This is mostly copied from a post of mine in soc.motss, where there is a thread on regrettable desserts made with lime Jell-o. Removing the rest of the quoted thread, this is what I came up with:
When my mother, God rest her soul, was married her mother gifted her with a set of those cookbook pamphlets that you slotted into a binder. I wish I had these (I think my sister in law deep-sixed them along with the cigarette rolling machine and the decades old liquor bottles full of dried-out alcoholic gunk when she cleaned out the house). They were the perfect embodiment of 1950’s lard-using artery-clogging obesity-producing stomach churning food. James Lileks’s “Gallery of Regrettable Food” draws heavily on this type of “cuisine”, and lime-green Jell-o with lots of stuff suspended in it was a favourite of mothers of the generation in which my mother grew up.
My mother was, on the other hand, a dab hand at pies and desserts. She could whip up an apple pie at the drop of a hat, and I assure you we kept hats around the house to drop for them. Her mince pie was absolutely delicious, and her squash pie (we never did pumpkin for some reason) was so custardy and light you’d kill for another piece of it. She did Joe Froggers (Marblehead molasses cookies), and a kind of chocolate cakey thing with cream in the middle the name of which I forget but it might have been “Eskimo pies”. She could do a batch of fudge that came out exactly right and delicious without a candy thermometer sullying her kitchen. Most of her cakes were out of boxes, but they tasted really good and not at all boxlike; brownies were a particular favourite. Tollhouse cookies from scratch were so good…
As for main dishes, she excelled at roast chicken: even the organic free-range chicken they sell nowadays hasn’t half the flavour of hers. Mother Hansen’s Spaghetti and Meatballs was, while not authentically Italian, so much more flavourful and interesting to eat than the goop you buy in stores now. (I figured out how she did it and I now make Mother Hansen’s S and M myself.) She cut her own French Fries in something that looked like a torture chamber for a rat and deep fried ’em too. She made clamcakes that melted in your mouth. Stuffed pork chops and stuffed chicken breasts (when you could still get two attached at the breastbone, and not the anemic 1/2 breasts you get in the stores today). Which reminds me: her stuffing, Pepperidge Farm with potato and Bell’s Seasoning mixed in, was delightful and filling. Creamed onions (a 50’s favourite, but I made some two days ago and HWMBO really loved them) were a staple holiday treat. She baked her own beans in her own beanpot starting in the late 50’s, when the bakery no longer sold them by the quart. Stews that were so delectable along with their dumplings.
One of her few culinary faults in this category was trying to make Chinese pepper steak and putting it on Minute Rice. We preferred it when dad went to the Chinese restaurant in Salem. Another food faux-pas was meatloaves–they were always somewhat raw in the centre and burned on the bottom, while being covered in cream-of-mushroom soup. She made wonderful biscuits, but always burned them on the bottom and we never knew why. But we didn’t care when she made homemade whipped cream (nothing out of a tub or aerosol can for her) and turned the biscuits into strawberry shortcake. I try to forget her fish, as it was mostly deep fried and greasily soggy, which has sparked my lifelong abhorrence of fish. We never ate lamb (dad didn’t like it). Her one attempt at tongue was spoiled by the fact that she neglected to remove the skin (I was too young to remember but it was a family story that others remembered and passed on to us). An attempt at parsnips didn’t turn out well, nor baked eggplant.
The entirety of this reminds me not only of the regrettable foods that mothers slaved over hot stoves to make in the 50’s, but the lovely basic foods that they and we prepared from scratch and enjoyed then. If we wanted chicken marsala, or roast chicken, or a steak, or hamburgers broiled with a slice of onion in the middle, we had to make them ourselves. Today you get this stuff from stores and heat it up (and we do our share of that too). Yes, I realise that it saves time. But time is something I have a lot of now. I should spend more of it cooking for HWMBO and me, and not heating up packets of glop but cooking real food.
My mother would be 78 in October if she were alive, and thinking about the food she prepared for us and that we sometimes liked or didn’t, I’m not only hungry, but nostalgic. I need to do more cooking like that, and less of the heating up packets of Chicken-with-Leek-and-Bacon-Sauce from Tesco.
PS: If you want the recipe for Mother Hansen’s Spaghetti and Meatballs, apply within…
I have the great pleasure to have my mother’s box of recipes, written on index cards and cut out of newspapers and magazines. Thusly I can, and do, reproduce my childhood fare, much to the delight of my housemate. Mom is still very much alive but was gracious enough to let me keep the box after I rescued it from the trash my father’s next wife threw it in.
Any chance of a scan or transcription of your favourites? I’m always happy to get new recipes.
My mother rarely used recipes, actually; she did everything by memory except for very complex things.