Does your family have 'weird' foods? A few of mine.

[trof]

Mom would boil elbow macaroni, drain it, and add Pet evaporated milk.
Not the sweetened kind.
Just plain Pet Milk.
I loved it.

She'd drizzle olive oil on heated canned spinach.
I liked that too.
(We're talking the 1940s and 50s.)

Milk toast.
Toasted white bread, buttered, sprinkled with white sugar, hot milk (heated in the top pot of a double boiler) poured over.
That was 'sick' food.

Sop eggs.
Grandpa cooked breakfast on Sunday mornings.
I guess it was a family 'tradition' because that's the only time I ever saw him in the kitchen.

He'd fry up some patty sausage.
Put 'em on a draining rack when they were done.
Carefully break an egg into the sausage grease and baste the top until the yolk was done.
Repeat.
You 'sopped' your toast (or biscuits!) in the yolk.

Just some memories.
You?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. We had the same milk toast.

But I hated it. I thought it was squishy and nasty and it made me feel sicker.

My mom used to make these "candle salads":



But she stopped serving them after one dinner when my brother and I (teenagers at the time) looked at them, looked at each other and burst out laughing. Mom said we had dirty minds, but my dad was laughing, too.

[loli phabay]

3. rofl, for sure i have a dirty mind cause thats what i thought to.

[LiberalElite]

20. That was a Campbell Kids recipe in the 1950s

http://www.etsy.com/listing/86679621/the-campbell-kids-at-home-1954-elf-books

-------snip---------

This is a really precious book starring the Campbell kids (they don't have names) making 3 different recipes for lunch. They don their chef hats and get to work making Flagpole salad, Peanut Butter Sandwiches and Hot Cocoa. Mother of course, heats the soup.

------snip----------

[loli phabay]

2. heres my list

Mashed potatoes with canned corn beef mixed in it

Cheesy hammy eggy, fried bread with bacon then a fried egg and topped with cheddar cheese

Plastics eggs, hard boiled egg chopped in a cup with butter mixed in it wirh cheddar cheese on top

Haddock steamed in milk

Roasted puffins served with raw cockles in a malt vinegar sauce

Can of fruit cocktail covered with carnation milk

On edit some additions

Grilled cheese but with smooshed fish fingers and branston pickle instead of cheese.

Ramen noodles with canned tuna and pickled onions

Potato pancake sandwich with hot relish and flaked salt

Bread roll with cheese and onion potato chip sandwich, phenomenal with pickled onion smooshed on it.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. Puffins???

[trof]

7. You win. Period. Hands down.

Where you from, anyway?
Nova Scotia?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. They eat puffins in Iceland.

But it's cold and dark there (at least in winter) so maybe they don't know what they're eating.

[Arcanetrance]

4. Growing up I don't remember anything I would say is odd

But my step mother is from Minnesota and she covers everything in cheese and turns it into a casserole.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. The correct Minnesota term is "hot dish."

"Casserole" is too hoity-toity and Frenchy for Minnesota.

[Arcanetrance]

8. Lol yeah that's exactly what she calls them she's also the first person I've really been around that

Refers to soda as pop

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Well, yah, that's what it's called. Pop.

[Arcanetrance]

12. We just always called it soda

[loli phabay]

14. we called it ginger.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. You must be from the East Coast

I grew up in Minnesota, too, and it wasn't until I moved to the East Coast that I heard people call it "soda."

[Art_from_Ark]

11. "Casserole" wasn't too hoity-toity for my small Arkansas town

However, whenever I hear that word now, I automatically feel a little nauseous, especially when it is preceded by "tuna".

[loli phabay]

13. oh hod, tuna casserole is lucifers own puke.

[Arcanetrance]

15. I'm right there with you when it comes to tuna casserole

[frogmarch]

16. Oh, I thought you said "weird fools"

and I was going to say yes.

But weird foods?

Mr. froggy uses syrup on cornbread, which to me is weird, but other than that, no, not that I know of.

[RebelOne]

17. When I was a child in Philadelphia,

my mother would cook scrapple for breakfast. I used to love it. But now that I know the ingredients, I would never eat it again. Plus, I am now a vegetarian.

Scrapple, also known by the Pennsylvania Dutch name pon haus,[1][2] is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. The mush is formed into a semi-solid congealed loaf, and slices of the scrapple are then panfried before serving. Scraps of meat left over from butchering, not used or sold elsewhere, were made into scrapple to avoid waste. Scrapple is best known as a rural American food of the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Scrapple and pon haus are commonly considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, including the Mennonites and Amish. Scrapple is found in supermarkets throughout the region in both fresh and frozen refrigerated cases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapple

[nolabear]

22. Take out the cornmeal and you have "head cheese."

There are pig based foods that I can't even THINK about, but my grandparents' generation was all over them.

[Cadfael]

26. we called it ''sultz'' - head cheese that is.

Another pig based delicacy that I love (and would never eat if I hadn't been indoctrinated at an early age) is jaternice. A natural casing (intestine of some poor animal no longer using it) stuffed with ground up pig liver, barley, cream and garlic - which must be simmered long and low otherwise the casing splits and oozes out a grey mush that must be smelled to believed. Not recommended to be enjoyed with beer (or any carbonated beverage in excess as the barley tends to swell post-ingestion)

The best advice I can give to the jaternice virgin is: don't look at it, just eat it.

[nolabear]

27. OY, chit'lins!

There are two words you probably should never see together.

But man, the worst smell in the natural world is chit'lins. Intestines that I can't imagine could ever be cleaned enough.

Not to be confused with crackling, which was sort of like pork skins but far greasier and tastier and absolutely astounding in cornbread. Thank goodness that didn't happen often, and I didn't have much tolerance for the grease, but they were really pretty good.

It's said that Southern cooking is poverty and slave cooking, and that's just true. Coffee, flour, water, grease and pork leavings make up a whole lot of classics. It's a wonder I survived to adulthood. My adult diet contains only the coffee and water.

[Cadfael]

31. Yep, peasant food

Make use of every part of the animal that can be used. I still love to have oxtails for Sunday dinner - they do have to be braised for a long time (preferably with potatoes onions and carrots). When they've cooked long enough the cartilage bits on both ends become sticky and delicious. Yum. Now I have to have oxtails this sunday - at least it's cooled off enough to have the oven on for protracted periods of time.

[nolabear]

38. I've never cooked oxtails but they're high cuisine in some restaurants here.

And they're delicious. I should try them sometime.

[Cadfael]

18. My folks were depression era kids..

We had gravy bread occasionally (with dinner instead of FOR dinner like they once did)

[LiberalElite]

19. I liked

saltines in a bowl with milk and sugar. (like cereal)

[nolabear]

21. Childhood ones:

I had a grandfather too. He was a rambling man, and brought home some very odd but really good foods.

Poke salet.

It literally grew on the side of the road. A kind of greens that if you didn't fix correctly (I don't really know what that means) could make you very sick. They were boiled and drained and then scrambled with eggs.

Coffee can tamales.

We used to joke about missing cats. Nobody knew what was in them but they were fabulous.

BBQ goat.

Goat is delicious.

Slum gullion.

My grandparents owned a cafe and at the end of the week everything went into a pot. His history as a rambling man gave him a taste for that kind of thing. I expect he was pickier than I recall because it was usually delicious and kind of Brunswick Stew-y.

Red eye gravy.

Essentially the grease the ham was fried in and a big splash of black coffee. SO good.

Oh now I'm seriously hungry, though I haven't had any of those things (well, curried goat) for years.

[riderinthestorm]

23. Now? No. Growing up I remember Campbells tomato soup dunked with white bread

That had been squeezed into a log of white bread squishiness.

Colcannon - a gelatinous mess of cabbage.

Mutton feet (don't ask).

Tripe was a regular dish at our house as was the precious jars of Marmite spread on toast that would make my friends gag.

And oh yes, my Irish mum is an old hand at cooking brains.

All of it now is just.

[frogmarch]

25. Well, this might seem weird

to some people, but this has been my favorite breakfast since I was a little kid:

Orange juice poured over uncooked oatmeal

[nolabear]

28. Am I right that Marmite is like something from the bottom of a beer barrel?

I'd go look it up but if I'm wrong I want the laugh.

[riderinthestorm]

29. Its a yeast spread. Very pungent and impossible to like or understand unless you grew up with it

So yeah you could rightly say its like the scrapings from the bottom of a beer barrel- dark brown peanut butter consistency.

Not nearly as pleasant looking (or smelling!) as Nutella

[loli phabay]

32. nutella rocks, but marmite is good on warm bread and with capers on it, the saltiness of the capers

Adds something.

[nolabear]

37. I'll bet it's nutritious as all get out though.

I remember reading that in the Middle Ages beer and such was the main reason people didn't die of malnutrition. That and the fact that the bread was so hard they had to dip it in the beer to eat it.

[baldguy]

24. Spaetzle

Now it's mostly a holiday thing, but when we were kids our grandmother (we called her Mutti) made them as a side dish for breakfast lunch & dinner - just as long as there was gravy to with.

[hobbit709]

30. Chicken Paprikash on top.

[noamnety]

33. mushroom soup sandwiches

When I was a kid, there was nothing better than a white bread sandwich, slathered with campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup, spread on cold out of the can with a knife. Poor man's brie.

[GoCubsGo]

34. White bread with meat drippings.

Mom would broil steaks or pork chops, and we'd sop up the drippings from the broiler pan with bread. White bread, of course.

[fizzgig]

35. tuna gravy and corn bread

i love it but the thought grosses my husband out.

a box of mac and cheese, a can of tuna and some peas.

[opiate69]

36. Our youngest loves peanut butter & mayo sandwiches..

No friggin' clue where he got that idea...

[OriginalGeek]

40. My grandparents would get me to eat stuff by putting sugar on it

I think it's perfectly normal to eat slices of tomato with a pile of sugar on top. Not sprinkled on. A pile. At least a quarter inch thick. For breakfast I'd often get bananas sliced up in a bowl of milk with a bunch of sugar on it.

But my wife's family are the ones who eat the weird stuff. They'll take a perfectly good cup of hot, black coffee and cut up cubes of cheddar cheese in it and then eat the melted cheese out of it with a spoon and then throw the coffee away.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. My dad used to take slices of bread, spread them on a plate, and cover them with

heavy cream and a bit of sugar.

When I was in grad school, I used to like to eat buttered toast with molasses.