My family was poor, but my mom always had a hot meal for dinner, anything from fried bologna and eggs, spam and eggs, meatloaf, greenbeans and mashed taters, and on Fridays it was always bread pudding made from the leftover bread from the past week. Please list your cheap but delicious meals your mom served you. As the economy falters many of us will be serving those tasty meals of the past.
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I grew up on pinto beans, cornbread, and fried potatoes. We rarely had frozen or processed dinners.
I bet your mom made the cornbread in an iron skillet, and used the bacon grease on the stove in the coffee can to line the skillet!
That is exactly what I grew up with. My grandparents lived next door and there was always beans and cornbread on the stove. We also ate fried potato sandwiches with mayo and onion. On occasion my sisters will get together and make them -- great memories.
YES the Best!!!…I sure do miss moms old fashion cooking
Sometimes she would! My grandma made her biscuits like that. I'd love a biscuit like that again.
Norwegian ancestry here, as well. Grandma (and mom) made LEFSE and homemade bread and buns. We didn't have biscuits, either.
I make a delicious Waldorf salad…
The key is to use three different types of apples. That way you get three different flavors of apples in the salad. Not too much mayo, because you can always add some later when needed. Celery, walnuts, and very little raisins. Too many raisins can ruin the salad, because they plump up with the moisture, and then turn some of the apples brown and discolor them. Sometimes I’ll just throw a few in when I serve myself an individual serving.
This time of year you can find an apple called tango. Tango apples are my favorite apples and they’re only around in the fall. If you make a Waldorf salad with tango apples, Honeycrisp apples, and Gala apples, it’s such a wonderful sweet and tart treat! A very refreshing light salad.
Salt and pepper to taste.
(also lemon juice in the apples before you add anything else will keep them from turning brown)
I think they called that "cracklin" cornbread, didn't they? Because the bacon grease made the edges a little crispy in the iron skillet? OMG, it's great!
Wasn't just bacon grease. It was "everything except from fried baloney and hamburger". Gramma's orders.
The amazing gravy that grease made. I miss it.
I got a choice between freezer crap or home cooked meal. Don't like what we cooked? Lol fuck off and have a hot pocket.
I would have been in so much trouble with my dad for disrespecting my mom's cooking if I tried to eat a hot pocket.
Sometimes she didn't feel like cooking and we'd just have something like that for dinner, with a few small extra things or leftovers, but you didn't just go get that by yourself.
My parents wanted me to be self sufficient from a pretty young age, if I didn't like something I had to do it myself.
When I was older I would make dinner if I didn't like what they were planning on making, it started with a "fine YOU do it then!" But later on they liked having one less thing to do. it got to the point where they would say they're making something I didn't like without having the ingredients because neither of them wanted to cook that day.
Now I'm a chef and in a year or so, when the property I want is ready to rent, a restaurant owner.
Seems like a win win situation.
Good luck with the restaurant.
Everything was homemade. August was canning month. Every house had a fruit room and most had a root cellar. We had no fresh vegetables and except for apples, no fresh fresh fruit in the winter. I longed for Wonder Bread and Campbell soup. We picked asparagus that grew wild on ditch banks and my parents took the horses and went deer hunting for a week. My mother bottled the meat for gravy and stews and soups. During pheasant season, my dad would go out daily before chores to get his daily limit. No rabbit because all we had were Jack Rabbits and there was some disease they carried.
Oh, and we had homemade root beer and ice cream for special occasions. Churned butter and chicken. Didn't have pizza or spaghetti until college and never had a "store bought" dress until I was 20. I was well dressed though because my mother was a master seamstress. Tailored coats and made my brothers' button down collar shirts.
And I grew up knowing we weren't rich but had no idea we were poor. A different world and glad I experienced it.
Hens that quit laying ended up on the table as fried (in bacon grease) or chicken and dumplings. Cornbread and cold milk with sliced onions and pinto beans, fried okra, potatoes all kinds, stewed, fried, mashed. Silver Queen Corn from the garden, collard greens, turnip and mustard greens seasoned with bacon fat. We were money poor but we raised everything we had, pork, chicken and beef. We had a smokehouse where we cured hams by hanging them from the ceiling after coating them in salt. Had shelves in the smokehouse where we stored our canned bounty from the three gardens we had. Our favorite meal in the winter was breakfast for supper, liver mush, bacon, scrambled eggs, stone ground grits and homemade skillet bread. Oh my! We were rich!
SILVER QUEEN CORN IN YOUR GARDEN!! You were rich!!
Blessed to have been born and raised in the south!
You have no idea how envious I am!
Me too.
I used to pick silver queen for my neighbor when I was a kid in Maryland. I've been looking for it for years and haven't been able to find it (I don't go back to MD).
My wife makes silver queen corn, freezes it, we have it all year long
I still do when I can find it. That’s the only thing we grew when I was growing up. We did also grow a type yellow corn that our horse and mules loved. It was just thrown into a corn crib and was hard and dried with the husks still on. Where I’m living now, you ask for silver queen and they look at you funny. Same state, different region. They have a hideous white yellow mixed hybrid here.
I had a similar childhood, I didn’t realize we were poor until years later. I wouldn’t trade those times for anything, I believe that upbringing has been a huge advantage in my life. Also has to be the reason me and all my brothers and sisters became good scratch cooks.
Hot dogs chopped up into canned baked beans.
Still love that!
Goulash, light on meat, heavy on salad and garlic bread.
Our rendition of Goulash was a pound of ground beef, home made egg noodles, tomatoes canned from our garden with parsley, and green beans, bread and butter, and kool-aid, wasn't bad for a family of 6
We did the same recipe with a family of 10. Delicious!
Goulash with elbow macaroni, a little hamburger, canned tomatoes from the store and maybe parmesan cheese? No extras like sald or garlic bread...
That soynds just like our goulash. Mom made a 'wedge' salad where she cut a head of lettuce into wedges then squirted a bit of salad dressing on top. The garlic bread was a plate of wonder bread and butter. No garlic actually. We liked it!
Not a meal, dessert. kool-aid pie.
One graham cracker crust, one can sweetened condensed milk (SCM), one small container of whipped topping (coolwhip), one packet of Kool-aid (lemonade is my favorite).
Empty SCM into a mixing bowl, stir in kool-aid mix until well combined - let sit for about 10 minutes. FOLD in coolwhip until well combined. Spoon into graham cracker crust. Enjoy.
Haha, interesting! Never heard of that before.
SOS (chipped beef and gravy on toast); spaghetti of course, cabbage rolls (ground beef and rice rolled in cabbage leaves and baked in tomato juice); homemade soups; "salad" which was basically just iceberg lettuce...
Stuff I still live on!
I wondered if anyone else knew the code for chipped beef on toast ahhahaha
Oh I forgot pigs in blankets (hotdogs in crescent roll dough)
What exactly is chipped beef?
A kind of dried and shaved beef? Some things I dont want to know. Like what is in scrapple. Kek
Lol. Never heard of scrapple but I get your point. Thanks.
Chipped beef and gravy over toast, spaghetti, cooked chicken in gravy with peas and biscuits on top, ham and beans, beef or chicken and noodles from left over roast beef or chicken, most leftovers went into soup at the end of the week. Mom shopped discount, cut coupons, and stocked up during sales. We ate mashed taters almost every day.
Lol. In the military I scarfed that down while everyone else turned their nose up 😃
I actually read all of these comments to see if someone mentioned SOS. 😉
Homemade mac and cheese, mashed potatoes that got turned into potatoe cakes the next night if not all were eaten, kinda rare but did happen. Green beans always fresh during the summer and during the winter it was what was canned during the growing season, along with so much more. Summers were and still are wonderful with all the fresh vegetables and even fruits from our trees and vines. We canned then and still can, make jams and even soups for winter. We had eggs from chickens, I still have a few for eggs. We made our own butter and cheeses too. I don't do that now because I have no cow but have been looking at getting goats. Deer meat too which I don't have much of now but at least know how to hunt. I was so lucky to have grown up during the 70s and 80s in the country. Wish life was like that now.
One week mom would buy a whole chicken and make it last an entire week. The next week she would buy a roast and make it last the entire week. And there was always plenty of that nasty government cheese. There were times when money was so tight, mom would dumpster dive at the local grocery store to dig out the canned goods that had recently expired. I am grateful for a mom that always made sure we had something to eat.
We had extended family dinners weekly and all the women of the family would cook. In a tiny kitchen with a wood stove and oven. Bread was always handmade and delicious. All fat was kept in a metal container above the stove and when it was full grandma would show us kids how to render it down, she would cool it in the icebox and we would get to make biscuits. Grandma taught us all to can and preserve food. Grandpa had an old bus and would fill it up with produce and fruit and we would drive up and down selling the goods.. us kids would each get an apple and orange and they were they best. Everything was homemade. Chickens provided meat and eggs. Had pigs too and would help grandpa butcher them and learned how to use almost every part of the hog. We would salt the hams and hang them in the cellar. I miss those days and those people… they could survive anything
Sounds great. I would love to know someone who could teach me all that stuff.
Pressure cooker made any cut of beef tender. My mother was a master with that appliance.
Open face mayonnaise sandwiches. Literally. Actually, Miracle Whip, not mayo. Just spread on white bread. One of my childhood favorites. Sometimes a tomato and mayo sandwich. Cheap cuts of beef run through a hand grinder. Every sort of 'fake' version of something. Like Potato Buds (do they still make those? They came in a box) or Minute Rice. Anything cheap AND convenient. For school lunches it was usually cream cheese and jelly.
Nowadays for a cheap meal, a pound or two of hamburger, a bag of elbow macaroni or shells, and a can of Spaghetti sauce (the cans are much cheaper than the jars.) That will feed a family of 5-6 people. Can substitute ground chicken or turkey if it's cheaper. Add in a little Italian Seasoning if you can and it looks and tastes fancier. Sprinkle on some grated parmesan cheese if you can stretch that far. Add a green salad and a 99 cent loaf of Italian bread and you're feeding a family pretty cheaply. If you can develop a relationship with your butcher, they might be willing to discount the price of meat on the day or day before it expires. I was able to do this for a while with a butcher at a grocery store. I would point out the packages where the date showed it was expiring and they would have to pull it off the shelf and he would discount it deeply. If you freeze it or use it right away, you're good.
Beans (bagged beans are cheapest and go a long way) seasoned with herbs and spices, and rices, (different types) go a long way. Add in a little meat where you can and you have a filling meal.
ALSO, if you haven't seen them, there are numerous videos on YT of people showing how they eat CHEAP, and I do mean, bargain basement CHEAP but still eat fairly well. Please check those out. Some people have done AMAZING things on a super tight budget. Good luck, fren. WWG1WGA
Our family likes to watch Struggle Meals and Cowboy Kent Rollins on YT. Latter includes home remedies, too.
I'll check them out. Thanks!
I stumbled across Struggle Meals a few years ago and I love watching episodes.
Kent Rollins is a great cook and a great patriot. I try to make a recipe from one of his cookbooks at least once a month. I gave a copy of his cookbook to some well off friends and they love his recipes. They're used to eating in 5 star restaurants all over the world and Kent's cookbook has a permanent place in their kitchen and they make stuff from his book all the time. My favorite is his chicken fried steak.
Ground beef and rice- still my favorite comfort meal of all time.
I'm running out of ideas, so this thread is great. My family is not picky and always thanks me for the meals I make.
Try this: https://youtu.be/rLBRK5Tf1I4
I’m watching this series and it brings back a ton of my grandparents cooking and lifestyle
This channel is good for inexpensive, simple recipes that taste great.
https://www.youtube.com/c/GreatDepressionCooking
My mother was not a great cook, but I picked it up somewhere. I spend a great deal of time on the kitchen and my family is thankful I love to give them great food...(except I always overcook my chicken!) 🤣
Kudos to you for being a budget queen- in envious... that’s a great skill!!!
Rabbit stew! Soo good!
Underground mutton! It's cheap, nourishing and puts meat on your bones!
we were not well off at all....my mom had a big garden, canned, sewed her own curtains and furniture covers plus went to pick and bag apples ...6 kids....and we always had more than enough to eat....sure...not steak, rare pork chops, but spaghetti frequently, meatloaf, pot roast, chicken on Sundays... btw...we saved shoe laces, used old socks for mittens, picked up "drops" and made apple cider....
We ate a lot of eggs. Rice, scrambled eggs and soy sauce. Scrambled eggs and sliced hot dogs. Fried Egg sandwiches, French toast, soft boiled eggs, egg salad sandwiches. Dad could stretch a pound of bacon or sausage to feed two adults and five kids.
Do you mean fruit cobbler or some other type? I have only made fruit cobbler once, but I have heard you can make vegetable and meat cobblers, though I haven't.
Lol. Maybe it was just vegetables then. I was thinking if meat was in it it would be like one of those biscuit casseroles or a pot pie.
I make what I call sausage casserole. Sausage (from our farm raised hogs) brown rice, onions, peppers, celery, peas, carrots, green beans and a little bullion. My kids like that with cheese on top. I quit buying most meats from stores and we are going to fill the freezer with venison, pork, fish, and wild turkey and hope to get some other small game birds. My garden gave some great produce this year (first year) and I put in strawberries, blueberries and raspberries
Yeah, I was thinking of that at first but that's not so much with a crust, it's potatoes, I think. But similar in the sense it would be filling and comforting.
I mix in some cheese to the mash potatoes, and do a thin layer on the bottom of a casserole with the mash, then seasoned ground beef with a can of sweet corn overlayed with a can of creamed corn. Then a thick layer of the mash with some extra cheese on top or bread crumbs. Beef gravy or ketchup when served depending on taste. I grew up with ketchup on top. Husband thinks that's gross so I make the gravy.
Condensed cream of mushrooms, canned green beans and cripsy French onions memory.
Homemade French meat pie, touche on toast with mustard, homemade beans with a big glob of bacon fat with fresh baked bread.
We ate a lot of Italian and French foods. I had an Italian Nana and a French memere.
My roommate in college was Japanese American. She introduced me to this treat and almost 60 years later, it's still a treat.
I had egg yolk mixed with rice with some soy sauce. Everything's done in the rice cooker. It was my childhood and I enjoyed it very much. Once a month we'll have minced pork or beef mixed with steam rice and soy sauce. Super delicious, to me at least. I cook these meals even to this day.
When I was really young, one of my grandfathers had a small egg ranch so we had eggs all the time.
We were like Forest Gump when it came to eggs - hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, poached eggs, over easy eggs, egg salad, eggs with rice, etc.
My favorite meal during summer is saute onions in butter til transparent, wilt a LOT of rough-chopped swiss chard over them, and finish by scrambling eggs with it.
I also use butternut squash puree as the base for coconut curries over rice. There's never a shortage of squash, and they store well! Loads of Vit A.
You know what? I really like you people, you're so true and real. Bless you all
Lots of spaghetti and homemade meatballs. Beef was cheaper back then, and it filled up our tummies for a long time.
Lived on a 7 acre plot with a large garden and a nearby stream where the banks were covered in blackberries. Mom canned, dad always got a dear and we had pigs. Never went hungry and my dad was the only one worked and made about 20k a year in the 80's. We had so much excess food we gave it away to our church. Life was awesome.
Spanish hot dogs. Line pan with the hot dogs fill in with tomato soup cover with cut onions. Bake 350 until cooked.
Yes, my mom made those too. So good.
Good idea! Although you sound like you grew up rich as you have such a wonderful mother!
Nope, my mom grew up in the hills of Kentucky, had an 8th grade education, and my success was based off of her, I was the first in my family to have a college education, while growing up my mother instilled the following, honesty, loyalty to your employer, good work ethic, and never miss work unless your so sick you can't get out of bed.
What a wonderful, hardworking, honorable mother! I am very lucky and feel very blessed to have a most spectacular, loving mum too! And her mum was wonderful as well.
Caned tuna and peas in a cream sauce on toast was a regular meal when money was tight.
I remember many nights of fried potatoes and onions with bread and butter. We didn’t know it was because we were poor. We loved it!
Liver, onions, salad....my parents were horrendous cooks. We went out to dinner a lot. My wife went out to dinner every night until she graduated HS and went off to college, LOL.
Pork fat, lentils and rice thrown in the rice cooker.
Spaghetti with sliced hot dogs inside
Daily staple
Beans on toast.
Anyone from the UK who grew up in a council house will know
English muffins, baked beans and velveeta cheese broiled in the oven was a fav in many military homes I knew of. Maybe this is how it started?
My mom would make chipped beef gravy on toast - (SOS) but she’d also put other stuff in a white gravy too. Chicken, ham, Hard cooked eggs is one I remember. Bologna sandwiches, don’t ask for more than one slice! We had a big garden and canned and froze everything. Somebody mentioned Silver Queen corn- we had that! Some home delivery service like Schwanns gave us a sample of their frozen corn- the guy was so proud of it. It didn’t hold a candle to ours. He was shocked. Lol. We couldn’t afford his stuff anyway. We’d pick all kinds of fruit from our trees or neighbors trees who didn’t care about it and freeze or can it. My mom made homemade applesauce and froze it. We’d eat it frozen in the hot summer. Leftover vegetables went into a little freezer container layer by layer until there was enough for vegetable soup. Leftover chicken bones got stewed and I mean EVERY sliver of meat picked off. The new bone broth craze cracks me up. We picked up black walnuts and hickory nuts and took painstaking hours to crack and shell them. Pheasant, quail, squirrel, rabbit and later deer (weren’t many in our area until late 70’s early 80’s) helped feed us many times. Mom stretched meat the same way I see in a lot of comments; goulash, Spanish rice, stuffed peppers, etc. Good memories. My mom just turned 78 and she has spent the past month canning stuff from her garden. Wonder how many times those canning jars have been used. Recycling at its best.
Kraft mac and cheese
Cabbage casserole......about the cheapest meal out there
Sounds good. What was in it?
Cabbage, cheese, rice, and groundbeef in a tomatoe sauce from how Ive had it.
Thanks!
The really cheap way.......chop up a cabbage and boil it until it is soft......drain as much water out as possible......stick it in a casserole dish and flatten it down with a spatula.....cover it with kraft singles and then cover the cheese with crushed up saltines....bake at 350 until the crackers start to brown....pull it out and let it sit for a few minutes
Thank you!
Yes, and me, I am that mom. Eggs from the coop, pancakes, cornbread, chili, chicken & dumplings. Potatoes, muffins, coffee cake. Apples from the tress, garlic from the garden. More and more to provide as the years go by.