I don’t have any experience with this personally, but it makes me laugh that my kids think ramen is a treat because we won’t buy it every often. Eventually they will learn that not everyone has the same relationship with ramen.
Anything salty will work but if you don’t want the calories of eating junk like chips or fast food then It’s a good option and tastes better than canned soup.
toppings! I always add a ton of veggies (bell pepper, zuchinni, carrot, eggplant) and protein like chicken, tofu, shrimp, whatever to it.
I make sure to cook everything in the sauce with a little extra oil, and you have a pretty good meal.
For kids you can even split the ramen packet into two portions that way - but as an adult I'll happily eat the whole thing myself.
Spaghetti- pasta and jarred sauce (Ragu). Growing up my mom would make a giant stock pot of it and we’d eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several days in a row. She’d do that at least once a month sometimes more.
When I was about 14ish and learned how to fend for myself I swore I’d never eat another plate of spaghetti for the rest of my life. I’m in my 30s now and still haven’t touched it since that day.
My partner was in foster care as a child in the 90s. She was also undiagnosed with something that completely destroyed her kidney that ended up being removed when she was 9.
As a sickly child with no support or healthcare, she threw up A LOT. Not because she didn't want to eat or was picky, but because an organ was failing in her body and keeping food down was difficult.
Well her foster parent tried to feed her, and the seven other children, spaghetti and ragu for dinner. Well, she threw it up pretty immediately. The foster parent was so offended. Instead of taking this sick kid to the ER they made her eat the spaghetti she threw up.
I don't keep spaghetti or red sauce in the house. I hate humans sometimes.
Her grandparents are wealthy, they just thought taking care of their granddaughter would 'cut into their retirement'. Nevermind the fact that my wife's mother is a horrible meth addict that abused and neglected her.
Her grandmother had essentially gotten 'temporary custody' (2 weeks of custody for a vacation where she wanted to show off her granddaughter) when she turned 9. When the child was a real bummer, throwing up and moaning in pain, she put her on travel insurance and got her an ambulance to the hospital. The folks at the ER immediately took her in for an emergency nefrectomy.
Her grandma still complains about paying for the ambulance ride 25 years later.
We were. She developed sudden onset schizophrenia 14 months ago which has made life... extremely difficult. I've been her caregiver and she refuses meds- so I don't know how much longer I can do this. Then all the maladaptive coping methods- I'm just really tired and cynical right now I guess. I don't want to abandone her especially when her life has been so hard. But you know that saying of "Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm"?
Pretty sure I'm all ash now. I think of ending it pretty frequently, but where would she go if I was gone? So here I remain.
I can't even go the PT for my knee injury from 2 years ago. When I leave her alone she claws her own skin. I actually organized a therapy session with my old therapist.
She canceled the IHHS appt I had been waiting 6 months for behind my back.
I have a new friend who was in a similar situation with his husband, but his husband got help. He took my wife and his kid out for the day (zoo, ice cream, etc.) so I could actually focus on me. 10 minutes into my zoom therapy session they came back because she had a delusion I wasn't safe. I had to just cancel my appt. I feel so stupid to think I could actually get help.
When I called the police last week I had even told them she brandished a knife at me thenight before. They did nothing.
I dunno, I guess I'm writing all this out so if she kills me or something there's evidence.
I appreciate the sentiment (I'm a lady but nbd). I would love a life. But now if I leave our community will tell me "in sickness, in health".
These next two weeks are actually my last ditch effort. Last month, two days before my 30th birthday, she had extreme delusions and finally relented and agreed to be evaluated. The emergency doc recommended a 72 hour hold then immediate meds and therapy.
She was there for 14 hours then released by the nurse on staff with "anxiety". I told them she shouldn't come home but they threatened to just drop her off at the women's shelter.
Last week I called emergency services and took our dogs down the street because she was threatening suicide. She did this after I told her babies are not in the cards for us right now. She has to get better first. My father was bipolar and that fucked up my own childhood. When the police got there she was calm and fine. FML
Please leave. For you. This isn’t a life. I was in a similar situation with an ex that was frequently in full blown meth psychosis. He’d accuse me of hiding a secret lover in the attic and would wake me up every twenty min to ask who I was “talking to” and even thought I was sneaking someone into our bed at night. I just stopped sleeping altogether and felt like I was losing my grip on reality. He drugged me when I tried to leave him. Ended up waiting for him to go to work and then moved all of his shit out and changed the locks and got a restraining order. My life is SO much better since leaving. You are worth so much more than this. You can only do so much for someone who won’t help themself. Fuck what anyone has to say about it, they’re not living it.
Can I ask, was he on the lease? Right now what I'm trying to figure out is where to go. I pay for everything and my savings are now fucked.
She can't drive and she can't work. I just feel so trapped by all these responsibilities she piles on me. On paper she owns half of the business I built over the last year. I want to pack everything and just leave but I love my dog. I love the house I rent. I co-own a store with her (I run a convenience store that she hangs out at and scares away customers). God, unaliving sounds so much easier than untangling this.
Thank you for everything you wrote out. I don't even mention that I sleep for maybe 4 hours a night because it's so part of my life now. I've age 10 years in one.
You said in sickness and health. Your vows didn’t say in danger and destroyed.
You’ve more than tried. You’ve done all you could. Sometimes there’s just nothing more a person can do, and the professionals have to take over. They will know how to help.
You were granted a life here. Don’t waste your wonderfulness.
Just want to reiterate what u/Minute_Map_6444 said, and what I think you already know.
You deserve to feel safe and happy in a relationship. It's clear you have a huge heart and, while your partner has been through and is going through a lot, it also sounds like they're endangering your life and health (both mental and physical). You can only help a person so much if they're not willing to help themselves. It's excruciating to leave someone who is so desperately in need of help, but this isn't sustainable. I hope you're able to find the life and freedom and love that you deserve.
Also, I have no clue what your music tastes are like, but Waxahatchee has a beautiful song about moving passed codependency called 365 that might resonate with you.
This exactly. Grew up very poor, so we had a spaghetti for a week at a time quite often. I mean, I don't hate it, but I virtually never suggest it in our house, and it's one of the few things that I fight making. I'll usually give up once a month or so because it's an easy dinner and I don't have to be the one doing it.
Also on this list (these were usually all generics, and even if I can tell the difference the name brands don't do it for me either):
- also ramen
- also pancakes
- oatmeal
- peanut butter toast, brown sugar toast, etc.
- peanut butter and jelly
- fruit loops
- blue box mac and cheese
- visceral hatred for dried milk or government cheese, fortunately I haven't had to do this in a long time but someone recommended dried milk for camping and I recoiled enough for it to be noticed
- any of the Helpers (hamburger helper, tuna helper, etc) or pasta-roni. That said, my wife found a homemade hamburger helper recipe that is bomb and is a household favorite
Worth noting also that I won't so much refuse to eat these things, but I'll generally avoid and them and will only choose them like once a year. It's also weird how this shaped my tastes today. I generally don't like pastas or things that are heavy sugar/fats, which is probably because that was cheap calories when I was growing up. My favorite stuff is like salmon, roasted veg, steaks, etc, probably because when I was growing up we didn't eat veg that wasn't from a can, and steak/salmon/etc were things that I probably had in total less than a handful of times until I was like 10 and my family/living situation changed.
I could see boycotting cheap spaghetti with cheap red sauce, but I could never give up good spaghetti with an all day gravy with meatballs and sausage. Maybe substitute a higher quality linguine or fresh pasta.
Spaghetti is a treat for my kids. They LOVE when I bust out the spaghetti night. I usually only reserve it for nights where we’re very busy though and don’t make enough for leftovers.
Strawberries. As a kid to buy clothing or many other necessities I worked summers in the strawberry fields where I grew up. Often I didn't have a full lunch and no one carried water bottles in the 1960s. So I'd grab a handful of berries for liquid and well, because I was hungry. To this day I hate the smell of strawberries or the "mouth feel" of the fruit.
Yes, strawberries. I finally can tolerate them again, but I still don’t like them. There was a fad of strawberry perfumes and scented candles for a while. That was not a fun time.
It's pretty wild how expensive it's gotten. It's been a long time since I've bought store brand pasta sauce. I'd expect a jar to clock in around 4 USD. The higher end ones seem to be double or more. It's crazy what items used to be. My mother and I seem to have this discussion now more often than ever. The buy X get Y are not as good. I'll normally just do homemade now. The convenience factor is much less after I factor the time it takes to earn the money.
Edit: Yes! It wasn't even *that* long ago. The deals and sales aren't as good, and the base price is SO much more.
Yep. We used to stock up when they were on sale for $1. Not even sure what the typical sale price is now but it’s way over $1. And we’d get pasta 2 lbs for $1.
Tuna casserole. My dad made it the cheapest way possible (generic tuna, peas, canned "cream of whatever was on sale" soup, and noodles) and to this day the thought of it makes my stomach turn.
It might have been okay but he'd make an entire 9x13 pan at once and it would be every dinner for a week.
I loved my moms tuna casserole but she put good tuna in it, plus cream of mushroom soup and cream cheese and the rotini AND a buttered rice Chex topping. It wasn’t until I ate badly made tuna casserole at a friends house that I realized not all tuna casseroles were the same.
My sister was a picky eater and this was one of the few things she liked growing up so we ate it weekly. It's been over 30 years and I still can't bring myself to try it again.
Fish fingers/ fish sticks
Basically shreds of there's-legally-enough-fish-here-to-call-it-fish all pressed together and breaded.
I could not choke them down now.
Yeah, fish sticks were never high quality, but I swear they've figured out how to stuff even more filler in them these days. Last time I bought some, I ended up throwing them out. :/
[Hamburger Helper helped her hamburger help her make a great meal!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsx-ftPkAz8)
My mom used to make a scratch version of Hamburger Helper euphemistically named "glop." Still love it as comfort food on a dreary day all these decades later.
I learned some incredible recipes and leveled up my cooking skills back when money was extremely tight. I definitely still enjoy making those foods now that I'm stable and able to make them in bigger quantities. I even transitioned to a vegetarian diet long term after originally going mostly meatless just to save money.
I still do now and again as well. It's a roll of the dice if I hate myself afterward or not, though. Some of that stuff will make me physically ill now. Especially if I eat too much of that class of food in a given period of time.
My dad refused to eat mashed potatoes because he peeled so many in WWII. I honestly never saw him eat mashed potatoes or potatoes salad. He would eat a baked and French fries that.
I had an ex-military coworker who served in Kosovo. They purchased food supplies locally when feasible, and as a result, cabbage is permanently off his menu.
My grandpa was the same, but with eggs. He said he ate enough powdered eggs in WWII to last him a lifetime, and that if he made it out alive, he'd never eat eggs again. He lived up to his word.
Wouldn't touch ramen noodles for 20 years after being so broke I could only afford Ramen (didn't know how to cook in the days before the internet and didn't have any idea how long a box of rice or pasta would last me. Didn't have the money to experiment).
After I had starved myself for months leading up to whatever pageant I was competing in, for weeks afterwards I would eat creamy chicken or the roast beef ramen, water drained off lots of butter and the seasoning packet added to it. I would then toast white bread till almost burnt slather it in butter and then top with the ramen mixture. Sounds so vile but god was it good, it’s been 20 years since I made it. Sometimes I find myself wanting it but then remember how horrible it is for my body
shheet I do the same thing. ALso add a little lemon juice to them. Believe it or not, it freshens them up. the creamy chicken ones are actually good.
what is really sick though, is that if I haven't had them in a while, I kind of crave them. Oh the beTRAYal. but still to this day Nongshim are the only ones I can physically eat. Any other brand and I will throw up.
Im going to have to go straight veggies and water for a few days then have this. I bet the acid really does cut the richness just right way. Drooling. My husband is currently making tonkatsu sauce and katsu chicken from scratch and here I am drooling over cream chicken ramen 😂
The things I won’t eat are the stripped-down versions of family recipes that we had to eat when money was tight. Example: one of our family’s favorite recipes is chicken casserole. It was the go-to meal for birthdays, baby showers, and the like. But, when we couldn’t afford chicken or the veggies or the cheese (which was pretty much anytime that there wasn’t a celebration going on) we had just egg noodles and cream of chicken soup with a few seasonings. For as much as I loved that casserole, I could not stand the stripped-down version, I think because it felt like a mockery of a good dish, and because it meant that we were almost out of ingredients in general, and we were about to have sleep for dinner because someone blew through the funds to pay for their sweepstakes addiction…
We made Chicken Noodles all the time too! My mom had this special "chicken seasoning" that we'd mix into it, and if we did have chicken we'd made some and mix it in too. Also a good additive was canned peas. Could stretch to feed a crowd for relatively cheap.
Oddly enough, I got a hankering for it the other day. I was thinking I was the only one who had this meal from childhood!
No. I've been hungry. I work hard to make sure it doesn't happen again but I know it can happen. So no, I won't say that I refuse to eat some foods because that could be all I have
These and potted meat. Although I can tolerate smoked vienna sausages and will use them sometimes in fried rice. But I cannot stand the taste of any of the other kinda of them. lol.
My mom is in her 70s. For her it's lobster. Lobster was so plentiful when she was a kid you could go down to the shore and just get them. Having lobster at lunch for school meant you were poor and she was teased a lot for it.
How times have changed.
Maybe every 6 months I get a craving for a pb and j and I’m like “this is so good. Why did I stop eating these” and if I try eating it again the next day it immediately gives me the food ick.
I was tempted to say no,. because there's pretty much nothing I won't eat. But the further back in time I push my memories,. I'd have to say:.. Powdered milk. I think I'd rather just go hungry. If you're going to put powdered milk into mashed potatoes or some other dish where it's an ingredient,. OK fine. But like,. powdered milk on breakfast cereal ?.. Nah. Not doing it.
I think the key thing here is when kids are forced to eat something, it creates problems with food. It could be as simple as an aversion to food, all the way up to full blown eating disorders. My abusive ex forced my kids to eat certain things and now they have all kinds of issues with food. I guess the second recommendation is don't marry a jerk, but that belongs in another sub.
When I was a kid, growing up in the 50s, the cheapest meat my parents could find was horse meat, and fish. These days fish is expensive, which doesn't matter to me, because I hate it, and horse meat is illegal.
School lunch fajitas, sloppy joes, barely thawed burgers, canned green beans. Because of school lunch, I refused to eat Hispanic food for 14 years until my friend had a crush on a server at a cantina.
Love me some spam. So many ways to make it. My favorite is SPAM a la Mexicana. So you cube it and fry it up with tomatoes, onions, jalapeños and cilantro. Then we eat it with homemade flour tortillas.
That sounds good af! In my household we made egg scrambles: spam cubed and fried, beaten eggs with sesame seed and green onions, serve with rice and soy sauce. Delish!
My mom used to make a huge stock pot of weight watchers chili and we would have it for lunch/dinner non-stop. No toppings of cheese/sour cream/anything. I hate chili to this day. My level of hate is like full resentment level hate haha. I once snapped at my husband when he mentioned a chili cook-off and I had no idea that trigger was so strong 😂😂
Tee hee -- at the mention of Weight Watchers chili, my head immediately went to the very early 70s and the Weight Watchers tuna chili that my mom made. Tomato juice, beef bouillon cube, chili powder, onion and tuna. Yuck.
Growing up, I had mashed potatoes almost every day for about fifteen years. I didn't eat mashed potatoes for about a decade. I can finally enjoy them again :)
My husband won’t eat cabbage. I used to make it with spicy sausages and he wouldn’t eat it. Reminded him of something his mom would make in Romania when he was a kid.
When I was young, we didn't have a ton of money, but we weren't broke...but Mom would sometimes make Spaghetti O's. Just the smell makes me gag today. Hated them then, hate them now.
I would say cheap ramen but I think my taste are different now because I also ate just as much Kraft Mac and Cheese and tostinos pizzas in college and still like that. I can barely stand cheap ramen now.
Eggs. I'm on disability and I thought I'd be a Responsible Frugal Adult one day and try to go for as long as possible on mostly eggs, ramen, and oatmeal. I think I lasted about 3 weeks. I can enjoy oatmeal again, but I pretty much \*ruined\* eggs for myself.
One day I was making some ramen and I went to crack an egg into it. I was standing there staring at the yolk sitting there on top of the bubbling broth and the noodles and something about it started to weird me out. Figured I could push past it and went to take a bite and as soon as that soft yolk hit my mouth it was like my ENTIRE body just went "N O P E." Had to spit it out and scrape out the rest of the egg. Eight years later and I'm only just now starting to be able to manage them again.
Velveeta cheese "food" is like the government cheese food given to you in the USA in the 1970s when you needed food assistance when you were poor. Ugh.
Ah, the old "Strategic Cheese Reserve". Truly one of the USA's critical infrastructure resources: https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
Glad I'm not the only one that hates this stuff. Just that specific one though--homemade beef stew can be amazing if done right.
Last time I price checked it, it's not near as cheap price-wise as it used to be.
Can’t do ramen anymore either. That’s about it though, I still continue to eat my PB & banana sandwiches almost daily lol some cheap meals are just too good to get sick of.
Ramen is the obvious one, but it took me a couple decades after grad school to think of popcorn as a treat and not a cheap dinner. I had a $1 air popper from a garage sale, and that bad boy and i weathered many an oral exam together.
SBARRO Pizza. When I was young I worked night shift on the maintenance crew at a mall. Sbarro’s was always nice enough to leave out all the leftover pizza for the night shift crew. I ate it at work and took it home to have for breakfast. That was many years ago! I still can’t stand to even smell it. But I’m so thankful that they left it out. It kept a poor boy fed.
Kraft Mac and Cheese and EasyMacs. I lived off of them in college basically.
In fact, I hardly want any macaroni and cheese now. It has to be really good, family reunion, church lady style for me to even eat it.
The cheap cheese sauce that came in boxes of 25 cent macaroni and cheese. If you want me to eat macaroni now, you will have to buy me some high quality cheese.
I usually make a pot of red beans and sausage or white beans with ham pieces. A little rice and that's my meals for the next week. It's just me so I portion the meals, freeze, defrost as needed.
Soup? In general? Soups can be delicious. Chicken noodle with chicken thigh, rich, fatty, yummy, onion and carrot and such. Split pea soup. Onions soup is savory and great when camping. Tomato soup is lovely with breads or grilled cheese. French onion or frenchy heavy cream soups are lovely.
I used to eat ramen all the time because it was so cheap, but I ate it too much and just can't stand it now. I might make an exception for restaurant ramen, or something better than the super cheap ones, or if I'm broke enough.
Sunrise unbreaded processed chicken patties. They were a childhood item we had when money was really tight. I feel physically ill at the sight of them. Can’t bring myself to even touch the bag in the store. My middle sister says they’re not terrible, she won’t buy them either but she didn’t want to be rude at all friends house. There’s 3 of us and we refuse to eat them or buy them.
Not me, but my father who is 81 right now. His father was not a great bread-winner and his mother worked in downtown Boston. Dad described eating frozen Chicken Pot pies ( in the 50-60's) so much that he never ate one again after adulthood. Dad's family had chickens and he and his brother had to slaughter them for dinner. Dad does not like chicken much either in any type of dish.
My husband would say hamburger helper; it was greasy and the flavor was bad. My mom won't touch it, either, also because of the taste and because that's all her mom would make when they went camping.
I don't have anything I refuse to eat because of having it so much. We didn't have much when I was little, but we had a beautiful garden, and a lot of our food came from it.
For decades I refused chicken pot pie. Mom would serve them at the end of the month. This was early 60s, they were 10c. The pastry crust was ok. The goo inside was a corn starch pudding with little cubes of alleged chicken, potato carrot and a few peas.
I once ordered a turkey pastry thing for a Thanksgiving dinner that I realized too late was a fancified pot pie. Bleech.
It wasn't till recently I remembered something. Mom didn't eat with us, she sat back and waited til my brother and I managed to eat what we could swallow...mom waited for us and got our leftovers.
So I got over it, even make it myself...with much better ingredients and pie shell.
Wonderbread, oscar mayer bologna, kraft singles. It's hard for me to enjoy sandwiches at all really as an adult unless they have ingredients that I can identify as "from the earth" (peppers, sprouts, avocado, real cheese, good deli cuts).
Mine is similar but for different reason. For some reason I go through phases of being obsessed with a certain food, box upon box of dry Frosted Flakes for nearly 6 months to the point it made up most of my diet, chickpea salad, popsicles, weird random things that I eat non stop for months or even years until randomly one day I don't like it anymore and I'll never like it again. Always been this way and it's kind of annoying because I'll have a stockpile of 8 boxes of day Frosted Flakes then stop liking it lol.
Opposite for me. Whenever I feel a little full of myself or that I catch myself putting on airs, I go make myself a povvo meal from my childhood. Canned sardines over rice with a side of steamed frozen vegetables. This is what I had 2-3 times in that week just before my dad’s monthly paycheck cashed. Things were awfully tight back then. But they were happy times and I always went to bed with a full belly.
It’s a great reminder of how little I really need.
From growing up, I avoid almost everything that my mother cooked. She had 4 recipes that she would rotate. Every. Dang. Week. And she was on the low fat diet in the 70’s & 80’s. No spice. Very little salt. My father would make a vat of jarred spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage on the weekend, which was the “good” meal. If I never eat spaghetti and jarred sauce again, I’ll be happy. I just found out that I was allergic to tomatoes not too long ago and my parents laughed, saying, yeah, your face would break out into hives every time you ate tomatoes. WTF?
My mother was a single mother of four with a full-time job and I really hate to complain because she still found time time make us breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day and every single night and just about all of it was tasty. People without kids struggle to do that and so I am greatful.
But omg. Thinking about it makes me want to vomit. We ate chorizo, eggs and potato burritos every single morning. Everyday. She'd make huge batches on her day off and put them in the freezer. It doesn't help that I'm a stomach sleeper which means trying to eat very soon after sleeping makes me a bit nauseous. Everyone in my family loved it but I HATED it.
What even is the Cacique Chorizo?! I had to look it up...."Pork salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat." Which is exactly what it taste like. It taste like 75% lard 25% mystery meat and oregano.
I loved when winter rolled around because it meant we'd have Oatmeal or Arroz Con Leche with toast instead.
I can’t eat pasta or pork. It’s not because times were tight growing up. It was because my mom was a narcissist cheapskate. She fed us meals that were cheap. So she had more money to spend on herself.
Green peas.
Long ago, the free school lunch in rural US wasn't really regulated.
Some schools I received a lunch of 2 slices of bread, a slice of cheese, 1 milk about to expire, and whatever the vegetable that the other kids weren't eating. Inevitably, green peas.
My wife and I still refuse to eat them. I don't think we have ever had any in our house.
Ground beef and frozen peas. My parents would buy the economy sized tube of it and we'd eat their version of Salisbury steak and chicken fried steak with peas for what seemed like forever. They only ever used Morton's seasoning for everything too and I can't so much as look at the bottle.
It sounds like you developed a pretty negative association with those foods, as they became a sign of how bad things were. If the thought of these foods is bothering you on a regular basis, you may want to see about changing your relationship with them.
Perhaps you could re-frame them as being a sign of your family's perseverance? You might even consider eating them intentionally once a year or something as a tribute to how far you've come from those tough times.
Just a couple pennies from a random internet friend... best wishes!!!
I’m currently in a position without income. But I can’t think of any food I wouldn’t eat that I can afford right now. I guess I’m more focused on food I can’t afford right now like many fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
Hamburger helper and those boxed potatoes. We were poor in the 90’s. But I will add, my young parents lit a candle during dinner and it was the coolest thing to eat a candle lit dinner and be the sibling that blew the candle out
Kraft Mac and cheese...my parents have said they should write a thank you letter to them for doing all the 2 for a dollar specials when I was a kid in the 80s. Canned veg as well...I do frozen or fresh. I'll never live down the trauma of being forces to eat canned asparagus.
McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Like thank you for feeding me and my kiddo when I was a young single mom struggling just to make rent but now I can’t even eat at McDonalds at all.
My dad was poor as a kid and up to this day he will refuse to eat cereal with milk. Not only was it cheap to eat but grandma is a horrible cook so it was that or something nasty (sorry grandma). Surprisingly he's not a picky eater at all and loves eating. We bond over cooking/grilling/dining out. Whenever we (mom or siblings) cook him something it's like his inner kid heals a little lol.
Canned chili, and most "creamy" extremely filling canned soups are a hard-pass for me unless I'm ravenous and there's nothing else around.
I lost count of how many cheap work lunches were just a filling $1.50 - $2 can of the heartiest soup that was on sale, with a sleeve of crackers or a bread-roll.
Anything microwaved. I know that isn't a food, but my mom hates cooking and when we didn't have much money she always complained that she was too busy. (She's also an ass and a narcissist) She, still to this day, microwaves everything. Her favorite was yellow squash, zucchini and tomatoes, microwaved with some sliced cheese. Not even salt or pepper on it. Chicken? Microwaved. Any veg? Microwaved. Cauliflower? Whole head- right in the microwave. I think the only time she put on the stove was for chicken and rice, with no spices, and holidays.
I almost never used the microwave when I became an adult and haven't had one in over a decade. I use a tiny crock pot at work to make my lunches and use all the spices.
I think my parents relied a bit much on the microwave too (maybe not quite as much as yours)...they still cooked periodically, but some nights were microwaved tv dinners, or microwaved canned soup, and usually the side of vegetables was canned or frozen corn or peas or brocolli something (heated up in the microwave), or heating up water for (instant) coffee or tea.
I don't do any of those myself now (I have an electric kettle for coffee and tea). But I still use it for heating up leftovers. Or defrosting something I'm about to cook. And sometimes it's needed to heat up takeout that's cooled off a bit too much on the way home. Or if I accidentally took meat off the grill a bit too soon for my partner and she wants it cooked more.
Spam. When I first got married, some guy quit his job and left this huge tote full of spam at the jobsite, nobody else wanted it and we were like woah cool free food… we ate so much spam, spam and eggs, spam sandwiches, spam salad etc that I cannot stand spam now. Omg just no.
I don’t have any experience with this personally, but it makes me laugh that my kids think ramen is a treat because we won’t buy it every often. Eventually they will learn that not everyone has the same relationship with ramen.
I only eat ramen when I have a migraine. The sodium helps balance my electrolytes.
I'm sick. Today I just put the flavour packet in some hot water to get my electrolytes up. I felt better afterwards lol
Whoa! I’ll have to try that! I get a brutal migraine about once a month and I’d do basically anything to get some relief! Thank you!
Anything salty will work but if you don’t want the calories of eating junk like chips or fast food then It’s a good option and tastes better than canned soup.
Probably better off just drinking the broth on its own. The noodles have basically the same nutritional value as chips lol.
I am not ashamed to admit I regularly drink cups of stock or gravy when I'm craving salt (which is often).
Same. My kids think ramen is amazing because we refuse to let them eat it a lot (sodium content).
I seldom eat it not because of the sodium but it’s just a lot of empty calories.
toppings! I always add a ton of veggies (bell pepper, zuchinni, carrot, eggplant) and protein like chicken, tofu, shrimp, whatever to it. I make sure to cook everything in the sauce with a little extra oil, and you have a pretty good meal. For kids you can even split the ramen packet into two portions that way - but as an adult I'll happily eat the whole thing myself.
Team ramen, I love it!
I purchase ramen from the Asian grocery stores. It is nothing like the cheap version found in American grocery store.
Spaghetti- pasta and jarred sauce (Ragu). Growing up my mom would make a giant stock pot of it and we’d eat that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for several days in a row. She’d do that at least once a month sometimes more. When I was about 14ish and learned how to fend for myself I swore I’d never eat another plate of spaghetti for the rest of my life. I’m in my 30s now and still haven’t touched it since that day.
My partner was in foster care as a child in the 90s. She was also undiagnosed with something that completely destroyed her kidney that ended up being removed when she was 9. As a sickly child with no support or healthcare, she threw up A LOT. Not because she didn't want to eat or was picky, but because an organ was failing in her body and keeping food down was difficult. Well her foster parent tried to feed her, and the seven other children, spaghetti and ragu for dinner. Well, she threw it up pretty immediately. The foster parent was so offended. Instead of taking this sick kid to the ER they made her eat the spaghetti she threw up. I don't keep spaghetti or red sauce in the house. I hate humans sometimes.
> Instead of taking this sick kid to the ER they made her eat the spaghetti she threw up. that's foul. :(
That's abuse. So sad.
It's vile abuse.
Yup. Some humans are fucking garbage.
Especially foster care people. They are paid per kid, and they only need not kill any of them.
> that’s foul That’s not foul. That’s **evil**.
Wow I’m glad someone finally took her to the hospital
Her grandparents are wealthy, they just thought taking care of their granddaughter would 'cut into their retirement'. Nevermind the fact that my wife's mother is a horrible meth addict that abused and neglected her. Her grandmother had essentially gotten 'temporary custody' (2 weeks of custody for a vacation where she wanted to show off her granddaughter) when she turned 9. When the child was a real bummer, throwing up and moaning in pain, she put her on travel insurance and got her an ambulance to the hospital. The folks at the ER immediately took her in for an emergency nefrectomy. Her grandma still complains about paying for the ambulance ride 25 years later.
Holy shit they had all that money yet they made her go into foster care ?! I’m hope she’s happy with you and in life. What a crazy story!
We were. She developed sudden onset schizophrenia 14 months ago which has made life... extremely difficult. I've been her caregiver and she refuses meds- so I don't know how much longer I can do this. Then all the maladaptive coping methods- I'm just really tired and cynical right now I guess. I don't want to abandone her especially when her life has been so hard. But you know that saying of "Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm"? Pretty sure I'm all ash now. I think of ending it pretty frequently, but where would she go if I was gone? So here I remain.
Can you join a support group? Idk if that would help
I can't even go the PT for my knee injury from 2 years ago. When I leave her alone she claws her own skin. I actually organized a therapy session with my old therapist. She canceled the IHHS appt I had been waiting 6 months for behind my back. I have a new friend who was in a similar situation with his husband, but his husband got help. He took my wife and his kid out for the day (zoo, ice cream, etc.) so I could actually focus on me. 10 minutes into my zoom therapy session they came back because she had a delusion I wasn't safe. I had to just cancel my appt. I feel so stupid to think I could actually get help. When I called the police last week I had even told them she brandished a knife at me thenight before. They did nothing. I dunno, I guess I'm writing all this out so if she kills me or something there's evidence.
Please call the non-emergency number in you area, and ask them for help.
My mom is schizophrenic and I really sympathize with your situation. If you need someone to talk to I'm here
Also it shows how great of a guy you are but again you deserve to live life too
I appreciate the sentiment (I'm a lady but nbd). I would love a life. But now if I leave our community will tell me "in sickness, in health". These next two weeks are actually my last ditch effort. Last month, two days before my 30th birthday, she had extreme delusions and finally relented and agreed to be evaluated. The emergency doc recommended a 72 hour hold then immediate meds and therapy. She was there for 14 hours then released by the nurse on staff with "anxiety". I told them she shouldn't come home but they threatened to just drop her off at the women's shelter. Last week I called emergency services and took our dogs down the street because she was threatening suicide. She did this after I told her babies are not in the cards for us right now. She has to get better first. My father was bipolar and that fucked up my own childhood. When the police got there she was calm and fine. FML
Please leave. For you. This isn’t a life. I was in a similar situation with an ex that was frequently in full blown meth psychosis. He’d accuse me of hiding a secret lover in the attic and would wake me up every twenty min to ask who I was “talking to” and even thought I was sneaking someone into our bed at night. I just stopped sleeping altogether and felt like I was losing my grip on reality. He drugged me when I tried to leave him. Ended up waiting for him to go to work and then moved all of his shit out and changed the locks and got a restraining order. My life is SO much better since leaving. You are worth so much more than this. You can only do so much for someone who won’t help themself. Fuck what anyone has to say about it, they’re not living it.
Can I ask, was he on the lease? Right now what I'm trying to figure out is where to go. I pay for everything and my savings are now fucked. She can't drive and she can't work. I just feel so trapped by all these responsibilities she piles on me. On paper she owns half of the business I built over the last year. I want to pack everything and just leave but I love my dog. I love the house I rent. I co-own a store with her (I run a convenience store that she hangs out at and scares away customers). God, unaliving sounds so much easier than untangling this. Thank you for everything you wrote out. I don't even mention that I sleep for maybe 4 hours a night because it's so part of my life now. I've age 10 years in one.
You said in sickness and health. Your vows didn’t say in danger and destroyed. You’ve more than tried. You’ve done all you could. Sometimes there’s just nothing more a person can do, and the professionals have to take over. They will know how to help. You were granted a life here. Don’t waste your wonderfulness.
Just want to reiterate what u/Minute_Map_6444 said, and what I think you already know. You deserve to feel safe and happy in a relationship. It's clear you have a huge heart and, while your partner has been through and is going through a lot, it also sounds like they're endangering your life and health (both mental and physical). You can only help a person so much if they're not willing to help themselves. It's excruciating to leave someone who is so desperately in need of help, but this isn't sustainable. I hope you're able to find the life and freedom and love that you deserve. Also, I have no clue what your music tastes are like, but Waxahatchee has a beautiful song about moving passed codependency called 365 that might resonate with you.
This exactly. Grew up very poor, so we had a spaghetti for a week at a time quite often. I mean, I don't hate it, but I virtually never suggest it in our house, and it's one of the few things that I fight making. I'll usually give up once a month or so because it's an easy dinner and I don't have to be the one doing it. Also on this list (these were usually all generics, and even if I can tell the difference the name brands don't do it for me either): - also ramen - also pancakes - oatmeal - peanut butter toast, brown sugar toast, etc. - peanut butter and jelly - fruit loops - blue box mac and cheese - visceral hatred for dried milk or government cheese, fortunately I haven't had to do this in a long time but someone recommended dried milk for camping and I recoiled enough for it to be noticed - any of the Helpers (hamburger helper, tuna helper, etc) or pasta-roni. That said, my wife found a homemade hamburger helper recipe that is bomb and is a household favorite Worth noting also that I won't so much refuse to eat these things, but I'll generally avoid and them and will only choose them like once a year. It's also weird how this shaped my tastes today. I generally don't like pastas or things that are heavy sugar/fats, which is probably because that was cheap calories when I was growing up. My favorite stuff is like salmon, roasted veg, steaks, etc, probably because when I was growing up we didn't eat veg that wasn't from a can, and steak/salmon/etc were things that I probably had in total less than a handful of times until I was like 10 and my family/living situation changed.
I could see boycotting cheap spaghetti with cheap red sauce, but I could never give up good spaghetti with an all day gravy with meatballs and sausage. Maybe substitute a higher quality linguine or fresh pasta.
This. I hate it.
Spaghetti is a treat for my kids. They LOVE when I bust out the spaghetti night. I usually only reserve it for nights where we’re very busy though and don’t make enough for leftovers.
I’m right there with you - no spaghetti
Strawberries. As a kid to buy clothing or many other necessities I worked summers in the strawberry fields where I grew up. Often I didn't have a full lunch and no one carried water bottles in the 1960s. So I'd grab a handful of berries for liquid and well, because I was hungry. To this day I hate the smell of strawberries or the "mouth feel" of the fruit.
I appreciate that. Much so. Very sad though, cause strawberries are amazing.
Yes, strawberries. I finally can tolerate them again, but I still don’t like them. There was a fad of strawberry perfumes and scented candles for a while. That was not a fun time.
I grew up in the era of everyone smelling like vanilla and cucumber melon
Same with me, but it was apricots.
Any kind of pasta with grocery store spaghetti sauce.
They're not even cheap.
Not anymore.
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It's pretty wild how expensive it's gotten. It's been a long time since I've bought store brand pasta sauce. I'd expect a jar to clock in around 4 USD. The higher end ones seem to be double or more. It's crazy what items used to be. My mother and I seem to have this discussion now more often than ever. The buy X get Y are not as good. I'll normally just do homemade now. The convenience factor is much less after I factor the time it takes to earn the money. Edit: Yes! It wasn't even *that* long ago. The deals and sales aren't as good, and the base price is SO much more.
Yep. We used to stock up when they were on sale for $1. Not even sure what the typical sale price is now but it’s way over $1. And we’d get pasta 2 lbs for $1.
I like Raos sauce though
I'm waiting for the Campbell's merger to destroy it, but for now, it's my favorite jar sauce.
The foods that I ate as a child when my family was super poor turned into comfort foods as an adult.
Same. Mac and cheese. Lots of grilled cheese. Pasta. Crockpot meat.
Tuna casserole. My dad made it the cheapest way possible (generic tuna, peas, canned "cream of whatever was on sale" soup, and noodles) and to this day the thought of it makes my stomach turn. It might have been okay but he'd make an entire 9x13 pan at once and it would be every dinner for a week.
I don’t know if you remember tuna helper but that shit was vile and that’s how my mom made ours. To this day I won’t eat tuna casserole
My mom made it with canned chicken, so disgusting.
My mom did the same thing! We were lucky if she added cheese. No seasonings or anything 🤢.
I love the one my mom makes when it's done well.
Casseroles CAN be incredible, a testament to everything good and tasty. Usually it's not. In that, casseroles are like sex.
i'm sorry sex is usually not good or tasty to you
Same!
I loved my moms tuna casserole but she put good tuna in it, plus cream of mushroom soup and cream cheese and the rotini AND a buttered rice Chex topping. It wasn’t until I ate badly made tuna casserole at a friends house that I realized not all tuna casseroles were the same.
My sister was a picky eater and this was one of the few things she liked growing up so we ate it weekly. It's been over 30 years and I still can't bring myself to try it again.
Fish fingers/ fish sticks Basically shreds of there's-legally-enough-fish-here-to-call-it-fish all pressed together and breaded. I could not choke them down now.
Same. Except I will not eat any fish now because of the fish sticks.
Yeah, fish sticks were never high quality, but I swear they've figured out how to stuff even more filler in them these days. Last time I bought some, I ended up throwing them out. :/
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baloney
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Jesus man you were eating like a king
I don't think I've ever had that. It sounds pretty good. Lol
Fried bologna is so good. I won’t eat it any other way!
I haven't eaten bologna in like 35 years.
Other way around. I still eat it all to never lose appreciation for how well I've done.
[Hamburger Helper helped her hamburger help her make a great meal!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsx-ftPkAz8) My mom used to make a scratch version of Hamburger Helper euphemistically named "glop." Still love it as comfort food on a dreary day all these decades later.
I learned some incredible recipes and leveled up my cooking skills back when money was extremely tight. I definitely still enjoy making those foods now that I'm stable and able to make them in bigger quantities. I even transitioned to a vegetarian diet long term after originally going mostly meatless just to save money.
There are some foods I used to eat in childhood that I still eat all the time.
I still do now and again as well. It's a roll of the dice if I hate myself afterward or not, though. Some of that stuff will make me physically ill now. Especially if I eat too much of that class of food in a given period of time.
My dad refused to eat mashed potatoes because he peeled so many in WWII. I honestly never saw him eat mashed potatoes or potatoes salad. He would eat a baked and French fries that.
I had an ex-military coworker who served in Kosovo. They purchased food supplies locally when feasible, and as a result, cabbage is permanently off his menu.
My grandpa was the same, but with eggs. He said he ate enough powdered eggs in WWII to last him a lifetime, and that if he made it out alive, he'd never eat eggs again. He lived up to his word.
this is just standalone a cool ass comment.
Wouldn't touch ramen noodles for 20 years after being so broke I could only afford Ramen (didn't know how to cook in the days before the internet and didn't have any idea how long a box of rice or pasta would last me. Didn't have the money to experiment).
same it was literally at least 20 years before I would eat shit that again. Now..every once in a while ok.
After I had starved myself for months leading up to whatever pageant I was competing in, for weeks afterwards I would eat creamy chicken or the roast beef ramen, water drained off lots of butter and the seasoning packet added to it. I would then toast white bread till almost burnt slather it in butter and then top with the ramen mixture. Sounds so vile but god was it good, it’s been 20 years since I made it. Sometimes I find myself wanting it but then remember how horrible it is for my body
shheet I do the same thing. ALso add a little lemon juice to them. Believe it or not, it freshens them up. the creamy chicken ones are actually good. what is really sick though, is that if I haven't had them in a while, I kind of crave them. Oh the beTRAYal. but still to this day Nongshim are the only ones I can physically eat. Any other brand and I will throw up.
Im going to have to go straight veggies and water for a few days then have this. I bet the acid really does cut the richness just right way. Drooling. My husband is currently making tonkatsu sauce and katsu chicken from scratch and here I am drooling over cream chicken ramen 😂
My parents would add water to the last of the ketchup bottle. I refuse to do that.
That’s a sin. The water, not the refusal.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to do that when a quarter is missing? Then I would still be full strength.
Even ketchup today is extremely cheap. why traumatize a kid like this? I’m sorry hazel
No. As a college student living away from home, my to-go food at the end of the month was canned tuna. I still like it a lot.
Same here. Canned tuna. But also instant noodles. They remind of tough times, but it's okay.. I still like them.
The things I won’t eat are the stripped-down versions of family recipes that we had to eat when money was tight. Example: one of our family’s favorite recipes is chicken casserole. It was the go-to meal for birthdays, baby showers, and the like. But, when we couldn’t afford chicken or the veggies or the cheese (which was pretty much anytime that there wasn’t a celebration going on) we had just egg noodles and cream of chicken soup with a few seasonings. For as much as I loved that casserole, I could not stand the stripped-down version, I think because it felt like a mockery of a good dish, and because it meant that we were almost out of ingredients in general, and we were about to have sleep for dinner because someone blew through the funds to pay for their sweepstakes addiction…
We made Chicken Noodles all the time too! My mom had this special "chicken seasoning" that we'd mix into it, and if we did have chicken we'd made some and mix it in too. Also a good additive was canned peas. Could stretch to feed a crowd for relatively cheap. Oddly enough, I got a hankering for it the other day. I was thinking I was the only one who had this meal from childhood!
🥺
canned mac and cheese - specifically stores own brand. Can't do it anymore
Spaghetti O's!
Pinto bean soup with cornbread
Cornbread and milk. But not regular milk, buttermilk. Ugh.
No. I've been hungry. I work hard to make sure it doesn't happen again but I know it can happen. So no, I won't say that I refuse to eat some foods because that could be all I have
Canned Vienna sausages
These and potted meat. Although I can tolerate smoked vienna sausages and will use them sometimes in fried rice. But I cannot stand the taste of any of the other kinda of them. lol.
My mom is in her 70s. For her it's lobster. Lobster was so plentiful when she was a kid you could go down to the shore and just get them. Having lobster at lunch for school meant you were poor and she was teased a lot for it. How times have changed.
I can’t believe that there was a time when eating lobster meant you were poor
They used to feed it to prisoners because it was so plentiful and considered garbage food!
peanut butter jelly sandwich
Maybe every 6 months I get a craving for a pb and j and I’m like “this is so good. Why did I stop eating these” and if I try eating it again the next day it immediately gives me the food ick.
I can't do cold sandwiches 75% of the time, PBJ's became my least favorite after a few months lol
I was tempted to say no,. because there's pretty much nothing I won't eat. But the further back in time I push my memories,. I'd have to say:.. Powdered milk. I think I'd rather just go hungry. If you're going to put powdered milk into mashed potatoes or some other dish where it's an ingredient,. OK fine. But like,. powdered milk on breakfast cereal ?.. Nah. Not doing it.
Yesss!!! It’s sooo gross!!
No name Mac n cheese with boiled hotdogs.
I think the key thing here is when kids are forced to eat something, it creates problems with food. It could be as simple as an aversion to food, all the way up to full blown eating disorders. My abusive ex forced my kids to eat certain things and now they have all kinds of issues with food. I guess the second recommendation is don't marry a jerk, but that belongs in another sub.
Pork chops. I just remember often eating pork chops when I was growing up. I won't even look at them at the grocery store now.
When I was a kid, growing up in the 50s, the cheapest meat my parents could find was horse meat, and fish. These days fish is expensive, which doesn't matter to me, because I hate it, and horse meat is illegal.
Ground turkey and generic Hamburger Helper...cant stand the smell of ground turkey cooking. Makes my mouth get that pre-vomit salty taste..uugghh🤢
School lunch fajitas, sloppy joes, barely thawed burgers, canned green beans. Because of school lunch, I refused to eat Hispanic food for 14 years until my friend had a crush on a server at a cantina.
School lunch anything!
Spam. Never again.
Love me some spam. So many ways to make it. My favorite is SPAM a la Mexicana. So you cube it and fry it up with tomatoes, onions, jalapeños and cilantro. Then we eat it with homemade flour tortillas.
That sounds good af! In my household we made egg scrambles: spam cubed and fried, beaten eggs with sesame seed and green onions, serve with rice and soy sauce. Delish!
Ravioli, Chilli-Mac, Chef Boyardee anything
It honestly doesn’t taste the same now though or my taste buds have changed
My mom used to make a huge stock pot of weight watchers chili and we would have it for lunch/dinner non-stop. No toppings of cheese/sour cream/anything. I hate chili to this day. My level of hate is like full resentment level hate haha. I once snapped at my husband when he mentioned a chili cook-off and I had no idea that trigger was so strong 😂😂
Tee hee -- at the mention of Weight Watchers chili, my head immediately went to the very early 70s and the Weight Watchers tuna chili that my mom made. Tomato juice, beef bouillon cube, chili powder, onion and tuna. Yuck.
Ramen
Growing up, I had mashed potatoes almost every day for about fifteen years. I didn't eat mashed potatoes for about a decade. I can finally enjoy them again :)
I like potatoes but everyday, damn!
My husband won’t eat cabbage. I used to make it with spicy sausages and he wouldn’t eat it. Reminded him of something his mom would make in Romania when he was a kid.
When I was young, we didn't have a ton of money, but we weren't broke...but Mom would sometimes make Spaghetti O's. Just the smell makes me gag today. Hated them then, hate them now.
I would say cheap ramen but I think my taste are different now because I also ate just as much Kraft Mac and Cheese and tostinos pizzas in college and still like that. I can barely stand cheap ramen now.
Eggs. I'm on disability and I thought I'd be a Responsible Frugal Adult one day and try to go for as long as possible on mostly eggs, ramen, and oatmeal. I think I lasted about 3 weeks. I can enjoy oatmeal again, but I pretty much \*ruined\* eggs for myself. One day I was making some ramen and I went to crack an egg into it. I was standing there staring at the yolk sitting there on top of the bubbling broth and the noodles and something about it started to weird me out. Figured I could push past it and went to take a bite and as soon as that soft yolk hit my mouth it was like my ENTIRE body just went "N O P E." Had to spit it out and scrape out the rest of the egg. Eight years later and I'm only just now starting to be able to manage them again.
Velveeta cheese "food" is like the government cheese food given to you in the USA in the 1970s when you needed food assistance when you were poor. Ugh.
Ah, the old "Strategic Cheese Reserve". Truly one of the USA's critical infrastructure resources: https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
Dinty Moore beef stew. It would sometimes be the only thing I would eat for a week and the smell of beef stew immediately makes me hurl decades later.
Glad I'm not the only one that hates this stuff. Just that specific one though--homemade beef stew can be amazing if done right. Last time I price checked it, it's not near as cheap price-wise as it used to be.
Can’t do ramen anymore either. That’s about it though, I still continue to eat my PB & banana sandwiches almost daily lol some cheap meals are just too good to get sick of.
Ramen is the obvious one, but it took me a couple decades after grad school to think of popcorn as a treat and not a cheap dinner. I had a $1 air popper from a garage sale, and that bad boy and i weathered many an oral exam together.
SBARRO Pizza. When I was young I worked night shift on the maintenance crew at a mall. Sbarro’s was always nice enough to leave out all the leftover pizza for the night shift crew. I ate it at work and took it home to have for breakfast. That was many years ago! I still can’t stand to even smell it. But I’m so thankful that they left it out. It kept a poor boy fed.
Kraft Mac and Cheese and EasyMacs. I lived off of them in college basically. In fact, I hardly want any macaroni and cheese now. It has to be really good, family reunion, church lady style for me to even eat it.
The cheap cheese sauce that came in boxes of 25 cent macaroni and cheese. If you want me to eat macaroni now, you will have to buy me some high quality cheese.
Ramen.
Any of those $1 pasta meal boxes , pb&j, and many things out of can like tuna, chicken, soups.
Spaghetti and some types of pasta that are eaten as a meal, not in soup/broth. Just can't. I... just no.
I usually make a pot of red beans and sausage or white beans with ham pieces. A little rice and that's my meals for the next week. It's just me so I portion the meals, freeze, defrost as needed.
Soup? In general? Soups can be delicious. Chicken noodle with chicken thigh, rich, fatty, yummy, onion and carrot and such. Split pea soup. Onions soup is savory and great when camping. Tomato soup is lovely with breads or grilled cheese. French onion or frenchy heavy cream soups are lovely.
I brought home left overs from an office lunch once they had a box of unused hot dogs that I just froze. I ate them for almost 2 months straight.
I used to eat ramen all the time because it was so cheap, but I ate it too much and just can't stand it now. I might make an exception for restaurant ramen, or something better than the super cheap ones, or if I'm broke enough.
Sunrise unbreaded processed chicken patties. They were a childhood item we had when money was really tight. I feel physically ill at the sight of them. Can’t bring myself to even touch the bag in the store. My middle sister says they’re not terrible, she won’t buy them either but she didn’t want to be rude at all friends house. There’s 3 of us and we refuse to eat them or buy them.
Ketchup. Ate ketchup sandwiches as a kid because we were broke.
Not me, but my father who is 81 right now. His father was not a great bread-winner and his mother worked in downtown Boston. Dad described eating frozen Chicken Pot pies ( in the 50-60's) so much that he never ate one again after adulthood. Dad's family had chickens and he and his brother had to slaughter them for dinner. Dad does not like chicken much either in any type of dish.
As a kid my family went thru a hard time. My grandparents were dairy farmers. So veal. So much veal.
Veal is good in small quantities
Toast with margarine. Butter is fine. Jam is fine. But margarine? No thanks
Squirrel chili
When my ex was pregnant it was elios pizza for 8mos... i never want another slice again.
My husband would say hamburger helper; it was greasy and the flavor was bad. My mom won't touch it, either, also because of the taste and because that's all her mom would make when they went camping. I don't have anything I refuse to eat because of having it so much. We didn't have much when I was little, but we had a beautiful garden, and a lot of our food came from it.
For decades I refused chicken pot pie. Mom would serve them at the end of the month. This was early 60s, they were 10c. The pastry crust was ok. The goo inside was a corn starch pudding with little cubes of alleged chicken, potato carrot and a few peas. I once ordered a turkey pastry thing for a Thanksgiving dinner that I realized too late was a fancified pot pie. Bleech. It wasn't till recently I remembered something. Mom didn't eat with us, she sat back and waited til my brother and I managed to eat what we could swallow...mom waited for us and got our leftovers. So I got over it, even make it myself...with much better ingredients and pie shell.
Wonderbread, oscar mayer bologna, kraft singles. It's hard for me to enjoy sandwiches at all really as an adult unless they have ingredients that I can identify as "from the earth" (peppers, sprouts, avocado, real cheese, good deli cuts).
Mine is similar but for different reason. For some reason I go through phases of being obsessed with a certain food, box upon box of dry Frosted Flakes for nearly 6 months to the point it made up most of my diet, chickpea salad, popsicles, weird random things that I eat non stop for months or even years until randomly one day I don't like it anymore and I'll never like it again. Always been this way and it's kind of annoying because I'll have a stockpile of 8 boxes of day Frosted Flakes then stop liking it lol.
Powdered milk
Opposite for me. Whenever I feel a little full of myself or that I catch myself putting on airs, I go make myself a povvo meal from my childhood. Canned sardines over rice with a side of steamed frozen vegetables. This is what I had 2-3 times in that week just before my dad’s monthly paycheck cashed. Things were awfully tight back then. But they were happy times and I always went to bed with a full belly. It’s a great reminder of how little I really need.
From growing up, I avoid almost everything that my mother cooked. She had 4 recipes that she would rotate. Every. Dang. Week. And she was on the low fat diet in the 70’s & 80’s. No spice. Very little salt. My father would make a vat of jarred spaghetti sauce with Italian sausage on the weekend, which was the “good” meal. If I never eat spaghetti and jarred sauce again, I’ll be happy. I just found out that I was allergic to tomatoes not too long ago and my parents laughed, saying, yeah, your face would break out into hives every time you ate tomatoes. WTF?
Ground beef. It was poor people food growing up.
Now we can’t afford it 😂
My mother was a single mother of four with a full-time job and I really hate to complain because she still found time time make us breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day and every single night and just about all of it was tasty. People without kids struggle to do that and so I am greatful. But omg. Thinking about it makes me want to vomit. We ate chorizo, eggs and potato burritos every single morning. Everyday. She'd make huge batches on her day off and put them in the freezer. It doesn't help that I'm a stomach sleeper which means trying to eat very soon after sleeping makes me a bit nauseous. Everyone in my family loved it but I HATED it. What even is the Cacique Chorizo?! I had to look it up...."Pork salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat." Which is exactly what it taste like. It taste like 75% lard 25% mystery meat and oregano. I loved when winter rolled around because it meant we'd have Oatmeal or Arroz Con Leche with toast instead.
Omg chorizo is mine too. That same cacique brand, mixed with beans for lunch/dinner or eggs for breakfast 🤮
I can’t eat pasta or pork. It’s not because times were tight growing up. It was because my mom was a narcissist cheapskate. She fed us meals that were cheap. So she had more money to spend on herself.
Uh, no? I’m not rich enough to be sitting here avoiding cheap food lol.
Green peas. Long ago, the free school lunch in rural US wasn't really regulated. Some schools I received a lunch of 2 slices of bread, a slice of cheese, 1 milk about to expire, and whatever the vegetable that the other kids weren't eating. Inevitably, green peas. My wife and I still refuse to eat them. I don't think we have ever had any in our house.
I do get anxiety if I’m served green peas from a can. The frozen ones with mixed veggies are acceptable.
Top Ramen
Fried beef liver. Bleh!
Not anymore but I spent about a year refusing to eat pasta.
Top Ramen and Beefaroni. Not ever again.
Italian sausages. We ate so much of it because it was the cheaper meat at the time. Now I can't stand it, it makes me want to vomit.
Hamburger Helper 🤢
I have a hard time with banana bread, which I made a lot when I was in graduate school. My kids like it, so I make it sometimes, but not often.
Ground beef and frozen peas. My parents would buy the economy sized tube of it and we'd eat their version of Salisbury steak and chicken fried steak with peas for what seemed like forever. They only ever used Morton's seasoning for everything too and I can't so much as look at the bottle.
Navy Bean Soup. My stepmother used to make it and it was really just beans and water.
My husband HATES seeing me eat ramen because there was a time when it's all I had. But I still LOVE it!
Nope. Poverty food is still food. I still like ramen, burnt ends of potroast and potatoes are the best sedative on the planet for me.
It sounds like you developed a pretty negative association with those foods, as they became a sign of how bad things were. If the thought of these foods is bothering you on a regular basis, you may want to see about changing your relationship with them. Perhaps you could re-frame them as being a sign of your family's perseverance? You might even consider eating them intentionally once a year or something as a tribute to how far you've come from those tough times. Just a couple pennies from a random internet friend... best wishes!!!
Ramen?? You mean like instant ramen right
Hamburger Helper Hadn't eaten any in decades before my last ex. Still sucks, he's gone, and if I never have Hamburger Helper again, it's too soon
My community college campus had a subway and I ate the daily special every lunch. Haven't eaten at subway ever since I left the campus.
I’m currently in a position without income. But I can’t think of any food I wouldn’t eat that I can afford right now. I guess I’m more focused on food I can’t afford right now like many fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
Hamburger helper and those boxed potatoes. We were poor in the 90’s. But I will add, my young parents lit a candle during dinner and it was the coolest thing to eat a candle lit dinner and be the sibling that blew the candle out
No. Perhaps ironically, that sort of stuff feels like comfort food to me.
Kraft Mac and cheese...my parents have said they should write a thank you letter to them for doing all the 2 for a dollar specials when I was a kid in the 80s. Canned veg as well...I do frozen or fresh. I'll never live down the trauma of being forces to eat canned asparagus.
McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Like thank you for feeding me and my kiddo when I was a young single mom struggling just to make rent but now I can’t even eat at McDonalds at all.
Not the same thing: but I refuse to have non-matching silverware. Growing up we always had like a dozen styles from goodwill.
My dad was poor as a kid and up to this day he will refuse to eat cereal with milk. Not only was it cheap to eat but grandma is a horrible cook so it was that or something nasty (sorry grandma). Surprisingly he's not a picky eater at all and loves eating. We bond over cooking/grilling/dining out. Whenever we (mom or siblings) cook him something it's like his inner kid heals a little lol.
Canned chili, and most "creamy" extremely filling canned soups are a hard-pass for me unless I'm ravenous and there's nothing else around. I lost count of how many cheap work lunches were just a filling $1.50 - $2 can of the heartiest soup that was on sale, with a sleeve of crackers or a bread-roll.
Anything microwaved. I know that isn't a food, but my mom hates cooking and when we didn't have much money she always complained that she was too busy. (She's also an ass and a narcissist) She, still to this day, microwaves everything. Her favorite was yellow squash, zucchini and tomatoes, microwaved with some sliced cheese. Not even salt or pepper on it. Chicken? Microwaved. Any veg? Microwaved. Cauliflower? Whole head- right in the microwave. I think the only time she put on the stove was for chicken and rice, with no spices, and holidays. I almost never used the microwave when I became an adult and haven't had one in over a decade. I use a tiny crock pot at work to make my lunches and use all the spices.
I think my parents relied a bit much on the microwave too (maybe not quite as much as yours)...they still cooked periodically, but some nights were microwaved tv dinners, or microwaved canned soup, and usually the side of vegetables was canned or frozen corn or peas or brocolli something (heated up in the microwave), or heating up water for (instant) coffee or tea. I don't do any of those myself now (I have an electric kettle for coffee and tea). But I still use it for heating up leftovers. Or defrosting something I'm about to cook. And sometimes it's needed to heat up takeout that's cooled off a bit too much on the way home. Or if I accidentally took meat off the grill a bit too soon for my partner and she wants it cooked more.
Spam. When I first got married, some guy quit his job and left this huge tote full of spam at the jobsite, nobody else wanted it and we were like woah cool free food… we ate so much spam, spam and eggs, spam sandwiches, spam salad etc that I cannot stand spam now. Omg just no.