What your grandmothers fed your parents, and how it might explain a few things...

[TreasonousBastard]

https://www.thoughtco.com/gross-old-fashioned-recipes-4153470

When discussing the times and how they've changed over the years, one thing is clear: There's good retro, and there's bad retro. Good retro is stuff like vintage dresses with nipped-in waist lines and swingy skirts. Perhaps a little cat eye eyeliner and a pin curl or two. That's good retro. Bad retro is the sort of stuff that deserves to be put into the vault of history and avoided from here on out, like cigarette smoking... and gelatin molds.

What is it about the gelatin molds?

This is one not a gelatin mold, but is every bit as creepy:

?w=600&h=749

[AJT]

1. So, I guess the cheetos, twinkies and taco bell my parents gave us was better?

[TEB]

33. you got it

[Doreen]

2. Uhmm.....NO!

[House of Roberts]

3. I could eat that.

.

[bobbieinok]

4. Mom (1913-2005) ate peanut butter banana sandwiches as a kid. Once was enough for me!

[TexasTowelie]

12. What a coincidence.

I'm eating a PBB sandwich right now. I usually eat 3 or 4 in a year.

[crazycatlady]

15. I loved those things as a kid

And I'm a 1980 baby

[mitch96]

26. I could eat that...

put a few strips of bacon on it as well!!
m

[lkinwi]

5. My great aunt used to make a fish with an eye jello mold.

I wouldn’t eat it, but I was fascinated with it.

[libdem4life]

6. Excuse me for a moment ....

Whew, now I'm back...feel better.

Fortunately, (well, in the end) my mother almost died from hypoglycemia and the old country doctor put her...and the rest of us...on a health food diet. This was 50 years ago. Our diet changed overnight. It wasn't great in the beginning, but we were never sick...ever. No days home from school.

Later on I got off it, but read John Robbins (of Baskin-Robbins) book, Diet for a New America...back in the 80s, and it again changed my life. I'd buy and hand out copies if I could. A long read, but I guarantee it will add 5-10 years on your life if you can make it to the end and eat accordingly.

[CurtEastPoint]

16. Found this video! THanks for telling this...

[libdem4life]

22. Don't forget to read the book. To your health !!! nt

[Docreed2003]

7. Can't imagine banana, ham, and hollandaise !

[The Genealogist]

8. Neither of my grandmothers made all that many jello molds

I had one grandmother who bought the unflavored gelatin and made her own pear jello, with pears suspended in it. She used just a regular casserole dish for it. I loved it! Where it got real hinky for me was when people would make those jello salads. As the number of ingredients rose, so did they chances it contained something I wouldn't eat.

[Historic NY]

9. OMG and there are worst ones....liver pate.....

I would never eat anything in a jelly mold.

[dixiegrrrrl]

29. Tomato aspic.

Basically tomato sauce mixed with gelatin, it set in a rather wobbly fashon, so it quivered on the plate.
Thing is, us kids had seen The Blob, and we could not get past our laughter at table.

That was haute cuisine next to my my mother's favorite vegetable....canned spinach. which she then boiled!! before serving.
Every house we lived in we left with small mounds of that crap tucked under the living room rug, cause we got to eat while watching tv, sitting on the floor. My brother and I would wordlessly signal the other one to distract Mom while we spooned that damned dead green slime under the edge s of the carpet.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. The Gallery of Regrettable Food contains many examples of '50's cuisine:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

[3catwoman3]

37. I am laughing so hard...

...I am crying!

[love_katz]

41. Dying from laughter.

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Now I remember why the Fifties sucked so bad. Gallery of Regrettable Food.

[PatrickforO]

11. Well, my mom was born in 1920 and Dad in 1916, so

they were Depression/WWII generation. There's good and bad with that. They were firmly convinced that a) there is right and wrong, and b) they could teach me the difference. In retrospect, this gave me a really strong moral base, but during the 60s and 70s when we had the assassination of JFK, MLK, RFK, the Civil Rights and Antiwar movements, Vietnam and the for-profit MIC that cost us 59,000 people with countless others maimed, not to mention millions of Vietnamese...well to make a long, sad, capitalistic story short - my naivete around the idea that justice would always prevail got totally shattered. We lost our heros.

Whoa...sorry...now to the topic! Mom always cooked nutritious but bland meals for us. We never, ever had TV dinners, and she tried to make sure I always had healthy snacks.

Now, when I was very young, like up 'til maybe age 8, Mom stayed at home - the whole fifties/sixties stereotypical housewife, and I was an only child so I've got tons and tons of really great memories about doing fun (and not so fun) stuff with Mom, like playing, shopping, and cleaning up, yardwork and all that.

When she had to go to work because Dad crashed and burned with some bad business decisions and we lost everything, Mom STILL cooked all the meals and did all the cleaning. Yes, I helped, but Dad would work, come home, have two drinks, eat dinner on a TV tray, then recline in his Naugahide chair and promptly go to sleep - usually after a bunch of yelling - never knew what that would be about, or if you'd be the target.

Now, I loathe cooking and so does my wife. So...we eat out a lot and have light home meals. I usually make myself a really nice smoothie every morning. But, yeah, we pay attention to what kind of stuff we eat. I don't think it's gotten better with regulatory rollbacks, either. We hear more and more about contaminated food, e-coli, botulism and all that.

[Ohiogal]

20. That sounds a lot like what my dad did

After he got home from work. Except for the TV tray and the drinks were sometimes 4 or 5.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. The presentation is a significant part of the awfulness.

[Ohiogal]

14. I am feeling fortunate

that my 1960s mom never fed us Jello, Velveeta, Wonder Bread, sugary breakfast cereal, or instant pudding. She must have been ahead of her time!

[demosincebirth]

17. We used to have calves liver and onions once a week - like it or not.

[Historic NY]

19. WE had it too but it was always cooked at someone elses house.

I can't stand it today, chicken livers ok.

[demosincebirth]

21. We couldn't afford to kill but one chicken every two months

[k8conant]

35. That would be delicious now...

however, my mother cooked it too long and it was like shoe leather. I love it now if it's not overcooked.

[CurtEastPoint]

18. I had friends who made this festive creation. I split a gut laughing first time I saw it.

They didn't understand why I thought it amusing.

[underpants]

28. I hope that's not Romaine lettuce

[3catwoman3]

36. One of the times i have laughed the hardest here on DU...

...was when someone described how he, his brother, and his dad had burst out laughing when his mom served the above creation. They were accused of having dirty minds. The particular picture included in his post did not have the red gumdrops, just the cream cheese (or whatever it was) topping the banana. It was called Candle Salad.

My high school cafeteria used to put canned peas and shredded carrots in lemon or lime jello.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

38. That was me.

I don’t know what my mom was thinking when she served those “candle salads,” but we never saw them again.

[3catwoman3]

40. One of my all time favorite DU stories!

(Maybe your folks always kept the lights off?)

[3catwoman3]

43. Yuo must check out this thread.

It seems the perfect complement to your Candle Salad tale.

www.democraticunderground.com/10181152882#post17

[airmid]

23. Definitely barf worthy...I am glad my Mom never had time for this.

[Runningdawg]

24. Yep I'm old and I like jello

However there are certain things that don't belong in jello: meat or fish, raisins, choc chips and most vegetables.

[yardwork]

25. OMG! There were a lot of bad foods back then but this... this is beyond.

[underpants]

27. the Black tips of the bananas is a bonus.

[liberalmuse]

30. They did make sure to try and get the veggies in.

Maybe food photography has come a long way since then?

[tymorial]

31. Diet helps but genetics does too

My mothers family all lived into their 80s. My grandmother is 87. My great grandmother lived to 88 and ate a pound of bacon every day. She died in 1988. My aunt irene was 96.

This isnt an advert for bad food. The men in my family either died young or old... not in the between. Those that died young drank and smoked heavily.

[Freddie]

32. The Mid-Century Menu

[link:http://www.midcenturymenu.com|

This site is hilarious. The blogger actually makes these foods - tuna jello molds, etc. - and makes her husband test them. Some aren’t bad. There’s a whole section devoted to Jello.
I’m “that age” (62) and while Mom and Grandma did make jello salads, they only made the dessert-types with fruit. No olives, radishes or fish.

[jpak]

34. And this

[ashling]

39. I remember that my mother

thought that a salad consisted of a half a pear on a lettuce leafe with a dollop of mayonaise and a sprinkling of grated cheddar.


Daddy used to say he did more before daylight than we did all day. Well sure, when he was our age the soda had cocaine in it.

[yuiyoshida]

42. This makes me glad

I am Asian! hahaha!

[Talitha]

44. Don't read this if you have a weak stomach.

My WORST childhood food memory is something called Koseliena (pronounced kosh-eh-LEE-na). It's a Lithuanian dish Mom used to make, but I never ate any... it looked sickening.

Online images show chopped meat, but Mom would boil whole pig ears, snouts and knuckles/feet in a huge pot and stir it once in a while as it chilled. When done, it looked like clear jello (aspic?) with the pig parts suspended in it. Really gross.

Then the family would cut it into 4" cubes, pour vinegar on it and eat it - UGH!!! To this day, I can't stand the smell of vinegar. My brother used to chase me around the house with the pig snouts before Mom started to cook them... they're big, hairy, and nasty looking.

I think there's a deli version out there called 'head cheese' - but I refuse to eat that too.

[TreasonousBastard]

45. Sounds a lot like scrapple-- a Pennsylvania Dutch delight...

The parts of the pig the farmer couldn't sell, he ground up and made into this gelatinous goop to feed his family. No obvious ears floating in the jell-o, but sometimes the snout wouldn't chop up properly and became one long string.

Waste not, want not.