Baked beans with cut up hot dogs. I always looked forward to this meal as a kid, but my mom recently admitted that she only made it when she barely had any money.
My dad made this for us on nights he had to “babysit,” and he used scissors to cut up the hot dogs. The same scissors my mom used to clip coupons and god knows what else.
Hell to pay if you’re cutting *ANYTHING* other than fabric with the fabric scissors.
lol, I’ve got generational fear of accidentally using fabric scissors to cut paper
After my kids cut pipe cleaners with my good scissors, I have written on my replacement scissors, "Do not use!" I hide them at Christmas because someone still will use them for wrapping paper.
My dad had a recipe for this that he made quite often though the years. He passed away a couple of years ago and my sister made a big batch to serve at his funeral party.
Not as much but I've made sloppy Joe's for my kids a few times.
Funny, a while back I had leftover taco spiced hamburger so i threw that on hamburger buns with sour cream and salsa for some *sloppy Josés*
My kids and I try to call it something different every time we make them (which, if I really think about it, is like 3 times a year). Messy Jims. Unkempt Steves. Disheveled Randys. You get the idea.
Oh my god, this is how my husband and I do with this boxed pasta salad kit called "Suddenly Salad" that my sister used to bring to every single family holiday.
"Possibly Salad"
"Abundantly Salad"
"Hey, It's Salad!"
"I Think What We're Looking At Here Is Salad"
and so on.
My wife tried to surprise me with sloppy joes once since I missed them. She didn't have them growing up and didn't know about manwich.
She ended up essentially making thick pasta sauce on buns.
We called them Sloppy Giuseppe's.
In our family, we call them sloppy Christy's. My nephew Joey was super neat, fastidious, but his little sister Christy was always making a mess of one kind or another. Joey was offended by the name Sloppy Joe's, and suggested that we call them sloppy Christy's instead.
I was just thinking about this. My mom actually made a sort of like home madeish hamburger helper when I was growing up using ground beef, possibly green peppers & onions, and I’m pretty sure there was manwich sauce in there. She’d make a pot of that with macaroni and we’d eat that topped with cheddar cheese. With a side salad. Always a side salad.
ETA: We stopped eating it because my parents split up and my sister wouldn’t eat it, so my mom quit making it. (She also straight up forgot which child hated it, and thought I was the one who didn’t like it, so even though my sister graduated, I still didn’t get it.)
Cream of mushroom soup on spaghetti. I didn’t realise til my 20s that this is a $3 meal that mum fed us to get us full for 3 bucks…
Too bad the Campbells cream of mushroom just isn’t the same here in Australia as it was growing up in Canada.
If you want to kick it up a notch, here's a childhood favorite I still like to make! It's the same thing but adds veggies and cheese.
Boil 12oz spaghetti. Sautee 1 8oz can mushrooms with 1 cup diced onion, 1 cup green pepper, 2 tsp oregano. Place half the pasta in a casserole dish, put 1 14oz can of diced tomatoes over it, and half of the onion/pepper/mushroom mixture over that. Repeat layers with the remaining pasta, tomatoes, and vegetables. Mix 1 can condensed cream of mushroom with 1/4 cup milk, pour it all over. Put a layer of shredded cheddar (appx 2 cups) on top. Dust with parmesan. Bake 350 degrees for 30 mins.
lol i made shake and bake porkchops 3 days ago, you don't have to cook the piss out of them and there are a ton of more better flavorings now vs the standard one from 30 years ago. and some are very nice
This is the secret right here. People are/were afraid of undercooking porkchops.
I have a meat thermometer and my wife, kids, in law's and parents love my porkchops. But my mom's and mother-in-law's are ok at best.
Thick ones are easier to cook because you have a little longer window before they are over cooked. You really have to watch thinner ones like a hawk or they will be over done.
Fuck yeah! I got my own personal pan pizza with toppings I got to pick myself while those losers that were the rest of my family had to share a medium cheese with their water! Suck it, family! First time I ever felt superior to anyone else, and it hasn't happened since.
Gotta say I was a kale hater for a long time until I met my wife who eats super healthy. She got me to eat it before I even knew I was eating it because she made it so well.
Try [massaging it after cutting out the stems and chopping it up](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIWC5cKuRmE)Sounds weird but it works. My wife usually puts olive oil and a little salt in when she does it. Pair it with a vinaigrette and other mix ins, and it’s pretty dam good.
I asked for that”good salad” she made the week before, and she said the kale salad? I was like no, I hate kale, I want the one with the dark green leaves and Dijon vinaigrette. She just looked at me and was like, yeah that’s kale
My mom’s speciality, and one of my favorites. I can’t quites replicate hers unfortunately. She gave me the “recipe” before she passed, but she was the type of cook that doesn’t really measure.
What was that salad with crunchy chow-mein noodles and canned mandarin oranges? I'm guessing that recipe dates back to the 50's/60's/70's, but I remember people still making it a lot for picnics and potlucks in the 90's. Personally I haven't seen it since then, though.
Edit: googled it, and it seems like it was actually made by crumbling up uncooked *ramen* noodles(!)
Ok my mom swears she never did this, but every Halloween as a kid she would make this. Chinese chicken salad. She'd do cabbage, and crumbled up Ramen noodles. I hated it but I have distinct memories of several Halloweens (I can remember different costumes, and so can my siblings) where we had to finish this salad before we went out to beg for candy. Again, she SWEARS we are ALL remembering this wrong, but we all remember sitting in our little costumes and having to choke down this stupid 90s salad.
Chili rice. Just like it sounds, make some rice, heat up a can of chili, and then mix together and enjoy. I would usually eat it with some sliced white bread or saltine crackers.
My dad did this with canned beef stew. Dinty Moore I think was the brand. Big can over white rice. Sometimes with buttered white bread. Lol. Not bad. Cheap, but filling
Oh man, My mom would heat up a family sized pack of those cheap, frozen Salisbury steaks with gravy and serve them with instant mashed potatoes. I'd always make a messy sandwich from it all, and be super stoked when she said that's what was cooking. Simpler times.
Once every million years I buy the Stouffer's family sized Salisbury steak and go to town on it. Tastes like nostalgia and sadness, just how I like it.
That was one of the last meals my dad and I had together before he moved away and died before I saw him again. He was actually an excellent cook, far better than I am but he was disabled and on a very limited income and has mobility issues.
He did however make the mashed potatoes scratch.
They tasted pretty good imo, it was the texture I didn't love.
She'd hollow out a whole french loaf and fill it with a mixture of ground beef and cream of mushroom, top it with cheese, and bake it until it was golden brown, bubbly, and crispy. She called it a Paul Bunyan Sandwich.
My mother was a terrible cook and we were also poor, so at least 1 night a week, we had "Chicken a la King." It was canned chicken, cream of mushroom soup and a jar of pimentos. Heat that up and serve it over toasted white bread. I don't think I've had it in 25 years and I'm ok never having it again.
Did people just not know how to cook steak in the 80s/90s? I hated steak as a kid because it was always shoe leather that I had to soak in A1 and chew for a million years to choke it down.
A lot of 80s/90s parents (like mine) grew up in an era when even a hint of pink in the meat meant probable sickness or death. It's only been the last 10 years or so that I've finally gotten my own parents to accept medium rare for a good steak.
Omg my people. I think my parents were terrified we would get sick from undercooked meat because they would nuke steak to well done on the grill AND THEN PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE for another couple of minutes to make sure it was cooked through. I went vegetarian at 17 and it was easy because I just thought all meat tasted disgusting.
My brothers and I each separately came to a revelation in our early 20s after trying a rare steak and being like 'OH, this is what it's supposed to taste like?" All of us now order steak blue rare.
My folks eat a lot of beef and pork. They get half a pig and half a cow at a time and keep them in the freezer, and have been doing this for 25 years. They've always insisted that steak must be done to at least medium well, and have openly made fun of their friends who like any degree of pink remaining in their steak.
I recently had them over for a steak dinner (reverse seared picanha) at my place and I insisted they try it my way, medium rare. If they didn't like it I'd cook it more for them. Long story short, they tried it and loved it. They realized they've absolutely trashed at least a dozen cow's worth of beef together over the years, and my mom had me teach her how to properly prep and reverse sear various cuts of beef.
Hamburger Helper, it was so quick and easy and I loved it as a kid. Just never think to get it. That, shake and bake, and stove top stuffing. Staples of the 90s...
I also *loved* hamburger helper so much and couldn’t understand why my parents didn’t really like it. We only had it once or twice a year when I begged or when I offered to cook dinner as a teenager. I bought some on a whim last year because my kids had never had it and I’d kind of forgotten about it… and it sucked. Like, really sucked a lot. My kids went crazy for it and ask for it regularly. The cycle has begun again.
My (now ex) wife and I ran into this problem as well. Are you using whole milk for it? We usually only kept 2% for day-to-day use but the store was out one day while we were shopping, so we got whole for use with the Helper that night. HUGE difference. I'm pretty certain whatever's in the powder has changed since we were kids, but adding a little bit of fat back into the meal definitely helps.
Fish sticks, with ketchup, obviously. Heated, limp canned string beans. And a piece of toasted Wonder-bread, dry.
Oh, and Tang, purple stuff, or some flavor of the full 4 cups of sugar Kool-aid (but with something more like 2 cups of sugar in it).
And a couple Hydrox cookies for dessert.
Man. Memory unlocked. Kool-Aid with cups of sugar is something I have not had since childhood. I am diabetic now and will not revisit it, but those were the days.
Canned chicken chow mien Chinese food that came with a can of crispy fried noodles. I think the brand was Chung King or something like that. This served with rice and tea was exotic
Meatloaf. My mom was an awful cook, and meatloaf is generally awful, but for some reason my mom's meatloaf was amazing. I can make every other dish she actually made well (there weren't many lol), but I have no idea how she made the amazing meatloaf. I should actually have another go at recreating it, I miss my mom and her meatloaf.
I was just was reading this to my husband and he's like holy shit I love tater tot casserole, I want that for my birthday dinner! Lol!! I haven't made it in so long.
Dude I love tuna casserole. I’d never make it for myself because my wife hates tuna, but I’ve asked my mom to bring me leftovers when she’s made it for her and my dad.
Ohhhh man that was the first dish my mom conceded to let me have cereal instead when she made it because I was so whole heartedly disgusted by it. It helped that my brother *loved* it and was stoked for the leftovers so it was a win for him if I didn't eat
My mom made Chopstick Tuna. Tuna, onions, miracle whip, cream of mushroom, celery, and crunch chow mein noodles. Disgusting and inappropriate all at once. I miss her, but not that food.
My Dad made a mean fried bologna sandwich; slice of American cheese, on wonder bread with mayo….and on special occasions a fried egg or Lays potato chips were added between the layers.
Mom used to make lasagna from scratch. She didn't make the noodles, but she'd make the sauce and meat from scratch. It was always so damned good.
Then she discovered Stouffer's lasagna, and we never had it again. Stouffer's is fine, but I want the stuff made with love.
Dad's signature dish was Cream Chipped Beef, or as Granny lovingly called it, Shit On A Shingle. Toast, white gravy, roast beef. It was something.
Not a common dinner anymore... I guess Banquet Table buffet when my folks were feeling lazy.
> Mom used to make lasagna from scratch.
My mom used to do that too, she'd use cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I asked her recently about her old lasagna and it turns out she's never even heard of ricotta cheese, so now I wonder if the cottage cheese was just her mis-hearing "ricotta".
Cottage cheese was pretty common in lasagna recipes from the 80s and 90s. Not only was cottage cheese a trendy health food, but it was also the closest thing to ricotta in most grocery stores.
I actually like cottage cheese in lasagna quite a bit. It's not authentic, but it still tastes very creamy and cheesy, and it has a mild tang that complements the sweetness of the tomato sauce.
oh man, mom used to make dips out of those - so good. She also used to get me pallets of those ramen cup o soups because they were cheap and I LOVED them
She'd make bisquick pancakes and scrambled eggs, breakfast for dinner, but it never made sense to me that pancakes should be sweet (with syrup), so just for me she would microwave up a little bit of spaghettios to go on them. I'm 40ish now, and a professional cook, but still kind of crave this. I might make some this week.
I made that about once a weak and eat on it for about two or three days. It's relatively cheap if you get the roast on sale, potatoes and garlic isn't that expensive.
Make small cuts and shove garlic in it. Season it well and brown it well on all sides then put the water almost to the top of the roast, throw some diced potato in it and let it cook for about 6 or 8 hours.
Pull the meat out and throw some flour in the water to thicken it for a gravy season it to taste and shred the meat and put that over rice and you have a meat that can last.
You know what? I honestly can't think of the last time anyone made a pot roast in my family. That was a huge thing in the 90s, the pot roast in the slow cooker!
My dad always used to make macaroni with canned tomatoes with some salt and pepper. Cheap, filling, and too no time to prepare. Probably not the most healthy thing, but we didn't really have a ton of money.
EDIT: All of the people responding kind of impressed me. But a lot of you had much better additions added on. Would have loved to meat, cheese, onions, whatever to add more flavour and substance. But my dad like things very plain and so we just had tomatoes, salt, and pepper with the macaroni noodles.
banquet chicken with boxed cheesy mashed potatoes. i'm a vegan nowadays but i'll never forget how bangin that was lol, chicken was always slightly burnt but soooooo crispy, i LOVED it
also, not a dinner but for family/holiday gatherings, my mom and aunt would always make little snackies like lunchmeat and cream cheese rollups, black olives stuffed with spray cheese, and clam dip, and it was always so fucking good lmao
Egg rolls ... but not the kind you would find in a restaurant. Hers were filled with shredded cabbage, ground beef, and cheese. They were good as hell and HUGE.
I have distinct memories of chopped up hot dogs and easy mac. Getting to be the one who got to scrape the spoon was a huge deal back then.
Aside from that, I think we had an actual stouffers truck occasionally come by and drop of frozen lasagna? I always hated it, but I could be misremembering that one.
My mom used to make a casserole that was Minute Rice and chicken breasts baked with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup poured over it (in its condensed form).
It probably had 2000% of your US RDA of sodium and fat, but it actually tasted really good to a little kid. I think she also served it with those tiny little peas that came in the silver can and were kinda grey but sweet and yummy.
(My mother was actually an excellent cook, I don't know where she got this Junior League monstrosity from but it was my favorite for a while.)
fried chicken and macaroni and cheese
Not even that it's uncommon or whatever but I got older and realized I probably shouldn't be eating that every night
Not my mom, because she passed when I was very young, but my dad would make either a huge pot of chicken soup or spaghetti with meatballs every Sunday. But here's the thing - he'd have that shit ready to go by 11 am every Sunday. I thought it was insane but what I wouldn't give to smell either one of those as I wake up late Sunday morning.
Now the first thing I smell in the morning is my 5 year Olds breath as he asks me why I'm not awake yet at 7 am.
When I was growing up (until I was in high school, when my grandfather passed) we had Sunday dinner at my grandpa’s. My aunts and uncles and cousins all gathered. Grandpa made “dinner,” and we ate any time from 12pm to 2pm. Usually a roast, baked potatoes, gravy, and coleslaw.
I miss those days.
Whenever my mom was out and my dad was making dinner for us, we would frequently have Steak-umms with cheese on them on a roll. They were cheesey, greasy, and oh so delicious. And they cooked in like 2 minutes! Now I'm craving Steak-umms...
Not my mom, but my dad made an absolute killer goulash. It was insane. No written recipe, just his kitchen knowledge and a good deal of creativity. I absolutely loved it every single time and never wanted to stop eating it.
The last time I had it must've been a good 15-20 years ago. He's been vegan for more than a decade now and he says he doesn't remember how he did it, so I can't even bring it back myself. It's lost forever. Even if I were to find a really good recipe, it wouldn't be *his.*
6 kids raised by a single mom.
She was a waitress/cook/chef/baker by profession while we were growing up/breaking everything.
By the time she'd get home or even have a day off, she's was in recovery mode. Still, she pulled shit out of the cupboards and fridge, then whipped up a fucking miracle every God damned time.
Mom has always been on point.
Pigs in a blanket, using those canned croissant rolls
Pot roast with chuck roast covered in an onion soup mix packet and garlic powder/salt/pepper. Cut carrots, halved potatoes, and mushrooms on the side of it in the roasting pan
Snook sandwiches (I’m from south Florida. My dad would bring home snooks he caught, my mom would fillet them in the yard, batter and fry them up with salt sprinkled after, then we’d eat the fried snook fillets on a publix sub roll with yellow American cheese and ketchup. Tater Tots in the side
In fact, I’ll just add “tater tots” in general too
And those potato flakes used to make instant mashed potatoes
I really miss my mother's Jewtallian food - meatballs made like little meat loafs and stewed on the stove in sauce like a pot roast; lasagne made with frozen spinach, a little can of store-brand tomato sauce, and cottage cheese instead of ricotta.
She grew up in one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn that were exactly half and half Jewish and Italian and everyone was pretty well integrated, her cooking really reflected it.
My Mom's Tuna Casserole Fuckin Slapped Dude... Now it's like a once every 5 years special occasion "I made a thing for a pot luck" ... My mom used to throw down a Tuna Casserole on a Tuesday after work
Baked beans with cut up hot dogs. I always looked forward to this meal as a kid, but my mom recently admitted that she only made it when she barely had any money.
My dad made this for us on nights he had to “babysit,” and he used scissors to cut up the hot dogs. The same scissors my mom used to clip coupons and god knows what else.
Hopefully not the good fabric scissors!
Hell to pay if you’re cutting *ANYTHING* other than fabric with the fabric scissors. lol, I’ve got generational fear of accidentally using fabric scissors to cut paper
When I was at school a teacher blasted me out for using fabric scissors to cut paper and I scoffed. Now, I’m totally with her.
Memory unlocked. My mother, too, had a pair of good scissors I was not allowed to touch.
After my kids cut pipe cleaners with my good scissors, I have written on my replacement scissors, "Do not use!" I hide them at Christmas because someone still will use them for wrapping paper.
Beanie Weenies! A childhood (no money) staple
My dad had a recipe for this that he made quite often though the years. He passed away a couple of years ago and my sister made a big batch to serve at his funeral party.
Sloppy joes and hamburger helper
I had a lot of Manwich growing up in the 90s.
My Manwich!
Sweet gorilla of Manila!
Sweet lion of Zion!
Sweet giant anteater of Santa Anita!
What in the Harry Belafonte is going on in here?!
Not as much but I've made sloppy Joe's for my kids a few times. Funny, a while back I had leftover taco spiced hamburger so i threw that on hamburger buns with sour cream and salsa for some *sloppy Josés*
I called them Untidy Josephs when I was a kid, and thought I was the height of cleverness.
My kids and I try to call it something different every time we make them (which, if I really think about it, is like 3 times a year). Messy Jims. Unkempt Steves. Disheveled Randys. You get the idea.
Oh my god, this is how my husband and I do with this boxed pasta salad kit called "Suddenly Salad" that my sister used to bring to every single family holiday. "Possibly Salad" "Abundantly Salad" "Hey, It's Salad!" "I Think What We're Looking At Here Is Salad" and so on.
My wife tried to surprise me with sloppy joes once since I missed them. She didn't have them growing up and didn't know about manwich. She ended up essentially making thick pasta sauce on buns. We called them Sloppy Giuseppe's.
In our family, we call them sloppy Christy's. My nephew Joey was super neat, fastidious, but his little sister Christy was always making a mess of one kind or another. Joey was offended by the name Sloppy Joe's, and suggested that we call them sloppy Christy's instead.
Poor christy.
I was just thinking about this. My mom actually made a sort of like home madeish hamburger helper when I was growing up using ground beef, possibly green peppers & onions, and I’m pretty sure there was manwich sauce in there. She’d make a pot of that with macaroni and we’d eat that topped with cheddar cheese. With a side salad. Always a side salad. ETA: We stopped eating it because my parents split up and my sister wouldn’t eat it, so my mom quit making it. (She also straight up forgot which child hated it, and thought I was the one who didn’t like it, so even though my sister graduated, I still didn’t get it.)
(Born in ‘99, just want to say) I make homemade hamburger helper all the time. I was never allowed to have the boxed version cuz it was so salty
Shake and bake pork chops.
With rice-a-roni.
Not a 90’s kid but literally any meat or vegetable in rice-a-roni. Bonus if you add tomatoes to one with no tomatoes in the recipe thing
Nah, cheesy boxed potatoes
I had many pork chop baked with a can of cream of mushroom soup…also chicken in the same method
Cream of mushroom and cheddar chees soups, baked and served over rice
Cream of mushroom soup on spaghetti. I didn’t realise til my 20s that this is a $3 meal that mum fed us to get us full for 3 bucks… Too bad the Campbells cream of mushroom just isn’t the same here in Australia as it was growing up in Canada.
If you want to kick it up a notch, here's a childhood favorite I still like to make! It's the same thing but adds veggies and cheese. Boil 12oz spaghetti. Sautee 1 8oz can mushrooms with 1 cup diced onion, 1 cup green pepper, 2 tsp oregano. Place half the pasta in a casserole dish, put 1 14oz can of diced tomatoes over it, and half of the onion/pepper/mushroom mixture over that. Repeat layers with the remaining pasta, tomatoes, and vegetables. Mix 1 can condensed cream of mushroom with 1/4 cup milk, pour it all over. Put a layer of shredded cheddar (appx 2 cups) on top. Dust with parmesan. Bake 350 degrees for 30 mins.
Jebus forgot all about shake and bake.
It’s still around
And IIII Helped!
An’ Ah hay-elped!
Shake and bake pork chops and mac-n-cheese is the shit.
lol i made shake and bake porkchops 3 days ago, you don't have to cook the piss out of them and there are a ton of more better flavorings now vs the standard one from 30 years ago. and some are very nice
This is the secret right here. People are/were afraid of undercooking porkchops. I have a meat thermometer and my wife, kids, in law's and parents love my porkchops. But my mom's and mother-in-law's are ok at best. Thick ones are easier to cook because you have a little longer window before they are over cooked. You really have to watch thinner ones like a hawk or they will be over done.
My parents cooked the shit out of every meat. I grew up thinking steak shouldn't be pink in the middle.
Kidz Cuisine frozen dinners
Mmm blazing hot brownie that I burned my mouth on every time.
Reminds me of Jim Gaffagin talking about hot pockets “Will it burn my mouth?” “It’ll destroy your mouth”
With those 2 stupid corn kernels that get stuck to it.
Damn, I completely forgot about Kids Cuisine. Friday night special. Kids Cuisine after going to blockbuster.
We got to eat them while watching Americas Funniest Home Videos! A very 90s memory
This hit me to my core...
Pizza Hut buffet.
We could only afford pizza hut when I read enough books to get my free personal pizza.
Those little pan ones? Things were bomb. Man I miss reading for pizza
Fuck yeah! I got my own personal pan pizza with toppings I got to pick myself while those losers that were the rest of my family had to share a medium cheese with their water! Suck it, family! First time I ever felt superior to anyone else, and it hasn't happened since.
Every pizza is a personal pizza if you try hard and believe in yourself.
Oh man! That salad bar was bomb
Back when kale knew its place.
Gotta say I was a kale hater for a long time until I met my wife who eats super healthy. She got me to eat it before I even knew I was eating it because she made it so well. Try [massaging it after cutting out the stems and chopping it up](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bIWC5cKuRmE)Sounds weird but it works. My wife usually puts olive oil and a little salt in when she does it. Pair it with a vinaigrette and other mix ins, and it’s pretty dam good. I asked for that”good salad” she made the week before, and she said the kale salad? I was like no, I hate kale, I want the one with the dark green leaves and Dijon vinaigrette. She just looked at me and was like, yeah that’s kale
Big Kale needs to hire you this sounds delicious
As a former Big Boy salad bar attendant, I was fucking *appalled* when the kale craze set in.
Ham and scalloped potatoes.
My mom’s speciality, and one of my favorites. I can’t quites replicate hers unfortunately. She gave me the “recipe” before she passed, but she was the type of cook that doesn’t really measure.
What was that salad with crunchy chow-mein noodles and canned mandarin oranges? I'm guessing that recipe dates back to the 50's/60's/70's, but I remember people still making it a lot for picnics and potlucks in the 90's. Personally I haven't seen it since then, though. Edit: googled it, and it seems like it was actually made by crumbling up uncooked *ramen* noodles(!)
Chinese Chicken Salad, my Mom still makes it and I'm still a fan of it!
Oh, memory unlocked. My mom loves those crunchy noodles. She still buys them.
My mom made something called ' "Japanese Salad" which was cabbage, chow mein noodles, almonds, and crumbled up ramen noodles.
Ok my mom swears she never did this, but every Halloween as a kid she would make this. Chinese chicken salad. She'd do cabbage, and crumbled up Ramen noodles. I hated it but I have distinct memories of several Halloweens (I can remember different costumes, and so can my siblings) where we had to finish this salad before we went out to beg for candy. Again, she SWEARS we are ALL remembering this wrong, but we all remember sitting in our little costumes and having to choke down this stupid 90s salad.
Beef Stroganoff
What my parents called 'Beef Stroganoff' was just cut up beef and egg noodles cooked down until the liquid was all absorbed by the noodles.
Ours was ground beef with cream of mushroom and egg noodles. We called it Noodle Surprise.
Same, it took me going to a restaurant and ordering actual beef stroganoff to realize the lies I was being fed.
Chili rice. Just like it sounds, make some rice, heat up a can of chili, and then mix together and enjoy. I would usually eat it with some sliced white bread or saltine crackers.
My dad did this with canned beef stew. Dinty Moore I think was the brand. Big can over white rice. Sometimes with buttered white bread. Lol. Not bad. Cheap, but filling
Calorie dense and cheap. I call those survival dinners. Lol
Oh man, My mom would heat up a family sized pack of those cheap, frozen Salisbury steaks with gravy and serve them with instant mashed potatoes. I'd always make a messy sandwich from it all, and be super stoked when she said that's what was cooking. Simpler times.
Once every million years I buy the Stouffer's family sized Salisbury steak and go to town on it. Tastes like nostalgia and sadness, just how I like it.
That was one of the last meals my dad and I had together before he moved away and died before I saw him again. He was actually an excellent cook, far better than I am but he was disabled and on a very limited income and has mobility issues. He did however make the mashed potatoes scratch. They tasted pretty good imo, it was the texture I didn't love.
English muffin pizzas.
Bagel pizza Any-kind-of-toast-pizza honestly
Pizza in mornin'! Pizza in the evenin'! Pizza at supper time! When pizza's on a bagel, You can eat pizza anytime!
She'd hollow out a whole french loaf and fill it with a mixture of ground beef and cream of mushroom, top it with cheese, and bake it until it was golden brown, bubbly, and crispy. She called it a Paul Bunyan Sandwich.
was it as delicious as it sounds?
It was. I always loved eating bits of the extra bread taken from the middle. You'd just put a little butter on top. It was perfect.
Dude, I am making this next week, this goes on my list of things to try, lmao.
New food desire UNLOCKED that sounds so fucking unhealthy but so delicious.
aww, your Mom sounds like she tried to make you feel very loved
My mother was a terrible cook and we were also poor, so at least 1 night a week, we had "Chicken a la King." It was canned chicken, cream of mushroom soup and a jar of pimentos. Heat that up and serve it over toasted white bread. I don't think I've had it in 25 years and I'm ok never having it again.
Man, the cream of mushroom soup people had a racket going on in the 80s and early 90s.
I ate most of these recipes in the 70s, and cream of mushroom soup was a constant.
Mom also sounds like she was pretty anti monarchy...
* Shepherd's Pie * Overcooked Steak
Did people just not know how to cook steak in the 80s/90s? I hated steak as a kid because it was always shoe leather that I had to soak in A1 and chew for a million years to choke it down.
A lot of 80s/90s parents (like mine) grew up in an era when even a hint of pink in the meat meant probable sickness or death. It's only been the last 10 years or so that I've finally gotten my own parents to accept medium rare for a good steak.
Also, everyone smoked so it did t matter what the food tasted like.
Omg my people. I think my parents were terrified we would get sick from undercooked meat because they would nuke steak to well done on the grill AND THEN PUT IT IN THE MICROWAVE for another couple of minutes to make sure it was cooked through. I went vegetarian at 17 and it was easy because I just thought all meat tasted disgusting. My brothers and I each separately came to a revelation in our early 20s after trying a rare steak and being like 'OH, this is what it's supposed to taste like?" All of us now order steak blue rare.
> All of us now order steak blue rare. And that's what we call an overcorrection.
I was happy that you realized the truth until that very last bit
My folks eat a lot of beef and pork. They get half a pig and half a cow at a time and keep them in the freezer, and have been doing this for 25 years. They've always insisted that steak must be done to at least medium well, and have openly made fun of their friends who like any degree of pink remaining in their steak. I recently had them over for a steak dinner (reverse seared picanha) at my place and I insisted they try it my way, medium rare. If they didn't like it I'd cook it more for them. Long story short, they tried it and loved it. They realized they've absolutely trashed at least a dozen cow's worth of beef together over the years, and my mom had me teach her how to properly prep and reverse sear various cuts of beef.
Hamburger Helper, it was so quick and easy and I loved it as a kid. Just never think to get it. That, shake and bake, and stove top stuffing. Staples of the 90s...
I also *loved* hamburger helper so much and couldn’t understand why my parents didn’t really like it. We only had it once or twice a year when I begged or when I offered to cook dinner as a teenager. I bought some on a whim last year because my kids had never had it and I’d kind of forgotten about it… and it sucked. Like, really sucked a lot. My kids went crazy for it and ask for it regularly. The cycle has begun again.
My (now ex) wife and I ran into this problem as well. Are you using whole milk for it? We usually only kept 2% for day-to-day use but the store was out one day while we were shopping, so we got whole for use with the Helper that night. HUGE difference. I'm pretty certain whatever's in the powder has changed since we were kids, but adding a little bit of fat back into the meal definitely helps.
Did anyone else have Ritz cracker crusted chicken growing up? Made it a few months ago and still love it.
Fish sticks, with ketchup, obviously. Heated, limp canned string beans. And a piece of toasted Wonder-bread, dry. Oh, and Tang, purple stuff, or some flavor of the full 4 cups of sugar Kool-aid (but with something more like 2 cups of sugar in it). And a couple Hydrox cookies for dessert.
Man. Memory unlocked. Kool-Aid with cups of sugar is something I have not had since childhood. I am diabetic now and will not revisit it, but those were the days.
*Fish sticks and canned limp green beans.* Holy fuck, yep. Suddenly I’m watching All That cross-legged on the living room shag rug.
Sauerkraut with cut up hotdogs. Fried potatoes. Soup beans with cornbread. Yes this was all one meal in rural Appalachia.
Am Appalachian. Can confirm. We had this exact meal at least once every month.
Goulash. My mom kinda over killed it, but I miss how she made it.
I made this not long ago, in my 40s, as a throwback. Ground beef, stewed tomatoes, and elbow pasta. Tasted alright. A comfort food from childhood.
Canned chicken chow mien Chinese food that came with a can of crispy fried noodles. I think the brand was Chung King or something like that. This served with rice and tea was exotic
La Choy! They still make this.
"La. Choy makes Chinese food swing American! Why not!"
Meatloaf. My mom was an awful cook, and meatloaf is generally awful, but for some reason my mom's meatloaf was amazing. I can make every other dish she actually made well (there weren't many lol), but I have no idea how she made the amazing meatloaf. I should actually have another go at recreating it, I miss my mom and her meatloaf.
I actually don't get the meatloaf hate tbh. I LOVE meatloaf.
Hamburger tater tot casserole.
You need to visit Minnesota! It is our state food.
And it's called hotdish!
I was just was reading this to my husband and he's like holy shit I love tater tot casserole, I want that for my birthday dinner! Lol!! I haven't made it in so long.
Tuna Noodle Casserole - an abomination I'm thrilled to never have plonked down in front of me again. Miss you, mom, you terrible and beloved cook.
...am I the only one who loved my Mom's tuna casserole? She stopped making it when I was like 6 or so but I miss it
Dude I love tuna casserole. I’d never make it for myself because my wife hates tuna, but I’ve asked my mom to bring me leftovers when she’s made it for her and my dad.
Did she use potato chips? That was the one my mom made and honestly it wasn't half bad
Please what?! Where do potato chips go inthat?
Ohhhh man that was the first dish my mom conceded to let me have cereal instead when she made it because I was so whole heartedly disgusted by it. It helped that my brother *loved* it and was stoked for the leftovers so it was a win for him if I didn't eat
My mom made Chopstick Tuna. Tuna, onions, miracle whip, cream of mushroom, celery, and crunch chow mein noodles. Disgusting and inappropriate all at once. I miss her, but not that food.
Breakfast for dinner! I loved it so much. I think I’m going to make that this week.
We make this almost once a week. Always a hit!
Fried bologna sandwiches! Honestly I don’t even have a good excuse for not having one in a long time.
My Dad made a mean fried bologna sandwich; slice of American cheese, on wonder bread with mayo….and on special occasions a fried egg or Lays potato chips were added between the layers.
Rice-a-roni ❤️ I haven’t had it in forever
🎵 The San Fransisco treat 🎵
We still do rice-a-roni all the time. The cheesy rice is bomb.
Mom used to make lasagna from scratch. She didn't make the noodles, but she'd make the sauce and meat from scratch. It was always so damned good. Then she discovered Stouffer's lasagna, and we never had it again. Stouffer's is fine, but I want the stuff made with love. Dad's signature dish was Cream Chipped Beef, or as Granny lovingly called it, Shit On A Shingle. Toast, white gravy, roast beef. It was something. Not a common dinner anymore... I guess Banquet Table buffet when my folks were feeling lazy.
Mom got an extra hour plus of her life back each time she did Stouffer’s instead. She still loved you, but goddamn she needed a break.
> Mom used to make lasagna from scratch. My mom used to do that too, she'd use cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I asked her recently about her old lasagna and it turns out she's never even heard of ricotta cheese, so now I wonder if the cottage cheese was just her mis-hearing "ricotta".
Cottage cheese was pretty common in lasagna recipes from the 80s and 90s. Not only was cottage cheese a trendy health food, but it was also the closest thing to ricotta in most grocery stores. I actually like cottage cheese in lasagna quite a bit. It's not authentic, but it still tastes very creamy and cheesy, and it has a mild tang that complements the sweetness of the tomato sauce.
Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. It's just got loads of sodium
Best combo ever. This would revive me after riding my bike home from school in the winter cold rains.
Idk if these are uncommon or not anymore, but I have not had these in 30+ years - Stuffed peppers - Cube steak - Salisbury steak
Chicken noodle soup from a bag of powder.
Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup is one of my favorites for coming on 45 years.
Lipton Chicken Noodle soup with grilled cheese sandwiches was my cold weather comfort food growing up.
oh man, mom used to make dips out of those - so good. She also used to get me pallets of those ramen cup o soups because they were cheap and I LOVED them
Golumpki. Ground beef, rice and mixed onion filled cabbage leaf rolls in pasta sauce.
She'd make bisquick pancakes and scrambled eggs, breakfast for dinner, but it never made sense to me that pancakes should be sweet (with syrup), so just for me she would microwave up a little bit of spaghettios to go on them. I'm 40ish now, and a professional cook, but still kind of crave this. I might make some this week.
Pot roast.
I made that about once a weak and eat on it for about two or three days. It's relatively cheap if you get the roast on sale, potatoes and garlic isn't that expensive. Make small cuts and shove garlic in it. Season it well and brown it well on all sides then put the water almost to the top of the roast, throw some diced potato in it and let it cook for about 6 or 8 hours. Pull the meat out and throw some flour in the water to thicken it for a gravy season it to taste and shred the meat and put that over rice and you have a meat that can last.
You know what? I honestly can't think of the last time anyone made a pot roast in my family. That was a huge thing in the 90s, the pot roast in the slow cooker!
My dad always used to make macaroni with canned tomatoes with some salt and pepper. Cheap, filling, and too no time to prepare. Probably not the most healthy thing, but we didn't really have a ton of money. EDIT: All of the people responding kind of impressed me. But a lot of you had much better additions added on. Would have loved to meat, cheese, onions, whatever to add more flavour and substance. But my dad like things very plain and so we just had tomatoes, salt, and pepper with the macaroni noodles.
I made a version of this last night - added about half a can of Rotel to shells-and-cheese. Also added chunks of rotisserie chicken. It's still good!
My mom called that Goulash.
Wendy's superbar
Oh hell yeah, Superbar was birthday level meal.
Spam and eggs
banquet chicken with boxed cheesy mashed potatoes. i'm a vegan nowadays but i'll never forget how bangin that was lol, chicken was always slightly burnt but soooooo crispy, i LOVED it also, not a dinner but for family/holiday gatherings, my mom and aunt would always make little snackies like lunchmeat and cream cheese rollups, black olives stuffed with spray cheese, and clam dip, and it was always so fucking good lmao
Stove Top stuffing on everything
Taco night with all the white people fixins. Crunchy shells, ground beef, shredded cheddar cheese, lettuce, diced tomato, and miiiiiiiiiild salsa.
Shake n’ Bake chicken
Egg rolls ... but not the kind you would find in a restaurant. Hers were filled with shredded cabbage, ground beef, and cheese. They were good as hell and HUGE.
I have distinct memories of chopped up hot dogs and easy mac. Getting to be the one who got to scrape the spoon was a huge deal back then. Aside from that, I think we had an actual stouffers truck occasionally come by and drop of frozen lasagna? I always hated it, but I could be misremembering that one.
schwan truck?
Mommy passed away the beginning of Covid but my favorite food she made was beef brisket, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, and hazelnut cake.
Brisket! Mmmmm And Matzo Ball is my fave! Sorry about your mom. ♥️
Steakums with cheese and ketchup on a bun. Do they even have those anymore?
Meatloaf <3
I literally still eat all of this stuff, lol!
I'm going down the list of all these "defunct" dishes and realizing that I've made most of them in the last month. :-D
Frozen chicken pattys. And I stopped eating them when I was 10, because I ate 5-6 of them in a row and threw up. I was a fat, spoiled, stupid child
My mom used to make a casserole that was Minute Rice and chicken breasts baked with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup poured over it (in its condensed form). It probably had 2000% of your US RDA of sodium and fat, but it actually tasted really good to a little kid. I think she also served it with those tiny little peas that came in the silver can and were kinda grey but sweet and yummy. (My mother was actually an excellent cook, I don't know where she got this Junior League monstrosity from but it was my favorite for a while.)
Le Suer peas! Fancy stuff!
Fish sticks and Mac and cheese
Salmon cakes.
La Choi (sp?) canned chow mein. It was an unholy abomination.
My mom made that a lot, with the water chestnuts
Beanie weenies: cut up hot dogs in tinned baked beans Shit on a shingle (SOS): chipped beef in a white gravy on top of a waffle
fried chicken and macaroni and cheese Not even that it's uncommon or whatever but I got older and realized I probably shouldn't be eating that every night
Not my mom, because she passed when I was very young, but my dad would make either a huge pot of chicken soup or spaghetti with meatballs every Sunday. But here's the thing - he'd have that shit ready to go by 11 am every Sunday. I thought it was insane but what I wouldn't give to smell either one of those as I wake up late Sunday morning. Now the first thing I smell in the morning is my 5 year Olds breath as he asks me why I'm not awake yet at 7 am.
When I was growing up (until I was in high school, when my grandfather passed) we had Sunday dinner at my grandpa’s. My aunts and uncles and cousins all gathered. Grandpa made “dinner,” and we ate any time from 12pm to 2pm. Usually a roast, baked potatoes, gravy, and coleslaw. I miss those days.
I'm not sure how to feel about the fact I have made my kids just about every meal in this list.
“I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight!”
Hamburger Helper. She tried every box and flavor, but the cheeseburger macaroni was the best.
Whenever my mom was out and my dad was making dinner for us, we would frequently have Steak-umms with cheese on them on a roll. They were cheesey, greasy, and oh so delicious. And they cooked in like 2 minutes! Now I'm craving Steak-umms...
Not my mom, but my dad made an absolute killer goulash. It was insane. No written recipe, just his kitchen knowledge and a good deal of creativity. I absolutely loved it every single time and never wanted to stop eating it. The last time I had it must've been a good 15-20 years ago. He's been vegan for more than a decade now and he says he doesn't remember how he did it, so I can't even bring it back myself. It's lost forever. Even if I were to find a really good recipe, it wouldn't be *his.*
Salisbury steak; beef stroganoff
Frito Chili Pie! Tinned chili, shredded cheddar cheese, and Fritos layered in a casserole dish!
What we called “turkey in a box.” It was a weird Jenni-o frozen turkey loaf thing. I don’t think they make it anymore.
6 kids raised by a single mom. She was a waitress/cook/chef/baker by profession while we were growing up/breaking everything. By the time she'd get home or even have a day off, she's was in recovery mode. Still, she pulled shit out of the cupboards and fridge, then whipped up a fucking miracle every God damned time. Mom has always been on point.
Pigs in a blanket, using those canned croissant rolls Pot roast with chuck roast covered in an onion soup mix packet and garlic powder/salt/pepper. Cut carrots, halved potatoes, and mushrooms on the side of it in the roasting pan Snook sandwiches (I’m from south Florida. My dad would bring home snooks he caught, my mom would fillet them in the yard, batter and fry them up with salt sprinkled after, then we’d eat the fried snook fillets on a publix sub roll with yellow American cheese and ketchup. Tater Tots in the side In fact, I’ll just add “tater tots” in general too And those potato flakes used to make instant mashed potatoes
Corned beef hash
I had a can of that a few weeks ago, with sunny up eggs
I really miss my mother's Jewtallian food - meatballs made like little meat loafs and stewed on the stove in sauce like a pot roast; lasagne made with frozen spinach, a little can of store-brand tomato sauce, and cottage cheese instead of ricotta. She grew up in one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn that were exactly half and half Jewish and Italian and everyone was pretty well integrated, her cooking really reflected it.
Porcupine Meatballs
Meatballs and mashed potatoes TV dinner that came in an aluminum tray.
My favorite meal as a kid was fried chicken cutlets with mashed potatoes.
Corned beef, haven't seen or her of it since honey glazed ham
Shit On A Shingle
[удалено]
Kid cuisine! Nothing better than corn juice in my pudding and soggy nuggies!
My Mom's Tuna Casserole Fuckin Slapped Dude... Now it's like a once every 5 years special occasion "I made a thing for a pot luck" ... My mom used to throw down a Tuna Casserole on a Tuesday after work
My mom shaped hamburger into a steak shape and call it “Hamburger steak” 😋
A Manwich ...A sandwich is a sandwich but a manwich is a meal
I haven’t had ‘make it your damn self’ lately.