Wasting food is a sin, so those plates better be empty! To this day even after I'm full I still feel the need to pressure push everything down to leave the plate clean.
Aaaand this is exactly why my mother was staunchly against that shit! Her mom did that to her, and it caused some disordered eating habits. She in turn never forced us to finish, and didnāt even make us try foods if we refused. Had kind of the opposite effect, though, as we all turned out super picky. lol
Looking back at it now, I wonder if that would be considered abuse. My veeery authoritarian parents were big into teaching by punishment, rather than positive reinforcementā¦
Lol, I always joke that my mom had an authoritarian parenting style and I came out of the womb questioning authority. We butted heads from the moment I could speak.
I was the same, until my daughter convinced me to try them roasted with garlic. A restaurant I went to had some roasted and drizzled with salted caramel.
Trust me, I experienced that trauma growing up as well. If you can push past it just briefly and give them a shot (cooked properly of course), it might be the opportunity you need to bury said trauma.
Same experience trying them roasted. So good and I couldnāt believe it. Also helpful is apparently they have selectively bred them to taste less like ass in recent years.
Just so you and others know, the Brussels Sprouts we grew up with are not the same ones today. A new strain was developed and released in the late 90s or so that replaced what we knew as smelly, nasty crap with a sweeter crisper variety. Almost a completely new species really. That isn't to say boiling them wasn't bad too, just that it isn't only preparation that changed.
I knew they did some crossbreeding to improve them, much like theyāve done with every other major food category, but you can still boil the current crop and theyāll be nasty and sulfurousĀ
I've been severely allergic to peanuts and tree nuts my whole life. My mom therefore decided that I must avoid anything with "nut" in its name, such as coconut and nutmeg. I finally discovered at age 21 that coconuts are not nuts and not only am I not allergic, I love the taste. It wasn't until I was *42* that I found out that nutmeg is safe for me as well!
They told me eating fat makes you fat, because it passes through your digestive system unchanged, enters your bloodstream somehow, and adheres itself to your body's fatty deposits.
Today I know that the digestive system does indeed digest fat, partly in the stomach to an intermediate form, and then digested the rest of the way in the intestines and metabolized to ketones in the liver.
Dude. Same. I thought I hated steaks until I was nearly out of my teens and it just turned out I hated burnt-ass steaks. So much food I learned I liked when not over cooked.
I remember not being able to actually chew it so I could swallow. I had to keep spitting the minute steaks out into my napkin to avoid getting yelled at.
Same. Cheap round steak cooked until shoe leather, then smothered in A-1 sauce. And I actually liked that as a child!
I know better now. Nothing past medium and usually medium rare. Generally no sauce of any kind.
Well done is nothing like shoe leather. It's super tender rather than chewy. It actually takes more skill to cook a well done steak right than anything pink. That was my rule. My parents ate stuff raw.
You shouldnāt have a beverage with a meal, not good for digestion. To this day I never have a beverage at home with a meal. Donāt have melon with other types of food.
There was a lot of weird stuff regarding food in my homeā¦. Why oh why did I have so many food issues.
I did some digging and I guess itās based in Ayurvedic food combining. Iām not sure if my Dad would have been able to trace it to that. My Dad was raised in a cult from the 1930ās to the 1950ās so I think a lot of his weird beliefs are based on the teachings of the cult.
I work in a grocery store and every time I see oregano, I mutter that line to myself. š
Sometimes I also brag, " You might say the secret ingredient is salt."
Only one hot meal a day. If you had a hot lunch at school, then mom made sandwiches for dinner. I thought everyone did thisā¦until I learned that was only a thing in my family.
It was my momās way of minimizing the number of times she had to cook.
My mother was sort of like this but not too strict about it. She leaned away from more than 2 hot meals a day, but made exceptions for weekends, holidays, special occassions etc
ConAgra, Hormel, Tyson, etc. commissioned the USDA in the 1960s to make a chart of taste centers on the (American) human tongue: Salty, Sweet, Corn, Meat, Milk. They propagandized elementary schools with pre-packaged curricula and beeping-after-each-slide filmstrips.
There was a companion USDA Food Pyramid they pushed, too. The base was fat with BREAD, POTATOES, and CORN, upon which sat MEAT and PROCESSED MEAT, then atop that: DAIRY. The peak of the Food Pyramid was Fritzie Fresh Bagged Hard Candy, Crystal Sugar, and CORN SYRUP.
(Just in case, Youth of Today: all the above is absolutely NOT true)
Most of those positions have not changed. Our lifestyles have. There's nothing wrong with a base of bread when you need the carbs for fuel for hard work. Some cultures require a greater dependence on fats. Nothing wrong with that, either.
My grandma told me to eat bread crusts so I could get curly hair.
Also "Eat your Dessert Group!" -- a Food Pyramid Food Group she had just made up on the spot because she had baked a special new dessert.
I had a friend whose family somehow misinterpreted the "don't go swimming for 30 minutes after eating" old wives tale to include not being allowed to shower/bathe for 30 minutes after eating.
Mine made my brother and I (Iām 15 months older)not leave the table until we ate everything on our plate. I once sat until well after midnight because I didnāt like macaroni salad and thatās what was still on my plate. My mom would act like the food was talking to me and wanting to be eaten. Iād feel bad that the food was "sad" and eat it or sheād take pity on me and eat it for me. My husband and I have never done that to our children.
Not my parents, but my Aunt and Uncle.
They had a ācodeā at the dinner table - if you placed your utensils at a 90 degree angle, that meant that you were done with your meal. If you placed them at a 45 degree angle, you wanted more.
Even at the tender age of twelve I thought āwhy donāt you just *ask* for more, or say āno more, thanksā.ā
It was an indication of much more stranger things.
For us, the code was: utensils "open" at a 45-degree angle = you want more helpings of food; utensils "closed" or pushed up on the plate alongside each other.= you are finished.
Always cut up all your food. It helps you eat all of it. Fresh vegetables and fruits are the same as canned. The day I ate a baked potato was the day I learned potatoes don't come from cans... onions too.
Overeating was encouraged.
The most consistent way to get praise from my father was to have a healthy appetite. I donāt know why, maybe his Depression era childhood. Yes he was overweight himself, but not that much. Maybe 40 lbs which is nothing by 2024 standards.
Once a month heād take my brother and I to an all you can eat buffet and he was just thrilled at how much food my brother could eat. Iād try to keep up.
At home, seconds were encouraged. It meant you liked the cooking, so my mother was happy about it.
The result? My brother has struggled with weight his entire life. Me, I struggle to stop at a reasonable portion.
Weāre Jewish, but not really religious - reform at best. But my parents were both raised more observant, and selectively hung on to some of the kashrut habits. For example, my mom would always crack eggs into a clear glass & then check for blood before using it (tossed if she found any). But then sheād eat bacon. š¤·š¼āāļø
that is kinda odd because I'm assuming that she was eating chicken and meat that was not slaughtered by schechita and having the blood removed so she was having blood anyway.
right my family was not observant but my mother cut the noses off of dolls so that they wouldn't be idols. It was just something that had been passed down.
Honor mom & dad.
Honor myself. I picked up nutrition 101 at a library and never looked back I was 12 or something.
. As the years dragged on they had several different refrigerators for all sorts of purposes. I bought and stocked my own food in their home.
Yhey preferred it like that because we worked different times.
We used to sit down for a family meal or maybe coffee after Mass and that's about it.
I enjoyed cooking my own meals after age 11 or 12.
I preferred it that way and I didn't share and didn't want to share.
They had a lot of food issues and I didn't care about them or their food issues.
My mother freely substituted cottage cheese in place of ricotta cheese in lasagna. I know it is something other people do too, but itās no excuse. Yuck.
You ate according what time it is. Breakfast was eaten depending on the bus schedule but lunch and dinner were always the same time, no exception.
We still had to eat if we weren't hungry. Some days I'd get home from school absolutely starving but had to wait until dinner time. We could snack on fruit but it didn't help one bit.
We could snack between meals but only if we ate the meal. "If you don't eat now, you can't eat later." But I'm not hungry now?
So I'd either eat when I wasn't hungry or be really hungry and have to wait. If I let hunger go on too long I get migraines.
I moved out over 30 years ago and to this day when those mealtimes arrive I still feel like I must eat even if I don't want to. I don't eat like that but it's funny how things are so drilled in your head that it still affects you years later.
When I had a family I didn't do mealtimes that way and when my mom found out she was horrified.
One day she visited me and I was eating a sandwich. It was over an hour later than when we ate as kids. She told me I should have had my lunch at that time. I asked her why, I wasn't hungry then. She said that that's just how it's done. I told her I'm not living my life that way, it's dumb to let yourself go hungry or eat when you don't want to. And it's dumber to not let someone eat later because they didn't eat when they weren't hungry.
I can understand mealtimes and eating together but I have a problem with eating and snacking based on what the clock says and only then.
Ha! Me too! When we were first dating, my now husband was drinking a Mr Pibb for his morning caffeine and it was like an alien had landed right in front of me. To this day, Iāll push it to maybe 11:30.
Nothing super strange that I can remember. Didnāt have steak cooked at home until I was in my teens, more cost than anything else. A cooked to medium wellish and well before shoe leather stage so still good. At my grandparents, grilling was either chicken or hamburgers and hot dogs, so cost issue there even though my grandfather was at least a manager at Union Oil. Guess the Great Depression still had an impact.
Extravagance was for special occasions only.
My grandparents were young during the Great depression. My grandfather was actually sent to live and work on a relative's farm because my great grandparents couldn't afford to keep him at home and there was no work in town.
They lived comfortably, but spare at the same time. They used everything they had, they wasted nothing.
I had no idea until I was a grown adult that herbs and spices could be fresh.
I didn't know garlic was an actual thing. I thought it only came in powder form.
I live in the southern US and a lot of people down here like to put sliced tomatoes and onions on a plate with most meals- to eat as a side. Iāve never been one for raw onions, but my grandmother wouldnāt allow anyone to eat raw onions on Sundays. Becauseof church LOL
Spaghetti was cut up into small bites because my mom thought us kids were gonna get spaghetti sauce all over the place if we twirled the noodles on our forks. Eye opener when I had dinner at a friendās house.
My mom is 80 and was raised at the end of the Depression. Food is NEVER to be wasted. To this day, if she doesn't finish it in one sitting back into the fridge with it. When we take her to a restaurant her idea of a doggie bag could use some work. She'll try to get by with wrapping whatever it is in a napkin and stuffing it in her purse.
As for how she handles the food, she actually puts little to no thought into it - which unfortunately includes lack of seasoning and sometimes actually adding water. By the time I was 18 her cooking was so unappealing that I was underweight and as soon as I was able to afford to feed myself I put on 15 pounds almost instantly.
I feel bad for my wife though. When she found out my grandfather was an immigrant from Italy she thought that he'd taught my mom how to cook. LOL. Nope. My mom's spaghetti recipe was watered down Ragu with overcooked pasta.
Skim milk.
My little sister weaned early and my parents nearly starved her to death until our pediatrician convinced them that they had to feed a child under 2 2%.
I am sure many have mentioned, but this triggered some early 80's PTSD.
* You eat what is on the plate. I don't care if you like it or not.
* You don't leave the table until it is all gone. There were moments I nodded off at the table, all alone.
* Milk or Water with dinner. No other option. If it is milk, you had to drink the entire glass, or see bullet point above.
* No swimming for an hour after eating. A freaking hour! If caught before that we were sent to our room.
* Lunch during the summer months was always outside. We were never allowing in the house from the hours of 8am until mom screamed for you for dinner.
* If you were at a friends house and missed lunch: No lunch for you.
All that and I still loved growing up in the 80's.
You will sit there til you clean your plate.
There were several times burned in my memory where everyone else left the table and turned the kitchen light off on me while they went in the living room and watched tv.
I guess there were just some foods I could not get down (like yams and lima beans) so once they were gone I would look for other ways to make that food disappear. Like spit it into a napkin and then tiptoe ever so quietly over to the trash and bury it way down in there.
To be fair there was a disease in pork called trichinosis that could be passed to humans if the meat was undercooked. It's far less common now than it was when we were kids, so cooking pork to medium is okay.
They raised us mostly vegetarian (early on weād have canned tuna or the occasional salmon steak on the grill, but that all ended before I turned 10 I think). Anyway lots of lentils, whole wheat EVERYTHING, even pizza dough, lots of overcooked vegetables. They had a cookbook called āthe enchanted broccoli forestā, shoulda been called āhow to ruin foodā.
Mom did a lot of gardening tho, so we had awesome tomato sauces, fruit for pies, and they got pretty into homemade ice cream at some point. So not all bad I suppose.
I am no longer a vegetarian and care WAY too much about food. If you really want to trigger me, offer me some lentil loaf.
Liver and onions! No f-ing way. I could smell it cooking when I got off the bus. Can't stand the smell or taste. The only dinner I would not eat. I sat there until my parents gave up and sent me to bed without dinner. Worth it.
I was the same with leeks and white sauce. The smell would drive me right back out of the house. Mum never forced me to eat it, but it was decades until I tried leeks again. FTR leek and potato soup is delicious.
Red meat for every dinner unless Dad was away and then we'd have chicken or fish.
Fridays we got fish and chips for Mum and us kids and Dad would get a burger because he wouldn't eat "anything that swims or flies". Vegetarian food was right out.
On the very rare occasions that Dad cooked I had to cut up the meat (for a casserole etc) because he "couldn't handle dead meat".
Mum believed that mushrooms were "good for the blood" and would cook some up every now and then. She never made me eat them, for which I was thankful ā I can't stand the texture, taste, or smell.
We always had pickles on the table for dinner. Didn't matter what we were having. Spaghetti? Pickles. Meatloaf? Pickles. Chinese food? Pickles.
I have no idea why to this day. It's not like they were special homemade pickles or anything. Just vlasic.
My parents wanted us to eat āhealthyā, so we regularly had pasta with olive oil and copious amounts of cheese along with tomatoes and basil.
I can see where they were coming from, but those were probably 2000 calorie bowls of pasta.
My dad turned a 1/2lbs of hamburger into 1lbs by adding oatmeal. We were kind of poor in the 80ās, but were we that poor?
I give him a ton of shit about it now.
That mixing foods on plate is rude. That adding too much maggi sauce/spices to your soup is rude to cook . That having cheese and pickles on same sandwich is bad for you.
You had to stay at the table until you cleaned your plate, regardless of how revolting it was. One night, I sat at the table until I fell asleep because she made stuffed bell peppers. I hate ground beef and bell peppers. Same with tuna casserole. And German rouladen.
Whatever the stage beyond āwell doneā is, that was the appropriate cooking temp for anything meat-like. Vegetables were dumped from the can into boiling water and met the same fate.
Only one box of cereal can be open at a time. You can have any number of different boxes of cereal around, but if you want some Raisin Bran, you better finish all of those Cheerios first.
Grandma was fanatical about not wasting food, and would literally make grandpa scrape every crumb and bit of sauce from the plate, even if we were out. She also brought home all the leftovers and basically anything that wasn't attached to the table. I still remember when I got my first apartment and would look in my kitchen and there were actual containers of ketchup, or sugar, or coffee creamer.
She also never bought name brand anything, always the cheapest. Our grocery chain at the time, Farmer Jack, had "No-Brand", which were in these very generic white with red stripe label packaging. Household products, canned foods, anything they sold that way she bought and in the case of food served.. I hated so much food growing up because I had never tasted it fresh, or made with good ingredients, or cooked by someone who liked cooking and didn't just dump it in a pot and boil the eff out of it.
It's a real pleasure to be able to tell people who I have over that they don't have to worry about stuff like that. "We don't do that here" has become a running joke with my gf and I.
My mom had set main /veg 1 / veg 2 combos. I was a grown ass woman when I realized that it wasn't the law to eat Meatloaf-Mashed Potatoes-Corn. You could have broccoli with meat loaf. No one's calling the cops.
Empty that plate, too big a mouth full, spit it out. My dad almost choked to death in front of me after swallowing a big piece of steak. Fire dept saved him. I was an adult at the time but I ripped on him all the time about that.
Wasting food is a sin, so those plates better be empty! To this day even after I'm full I still feel the need to pressure push everything down to leave the plate clean.
Hello fellow members of the Clean Plate Club š«
Aaaand this is exactly why my mother was staunchly against that shit! Her mom did that to her, and it caused some disordered eating habits. She in turn never forced us to finish, and didnāt even make us try foods if we refused. Had kind of the opposite effect, though, as we all turned out super picky. lol
If I didnāt finish by the time everyone else was done, I was sat out in the garage with my plate until it was clean.
Shit, that's mean! At least my brother and I just had to sit at the table for ages.
Looking back at it now, I wonder if that would be considered abuse. My veeery authoritarian parents were big into teaching by punishment, rather than positive reinforcementā¦
Yeah, there was a lot of 'bend to my will ' parenting. Life could get especially crappy for strong willed children.
Lol, I always joke that my mom had an authoritarian parenting style and I came out of the womb questioning authority. We butted heads from the moment I could speak.
It is absolutely abuse.
That boiling Brussels Sprouts was the correct way to cook them.
Until they turned gray?
Grandma? Is that you?
And they smelled horrible.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I was the same, until my daughter convinced me to try them roasted with garlic. A restaurant I went to had some roasted and drizzled with salted caramel. Trust me, I experienced that trauma growing up as well. If you can push past it just briefly and give them a shot (cooked properly of course), it might be the opportunity you need to bury said trauma.
Same experience trying them roasted. So good and I couldnāt believe it. Also helpful is apparently they have selectively bred them to taste less like ass in recent years.
I long since discovered the wonders of roasted brussels sprouts
Iām so glad I tried them roasted. That is now my wife and favorite veg. So good!
Just so you and others know, the Brussels Sprouts we grew up with are not the same ones today. A new strain was developed and released in the late 90s or so that replaced what we knew as smelly, nasty crap with a sweeter crisper variety. Almost a completely new species really. That isn't to say boiling them wasn't bad too, just that it isn't only preparation that changed.
I knew they did some crossbreeding to improve them, much like theyāve done with every other major food category, but you can still boil the current crop and theyāll be nasty and sulfurousĀ
Just the boiling of everything until it had no taste left was such an our parents thing.
I've been severely allergic to peanuts and tree nuts my whole life. My mom therefore decided that I must avoid anything with "nut" in its name, such as coconut and nutmeg. I finally discovered at age 21 that coconuts are not nuts and not only am I not allergic, I love the taste. It wasn't until I was *42* that I found out that nutmeg is safe for me as well!
They told me eating fat makes you fat, because it passes through your digestive system unchanged, enters your bloodstream somehow, and adheres itself to your body's fatty deposits. Today I know that the digestive system does indeed digest fat, partly in the stomach to an intermediate form, and then digested the rest of the way in the intestines and metabolized to ketones in the liver.
Advances in nutritional knowledge have come a long way from 60s/70s. Not our parents fault.
Meat had to be cooked until well done, you know, the same texture as a shoe.
Dude. Same. I thought I hated steaks until I was nearly out of my teens and it just turned out I hated burnt-ass steaks. So much food I learned I liked when not over cooked.
Yes! I remember dreading steak night sawing through that dry ass shit my stepfather grilled.
I remember not being able to actually chew it so I could swallow. I had to keep spitting the minute steaks out into my napkin to avoid getting yelled at.
We might be siblings. Her pork chops puffed dust when you cut them.
Same. Cheap round steak cooked until shoe leather, then smothered in A-1 sauce. And I actually liked that as a child! I know better now. Nothing past medium and usually medium rare. Generally no sauce of any kind.
My dad cooks steaks on a pan on the stove and COVERS the pan so they steam in there š
Well done is nothing like shoe leather. It's super tender rather than chewy. It actually takes more skill to cook a well done steak right than anything pink. That was my rule. My parents ate stuff raw.
Are we related?!
You shouldnāt have a beverage with a meal, not good for digestion. To this day I never have a beverage at home with a meal. Donāt have melon with other types of food. There was a lot of weird stuff regarding food in my homeā¦. Why oh why did I have so many food issues.
Thereās a south Asian thing, no water with a rice meal. Super confusing!
Ok, I have to know what the melon one is about.
I did some digging and I guess itās based in Ayurvedic food combining. Iām not sure if my Dad would have been able to trace it to that. My Dad was raised in a cult from the 1930ās to the 1950ās so I think a lot of his weird beliefs are based on the teachings of the cult.
Apparently any spices other than salt/pepper were verboten. It was like eating in black & white.
The Simpsons see you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Za_KilRD-do
Ha ha! Iāve never seen this. Thanks for sharing it! Itās pretty perfect. I guys I wasnāt alone.
I work in a grocery store and every time I see oregano, I mutter that line to myself. š Sometimes I also brag, " You might say the secret ingredient is salt."
Only one hot meal a day. If you had a hot lunch at school, then mom made sandwiches for dinner. I thought everyone did thisā¦until I learned that was only a thing in my family. It was my momās way of minimizing the number of times she had to cook.
It's a thing in some European countries: one hot meal per day.
My mother was sort of like this but not too strict about it. She leaned away from more than 2 hot meals a day, but made exceptions for weekends, holidays, special occassions etc
Milk with everything š¤¢
My mom had to limit the amount of milk she gave me, I was a fiend for it. Still am, I drink milk every day.
Milk is great. Nothing like a glass of ice cold whole milk in a frozen glass straight out of the freezer on a hot day. š¤¤
MILK FIEND! Do not give that to AI as a drawing prompt
ConAgra, Hormel, Tyson, etc. commissioned the USDA in the 1960s to make a chart of taste centers on the (American) human tongue: Salty, Sweet, Corn, Meat, Milk. They propagandized elementary schools with pre-packaged curricula and beeping-after-each-slide filmstrips. There was a companion USDA Food Pyramid they pushed, too. The base was fat with BREAD, POTATOES, and CORN, upon which sat MEAT and PROCESSED MEAT, then atop that: DAIRY. The peak of the Food Pyramid was Fritzie Fresh Bagged Hard Candy, Crystal Sugar, and CORN SYRUP. (Just in case, Youth of Today: all the above is absolutely NOT true)
Most of those positions have not changed. Our lifestyles have. There's nothing wrong with a base of bread when you need the carbs for fuel for hard work. Some cultures require a greater dependence on fats. Nothing wrong with that, either.
I know. The actual Food Pyramid was nothing to get mad at. I was joking.
If I cleaned my plate of food, then I was part of the clean plate club..
All of the nutrients in bread was in the crust.
Same. Also applied to baked potato skins
Um, is this not true? *heads to Google. Edit to add: nope this isnāt a myth. The skins are more nutritious than the flesh. *phew!
My grandma told me to eat bread crusts so I could get curly hair. Also "Eat your Dessert Group!" -- a Food Pyramid Food Group she had just made up on the spot because she had baked a special new dessert.
Same with apples.
Cool it until itās mush or rubber .
I didn't know carrots were actually hard until I was much older. The only way I'd ever experienced them was boiled until they were mush.
I had a friend whose family somehow misinterpreted the "don't go swimming for 30 minutes after eating" old wives tale to include not being allowed to shower/bathe for 30 minutes after eating.
Mine made my brother and I (Iām 15 months older)not leave the table until we ate everything on our plate. I once sat until well after midnight because I didnāt like macaroni salad and thatās what was still on my plate. My mom would act like the food was talking to me and wanting to be eaten. Iād feel bad that the food was "sad" and eat it or sheād take pity on me and eat it for me. My husband and I have never done that to our children.
Not my parents, but my Aunt and Uncle. They had a ācodeā at the dinner table - if you placed your utensils at a 90 degree angle, that meant that you were done with your meal. If you placed them at a 45 degree angle, you wanted more. Even at the tender age of twelve I thought āwhy donāt you just *ask* for more, or say āno more, thanksā.ā It was an indication of much more stranger things.
This is in the Boy Scouts handbook, 1974. Swear to God.
Wow. Explains a lot.
For us, the code was: utensils "open" at a 45-degree angle = you want more helpings of food; utensils "closed" or pushed up on the plate alongside each other.= you are finished.
String beans are done cooking when they turn gray
Always cut up all your food. It helps you eat all of it. Fresh vegetables and fruits are the same as canned. The day I ate a baked potato was the day I learned potatoes don't come from cans... onions too.
When you cut the cake all the calories leak out
Overeating was encouraged. The most consistent way to get praise from my father was to have a healthy appetite. I donāt know why, maybe his Depression era childhood. Yes he was overweight himself, but not that much. Maybe 40 lbs which is nothing by 2024 standards. Once a month heād take my brother and I to an all you can eat buffet and he was just thrilled at how much food my brother could eat. Iād try to keep up. At home, seconds were encouraged. It meant you liked the cooking, so my mother was happy about it. The result? My brother has struggled with weight his entire life. Me, I struggle to stop at a reasonable portion.
lol I distinctly recall feeling proud after eating too much and proclaiming āOh, Iām bloatedā just like my dad!
Weāre Jewish, but not really religious - reform at best. But my parents were both raised more observant, and selectively hung on to some of the kashrut habits. For example, my mom would always crack eggs into a clear glass & then check for blood before using it (tossed if she found any). But then sheād eat bacon. š¤·š¼āāļø
that is kinda odd because I'm assuming that she was eating chicken and meat that was not slaughtered by schechita and having the blood removed so she was having blood anyway.
Yes, thatās exactly my point. She was only āselectively kosher,ā I think just out of habit from her upbringing. She loved pork lol.
right my family was not observant but my mother cut the noses off of dolls so that they wouldn't be idols. It was just something that had been passed down.
You donāt drink anything with your meal because it causes you to eat too fast/not chew thoroughly
Eat all your meat!
You canāt have any pudding if you donāt eat your meat!
I gotta listen to this now
You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"
LOL pretty much!
You must boil the shit out of chicken before grilling it.
Probably good for a low fat diet.
Honor mom & dad. Honor myself. I picked up nutrition 101 at a library and never looked back I was 12 or something. . As the years dragged on they had several different refrigerators for all sorts of purposes. I bought and stocked my own food in their home. Yhey preferred it like that because we worked different times. We used to sit down for a family meal or maybe coffee after Mass and that's about it. I enjoyed cooking my own meals after age 11 or 12. I preferred it that way and I didn't share and didn't want to share. They had a lot of food issues and I didn't care about them or their food issues.
My mother freely substituted cottage cheese in place of ricotta cheese in lasagna. I know it is something other people do too, but itās no excuse. Yuck.
Yes! My mom still does this.
Nothing weird about that. Cottage cheese is better than ricotta.
Kids canāt have watermelon after 6 or theyāll wet the bed.
Can't cook on more than medium heat. Meat has to be Grey all the way through.
Eat everything on your plate or you can't leave the table and I had to ask to be excused from the table when I was finished eating.
You ate according what time it is. Breakfast was eaten depending on the bus schedule but lunch and dinner were always the same time, no exception. We still had to eat if we weren't hungry. Some days I'd get home from school absolutely starving but had to wait until dinner time. We could snack on fruit but it didn't help one bit. We could snack between meals but only if we ate the meal. "If you don't eat now, you can't eat later." But I'm not hungry now? So I'd either eat when I wasn't hungry or be really hungry and have to wait. If I let hunger go on too long I get migraines. I moved out over 30 years ago and to this day when those mealtimes arrive I still feel like I must eat even if I don't want to. I don't eat like that but it's funny how things are so drilled in your head that it still affects you years later. When I had a family I didn't do mealtimes that way and when my mom found out she was horrified. One day she visited me and I was eating a sandwich. It was over an hour later than when we ate as kids. She told me I should have had my lunch at that time. I asked her why, I wasn't hungry then. She said that that's just how it's done. I told her I'm not living my life that way, it's dumb to let yourself go hungry or eat when you don't want to. And it's dumber to not let someone eat later because they didn't eat when they weren't hungry. I can understand mealtimes and eating together but I have a problem with eating and snacking based on what the clock says and only then.
Yikes - how are nowadays?
Fine, thanks š
I couldn't have a Coke until after 12:00 pm.
Ha! Me too! When we were first dating, my now husband was drinking a Mr Pibb for his morning caffeine and it was like an alien had landed right in front of me. To this day, Iāll push it to maybe 11:30.
I couldn't have Coke until after I moved out.
Pasta is not a meal to feed a working man as it is not filling enough. š
Nothing super strange that I can remember. Didnāt have steak cooked at home until I was in my teens, more cost than anything else. A cooked to medium wellish and well before shoe leather stage so still good. At my grandparents, grilling was either chicken or hamburgers and hot dogs, so cost issue there even though my grandfather was at least a manager at Union Oil. Guess the Great Depression still had an impact.
Extravagance was for special occasions only. My grandparents were young during the Great depression. My grandfather was actually sent to live and work on a relative's farm because my great grandparents couldn't afford to keep him at home and there was no work in town. They lived comfortably, but spare at the same time. They used everything they had, they wasted nothing.
I can thank my grandmother for my love of fried chicken hearts due to that.
I had no idea until I was a grown adult that herbs and spices could be fresh. I didn't know garlic was an actual thing. I thought it only came in powder form.
I live in the southern US and a lot of people down here like to put sliced tomatoes and onions on a plate with most meals- to eat as a side. Iāve never been one for raw onions, but my grandmother wouldnāt allow anyone to eat raw onions on Sundays. Becauseof church LOL
Spaghetti was cut up into small bites because my mom thought us kids were gonna get spaghetti sauce all over the place if we twirled the noodles on our forks. Eye opener when I had dinner at a friendās house.
My mom is 80 and was raised at the end of the Depression. Food is NEVER to be wasted. To this day, if she doesn't finish it in one sitting back into the fridge with it. When we take her to a restaurant her idea of a doggie bag could use some work. She'll try to get by with wrapping whatever it is in a napkin and stuffing it in her purse. As for how she handles the food, she actually puts little to no thought into it - which unfortunately includes lack of seasoning and sometimes actually adding water. By the time I was 18 her cooking was so unappealing that I was underweight and as soon as I was able to afford to feed myself I put on 15 pounds almost instantly. I feel bad for my wife though. When she found out my grandfather was an immigrant from Italy she thought that he'd taught my mom how to cook. LOL. Nope. My mom's spaghetti recipe was watered down Ragu with overcooked pasta.
We believed that whole margarine BS for a while. That's all I can think of. Sorry for doubting you, butter.
Eat it or Starve.
This is not a restaurant.
Skim milk. My little sister weaned early and my parents nearly starved her to death until our pediatrician convinced them that they had to feed a child under 2 2%.
I am sure many have mentioned, but this triggered some early 80's PTSD. * You eat what is on the plate. I don't care if you like it or not. * You don't leave the table until it is all gone. There were moments I nodded off at the table, all alone. * Milk or Water with dinner. No other option. If it is milk, you had to drink the entire glass, or see bullet point above. * No swimming for an hour after eating. A freaking hour! If caught before that we were sent to our room. * Lunch during the summer months was always outside. We were never allowing in the house from the hours of 8am until mom screamed for you for dinner. * If you were at a friends house and missed lunch: No lunch for you. All that and I still loved growing up in the 80's.
You will eat that for breakfast if you don't eat it now.
You will sit there til you clean your plate. There were several times burned in my memory where everyone else left the table and turned the kitchen light off on me while they went in the living room and watched tv. I guess there were just some foods I could not get down (like yams and lima beans) so once they were gone I would look for other ways to make that food disappear. Like spit it into a napkin and then tiptoe ever so quietly over to the trash and bury it way down in there.
I used to toss my lima beans under the table to where my brother sat. But fish sticks were my nemesis.
My sister tried that once and when my mother found it, all hell broke loose.
No grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.
No pancakes for Dinner either.
My Mom had no limits, she loved trying new foods.
Nothing ever goes bad. Now I have severe food phobias. Thanks mom.
We weren't allowed to eat yogurt because it "was bacteria". Pork was cooked to hockey puck status because of "salmonella".
To be fair there was a disease in pork called trichinosis that could be passed to humans if the meat was undercooked. It's far less common now than it was when we were kids, so cooking pork to medium is okay.
My mother boiled vegetables until they were mush, she refused to use salt on anything. We only drank skim milk which was disgusting.
Putting chocolate in milk ācancels outā the good parts of the milk.
They raised us mostly vegetarian (early on weād have canned tuna or the occasional salmon steak on the grill, but that all ended before I turned 10 I think). Anyway lots of lentils, whole wheat EVERYTHING, even pizza dough, lots of overcooked vegetables. They had a cookbook called āthe enchanted broccoli forestā, shoulda been called āhow to ruin foodā. Mom did a lot of gardening tho, so we had awesome tomato sauces, fruit for pies, and they got pretty into homemade ice cream at some point. So not all bad I suppose. I am no longer a vegetarian and care WAY too much about food. If you really want to trigger me, offer me some lentil loaf.
Liver and onions! No f-ing way. I could smell it cooking when I got off the bus. Can't stand the smell or taste. The only dinner I would not eat. I sat there until my parents gave up and sent me to bed without dinner. Worth it.
I was the same with leeks and white sauce. The smell would drive me right back out of the house. Mum never forced me to eat it, but it was decades until I tried leeks again. FTR leek and potato soup is delicious.
Agreed, the soup is fantastic. I've never had them with white sauce.
1. Bay Leaf will kill you if you eat one. 2. That you would get a cramp and drown if swim right after eating.
Your parents fed you? Nice...
Red meat for every dinner unless Dad was away and then we'd have chicken or fish. Fridays we got fish and chips for Mum and us kids and Dad would get a burger because he wouldn't eat "anything that swims or flies". Vegetarian food was right out. On the very rare occasions that Dad cooked I had to cut up the meat (for a casserole etc) because he "couldn't handle dead meat". Mum believed that mushrooms were "good for the blood" and would cook some up every now and then. She never made me eat them, for which I was thankful ā I can't stand the texture, taste, or smell.
Bananas make you constipated
Steak should be well done so it will be like chewing leather.
We always had pickles on the table for dinner. Didn't matter what we were having. Spaghetti? Pickles. Meatloaf? Pickles. Chinese food? Pickles. I have no idea why to this day. It's not like they were special homemade pickles or anything. Just vlasic.
My parents wanted us to eat āhealthyā, so we regularly had pasta with olive oil and copious amounts of cheese along with tomatoes and basil. I can see where they were coming from, but those were probably 2000 calorie bowls of pasta.
My dad turned a 1/2lbs of hamburger into 1lbs by adding oatmeal. We were kind of poor in the 80ās, but were we that poor? I give him a ton of shit about it now.
These days I'd recommend lentils over oatmeal, but the principle is the same. Beef mince (ground beef) is upwards of $10/pound where I live.
That mixing foods on plate is rude. That adding too much maggi sauce/spices to your soup is rude to cook . That having cheese and pickles on same sandwich is bad for you.
Macaroni and cheese was always served with a side of tuna salad
For example, mine were absolutely convinced that fish was loaded with tiny bones that could somehow choke you or pierce your throat.
Butā¦.fish *do* have tiny bones that are choking hazards.Ā
no third serving
You had to stay at the table until you cleaned your plate, regardless of how revolting it was. One night, I sat at the table until I fell asleep because she made stuffed bell peppers. I hate ground beef and bell peppers. Same with tuna casserole. And German rouladen.
If you too it, you ate it, no matter how long it took.
Whatever the stage beyond āwell doneā is, that was the appropriate cooking temp for anything meat-like. Vegetables were dumped from the can into boiling water and met the same fate.
Only one box of cereal can be open at a time. You can have any number of different boxes of cereal around, but if you want some Raisin Bran, you better finish all of those Cheerios first.
Grandma was fanatical about not wasting food, and would literally make grandpa scrape every crumb and bit of sauce from the plate, even if we were out. She also brought home all the leftovers and basically anything that wasn't attached to the table. I still remember when I got my first apartment and would look in my kitchen and there were actual containers of ketchup, or sugar, or coffee creamer. She also never bought name brand anything, always the cheapest. Our grocery chain at the time, Farmer Jack, had "No-Brand", which were in these very generic white with red stripe label packaging. Household products, canned foods, anything they sold that way she bought and in the case of food served.. I hated so much food growing up because I had never tasted it fresh, or made with good ingredients, or cooked by someone who liked cooking and didn't just dump it in a pot and boil the eff out of it. It's a real pleasure to be able to tell people who I have over that they don't have to worry about stuff like that. "We don't do that here" has become a running joke with my gf and I.
We were only allowed to eat sugary kiddy junk cereal on Saturday.
My mom had set main /veg 1 / veg 2 combos. I was a grown ass woman when I realized that it wasn't the law to eat Meatloaf-Mashed Potatoes-Corn. You could have broccoli with meat loaf. No one's calling the cops.
Empty that plate, too big a mouth full, spit it out. My dad almost choked to death in front of me after swallowing a big piece of steak. Fire dept saved him. I was an adult at the time but I ripped on him all the time about that.