There’s No Place Like Home—Home-Cooking, That Is!
Volume: Sounds of lips smacking!
Issue: Comfort Food
Date: October 15, 2022
“If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks, why is there a light in the fridge?”
—Anonymous
There’s No Place Like Home—Home-Cooking, That Is!
In Fall 1953, Swanson came out with the first frozen TV dinners. Soon over 35 million people went bonkers eating aluminum trays filled with turkey and trimmings, mashed potatoes, and corn niblets on TV trays in front of their black and white RCA TVs. (And, oh no, they had to leave their TV trays but for a moment and move their butts to the TV to twist the channel dial—no remotes back then!)
That was almost 70 years ago, but our tummies never forgot some of the “joys of cooking” that emerged from those 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s turquoise metal GE Dream Kitchens. Here are some food memories to whet your appetite for that old homestyle cooking (back in the days when “nuke” referred to bombs and not microwaves).
APPS (food, not downloadable computer applications!)
Pigs in a Blanket—which made piggies out of all of us.
Stuffed Mushrooms—eew—adult food—no kid would stuff mushrooms in their mouth!
Cheese Balls—who knew that cheese grew in spheres?
Swedish Mini Meatballs in Sweet Sauce—who eats meatballs with a toothpick?
Lipton Onion Soup Mix—Whip-a-chip-dip in 60 seconds!
MAINS
Swanson Frozen Pot Pies—the best, with crust on the bottom as well as the top!
Dinty Moore Beef Stew—who needs a kitchen when you have a can opener!
Tuna Noodle Casserole—the classic that nobody loved even then.
Beef Stroganoff—daring mix at the time of meat and pasta.
Chicken ala King—what? almonds in chicken gravy?
Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast—civilian version of s—on a shingle.
Fondue—we were so fond-of-you.
Quiche Lorraine—real men do eat quiche when it’s the only thing on the table.
SIDES
Watergate Salad—recipe stolen from the Watergate Hotel chefs, that WatergateGate of Nixon’s downfall; even back then, politics was obsessed with green stuff.
Green Bean Casserole with Canned Onion Rings—still surviving on tables everywhere on Thanksgiving Day.
DESSERTS
Baked Alaska—a smart dessert, something smart that came out of Alaska prior to Sarah Palin.
Crepes—easy as cr—, er, pie with one of those new-fangled crepe makers.
Upside-Down-Cake—Dole pineapple rings turning cakes upside-down decades before the world turned upside-down.
Ambrosia Salad—a dessert gift from the dessert gods (who never had bathroom scales).
We all have our nostalgic feelings about food blasts from the past. Foods that we still lust for. And, speaking of food and lust, here is a heartfelt wish from an Aging Human Female:
“I just want someone to look at me the way I look at food.”
Bon Appetit!
Irene