Nostalgia Foods [NOT 25/11/20]

25/11/20 brightersideoflife 48
image of 1960s table with appetizers

Do you have specific foods that are super nostalgic to you? Do you even think you’d like them now as an adult?

I was thinking about when everyone was still alive and we’d have big Thanksgivings and Christmas Eves at my grandparents’ house. We haven’t had get-togethers on that scale really since before I was in high school thanks to a massive family falling out and then the older generation of folks passing away.

I loved my grandma’s rye bread party pizzas. Did any of you make those or have family who made them?

Here’s the secret family recipe. Ingredients are a loaf of dark rye cocktail bread (the one with the square slices), a lb of ground beef, a lb of ground pork, a lb of Velveeta/cheez product, and a packet of taco seasonings. I know, I know – most recipes have pizza sauce and worchestershire sauce and ketchup in them, but grandma skipped that extra step in favor of tossing in that packet of taco seasoning. You brown off the meats with the taco seasoning and when that’s done, add chopped up cheez product, stir, load up those rye bread slices, and bake at 350 degrees F for like 10 minutes to finish them off.

Grandma didn’t even bother putting them on a platter. We’d all swarm the sheet pan when she pulled them out of the oven and grab them right off the pan.

Probably as an adult I’d be like ewww cheez product and soggy rye bread with really salty fatty meat. But damn if they weren’t the bees knees to me when I was a kid. We only got those on holidays, too.

*when I say bad falling out, I mean things like 13 yr old me walking in of a bunch of adults doing cocaine on Christmas Eve.

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48 Comments

  1. Clam dip in a sourdough bread bowl served with corn chips. My aunt used to make it every year when we would go to her house for Christmas and New Years. 

    We used to always have big family parties on my dads side of the family, but right after I graduated high school my parents separated and the family gatherings began to dwindle. We still get together from time to time, but it’s not like it used to be.

    • That’s so interesting! When we did the dill dip in the bread bowl, you just tear off chunks of bread for the dipping/dunking. 

      Is the clam dip a more scoopable texture so you needed the corn chips to scoop it out?

      • The clam dip is a bit on the thicker side so I think it works best with corn chips to scoop it up. We would also use the bread for it, but there never seemed to be enough bread for all the dip!

  3. It’s not a holiday dish, but nostalgic for me, when I was growing up my mom would make a coleslaw that was just shredded green cabbage, salad oil, and Season-All seasoning. Put that on the side of some roasted chicken & it just tastes like my childhood. I still make it occasionally but I like to add a splash of white vinegar to cut the oil. 

  4. Boiled peanuts. And yes, I still love them. DON’T JUDGE ME. But cooking them yourself is a bad idea. Buy them from a roadside stand. 
     
    My mom also used to make candy rolls that are a sheet of cooked and mashed potatoes mixed with powdered sugar (maybe other stuff, I don’t know). You spread peanut butter on the potato/sugar stuff, roll them up, and slice them into little sections. She used to make it every Christmas. At least one of my sisters has the recipe and they will be forced to give it to me. Possibly tomorrow. 

  6. …well my grandmother used to make peppermint cremes around christmas time, so those would probably count but no one in my family who’s still around seems to have the touch

    …& in a non-seasonal fashion there’s always what some people call fridge cake but was always referred to as RCBC (for rich chocolate biscuit cake) in my family…it’s basically dark chocolate, golden syrup & butter all melted & mixed with crushed biscuits (generally digestives but ginger nuts work pretty good) & then spread in a baking tray & put into the fridge to set

  7. My mom’s red beans and rice, and her banana fritters are something I really miss.  I can make them but never as good!  The nostalgia food I never understood is jello salads!  Why people?  Why?

          • …I still think of it as just jelly (the other stuff I still call jam) but even when I used to happily consume the stuff as a kid I never could abide putting bits of fruit in there…I used to try to excavate them so I could just eat the jelly on its own..it’s just an all around terrible idea

    • Ooh your mom’s red beans and rice and banana fritters sound so good! 

      I find jello to be an abomination. It makes my gag reflex go off, even when it’s in jello shot form. Not a fan. So I completely agree with you – jello salads are GROSS. 

    • Because Strawberry Jello and cool whip, whipped together juuuuust as the Jello starts to set up, so that it creates a strawberry-flavored “mousse”** is a DELICIOUS combination!!!
      (This is the ONLY correct version of a “jello salad” in my headcannon😉)
      **known in my extended family as “the pink stuff,” it has been the dish my mom was asked to bring since my childhood–just like my godmother HAS to bring “the potato salad”, otherwise there is GREAT disappointment at extended-family gatherings

  8. Yeah, I can imagine that a big cocaine party would cause some tension in the family.
     
    My mother’s side of the family would get together all the time.  Holidays, birthdays, you name it, and we all would have a big party.  Growing up, all the big holidays were at my Grandparents’ house.  These gatherings were almost always potlucks, so that there wasn’t all the burden of cooking for 30 people put on just my Grandmother.  My oldest aunt would always bring these meatballs and sauce in a crock pot that were the best ever.  I would just stand at that crock pot and spoon out them out and plow through them until an adult would yell at me to move on.  The recipe was from a friend of my Grandmother’s, but my aunt was the one who really made them her own.
     
     
    1 Tbs. Olive Oil or Butter
    1 Pound Ground Beef
    ¼ Cup Chopped Onion
    ½ tsp. Salt
    1 Pound Franks cut into 1-inch pieces
    1 10oz. Jar Apricot or Peach Preserves, drained
    1 Cup BBQ Sauce
    1 20oz. Can Pineapple Chunks, drained
     
    In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil or butter over medium heat and add ground beef and stir for one minute.  Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally until meat is brown and onion is tender, about 5-7 minutes.  Pour off drippings from saucepan.  Add salt, franks, preserves and BBQ sauce and turn down heat to simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.  Add drained pineapple chunks and remove from heat.
     
    My immediate family moved across the country when I was 15 so no more big gatherings for me after that.  Every once in a while I would be able to fly up and visit over Christmas, which was always great, but time moves on, people die, you know the drill.
    I’m putting together a family cookbook of all my Grandmother’s recipes.  In the process, I plan to make several of them for that sweet hit of nostalgia and so I can include some pictures.

  9. My grandmother always roasted chestnuts for us around Christmas, and I loved them. We’d eat them with the dried apple slices she put up in the fall. Sadly, you can’t buy American chestnuts anymore and the European varieties aren’t as good. She used to make pizzelles for all the major holidays. When I was a kid that was a big deal because electric pizzelle irons weren’t readily available. She had a cast iron one that my grandfather, who was a machinist, made. The handle was over two feet and it had a double press at the end. It was very heavy. She’d hold it over the gas stove burner and flip it like it was nothing. She was 4’11” tall, and weighed about 95 lbs soaking wet, but it was all muscle. My father loved pizzelles but he hated how much work it was for her to make them. He bought her an electric iron when they started selling them in stores. I don’t think she ever completely forgave him. She made her own grape juice and jelly from her vines and the whole house smelled amazing. Made all her own pasta, bread and rolls too. And she’d fry extra bread dough for us, we’d eat it warm sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Nothing will ever taste as good as that did.

  10. My mom would make those little rye breads too. [pepperidge farm remembers]. Also for special occasions we’d get icecream sundaes with vanilla icecream, Hershey’s syrup and creme de menthe. 

  11. For me, it’s pan fried Spam/Kam (the Canada City equivalent.)
    Mom would toast up bread slices and then pan fry some Spam on those days when she had enough of kids and wanted to make something different.  Later, she would make rice topped with Spam similar to what they do in Hawaii but no fried eggs or sauce.
    Once in a while I’ll make it.  Who doesn’t like fried grease and salt?

  12. My mom has eight siblings and all but one of them had at least two kids. Our family gatherings consisted of mountains of international dishes (they are Asian and married people from other cultures), extremely loud conversations that switched between multiple languages, and always ended in a Disco/Motown dance party… Vietnamese pancakes are what come to mind when I think back to those glorious family gatherings. Alas, most of them eventually got divorced, my grandparents passed, my generation grew up, and infighting between the nine aunts and uncles prevent us from gathering en masse.

  13. *thinks hard*
    ummm
    nope?
    i mean aside from not doing thanksgiving here..my family is not big on traditional foods
    really.. the closest thing to a family tradition we have is that the first person to turn in to a nasty drunk is going to get clobberred with a frying pan
    (its happened more than once…so its tradition)
    (and no..it hasnt been me..yet… was me dad once…and all the neighbours outside egging him on……me mums a fierce creature)

    • There’s a comedian, I think his name is Mark Roberts? He had a joke that was totally my family. He said on holidays his family would “psychologically abuse each other until somebody cried. Then we had pie” Ah, the memories!

    • I’m with you, childhood food is super triggering for me, nuff said.
      Although, if I go really back, my grandmother made koulouria, greek hairpin cookies with sesame seeds on top, not too sweet, great with tea and coffee. I’ve never been able to make them like hers.

  14. Happy Thanksgiving everybody (or everybody American.)
     
    If you check out my FYCE contributions you’ll see that everything I make was available, and usually much more common, decades ago. I don’t know how I got trapped into this time warp loop but there I am, and I have the alarming BMI numbers to prove it.

  15. One of my “family” tradition” foods is Whipped Jello (teeeeechnically a jello salad😆😂🤣💖).
    All it is, is jello–in the case of *my* family, the only one allowed is strawberry–and coolwhip.
    You HAVE to use regular jello, and regular cool whip–the sugar free versions won’t set up right, and neither does whipped cream. Generic versions of the coolwhip and jello are fine, though, apparently there is some sort of chemical reaction/magic in those two VERY processed foods which works, while “better for you” options don’t succeed.
    All you do is make two small (or one large) packets of jello as directed, then refrigerate it until juuuuust before it sets up (it should be thick, and slide off a spoon without coating it if scooped). When the jello reaches that almost-set stage, you whip in a large container or two small containers of thawed cool whip, and put the “fluff” back into the fridge until it sets up all the way.
    The texture would best be described as somewhere between jello and mousse, and–at amoxicillin-pink is ENTIRELY disturbing…
    But EVERYONE i know who’s ever *not* grown up with it, but has been willing to try it (mostly my roommates over the years), has been surprised to discover that they actually LIKE it!😉😄🤣
    One DOEShave to like plain jello, of course. But this is the ONE “jello salad” that i will always love, and make for potlucks (along with more “grown-up” fare like Spinach-Artichoke dip, or mini carrot-cake cupcakes)

  16. My mom had the Pampered Chef bread tubes that came in various shapes but she only ever used the flower one. For all parties at home, she’d make some cream cheese and herb spread to go in top, plus a cucumber slice. I loved them. 
     
    Not holiday specific, but her version of spaghetti is also very nostalgic. Italians, look away. She would add bacon to the sauce as well as frying the meatballs in the bacon grease. And the sauce was just Campbell’s tomato soup lololol. I don’t bother with meatballs when I make my own but crumble some bacon into a store bought sauce and it takes me back.

  17. My nostalgia-foods are as follows (and I WILL happily eat any of them!😉😁):
     
    1. The previously mentioned “Whipped Jello” or “pink fluff” “jello salad” i described elsewhere.
     
    2. “The Red Stuff”
    It’s a “fruit salad” of… dubious 1940’s-1970’s origin, consisting of: 1 can drained mixed fruit cocktail (the kind with maraschino cherries), 1 can drained pineapple tidbits, 1 large can drained mandarin oranges, and 1 can of Cherry Pie Filling.
    You dump everything into a large bowl, and mix/bind it all together with the pie filling as your “sauce”
     
    It’s OBNOXIOUS and sweet, but like my mom’s Whipped Jello, and Grandma’s/my Auntie’s** Potato Salad, any of the family Holiday Potlucks of my childhood would’ve been incomplete without this salad. The Aunt who was in charge of bringing it called it “fruit salad,” but to us kids, it was “The Red Stuff”😉
    And YES, once every few years, I DO get a mad, bad, craving for it, and make it for myself–the last time was just a couple weeks ago, tbh!😉
     
    3. Potato Salad. The PROPER, YELLOW, COLD, kind–not that *other* “German” abomination with the vinegar & oil, served WARM🤨🤨🤨
    😉😂🤣
     
    This one is made with cooled, previously-peeled & boiled Russets or Reds (either will work, but you NEED a “grainy” potato to get the texture right–a sticky/finer-grained/”pasty” potato like Yukon Gold is just texturally “wrong.”
    There needs to be LOTS of mustard & mayo in the sauce, iirc some white distilled or apple cider vinegar, a little sugar, salt, pepper, maaaaybe some onion powder(?), some diced celery, and a BUNCH of diced hard-boiled eggs.
    There are no pimentos, olives, pickles, or other unnecessary vegetables or meats… Just Potatoes, Eggs, & Celery, as God and Grandma intended, The.End.😉
     
    At every family potluck (we ONLY ever did potluck-style gatherings, because with an *initial* family of 12 [grandpa & grandma, plus 5 kids and their spouses), which grew to 25 with just G&G, plus our parents’ generation and us grandkids), we ALWAYS did a buffet-line style meal, because there were TOO MANY PEOPLE to ask one family to cook and/or provide everything, and there was no way to fit everyone in one room. 
     
    Someone ALWAYS cooks a large turkey, and someone else will cook up a large ham to bring… sometimes now we have *two* turkeys–because if all the parents, cousins, spouses, and now cousins’ kids were to show up, we’re at 60 people😉
     
    The rest of us bring sides.
    Mashed & scalloped potatoes; cheesy hash browns; the aforementioned “Jello Salad”/whipped jello; some pasta salads; broccoli salad; additional meats,like lil’ smokies & meatballs; a couple cool-whip-based salads, like Snicker Sapad and Pistachio Salad; dressing/stuffing–at least two types–one runny/soupy, one drier/more “firm”; breads/rolls; assorted pickles & olives; and SO MANY desserts!
    And since we’re gonna be hanging around for hours, there will also be assorted snackable foods like Puppy-Chow (Rice Chex coated in a mixture of melted peanut-butter & chocolate chips, then coated again in powdered sugar), chex mix, garlic-ranch pretzels (except we often use Orville Redenbacher’s Popping & Topping oil), cookies, fudges, various candy-brittles & barks, etc.
     
    4. The last thing that is a family tradition is the Plum Pudding.
    We haven’t had it in a few years, because it’s a pretty *involved* recipe, and takes AT LEAST a day to make, preferably a weekend, because there’s so.damn.much.chopping to do to make it🙃
    I’ll make that a separate comment, so this doesn’t go for days😉
     
    (**that Auntie is also my godmother)

  18. The plum-pudding;
    The recipe came over with grandma’s ancestors, soooometime in the 1600’s-1700’s, and it’s a Traditional English Pudding.
     
    Wrapped in a muslin dishcloth–because this pudding is a goddamn BEAST, and the thought of attempting to put it into a “pudding mold” is…. laughable. You’d need too many molds, and no one’s got time for that😉
     
    There are NO plums in it, it’s just from the era when alllll dried fruits were called “plums.” The fat used is beef suet–NOT the refined stuff one feeds birds,you need the leaf-suet found amongst the cow’s organs, when butchering. 
     
    There are dates, Sultanas (golden raisins), currants, Brazil nuts, walnuts, and God only remembers what else, a dozen eggs (YES, a full dozen!!!–as I said, this pudding is a BEAST!😉), multiple cups of flour, assorted spices, and you WILL need a larger mixing bowl than the average American household owns (learned THIS the hard way!🤣🤣🤣)…
     
    Once you’ve chopped until you have blisters and NEVER want to hold a knife again, and wrestled with every bowl you have gone out to purchase the largest stainless-steel tub you could find & afford at the farm-suoply store, it’s time to put your canning pot on the stove, filled halfway with water, and also to get the *second-largest* pot you have FULL of water & bring both to a rolling boil…
     
    Then you take your two clean muslin dishcloths, get both wet, wring them out, and set one aside. Lay the other out flat, and sprinkle it with flour, then turn the pudding-beast out onto it.
     
    Pull up the corners of the first dishcloth, binding up the mass pudding as tightly as possible, then put the 50-pounds of wrapped pudding (ok, it’s really more like 20-25, it’s just that you’re gonna be so tired from all.that.chopping.and.mixing, that it FEELS like 50 lbs!😉) on top of the second dishcloth, and bind THAT one as tight as you can, too.
     
    Be SURE to get those wraps tight, because if you don’t, the outside of the pudding will get waterlogged & fall apart!
     
    Once you’ve got the beast all wrapped, (it WILL be larger than a men’s basketball! Typically it’s about 16-18″ across, and a good 8″ high, when it’s wrapped right)), you try to *gently* drop the bastard into that canning pot–make sure you have a rack on the bottom, so the pudding doesn’t touch–because somehow, even though you’re boiling the damn thing, it CAN burn🙄🤪🙃–and find *something* heavy to put on top of it, because it needs to be UNDER the surface of the water to cook properly…
     
    If you didn’t have enough water to cover it, take some from that second pan of boiling water, and get the beast completely covered… adding additional water, every so often from the secondary pot, as you boil that beast for…. three to five hours(?)
    Luckily, you can’t overboil the pudding. You CAN under-cook it, though, so use your best judgement😉
     
    Once you’re sick of cooking the damn thing & are tired of your house being a sauna, take the pudding out of the water, let it drain, and then put it somewhere “cool but not freezing” (an unheated garage works GREAT, if you have one.
    Be sure to cover it/store it in something, so that no pests can munch on it during storage.
     
    Depending on how many days/hours ahead of time you made the pudding, this is where you can start to have some fun with it…
     
    If you made it a few weeks ahead, that’s best. Like a good chili or lasagna, the puddings flavors will meld better the longer it sits… AND you have the time to make it a boozy beast😉
     
    Every so often–as often as you like, or as seldom as you remember, you can go out to wherever the pudding is being stored, and soak the dishcloth with the booze(s) of your choice. I used some E&J  VSOP brandy, some Grand Marnier, a little Drambouie, some Applejack (Laird’s), a bit of Two Gingers whiskey, and some Captain Morgan Private Label, along with some of my homemade vanilla extract (Beans, with a 50/50 mix of Two Gingers & Captain Morgan Spiced rum).
    I just splashed a bit of each on the cloth, till a bit of liquid was sitting on the sheet pan underneath it, covered it back up to soak in, and did that over the course of a few weeks… then at Christmas, I unwrapped the beastie, cut it into manageable quarters, then sliced each quarter 3/4″ thick, and gave 4-6 slices out to each of my aunties, some to each of my parents, shared a bunch of it at the family Christmas, as a dessert (with either the brandy hard-sauce, OR liquid whipping cream, and still had a bunch of slices for myself to eat on into January😉
     
    If you DO choose the booze-soak, I believe you *could* do the “flaming Christmas pudding” thing…. 
    But that’s too much work for me, too much of a fire hazard, and also, why–after boozing the thing for weeks, would one want to burn off all that tasty alcohol?😉

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