Megan McArdle has a nice Friday-appropriate piece today, “Friday Food Post: The Economics Behind Grandma’s Tuna Casseroles.” Go read it, if you haven’t already (but please come back here afterwards!). The basic point of the post is that, it’s now rather popular to mocking recipes from the 50s that are full of seemingly-nasty food combinations and ingredients, but we should give some thought to the world our parents/grandparents lived in, in which dining out was a rarity and some foods we take for granted were a luxury — in particular, the ready availability of all manner of fresh produce year-round. Heck, I remember Mom and Dad arguing about whether oranges were a special treat or not (she was from St. Louis, he was from Colorado — I assume that in the 40s, there was a regional difference here). What’s more, she points out that the immigration from Asia which brought new flavors to American kitchens hadn’t happened yet, and reminds us that, in 2015, bad (middle-class) cooks have convenience-food alternatives; whereas, bad cooks in the 50s really had no choice but to cook dinner, no matter how nasty.
Now, Ms. McArdle, who’s roughly my age, grew up with a “foodie” family, so she thinks of this as a relic of the 1950s. But, heck, that’s my childhood in the 70s/early 80s. Eating out was a big treat, and a rare one. I remember going to McDonald’s: Mom would order two shakes and the three of us kids would each get 2/3s a shake. Once a year, the Girl Scouts had a dinner at a smorgasbord restaurant (really – I don’t remember if they offered particularly Swedish meals but they called themselves a smorgasbord). When my grandparents came to visit, or we visited them, we went to Bonanza or Ponderosa, and, later, to Steak and Shake. And that’s about it as far as restaurant meals that I remember.
What about Mom and Dad’s home cooking? I have to say, I remember little. Daddy’s Special = ground beef with a spaghetti sauce (though I think it was seasoned tomato sauce rather than actual spaghetti sauce) with maybe things like mushrooms & onions added, topped with blue-box macaroni & cheese. (Yes, this rotates its way through my meal plan, now.) Spaghetti with spaghetti sauce and ground beef. I remember liver, and complaining about the gristle landing on my plate. Fish of some kind, about which I remember little except disliking it. It seems to me that we would have steak periodically, but I think a cheaper cut, except not braised, just panfried. Canned vegetables like peas and corn. Sundays were waffle nights, or sometimes crepes for variety (but no fancy fillings, just the same applesauce and syrup). Oh, and Mom and Dad canned for a stretch — apples picked at the orchard, and pickled beets, and I want to say maybe stewed tomatoes, too. They gardened, and I remember leaf lettuce (which I never liked), and maybe green beans, and I don’t recall what else. And that’s about all that made an impression on me.
Were we poor? No. Dad was an engineer at General Motors. He never got that corner office, but, so far as I know, did respectably well. Mom worked at a hodge-podge of jobs, off and on, mostly part-time, sometimes clerical/retail, and sometimes using her RN qualification, thought she never took that refresher course (and I think never really wanted to), so was limited to things like orthodontist’s assistant. I disliked having to wear hand-me-downs and other embarrassing clothes, but (or perhaps as a result) I didn’t have much of a fashion sense anyway (still don’t), and Mom and Dad always repeated that this was because, unlike my classmates’ families, they were saving diligently, and it never really occurred to me that we might be missing out on a superior culinary experience. (Yeah, for all I know, they could well have afforded more but there was some skeleton in a closet somewhere.)
In our household? Well, we go out to eat about once a week, rarely anywhere fancy, but even so, the tab is growing what with fewer kids eating off the kids’ menu. And I’m more likely to buy a better cut of meat to grill. And I like to think I put more effort into finding a variety of good, yet easy-to-make meals — helped by the ready available of internet recipes and the ability to check out cookbooks from the library and photocopy the good recipes. What will my kids remember, though, when they’re adults? Who knows?
So that’s it for me. And all of this is really building up to this: tell me about your experiences. It’s Friday night, after all. What else do you have going on?
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