Nostalgia for the Meals of a Farmboy

Lately, I’ve been thinking nostalgically about some of the dishes that I ate as a youngster. Maybe it’s because it’s the time of year when we began to prep the vast fields for planting – discing under the prior year’s corn stalks and plowing last year’s oats and hay. Tractors back then lacked power steering or a comfortable cab, so by the end of the day, I was cold and hungry.

I’m not hankering for a big plate of lime Jell-O, green bean casserole, or chipped beef on toast. On the other hand, I’d happily sit down to a meal of beef stroganoff (pictured above) or Swiss steak with brown gravy (some would call it Salisbury steak), and I’d welcome a side of three bean salad or macaroni salad. I’d also happily make a lunch of a ham salad sandwich or an egg and olive salad sandwich. And good old hash is always welcome. Here in New England, where it’s a cold, raw end-of-March day, I find myself nostalgic for this rib-sticking fare.

So what happened to these dishes that we seldom see any more? Why are they largely absent from today’s tables? For one thing, most are heavy and full of calories. Some such as condensed soup are high in salt, or there are not-terribly-appetizing additions such as Velveeta cheese. As for the latter, there was a pea salad with small chunks of Velveeta that I liked as a kid, but I’m not sure that my current palate would agree.

You couldn’t blame the cooks of the 1950s. They didn’t have easy access to ingredients. It was mostly canned foods. Dishes incorporated things like canned corned beef and canned sauerkraut together with store-bought Thousand Island dressing and shredded Swiss cheese to make a Reuben casserole. Too many dishes of the era featured condensed soups – cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, or cream of celery. Not to mention liberal use of canned vegetables – peas, green beans, and corn.

If you wanted real Italian food in the middle of the Farm Belt, fuhgeddaboudit. Making lasagna, for example, was challenging. The population in our area was mostly people of northern European heritage, and they weren’t shopping for Italian ingredients. I have an old-time recipe for lasagna casserole that incorporates ground beef, minced garlic, Hamburger Helper, frozen chopped spinach, cottage cheese, and grated mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

Still, these cooks creatively came up with decent meals. There’s a recipe in my grandmother’s church cookbook for “chicken loaf” made with cooked chicken, cooked rice, eggs, canned mushroom soup, chicken broth, and seasonings. Just toss it in the oven for an hour or so and you have an easy dinner. I’ll pass on that one, but I could be tempted with a 1950s neighbor’s recipe for hamburger noodle casserole. Then, I’d be ready to finish plowing the back 40.

Do you have a dish from your youth you’d like to make and share? Please tell.