What foods did you grow up with?

I'm from Eastern Kentucky [ Go Cats!! ] and I grew up eating the best food ever made, by the best cook that ever lived. My Nanny. That's what I called my Grandmother.
Homemade buttermilk biscuits for every meal, with real molasses that you mashed a pat of butter in to, but especially biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which also included, pork chops, sausage, bacon, fried potatoes, fried apples with a dash of cinnamon, eggs any way you wanted, pancakes, made from scratch of course, along with assorted jams, jellies and syrup. All with a giant glass of ice cold milk. The coffee Nanny made should have had a warning label. Strong, hot and good enough to make it worth while to a kid to steal a sip from her cup when she wasn't looking. You left the table ready for a full days work or ready to go back to bed to sleep it off.
Every meal was like that and she cooked 3 times a day. That's where I learned to cook. It's a wonder I didn't weigh 300 pounds and need a triple bypass by the time I was 10.
But I would give you just about anything I have for one more day of sitting on the front porch with her. Looking up at those mountains, rocking, talking and eating just one more of those biscuits.

One thing I forgot that I do miss ... When I was a little girl, grandpa was a sheep farmer, so we used to always have access to the most amazing lamb. Lamb roast, chops, you name it.

When he retired from farming, that was something I missed so much ...

I am so thankful that I've finally found a local butcher shop that stocks it regularly now.

Sardines and bread

Hence these days I love the pleasure of eatin out

I had a food childhood of 2 halves. One mother, one childminder.

Childminder: Stews, dairylee sandwiches and malt loaf

Mother: Casseroles, meat,with veg and potatoes or pasta, Turkey rasher sandwiches, many, many sandwiches. and when my dad was away Kippers.

That is all really of note.

Do you know how many hundreds of different configurations of food you can make from corn, flour, beans, ground beef, and cheese? Throw in some peppers/chiles, and you get a whole bunch more.

One thing we knew with our TexMex: make a whole bunch out of nothing. And was it good!

If you have never lived in the bottom of an oil bust here in West Texas, you haven't learned what living really is.

a reply to: NewzNose
Oh yeah on so many of these from everybody.
Than there was going down to the Red River just out side of Terrel OK, with a huge cast iron kettle and having a fish fry right on the bank of the river with FRESH caught catfish. And of course mom and aunts brought most of the rest of the stuff you and others mentioned just in case we hadn't caught enough cats. We had to drive over from the Texas side though.

a reply to: LamontCranston

I also have memories of catfishing and fish frys with all the trimmings. NOM, nom, nom,
Thanks for those memories, Lamont.

I grew up with almost no prepackaged foods.

I remember chicken soup, chili, fried chicken. Navy bean soup, split pea soup. Swedish meatballs. Meatloaf. Baked chicken, w gravy, taters and carrots. Spaghetti with meatballs. "Chop suey"....not really like the restaurant kind but good.
Potato pancakes. Fish on Fridays.
Great potato salad.
Polish food, much of it home made: golabki, kielbasa, kapusta, pierogi, beet soup, mushroom soup.
Rye, pumpernickel and French bread from the local bakery.
Pizza...my dad made the dough from scratch....it was THE best.
The best homemade Christmas cookies...all from scratch, including the fruitcake.
Lemon meringue pie. Blueberry pie.

Stuff I don't remember fondly: frozen mixed vegetables.

a reply to: MaMaa

I grew up with Cuban grandmothers (great grams and gram)

They made empanadillas, (like beef patties)

Tamales (Cuban style, in corn husk and with different type of corn meal)

Smoked pork chops

Oatmeal, that is just their own appropriation, though they would obsess about it. I would get a POT of it, not a bowl...lol

Lots of lemon chicken breast and mashed potatoes.

Tostones (Fried green plantains)

Platanos maduros, (fried sweet ripe plantain)

Steak, lots of onion steak.

Soups, I dont remember any of them, but Cuban style soups inspired by Galician style ones. (There was a HUGE immigration of Galician Spaniards into Cuba.)

Cuban sandwiches

Cuban coffee and "pan con manteca"- espresso and potato bread covered in butter for breakfast.

Fruit, all sorts of Caribbean fruit and home made desserts made from them.

Rice, my god, lots of rice.

Arroz con moro- White rice and thick black bean soup mixed together.

White rice with broken up eggs on it covered in tomato sauce.

yellow rice with green beans and assorted meats, like a bastardized paella.

More, I cant even remember.

Concon- Slightly burnt rice, usually the left overs of a pot that stick to the bottom, then slightly dressed up and served as its own dish. Incredible.....really. Dominicans do this like pros.

There is so much more.

I miss their kitchen. I wish my kids had that. I am not even slightly Cuban culturally anymore (not really). It would all be alien to my kids.

We dont even have Cuban family we speak to anymore. The Cuban side was more political and didnt even last more than a generation and consisted of immigrating Spaniards from Spain during the civil war.

My great grandmother was a first generation Cuban. My grandma left Cuba when she was about 30 along with her mother and my mom and uncle. Thats about it. Only my grandmother married a Cuban guy.

My kitchen in my house is more Mexican centered now. LOL

Life is weird.

a reply to: tadaman

Its funny see you typing this. Some parallels with Chihuahuan culture:

tostones : deep fried flour tortilla, with sugar/cinnamon when it comes out (not to be confused with a sopapilla, which is fried before the dough is cooked into a tortilla). If you grow up in West Texas and don't know what its like to fry your day old tortillas in butter and cover in sugar and salt, then you probably grew up way wealther than anyone I knew.

tamales: still made with corn husk. The corn meal is ultrafine, and mixed with lard and chile (and salt)

manteca: the corn that we put into the tamales. You can call it "masa" or "manteca", although manteca usually refers to undressed masa (only corn meal and lard, no chile and salt).

Thanks for sharing.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Is what you call Manteca the same as Masa Harina?

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

OOh,

That sounds really good. We always take the old tortillas, toast them and make sopes. Like a crispy tortilla "toast" with sour cream, beans and fresh cheese.

I have to try that though.....Sounds great!

Thanks!

*lights up stove and pours some oil......

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Yup.

Something to keep in mind: the part of the world i live in exports a lot of people, but doesn't import many. So the spanish spoken here in this region has become very dialectic. I once ran some bilingual support call queue's for T-Mobile, and the spanish spoken locally was a real source of heartburn. There are some things that the spanish word never made it out here, so an english word was swapped in and made more spanish sounding. "la cell fon", for example.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Never knew that, interesting to know.
Manteca comes from mantequilla what is just butter and with 'masa' we refer to dough, that's how Spain knows it.
We also have a small mountain range with the same name but no idea what is its origin.
La cell fone, good one

originally posted by: intergalactic fire
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Never knew that, interesting to know.
Manteca comes from mantequilla what is just butter and with 'masa' we refer to dough, that's how Spain knows it.
We also have a small mountain range with the same name but no idea what is its origin.
La cell fone, good one

My mother in law picking up the dog i was sitting for them last weekend: "y where's la Kayda? and her toys, tambien?"

LOL....Spanglish at its finest.

I grew up on processed crap. Microwave dinners and anything from a can. I rebelled.

I was addicted to Captains Cook fish fingers & ketchup
Now I am making some for my two pussycats the aroma reminded me of this thread

Woke up to apple cinnamon muffins before school when I was 10.

Apple crisp after school.

Other than that, junk food. I ate anything that tasted good.

Typical kid diet for the early-mid 2000s.

Steamed white rice. Chicken stew. Indomie. Colonial style steak with simple brown sauce.