Food your parents made you've never heard of anywhere else

My mom used to make:

• "Cowboys and Indians" – a ground beef patty covered in pepper, with thinly sliced onions and potatoes, all baked individually in aluminum foil.

• Tuna chip casserole – canned cream of mushroom soup, frozen peas, and drained canned tuna stirred together in a skillet, covered with a layer of potato chips, and baked on the stovetop. This she made whenever her & my dad went out and leave the babysitter to turn the stove off at the appropriate time. I found this exciting as it was the only time we ever got potato chips.

• Tamale pie – canned tomatoes + ground beef in a casserole dish with boiled corn mash & cheddar cheese on top of it, then baked. A nostalgic favorite. Somehow I imagine this is what "Mexican food" made by white midwesterners was like in the '70s?

I will not be heartbroken if these are really common foods and I just had friends whose families were really unimaginative eaters. (This could be the case: one of my friend's dad made beanie weenies every single night I ate there, which was at least once a week.)

i have seen tamale pie a bunch of places, maybe a different prep than your mom's though...

my dad wld report having the tuna casserole w/potato chips on top if he posted here; a vile exercise imo

It's really a strange dish.

I refused to eat tuna for years due to that casserole.

My mom used to make "7 layer dinner": slices of raw white potato, canned peas, onions, canned carrots, canned mushrooms, thick layer of ground beef, all topped with a can or two of canned tomato soup and baked. Really really disgusting, as the potatoes stayed crunchy and were drowning in a puddle of tomato-y beef grease, and canned veg are just awful no matter what.

She also made something called "Cindy's Fish", possibly gotten from a friend: frozen fillets of some kind of white fish layered on the bottom of a casserole dish, covered with a can of crushed pineapple in light syrup, all topped with a can of cream of mushroom soup and baked.

ewwww

Creamed tuna on toast, generally with a green salad on the side. I really liked it.

"rice crispy" treats made with grape nuts.
http://www.thesneeze.com/art/razz/bleah.gif

god we have come so far in terms of food.

The seven layer dinner is baffling – if you're using that much canned veg, why fresh potato?

why was cream of mushroom soup considered a reasonable base ingredient by generations of moms??

Philip you mean like melted marshmallows + butter folded into grape nuts? tbh this sounds as good as regular rice krispie treats, which I've never liked.

xpost - It probably would have been much better with those dehydrated slices from the Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes in a box!

My dad would make "food storage candy" sometimes, which was equal parts honey, powdered milk & peanut butter mushed together in a flaccid play-doh consistency.

??????

i don't even understand that

It was the only thing we used powdered milk, for, too. We never drank it.

• Tuna chip casserole – canned cream of mushroom soup, frozen peas, and drained canned tuna stirred together in a skillet, covered with a layer of potato chips, and baked on the stovetop. This she made whenever her & my dad went out and leave the babysitter to turn the stove off at the appropriate time. I found this exciting as it was the only time we ever got potato chips.

― mascara and ties (Abbott), Tuesday, December 8, 2009 10:28 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a friend of mine cooked up an entire mormon meal once including basically this dish

Ha!

What else was in the meal?

it was funny hes a chef and one day he was all now imna show you guys the food i grew up eating - i think there was a jello dish for dessert - having trouble recalling the rest

isn't there some weird potato casserole too?

'cindy's fish' sounds like the worst meal EVER

my mum wasn't creative enough to make such one-of-a-kind nasties, but she is maybe the only mum i know who literally cooked everything in a goddamn microwave and completely stopped using pots for about 18yrs.

my mom used to make chicken divan all the time which i'd never heard anyone else mention til harbl said her mom made it during thanksgiving week THIS YEAR!!!

my friend's mom used to make some weird gloppy rice thing - i never ate it but it looked like rice with a bunch of corn starch/white gravy? not really sure but it looked disgusting.

congee?

no way my friend's southern bred mom woulda known what congee is! hahaaaaa

rice and gravy is a done thing in some households down here, yeah

this girl was brought up on a strict southern meat and starch diet. to this day she will not go out to eat at thai, japanese, middle eastern, etc. restaurants.

sometimes i'm really glad the "comfort food" my mom grew up with was armenian. some of these just sound so gross. "green bean casserole" in my family just means green beans, onions, and tomato cooked in a little olive oil until very soft, not anything involving canned soups and fried onions or whatever.

we did have one chicken casserole with rice and horse chestnuts in a whitish sauce sometimes though. it was not my favorite, and i really hate horse chestnuts.

hay u didnt say they were wite

"melted marshmallows + butter folded into grape nuts?"
yup

"tbh this sounds as good as regular rice krispie treats,"
madness!

"which I've never liked."
madness!

We had turkey divan with Thanksgiving leftovers most years I can remember. I actually like it, though it's better with homemade cheese sauce or hollandaise instead of the canned cheddar cheese soup my mom would use.

yeah rice crispy treats are amazing

hah my mom did it with cream of mushroom! basically, browned chicken breasts, put in casserole w/ broccoli, poured over soup, baked. served with rice.

horse chestnuts in a whitish sauce

I didn't know you could eat these!

Ugh there was this dish I knew all Mormons made where you put a sliced-up fryer chicken & a bunch of rice & water (+celery & cream of mushroom soup) in a casserole dish and bake it all together. It was so bland and beige and flavorless, which would have been more manageable if not for the texture. The rice was so gloppy and gluey but still crunchy in the middle sometimes.

That sounds pretty gross. And sad.

Oh! I forgot - there was rice like that in the 7 layer dinner! Maybe no mushrooms, that would have been too fancy. I haven't eaten it since I was 10 or 12.

in nz we make 'rice bubble cake' but with honey not marshmallows. totally amazing.

I tried to make creamed tuna on toast once after I got married, but it just didn't have that proustian something like it did when I was a kid. And my wife was horrified at the whole concept.

"But I creamed it, honey!"

another time a friend from hawaii was all now im gonna make u guys a genuine hawaiian meal and i got all psyched cause that sounds amazing - it was layered in a bowl rice/spam/fried egg/gravy

My mom had a dish called "Hawaiian haystacks" which was like pineapple/coconut/gravy/shredded leftover meat on rice. I had no idea this dish had any basis in Hawaiian reality.

WmC, will your mom still make it for you?

I get that way about creamed chipped beef on toast. It was one of the first things I ever learned to cook - my dad's girlfriend (later my stepmom) taught me. Has to be white bread toast. Best on a Sunday morning, after staying up too late watching wrestling and scary movies on Saturday night.

My stepmom also made this great bar cookie/cake thing we called Peanut Butter Junk - tasted exactly like Reese peanut butter cups, except as a cake. I asked her for the recipe though and she doesn't remember anything about it.

my dad used to make us dishes he picked up from his mom with weird names like "shrimp wiggle" (tomato-y sauce, macaroni, shrimp) or "chinese spaghetti" (i don't remember what was in this one, but it wasn't horrible). there was probably some canned soup involved somewhere, too.

I had chinese spaghetti in a chinese restaurant once. It was chow mein noodles in tomato sauce and tasted exactly what it sounds like. Was that it?

no, think grosser and more 50's econo-cooking. it was normal spaghetti noodles with some kind of sweet n' soury sauce.

we used to have that green bean casserole every thanksgiving. over the years have gradually moved into less soup... fresh green beans... fewer onions on top.... til now we generally just make a nicer fresher green bean dish (at least i do... haven't had thanksgiving w/ the rents in many years). but it was my favorite as a kid. we never used canned gb though, only the frozen ones (those little weird shreddy ones).

Yeah! Those "french cut" beans! My mom would make green beans almondine with those too - green beans and sliced almonds and some kind of sauce (possibly cream of celery soup?).

Campbell's soup has so much to answer for.

I rly like French cut green beans, because otherwise the short cut ones are too thick -- do they grow them on the vine longer, or just feed them tons of fertilizer/growth hormones? And the little seeds squirt out when you bite into them, and it's gross.

If you buy like farmers market green beans, they're longer and thinner and they cook through faster and the insides aren't so squishy. But the frozen kind are too thick and there's too much...bean flesh. Matter. Whatever.

OMG Abbott all that Mormon food brought back vivid memories of my childhood years in Utah.

A couple of months ago Mr. Que and I were watching an episode of "Weeds" on DVD and tamale pie was mentioned. I almost spit out my wine. Mr. Que was like "what the hell is tamale pie?"

Mormon funeral potatoes are imo the ultimate mormon dish.

Oh duh it was "Big Love," not "Weeds".

We had the chicken, rice, celery, and water chestnuts (which I hate) with cream of something (mushroom?) soup to hold it together and crunchy onions on the top. Not a favorite, though.

New entry: "Camper stew": Basically a hash of ground beef with frozen green beans, tomato sauce, egg noodles, um I forget what else but I never could stand it.

funeral potatoes! that's what i was trying to think of.

i think my uncle makes green beans almondine, but no soup involved, just almonds and a little olive oil.

One of our weeknight staples was pizza casserole: ground beef, egg noodles, tomato sauce, baked with lots of mozzarella on top. Not very interesting and hardly pizza-like. It only occurred to me a few years ago that my parents probably eliminated the pizza topping ingredients since that's something we never could agree on.

This kind of casserole is sort of one of my staples too (I don't use meat, usually, and add vegetables), but isn't it just "baked ziti" basically?

Cowboy beans sound kind of tasty, actually.

my grandmother always made something very similar to it and actually, i think it's really popular around buffalo because i've had it at lots of catered events. i never thought anything of it until a friend from utah mentioned 'funeral potatoes' as this big mormon thing. they call it something different in buffalo, though. but my aunt would always bring it to christmas eve.

xpost

I had to know what's in Mormon funeral potatoes, and found this Essential Mormon Cookbook! I love the review stating it's the only cookbook I'd ever need :)

(which, finding that one, led me to the I Can't Believe It's Food Storage! cookbook - jackpot!

hahahaha people also bought

http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Believe-Its-Food-Storage/dp/1935217178/ref=pd_sim_b_4

Do you have a three-month supply of food for your family? Are you building up and using your long-term food storage? In I Can't Believe It's Food Storage , author Crystal Godfrey explains how to transition common food-storage items (such as powdered milk, whole wheat, and dried beans) into your own recipes.

lol @ needing a book to figure out how to incorporate beans into a recipe.

that is what's making you lol???

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705276685,00.html

Also, please use plain cream of chicken soup. Don't use the herbed kind or the kind with allegedly roasted garlic. And please do NOT use the Healthy Request variety. Seriously. What's the point?

Exactly! These ARE funeral potatoes, after all!

i can't imagine going to a funeral and bitching about the food served. that just seems really rude/inconsiderate.

can't imagine having my own planet full of ~~ladies~~

Oh man that "treat" with the dried milk + honey + peanut butter soooooooo Utah.

xpost to Que: I am not sharing our bathroom with another chick, just sayin'

Funeral potatoes sound delicious! I need a church cookbook, I think!

Oh man that "treat" with the dried milk + honey + peanut butter soooooooo Utah.

― quincie, Thursday, December 10, 2009 4:57 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

I think I made this in 6th grade home ec

i once had to make this thing at girl scout camp that was like ground beef on a stick wrapped in canned biscuits that you cooked over the fire like s'mores.

Haha yes, hot dogs on a stick with biscuits wrapped around it! Weird, sort of...proto-corndog.

how do you can a biscuit

http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/4591455/CanofPillsburybiscuits-main_Full.jpg

has anyone mentioned chipped beef yet?

New entry: Coffee Cheese aka Hillbilly Fondue

Grate cheddar cheese (sharp or mild) into a coffee cup until it is mounded over the top a little. Pour hot coffee over it and set a saucer on top. Leave it alone for about five minutes until the cheese melts. Scoop the melted cheese out and put it on biscuits (canned are fine) or toast.

I still make this because it is seriously delicious, even though I understand it sounds disgusting to many people. I'm sure that this is not specific to my family but it's not as common as it should be.

O_O I think we used that to make what was called a 'texas tommy' in home ec too xxp

I don't even know how you could make something like those canned onions at home.

My brother-in-law got me hooked on making the Cook's Illustrated version of green bean casserole, which basically has you using fresh beans and making your own mushroom and cream base instead of using canned soup. I think they tried a bunch of homemade onion options before saying fuck it, just use the canned ones.

― joygoat, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 10:52 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

This is a seriously good recipe. I love how CI cuts the crap and tells you how to make the tastiest everything, even if it ultimately comes from the can.

The problem with the stuff in a can is it is concentrated processed food. Its very high in sodium for one thing. Thats why it is so "tasty". Its meant to be 4 bowls of soup!

Mum always made bechamel from scratch for us, so I'm glad I know how to make it. All my cream/pasta bake bases are either bechamel or cream.

TBH I'm kind of weirded out by the idea of fresh beans smothered in sauce to begin with. Vegies are for eating as is, not smothering in salty creamy stuff :/ Maybe its an aus thing.

yeah I've never had a green bean casserole, but no matter how many times I turn and combine the listed ingredients above in my head I can't come up with a version that might taste good

Green bean casserole is one of those things that's totally delicious and necessary only one time per year. I hardly never eat any super salty processed to death but stuff like this is definitely an exception.

Basically my whole childhood was based on salty packaged processed overcooked foods and I'm well past that era in my life.

I'll also just go on the record here as being pro-canned cream of mushroom soup.

When I was in first grade the teacher asked us all to share our favorite recipes so they could be published in the paper and to my newly single and financially struggling mother's utter horror, I gave the recipe for my then favorite meal: elbow macaroni mixed with canned cream of mushroom soup.

My mother would use up the last bits of turkey, mixed with frozen peas and cream of mushroom soup, topped with Bisquick, as "turkey pot pie".

Ground meat in milk gravy. It was served over chunks of boiled potatoes and you'd sorta mash them together with your fork. Not my favorite.

We had something similar - hamburger gravy (like sausage gravy, only extra-bland) served over biscuits or toasted white bread.

this thread is making me feel rather lucky that my mom made a lot of stir fries and basic meat + steamed vegetables.

Any "stir fries" would fall into a category of foods that my mom still to this day refers to as "funny business" and thus viewed suspiciously at best. And why would you steam vegetables when you can boil the hell out of them for an hour?

My mom made a lot of amazing food, too. She'd make her own pasta + stock + etc for chicken noodle soup, make her own barbecue sauce (from a recipe that called for coffee grounds – she used Pero instead), freestyle a great ginger salad dressing, make a perfect pizza crust, insanely good creole shrimp/black beans + rice, shit I can't even step to. OTOH there are seven people in my family & I can't blame her for taking some occasionally questionable shortcuts from time to time. I don't want to misrepresent her mad cooking & baking skills, tho.

I'm amazed she can make anything at all, given what my Grandma makes. She took care of us for two weeks once while my parents went on vacation. Most memorable dish was stirred-together flavorless tomatoes & stew meat with rice (of the baffling/amazing gloppy/crunchy texture combo). She told my parents, "Your kids sure eat a lot of cereal."

I mean I love making risotto but I don't think I'd want to make it for seven people.

my mom made a wide array of utterly bizarre casseroles. mostly ground beef based but there was also a tuna/canned peas/potato chip number. my favorite was the ground beef w/tater tots and I think cream-of-mushroom soup as a binding agent. worst was our neighbor "mrs. yerina's casserole" a ground beef w/noodles and MAYO monstrosity. I loved my mom's take on chili -- very mild w/lots of green pepper -- served over spaghetti cincinnati-style. and these "corned beef hash sandwiches" on english muffins, from I guess a can. her deserts were dynamite, not uncommon but stuff I don't see much anymore like snickerdoodles and bundt cakes. she considered herself a healthy eater and was always pushing fresh fruit on us but I look back at all that hamburger...and canned vegetables...and mayo...and think "why did it occur to anyone that these foods should be eaten together." it was the 60s, man!

so glad i grew up a NYC jew. we don't eat casseroles.

Dude what about kugel? Kugel is TOTALLY a casserole!

kugel is not made with canned cream of mushroom soup and potato chips.

M. Coleman, the snickerdoodle (a fine food and the only reason I have cream of tartar around) is alive & well. Especially on this site, where she has recipes for snickerdoodle muffins, snickerdoodle tarts, snickerdoodle sortbread, and snickerdoodle 'blondies',

<3 kugel
i am also really glad i grew up withe a jewish bff and tons of jewish family friends because i learned about the wonders of brisket and kugel and lox and whitefish salad and latkes.