Life as I see it: #Nostalgia What's for dinner in the 1950s

Last week I described my family’s nightly dinner ritual. If you missed that, you can catch up at https://crdowning-author.blogspot.com/2019/04/nostalgia-dinner-with-lowell-thomas.html
An important part of the dinner ritual was . . . dinner!

We were never hungry after dinner.

That’s not quite accurate. No one but my sister was hungry after dinner, and then, not every night.

Sis, not her given name because I want to keep her as my sister, did not like certain food items. She made it very clear which food items those were. Two examples:

She picked beans out of Indiana Chili (keep reading) and deposited them on her napkin.
She refused to eat peas altogether. In her late teens, they tested her for allergies. Peas were one food item that tested positive.

My dad loved liver and onions. At least every other Friday we had liver and onions. No one else was fond of that combination. I ate some. My mom ate more. Sis ate none.

Mom cooked only enough food for each meal with no leftovers. The reason? Refrigerators were small.

On the left is like the one we had in the 1950s. The freezer held an icecube tray with enough room for one half-gallon of imitation ice milk, and that's about all! On the right is the upgrade we got in the early 1960s. Still only one door, but the freezer as DOUBLE the size of the old one. Oh, our refrigerator was white, not red.

We ate fresh fruit and vegetables in season, but lots of our food came from cans. I suspect the high salt content in canned food added to my mom’s hypertension. On the other hand, my dad’s normal blood pressure was just enough to keep someone alive. That didn’t bother him. He was a natural athlete and a tireless worker.

Recurring food items were:

Creamed tuna and/or creamed peas. Mom heated both tuna and peas in a creamy white sauce. If it was tuna alone, or tuna and peas together, they were almost always served ladled onto slices of toast. Creamed peas alone were a side dish. They were almost always served with . . .

Salmon Patties. They would appear whenever Mom was in the mood. The salmon was always from a can. The link to a recipe for Salmon Patties is the photo's caption.

https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/main-course/fish/quick-and-tasty-salmon-patties.html

I guarantee that there was never any onion, exotic spice, or anything red or green in Mom’s version. Think “Sis.” It was common to crunch on relatively soft salmon vertebrae while eating. And don’t forget to pour creamed peas on the patties before eating!

Chipped beef on toast is the last creamed item on today’s menu. My dad had a love/hate relationship with this combination. During his twenty-two years in the Navy, he consumed more than his share of what I think is a delightful dish. Usually called by a “salty” nickname, that I will not provide, by those in the military was another monthly staple. I often wonder why I don’t eat more of this and Spam today.

Recipe: https://www.smalltownwoman.com/creamed-chipped-beef/

Indiana Chili is more soup than chili. It contains browned hamburger, tomato juice, and kidney beans. Seasonings vary. Mom put elbow macaroni in hers. I thought it was a family dish until I was visiting my son in Northern Wisconsin. We were at an off-road race where he was pitting for a car he worked on. The owner of the car invited us into his massive motor home for lunch.

I grabbed a bowl and dumped a ladle full of the contents of a crock-pot into it. Staring back at me was . . . Indiana Chili, complete with elbow macaroni! Talk about menu shock.

Grilled cheese and Campbell’s Tomato Soup was a treat. Mom’s grilled cheese sandwiches rallied kids in our neighborhood. People knew her for a LOT of different foods, so that’s no surprise. Thinking back, I don’t know what made Mom’s grilled cheese sandwiches special. She normally used white bread with butter on the side to be down in the skillet and plastic-wrapped American cheese slices. Reputation is a powerful advocate!

Accompanying the sandwiches was Campbell’s Tomato Soup. She usually served the soup in mugs. For kids between seven and eleven years old, drinking soup from mugs is an adventure.

When I went to some of my friend’s houses I was often disappointed if we had tomato soup. First, those moms didn't serve it in a mug. Second, it was thin. That’s when I learned that my mom always used all milk or no less than a 50/50 mix of milk and water in her tomato soup.

Speaking of milk, we drank whole milk and lots of it. The Navy commissary sold boxes with four half-gallons of milk in them. Mom always came home with a boxed set of half-gallons. It’s almost all I drank all the way through high school. Soda was a “walk to down the street to the gas station and buy a bottle” treat.

Mom shopped for everything but ice cream at the commissary. She went every other week. It was an experience. We kept large reusable cardboard “commissary boxes” in the carport. Mom lugged them to the commissary, grabbed a cart in the parking lot, and carted them into the building. At checkout, box boys placed food items in those boxes and assisted patrons to their cars. They expected a tip for each box. I suspect Mom always tipped them.

Dessert

The commissary was at least a half-hour drive from our house. That’s why Mom never bought ice cream there. We got our frozen dessert items from the Valley Farm Market. It opened only two years before we moved into the neighborhood. They’re still there because they are nice people, are convenient, and sell some of the best meats in San Diego. Their homemade pollo asada and corn beef are magnifique!

What I didn’t pay attention to until I was in Junior High School to what frozen confection we were eating. It wasn’t ice cream. It wasn’t even ice milk. We ate imitation ice milk! It couldn’t have been too bad. Either that or my palate was more Philistine than I thought.

Note the emphasis on IMITATION.

What made the imitation ice milk easier to swallow were my mom’s homemade cookies. She made some of the best Snicker Doodles ever. Visitors to her Sunday lunches always commented on the crispy outside and soft inside of those delights. Essentially, the best of both Snicker Doodle worlds.

Other favorite cookies were Ranger Cookies and Chocolate Chip Cookies using milk chocolate chips. At Christmas, she made eight or ten dozen Christmas Butter Cookies using her mother’s recipe. The whole family and assorted neighborhood kids helped ice and sprinkle those.

None of those desert cookies are my favorites. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t remember turning any of them down, ever. However, my favorite cookie isn’t really a cookie. It’s my mom’s Chocolate Rice Krispies Treats.