Friday, April 3, 2009

Food Memories

I'm posting about food today.

I've been trying to lose weight this week and I have been very good. I haven't ate any Dove chocolate or Hershey's kisses. I do have York Peppermint Patties, tho. I love those! I find if I can include them, or some other low fat/low calorie chocolate in my diet, it's easier for me to stay on it.

I feel like I'm a spokesperson for Hersheys.

Anyway, since I can't eat much food, I find I think a lot about food. When my friend and I walk when we're trying to lose weight, about 90% of what we talk about is food.

My willpower is going to be tested tonight, tho. We're having our fist church dinner of the year. There is always a lot of desert at our dinners. I love deserts! I usually take a tiny piece of each one. But, I'm going to fight the urge tonight, maybe someone will bring Jell-O.

I'm taking my blackberry cobbler. It wouldn't be a church dinner without it.

When I was a child I remember my Mom making a lot of chocolate pies, lemon meringue pies, pineapple upside down cakes and what I call bread pudding. It wasn't the baked kind, tho. She cooked home made vanilla pudding in a pot on the stove and then she would tear up pieces of light bread and put in it. That was it, no baking required. It was so good, I can still taste it. Sometimes I make it with the instant cooked vanilla pudding, but it's just not the same.

My grandmother was known for her applesauce stack cake. It was her specialty. It was an old fashioned cake with lots of thin layers stacked on top of each other. Applesauce was spread between each thin layer and on top of the cake. The cake is best after it has set for a few days in the fridge. The applesauce then has a chance to soak into it. I remember many times walking in her kitchen door and seeing the cake on the table. She always gave me a piece.

We were a pinto beans and fried potato family. . . and of course, cornbread. Cornbread sliced down the middle with butter spread inside. The only time we had chicken was on Sunday. Seems like we always had fried chicken on Sunday.

Left over cornbread would be crumbled up in a glass and milk poured over it. I would sprinkle pepper on it and eat it with a spoon. My husband likes to do this with buttermilk, but I don't like buttermilk.

I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I remember when I was a child, Mom would take a piece of folded over light bread and dunk it in the coffee and give me a bite. I liked that.

School lunches bring back many memories. The principal wouldn't excuse a table until everyone there had tasted everything on their plate. The only thing I wouldn't eat was this stuff that looked like the green Easter grass that you fill your Easter basket with. To this day, I still don't know what that was. It tasted awful.

Other than that, I loved our school lunch food. We had rolls that were so soft. The cooks always asked if you wanted one or two when you went through the line. And their cornbread ooozed with butter. And my favorite desert was the peanut butter chews. The recipe I have for these is the recipe they used, only the ingredients are cut down a lot to make a small batch.


Here is the recipe for the peanut butter chews for those of you who aren't on a diet and want to give it a try.

Peanut Butter Chews

2 1/2 cups corn flakes
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar

Bring sugar and syrup to boil.
Take off heat and stir in peanut butter and cornflakes.

Press into a pan.
Cool . Slice. Eat.

They are very good!
If you want a big batch, double the recipe.


What food memories do you have from when you were a child?

Did you have the weird green grass on your school lunch plates?

11 comments:

  1. The school I went to didn't have a lunchroom so we had to take our lunch. I don't remember much about them except sometimes it was just a sandwich. It was a real treat to get some chips with that sandwich! blessings, marlene

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  2. Janet, I don't remember any green stuff . . . I don't know what you're talking about. I like to eat, too, but I am determined to stick with the Weight Watcher's plan. It isn't bad. I'm thinking when and if I ever get down to where I should be, I might treat myself to a little forbidden food . . . but not make a habit of it . . . I sure don't want to gain the weight back. We just have to think and talk of something other than food . . . you're not big anyway.

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  3. Janet,

    We didn't have a cafeteria when I went to elementary school and the high school cafeteria was full of unhealthy foods like French fries and gravy, hamburgers etc.

    I do have great memories of the food that came out of Grandma's and Mom's cookstoves. Grandma could make the best clover leaf rolls in the world. We had fresh fruit or preserves for every meal and fried potatoes and eggs for breakfast every morning. Along with it we had either bacon, pork loin or sausage.

    I too am trying to lose weight and I've been doing a lot of munching on celery the last couple of weeks.

    Enjoy your weekend, my friend.
    Blessings,
    Mary

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  4. My Mom made the best pineapple upside down cake, she added cherries to the center of the pineapple.
    We were also a pinto bean and fried potato family. With milk and cornbread for a snack. My Mom and brother liked buttermilk, too. Not me. Yuck.
    I don't remember the grass stuff.
    I never like blackberry cobbler because they poured milk or cream over it. And I don't like soggy crust.

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  5. I remember when I was little, my neighbor would make "Potato Candy" with mashed potatoes. Ever heard of it?

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  6. Well after reading that-I am starving!! I grew up on fried taters, pintos and cornbread too. Pap makes the best fried taters ever!

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  7. OK, I am so starving!
    Whew, my drying is going off, so I'm saved by the bell!
    (good luck on the eating right:)

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  8. My family was also a beans and taters family. I miss my mother's soup beans. We also ate cornbread and milk. It was a great evening snack. I can remember going to a two room school in Clay County KY. the school was called Locarad's Creek. It was in walking distance of where I grew up. I do not remeber much about the lunches, but I can remeber the orange marmalade sandwiches we got for snack sometimes. They were so good. We would e one piece of bread spread woth the marmalade..yummmm. thanks for taking me back! Good memories

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  9. There were only two things in our school lunches that I would never touch. We would had something that looked like dark green mush that was supposed to be asparagus. No one would touch it.
    For holiday meals, we had wither green or yellow jello with cabbage and pimentos in it. I never thought cabbage and jello should touch so I never could bring myself to eat it.
    Other than that we had great lunches. But that was back when everything was made from scratch and there was a lot of meat in the menus.

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  10. My upbringing was a little different--mom was English and Dad was from New Orleans, so we didn't do beans and cornbread. Our staples were things like Yorkshire pudding, chicken and noodles, stuff like that. And big breakfasts on Sundays. With jelly doughnuts from Buddy's Bakery. He always gave Dad a baker's dozen because there were 13 children in the family.

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  11. Okay, you've just made up my mind for me. I have been thinking about dieting, but not anymore. i'm gonna go eat as many of these things you blogged about as I can find. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

    Matthew

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