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Nostalgia Recipies

My mood often dictates what I want to cook and taste, as I start dealing with ailing family and thinking of fall being here soon (despite our heat wave), I start getting food-nostalgia.

Pickled beets. Perogies. Spatzle. Pressure cooker roast/potatoes/carrots. Tea biscuits with butter and milky tea.

I just realized that it's pretty easy to tell where my paternal ancestors are from based on at least the first three, and I wonder if the last three are telling on where my maternal side of the family is from also.

What foods make you feel nostalgic? I'm sure I could add more to this list, but I have to go wrestle the circus out the door and head to work.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ks on August 17, 2009 at 5:47am

Mine's mostly cheap convenience food, like Chef Boyardee pizza mix and Duncan Hines blueberry muffins. We ate a lot of that stuff growing up. But there are also the standards (where I'm from, anyway) of biscuits made with bacon fat and cornbread slathered with butter.

Permalink Reply by rommie on August 17, 2009 at 5:58am

Kraft mac & cheese and hot dogs. Grilled cheese and Campbells tomato soup. My mom's tuna casserole--the kind that has the crushed up potato chips on top. Beef cubes and gravy over rice. Fudge rounds, or really anything sweet and bad for you and individually wrapped in plastic.

Seriously, my kid is going to eat so many more vegetables than we did.

Permalink Reply by Herasmus B. Dragon on August 17, 2009 at 6:08am

Thanksgiving food in general. All year I looked forward to the entire paternal family stuffing themselves into one tiny cinderblock house in a farm valley in WV, working together to put a huge meal on the table and talk-eat-talk-eat-talk for 5 days. Perhaps that's why I love stuffing so much.

My grandfather would roast chicken breasts marinated in red wine vinegar, then as a treat would take a thick slice of Italian bread, soak it in the pan juices, and split it between my brother and I. Eating carbs soaked in fat is really bad for you, but damn, it tasted so good when I was 10!

I guess you can tell I loved holidays with my extended family.

Permalink Reply by ks on August 17, 2009 at 6:40am

This just reminded me of Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. She lived two houses over from us, but in the house where my mom was born and most of the family grew up and so we did Thanksgiving there with the whole family (and my mom had 11 siblings, so there was a lot of us) every year. And there was banana pudding. And another aunt's apple cake. And my mom's pumpkin and coconut cream pies. And chocolate lush. I seriously loved the Thanksgiving desserts.

Herasmus B. Dragon said:

Thanksgiving food in general. All year I looked forward to the entire paternal family stuffing themselves into one tiny cinderblock house in a farm valley in WV, working together to put a huge meal on the table and talk-eat-talk-eat-talk for 5 days. Perhaps that's why I love stuffing so much.

Permalink Reply by MamatothaMax on August 17, 2009 at 6:40am

Shepherds pie, yorkshire pudding, roasted lamb with mint sauce, cheese and onion pie, stew with Irish soda bread, and hot custard over blackberries. You can tell where my family comes from by our favorite foods too. Summer makes me nostalgic for what we called a Florida lunch. Loads of rolled deli meats, cheese, fresh fruit, pickles, ans olives. It all tasted so good especially after a hour in thw pool.

Permalink Reply by Mamawho on August 17, 2009 at 6:43am

ks - sometimes I even make fresh butter to go on my cornbread or biscuits. Yum.

The one thing I really miss that I've never made it S**t on a Shingle, or, SOS. It's old military food, and my daddy used to make it for me. It's the corned beef slices in a jar in cream gravy served over toast. I think it has a year's worth of sodium. But damn it's good.

Permalink Reply by ks on August 17, 2009 at 7:13am

My papaw used to do that every time we had cornbread. I've done it a couple of times, but it just isn't the same.

Mamawho said:

ks - sometimes I even make fresh butter to go on my cornbread or biscuits. Yum.

Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on August 17, 2009 at 1:20pm

Ok, now I am really jealous: fresh butter? But first I am going to work on mastering bread to put the butter on.

And the SOS, my mom made it with dried, not corn beef, but used to find the dried beef from a local butcher and it was much better than the canned stuff. You are going to make it want to make it!

Mamawho said:

ks - sometimes I even make fresh butter to go on my cornbread or biscuits. Yum.

The one thing I really miss that I've never made it S**t on a Shingle, or, SOS. It's old military food, and my daddy used to make it for me. It's the corned beef slices in a jar in cream gravy served over toast. I think it has a year's worth of sodium. But damn it's good.

Permalink Reply by Herasmus B. Dragon on August 17, 2009 at 3:39pm

You can buy a packet at Giant, if you're really desperate. It's not the real deal, but it's OK.

Mamawho said:

The one thing I really miss that I've never made it S**t on a Shingle, or, SOS. It's old military food, and my daddy used to make it for me. It's the corned beef slices in a jar in cream gravy served over toast. I think it has a year's worth of sodium. But damn it's good.

Permalink Reply by JTX on August 17, 2009 at 7:43pm

This is going to sound goofy, but surprisingly, I miss a lot of the foods served at my school. I went to prep school until I was 13 and the hot lunches were a huge affair -- served family-style, at assigned tables. I still love a good tuna noodle casserole (only one in my family), buttered noodles and kielbasa, and other crowd-pleasers.

Peanut butter & jelly on white bread is a simple comfort food (can't have it at home because my hubby & kids are peanut-allergic). I love kid-friendly foods. Chocolate pudding, mac & cheese... mmmm!

Family nostalgic foods:
Sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving (topped, of course, with giant marshmallows browned under the broiler)
Matza ball soup, noodle kugel, matza brei (fried matza & egg, topped with cinnamon & sugar)

Holy crap, am I a carb freak. But if I'd told you how I crave boiled, canned asparagus, I'd also beg you to put me somewhere safe and point my hospital bed towards the Lobotomy OR.

Permalink Reply by Ylimemagic on August 17, 2009 at 8:23pm

What is the recipe for homemade butter? I want to try that!

And, absolutely, Thanksgiving food. Roast turkey, my mother's mashed potatoes, chocolate pecan pie. Fried chicken is also way up on my list and I NEVER eat it any longer. I don't fry things...I can't handle the grease. I've also gone a little weird when cooking chicken. But if my mother asks me what I want for dinner, it's fried chicken. Spinach salad with candied pecans and blue cheese. Caprese salad.

Yum.

Permalink Reply by sproutsinthekitchen on August 17, 2009 at 10:43pm

Baked beans (with 3 kinds of beans, tomatoes, bacon, ground beef, bbq sauce, onions, and chili powder)--just had this tonight. It's my Grandma's (and now my Dad's) specialty.

Potato Salad (again, Grandma, and I've been trying to figure out the right combo of what's in it for years now). I made something REALLy close to it tonight, too, but substituted fennel for celery. Weird but good.

Nutter Butters.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches with homemade jam and real butter on white bread.

Cinnamon Toast.

I could go on and on. And when I was pregnant, this food, the stuff I ate as a kid, was the ONLY food I could stomach. Doubly strange since I hadn't eaten most of it in years.