool canned pear or peach. Sometimes it was fitted on an iceberg lettuce leaf. That, I am known to occasionally make for my lunch even now. Others include pea salad: thawed frozen peas, chopped celery, chopped hard-boiled eggs, salt, and mayonnaise. Another was a salad of chopped iceberg lettuce, sliced bananas, and Miracle Whip. It might not be for everyone, but I loved it. (I should note that my newly married sister once made it at her house, and my brother-in-law politely said after the meal, “You don’t need to fix this again.”)

Savory sandwiches

I had two favorite sandwiches, both prepared on white bread. These were usually midday meals, eaten quickly during planting or harvest season. The first was a simple ham salad – leftover ham ground in a hand-cranked meat grinder and mixed with sweet pickle relish and mayonnaise. If relish was not available, my mother says she would grind up some sweet pickles. The second was an egg and olive sandwich – hard-boiled eggs chopped and mixed with chopped green olives and mayo.

As for main dishes, my favorites were over the top in terms of appetite satisfaction. Take a casserole of scalloped potatoes and ham – not a flashy meal, but a mix of creamy Idaho potatoes and salt-tinged ham: thin-sliced potatoes tossed in flour, then layered with quarter-inch-thick sliced ham and covered with milk and baked. I couldn’t wait for it to come out of the oven. With the leftover ham bone, my mother would sometimes make simple ham and dumplings. Here’s a recipe that’s akin to what she made. Talk about satisfying an appetite. The last main dish was what we called a minute steak.  It’s a meal that’s close to what some in the Southwest call chicken-fried steak.  It’s a thin sirloin that’s been thinned and tenderized by a meat hammer or a machine tenderizer.  My mother would dredge the steaks in flour then fry them.  When done, she’d make gravy from the drippings and we’d eat a good old Midwestern meat and potatoes dinner. Pure satisfaction.

Delicious desserts

Humans are engineered to compartmentalize their meals – including saving room for dessert. One of my favorites was a graham cracker pudding. My mother layered graham crackers in a baking dish, covered them with vanilla pudding, another layer of crackers, more pudding, then topped it with a layer of whipped cream and chopped walnuts. It sat in the fridge for an hour to cool and set, and that was dessert.

We all have nostalgia for the meals of our formative years. I asked my friend Tom what food he yearned for from his youth, and he replied that it was his mother’s gravy. What about you? What dish from your youth do you crave? Please share.

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