I was born in 1955, first generation Italian. My dad was seriously injured on his job as a commercial fisherman in 1957 & didn’t work for 5 years. I have no idea what we did for money…my mom was a housewife, never worked outside the home…but my parents made gold out of straw. We always had Christmas & Easter, we always felt like we had enough. My mom was a fabulous cook…could make anything taste good, no matter what..and most of our meals came from whatever dad grew in the vegetable garden or picked up from his fisherman friends, or what mom could finagle from other friends & family. I have some pretty special memories from those times.

I was born in 1958. All five members of my family lived in a 8'wide, 30' long rented mobilehome. Meatloaf, or beans or potatoes were staples. We were poor but, not hungry. Mom is my hero. Please, read both of the comments I wrote RE: growing up very poor but happy.

My folks married in 1945 one week after he got back rom Europe in WW2. He had saved up most of his pay and they bought a little house. He went to college on the GI Bill. My brother and I had a great life compared to Mom and Dad who grew up in the Great Depression. Thank you Greatest Generation!

I was born in 1953 and I remember badgering my parents to buy a frozen dinner because they looked "cool". They gave in. I tried it - and was never so disappointed in my life. My Mom and Dad's food was SO much better. Ah, the power of advertising!!

I'm a Boomer, smack in the middle of the demographic. My family was white, lower middle class, in the American south. I ate plenty of ridiculously sugary cereal, drank plenty of soft drinks, and GALLONS of that good old sweet tea. On the other hand, I never saw a TV dinner, except on TV. My extended family had farms and huge backyard gardens, and my diet was replete with fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. That being said, meatloaf RULES!

I think most of this is what Middle class city folks had. My mother (she has 3 siblings) was a low class Southern farm girl. She said they didn't eat Wonder Bread. It was too expensive so, my grandma made their bread. I had a Super Grandma who could do anything. They ate mayo sandwiches (Mayo on a piece of bread) sometimes when times got real tough. Cornbread was a staple in their meals. My grandma made their jelly and preserve their fruits & veggies. My great grandfather cured all their own hams. They did eat treet-meat sometimes. Grandma grew & slaughtered & cooked her own chickens too. She also made their clothes too. Yes, she even knew how to weave rugs & make quilts. My mother said that every Sunday, they got half a 7-up and a bag of popcorn (Grandma grew, dried, & popped the corn herself) and watched the Wonderful World of Disney.

I love the comments sections on these videos. They’re a treasure trove of stories from back then. Thanks to you all for sharing your history! 😊😊😊

I was born in the middle of WWll and grew up on a farm. Our food was home grown vegetables, fresh in summer and canned, later frozen, for winter or stored in the basement. Eggs or Oatmeal with plenty of milk for breakfast, sometimes pancakes and our own sausage or bacon. We raised Chickens for eat & eggs, cows for milk, our own beef cows to sell & our meat, hogs for our meat & to sell also. We had an orchard for fruit and honeybee hives in the middle of it for honey. About the only things we bought were sugar and coffee, baking powder, baking soda, salt & cocoa. We ground our own flour, cornmeal. We even made our own butter, ketchup, horseradish mustard, cottage cheese and Farmers cheese, pickles and relish. No soda/pop in our house. On Sundays in the summer we made our own homemade ice cream in a hand cranked maker with us kids doing the cranking. Fresh strawberries from the garden went in the ice cream. We drank water or mil at all meals. Our food was so much different from city kids and I am thankful for that.

I used to work at Walmart. Spam sold alright. Shortly after the area I lived in got a huge influx of Pacific Islander immigrants we were regularly sold out of spam. Took some time for our store to adjust to the higher demand. Same thing with cornmeal when our area got a huge influx of immigrants from East Africa. Cornmeal went from only one facing one brand and size on a bottom shelf to taking up nearly an entire four foot section in the baking aisle with multiple different brands and sizes. I always found it interesting to see the changes with demands and supply happen in the store I was in.

They forgot to mention the milkman! Ours came around armed with a handful of dog treats to ward off any trouble. He delivered milk in glass bottles to the tin box we had on our front porch. But he also had a variety of dairy foods like sour cream, and the best treat: popsicles. I miss the milkman. 😀

I lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood with doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners as my neighbors so I know I was especially blessed. My grandmother ran a very popular restaurant in the Cincinnati area which she started from scratch after WWII. She would make some of the best dinners in the country. I think it was her experience and love that made it so very good. My mother would purchase those Swanson's TV dinners in the aluminum trays (heated up in the oven -- before microwaves we're popular in the home) and afterwards we might get to help pop Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove. Do you remember the sound it made while you slid it back and forth and the cool pop sounds while you mother watched over you so you did not burn yourself or ruin the popcorn?

man this gotta be the worst era of food

We serve meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy and a vegetable every Thursday for lunch at our Italian restaruant.

Spam is the most popular meat dish in Hawaii, where it has the highest consumption, per capita, in the whole US. This is due mostly to the fact that it was pretty much the only accessible meat available to the tiny island nation during WWII, introduced by American GIs.

Loved this walk down memory lane! I was born in 1950! You might want to include the history of Kool-Aid… All summer we drank it out of anodized aluminum glasses!

I was born in 1991, and grew up relatively poor. My mom was single for many years and we lived with my grandma, who would always make meatloaf for us. When mom met my stepdad, he introduced to us my all time favorite meal: Tater tot casserole.

My mid-western Grandma who lived through the Depression, Dust Bowl, and her husband being sent overseas during WW2 ... She made meals out of everything she could get her hands on and she reused things out of habit. She was an amazing cook. Her go to recipes were meatloaf, potato dishes, casseroles, chick fried steak, a lot of home made noodles.... I miss everything except the god awful jello desserts that were filled with fruit and other mysterious things.

"it's digestible" is the worst tag line I have ever seen.

my Polish grandma grew up in the 40s/50s and her cooking really shows it. all her meals are a mix of southern/polish dishes, with portions to feed 6 cows. it's crazy how an era can impact living style so much, despite being in it for only about 10 years or so

Accurate.. I was a young mother and housewife in the 50’s ..sugar and fat ruled! I was a casserole queen 👑

I'm mildly disturbed that the slogan for Crisco was "Use Crisco, it's digestible!".

Apparently, I eat like it's the 50's...😂 Meatloaf, cereal, casserole, SPAM, etc

I grew up with all these foods. Another thing about the 1950s and 1960s was that people thought nothing of eating the same thing every day. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a knock-off Wonderbread, with Campbell's chicken noodle soup every single day for lunch until I was in middle school and started taking hot lunch at school. My mom made us oatmeal with brown sugar and milk every morning with cold cereal reserved for Saturday and pancakes or eggs and bacon on Sunday. And dinner was most often a chicken, meatloaf, or a roast of some sort with potatoes, carrots, and celery alongside. My friends had a variety of casseroles, but my father didn't like them and meals catered to his tastes in our house.

I was born in the late 1940’s so I remember very well how things were during the 1950’s. We were a middle class family with 5 children. My mother was very health conscious so we never drank soda pop and didn’t eat sugared cereals. We always had some sort of salad with dinner and ate very few desserts. Both of my grandmothers were wonderful cooks. One came from a family of 13 children and the other cooked in logging camps and restaurants. Here are some of the foods we ate: oatmeal, cream of wheat,Zoom, tuna, baloney, peanut butter and jam, fried egg and meatloaf sandwiches. For dinners we had homemade soups,stew, lentils or beans with sausage, spaghetti, salmon loaf, tuna casserole, Swiss streak, meatloaf, and a variety of hamburger casseroles. We rarely ate bacon but sometimes we had pancakes or waffles for dinner. We always drank milk. My mother and all our relatives canned fruit in the summer. The best treat was walking to the Dairy Queen in the evening for a 25 cent soft ice cream cone. What a wonderful, simpler life we had. By the way, Mom would tell us about trading their homemade bread sandwiches with the “rich” kids Wonder Bread sandwiches during the Depression. Go figure.

I've eaten them all, but since my mother liked to cook and we were farmers who butchered our own meat, I never had Spam until well into the 70s. Store-bought cereal was a summer treat. In the winter we ate good old fashioned oatmeal or cornmeal porridge. As far as TV dinners go, I never had one in the 50s, but, of course, we didn't get a TV until the 60s.

Did anyone here ever eat fried baloney sandwiches in the '60s? I used to cook myself one after school everyday in elementary school and eat it while watching "Felix the Cat" 😭😭😭

I was born in the late 90s and most of these foods were staples on the weekly menu. It's comforting to know that decades seperate generations and there's bickering but at the end of the day, we're all just trying our best to get through life with enough to fill everyone's bellies and make everything a little special

My mom told me about how her family (they lived in Charlottesville in the 1960’s) couldn’t even afford a loaf of bread. They had to hunt for food every other morning to get enough food for the week. It is crazy how much it differed for life in then rural Charlottesville, VA versus modern day Urban Charlottesville, VA where that is a lot less common.

Was born in 87 but spent most of my childhood with my grandparents who were a pilot in the army and a nurse during the tail end of the war. Grew up with a lot of these, but thankfully avoided savory gelatin concoctions.

My grandfather always said "Eat white bread and you'll be dead." He knew even back in the 30s that it was pure crap.

My grandparents were born in the 30s and my grandma always cooks roast meat, potatoes, carrots, peas, etc not much processed. Although she also has a habit of saving nonperishables for years past their expiration date and insisting they're still good no matter how stale they are.

My grandmother grew up in the late 20s and into the 30s and I never saw her ever waste anything when it came to food or anything else...she had a Tupperware dish under the bathroom sink in the cabinet where she put the pieces of soap that were too small to use then when it was full she would add a little water and my brother and I had liquid soap for bubble baths! It was way cooler than buying a bottle of bubble bath! She grew her own vegetables and her homemade bread put wonderbread to shame! I sure miss her and am grateful that she taught us the value of a dollar and how to make ends meet with pennies❤

Mom grew up during the Depression. Grandma made peanut butter *or* jelly sandwiches. They couldn't afford to put both on one sandwich.

We ate a lot of chop suey when I was growing up in the 80s. My mom would brown some ground beef and add a big can of Chun King or La Choy mixed Chinese vegetables and a packet of sauce mix, and then serve it with rice. It was one of my favorite meals growing up!

Ovaltine was my favorite drink growing up. I was born in '83 but my mother in '56 & her folks in the '30's.. Ovaltine was always a staple in our cabinet. 🙂

Meatloaf is timeless. It is one of my daughter's favorites. She was born in late 2008. I never had it growing up. I loved it so much started to make it for my family. We have it all the time. And casseroles save so much time for those long days when work and practices leave limited family time for dinner.

I grew up in the 1950s, and loved my mom's meatloaf! It contained ground beef, crushed soda crackers as a binder. She used Heinz Chili Sauce as the covering. Baked it in the oven in a rectangular pyrex container, and then after it was removed and sliced, we added more chili sauce to our own taste. Good served fresh, but even better as the meat in a cold sandwich....wonder bread, Miracle Whip, lettuce and slice of meat loaf!! Yum, so better sandwich!

My grandma was allergic to many skin products and used Crisco as lotion, and for chapped lips. She despised spam and jello as a dinner. She made us sweet salad. Raisins, carrots, apples, pears, walnuts, tossed with lemon juice. It was amazing. Sugar cereals were only for Saturday, and we got half a cup each, with dried fruit mixed in. Dandelion salad, lentils and dandelion stewed with tomatoes. Meatloaf was made with any stale bread. She taught me to cook, and I can feed our family without many premade products. I also grow most of our veggies.

I’m 64 years old and grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s eating 🍽 many of the items described in this video. What a reflection in time from then until now. A TV dinner verses a microwave dinner 🍲. The dry cereals which now offer high grain, nuts, dried fruits and berries. SPAM, something I ate in the Army in the 1970’s now is a major prepper food for the hard times that we will soon be facing again.

I always love the selling feature of Crisco being "it's digestible!" I have fond memories of TV dinners because we got them when our parents were going out. Either for an evening out or if my mum had to go to a meeting (my dad worked nights). So I remember they were 75cents and, while horrible, they were exciting. Still love SPAM but not cooked.

Now THIS was a trip down memory lane..! I ate all of these, and still do many of these, as a '47 Boomer. Meatloaf is still my ultimate comfort food and is realizing a resurgence in popularity. OMG, I've got to go find Chop Suey again. Loved it..!

I'd like to hear about the various New Year's Eve "lucky" foods around the world and their history.

My mom grew up in the 50s, so many of these things were still on our table when she was the one doing the cooking. Meatloaf, casseroles, and Jell-o salads were often found at our home. We didn’t eat spam, but she told me that when she was a teenager, one of her favourite sandwich fillings was spam, grated on a box grater, then mixed with mayo and chopped pickles…I never could see the appeal of that. Today meatloaf remains a favourite in my own kitchen, as one of my 9 year old son’s most often requested dinners. It has a 21st century spin though, now being made from ground turkey, with sautéed onions, fresh thyme, seasoned Italian bread crumbs and even a bit of Parmesan cheese…and cooked free form, on a sheet pan, so it gets lots of delicious brown crust, rather than boiling in its own juices in a loaf pan😕

Born 1946. Mom was a working gal (unmarried) who, besides me, took care of my Nana & Grandpa. Even tho her life was a busy one she rarely used convenience foods. I thank my adventurous pallet for her from scratch meals. No canned spaghetti, no gooey Campbell's soup casseroles, and no 'cheap' foods. Luckily she introduced me to: frog legs, braised rabbit, garlic laden whole leg of lamb, grunions, grilled steak, lamb shanks in sauerkraut, sausage and root veggies hash, brains and scrambled eggs and fried liver and onions. At lunch in grade school, when other kids had pb&j or bologna sandwiches I enjoyed sliced tongue with brown mustard or creamcheese & jelly sandwiches. Thank you Mommy. What a good cook. 😋

Not say that I’m a dilettante. Meatloaf made with ground beef, onions, garlic, an egg, S&P, and perhaps even a bay leaf. Remains a wonderful infusion of taste In conjunction with mashed buttered potatoes featuring nutmeg with an in season veg. All of the spice wars, I am become benefit.

I have eaten all of these foods and most are still eaten today. Frozen dinners and aspic are off my list of enjoyable foods. Jello is, however, just fine.

I was born in 1948. So often when I read about life in the 1950s, it's a romanticized version and not the reality. This video is very accurate. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Born in 1956 with both sets of grandparents and parents being farmers, most of what we ate was grown, harvested and shared. My mother never spent more than $10 at the grocery store and that was for salt, flour, sugar, toilet paper, MW, dish soap, soap for the washing machine, shaving cream, razor blades etc. TV dinners were bought 5 for $1.00 as a Sunday night treat once in awhile. Hot dog or tuna gravy on toast was a Saturday night meal. All the women were good cooks and bakers. Meatloaf was a Sunday midday meal along with, creamed corn casserole, fresh green beans or peas, mashed potatoes etc.

Most of the foods listed were well-liked with our family, except for the aspec-type dishes. We did eat Jello from time to time though. Mom always had big bowls of salad with every dinner, either green salad or fruit salad she made with any fruits in the house, topped with mini marshmallows, and splashed in orange juice or 7-Up, my favorite. I just made some for my husband and I tonight. My dad was Air Force, stationed in Ismir, Turkey with the NATO forces, and we couldn't get our American bread over there, so we ate many a PBJ using graham crackers instead. I love them to this day. Spam walso a hit with us, but we used it as lunch meat when sliced, and never cooked it, as I've seen in some recipes. I remember my sister sprinkling Ovalteen on top of a dish of ice cream.

I grew up in the 50's in a family of 6 kids. My Dad liked to cook and made stuff like chicken caccitori, spaghetti, what is known as shit on a shingle and,at least once a year a big ham and turkey. The big problem was we ate ham or turkey until it was just bones and then he'd make soup in a pot big enough to feed an army and in that pot went the bones and any scraps. After I left home potato soup or bean soup was off the menu for years. I like them now however. Funny how our tastes can change. The other problem was he obviously never read the lable on the jar of chipped beef and he never rinsed the beef before cooking it...makes for a salty dinner. My mother made some things wonderfully and other things not so wonderful.I would have preferred having an enema than eating her liver but her homemade mac and cheese, scalloped corn or her meatloaf was great. In such a big family we had more than our share of potatoes,pot pies, tv dinners and spam...but,ya know, my mom always cooked sweetened yams with the spam so we didn't mind spam too much. When either the Jello Co. or the Cool hip Co. came out with the jello and cool whip recipe she made that alot but she also was good at baking. Many people liked her apple sauce cake but I don't think anyone has ever topped her peach pie....my mouth waters just at the thought.

I worked hanging tobacco a few years ago for an old couple in their 80s. Every day his wife would lay out a spread for us for lunch. If there were fewer than 20 items on the table every time I would be surprised. Always bread and butter, pickles of all kinds, cold chicken, macaroni salad, jello salad all kinds of stuff. She told me her mother taught her to cook back in the fifties.

Born in 1950, East Texas, ate very well. Mom canned and cooked from scratch. We loved hamburger but usually had roast beef, steak, or chicken. We didn't get tv dinners or casseroles. I'm the only person among my friends who never had tuna noodle casserole. My dad, a WWII vet, wouldn't allow Spam or hash in his house.

I remember when I was about 8 or so, my best friend stayed for lunch and mom made PB&J's for us kids, my friend Aimee had never had 1 before. My mom talked to Aimee's mom to ask why. Aimee's mom was a very young child smuggled out of Nazi Germany and in England, the kids were given PB in ice cream cones as there wasn't much else. Her mom swore her kids would never eat it!!! She was a sweet woman who made it through a very hard childhood.

When I grew up every family I know had a cereal cupboard or cabinet that contained several boxes, usually one or two healthy ones in the back with a bunch of sweet ones in the front that were never sealed quite well enough to keep them from going stale or had the cereal dumped directly into the box out of the bag in order to get the prize that was always at the bottom. And I still love Spam, but the sodium wrecks me for a day.

I still make meatloaf❤and my kids love it. My Mom was born in Tennessee during the 30's and she made our bread, chips and crackers as well as pies, cakes and cobblers from scratch. I was born in Alaska during the 70's and I ate all of it. My Mom made some of the best moose, bear and caribou with a Tennesee twist. Wonderbread was a treat and nothing went better with bologna and cheese than Wonderbread. RIP Momma❤I'm still cooking from scratch.

I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the food they describe is practically identical to what I identified as being mainstream back then, save the diet soda they were talking about and maybe the gelatinous food, but even with the latter I think I saw stuff like that when I was very little at my grandmother's house. So this could almost, for me, be about food from the 1970s.

Grew up in Northern OH, mom was from the South, stayed at home, supper with Family around the table every night, lots and lots of Sweet Tea, brewed hot, with fresh lemon, poured over ice. It was so good that my cousins would ask for a gallon of it as a birthday gift! Wouldn't trade those memories for anything.

I loved Swanson TV dinners! We had them every Saturday night. I wish the frozen dinner companies still made the great tasting dinners we had back in the 60s and 70s. I also still eat La Choy canned Chinese food from time to time with those hard rice (?) noodles.

So glad that I stumbled across your channel, that walk down memory lane was very enjoyable! As a boomer myself this brought back a ton of memories all leaving a smile on my face! Keep up the good work, we all need some brightness in our lives right about now.

Nothing wrong with meatloaf. It can still be found in diners and many restaurants. I make it at home, usually with ground turkey so it's healthier. Leftover meatloaf makes great sandwiches. As for the other food, I stopped eating cereal years ago, the same goes for diet sodas. I always hated PB&J sandwiches as a kid. As a grown up I realized that what I really hated was the bread, it became a gooey mess and stuck to one's palate. I now have the occasional piece of toast with PB for protein for breakfast. We never ate Spam, aspic dishes or TV dinners growing up. My mother was a gourmet chef, I took the best lunches to school. 😃

Meatloaf was definitely a favorite in my childhood house. On some Friday nights Mom would serve us TV dinners to eat while watching the CBS Friday Night Movie. Tuna casserole was another favorite. There was this tuna casserole flavor packet Mom used, which I really liked.

I am a 1946 Boomer and had a home cooked meal every day. I came from a Blue collar family and never ate a TV Dinner until I was on my own. We also drank a lot of milk and peanut and butter sandwiches as snacks.

I grew up in the late 70's and the 80's, we still consumed most of these even then. I still love meat loaf and casseroles.

Growing up in the south, we had a lot of garden grown food. Only had TV dinners at my Grandparents, my Mom refused to buy them. They were actually good then, taste like crap now. Meatloaf rules, although my family didn't top it with ketchup. Mom cooked it surrounded by a tomato paste sauce, that she would baste the meatloaf with as it cooked. She always used lean ground beef, the tomato sauce was used as a beefy tomato gravy to top the meatloaf and mash potatoes when serving. We always had this with garden peas and carrots, with homemade rolls, Delicious.

My dad and mom were born in 49 and 52, respectively in small-town south Texas of Mexican descent. They had lot of siblings and fairly poor. They ate lots of rice, beans and flour tortillas and very little meat. My mom and dad ran off to Dallas, TX in 1972 and my mom says that was the first time she had ever tasted a pizza. She still remembers watching my uncle coming in to the shared apartment with a frozen pizza in his hand.

What people ate in the 50's: pb&j on Wonder and meatloaf. What I ate last Tuesday: pb&j on Wonder and meatloaf.

Let's take the moment to appreciate how much effort he puts into the content for us ❤

I’ve eaten (and still eat) just about everything on this list except the aspic. Although there was a jello salad my grandma used to make for Christmas with pistachios, pineapple, and I think cream cheese.

Another Boomer here (b. 1961), and basic Corn Flakes was a breakfast staple. Add the obligatory tablespoon of sugar, and it was perfection. Drinking the milk/sugar combo after the flakes were gone was the BEST! Regarding Spam, still love it to this day. Perfect side with eggs. It was also the meal of choice for Vikings (per the famous Monty Python skit at least).

My mother made lots of meatloaf and casseroles. She really liked casseroles. But I don’t remember her ever buying Wonder Bread, Crisco, Ovaltine or Spam. She never made aspic as far as I can remember, but she made plenty of jello molds. We never ate chop suey. On the rare occasions that we went out to a Chinese restaurant, we had authentic dishes because we lived in Los Angeles, where authentic Chinese cuisine has always been readily available. And I don’t remember ever eating TV dinners until the late 1960’s, when my parents went out on Saturday nights almost every week. My mother was a typical postwar American housewife; She always put an emphasis on cooking good, nutritious meals made from scratch, but liked to take advantage of prepackaged products such as Campbell’s soup and Bisquick to save time in the kitchen.

Born in '57, was in a college Physiology class in the late 70's where my professor (who was probably 65-75) told us that the greatest thing ever invented was Crisco. He grew up on a farm and the lard bucket could be very disgusting at any time, but especially so in the summer. Crisco changed that as it would not go bad in the kitchen cabinet for a long time.

I am a millennial who grew up with almost all of this food. My grandmother cooked a lot of it. Most of the people who cooked at all in my family were making older recipes and not very willing to change. At least I avoided the gelatin shaped food! Pretty sure I have several recipes for it, though.

Who knew food could be this interesting

I was raised on everything up until the aspic, which I had never heard of until I watched “Julie & Julia”. I was the last kid of six, born in’74. My family is of Mexican origin, but my Mom had struggled enough to know how to be successfully frugal. She was a homemaker and she helped my dad build his business, so there was the occasional TV dinner. She also used to put spam into salad and I have to say it was amazing. That being said, it’s kind of amazing to see how post-war also meant the birth of so much unhealthy food.

I’m a Millennial and I had a lot of these foods growing up and still do to this day. Our meatloaf had BBQ sauce instead of ketchup and my favorite casserole is one made with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, tater tots and green chili peppers.

I was born in the late fifties. We did eat cereal but not too much of the really sugary ones. We had spam once in a while but also the canned corned beef for dads sandwiches for work, casseroles like chipped beef on toast. Wow, we sure ate a lot of salt. I remember Grandma making a tomato aspic jello salad one Christmas. It was so gross that she never made it again. Ah, good times.

I was never too keen on chop suey, but my mom made it because it was a good way to use up the last of the celery bunch every week. I miss her beef tongue with Polish mushroom gravy, but that's way too expensive now. The 60s food fads like Swiss steak and Swedish meatballs could never replace her pierogi and stuffed cabbage, but I suppose they were faster and easier to make. She really was a wonderful cook.

Upbringing in Canada is almost exactly the same at least for my family. Its amazing how much of our own culture we have because of American influence.

My grandmother did all the cooking in my family as she lived with us also, and made mostly homemade meals until her arthritis got so bad she couldn't stand long enough to cook. Then my mom took over and she, like myself, relyed on recipes from cookbooks. Once in a while though my parents would pick up Chinese for a treat from our local carry out restaurant and it was always Chop Suey and egg rolls. Always. I hated both of those things so much so I never ate any, opting for bologna instead. I always wanted to try something else from the menu but no, they were stuck on chop suey. Later on in life when I met my now ex husband who is Chinese, I discovered that chop suey is not a Chinese dish at all but very American! If you notice, it is rarely,.if ever on a Chinese menu these days. I grew to enjoy egg rolls but don't think I would like chop suey even now if offered to me.

All (or mostly) familiar to a middle-middle-class kid growing up in the 1950s. Especially meatloaf and casseroles. After those cans of Crisco made it into the housewives' kitchens, they all had a piece of wax paper folded into a square stored in them, for spreading the Crisco on cooking surfaces. Often the cereal premiums weren't in the boxes themselves - you had to send in the boxtop to get the prize. Wonder bread was touted on commercials as having "red, yellow and blue balloons printed right on the wrapper". The photo at 7:40 is what dinners really looked like.

I don’t know what I would do without Meatloaf... The food or the musician!

Narator: "Gone were the days of making a meal from scratch." *A single tear rolls down face*

My mom was born in the 50s, and when she and I moved in with my grandma after my parents divorced, I ate a lot of these foods -- though TV dinners were a Saturday-night treat, because they were pricey. Lots of meatloaf and different types of casseroles, and Ovaltine before bed. I also grew up hating vegetables because the only way Grandma and Mom knew how to cook them was to boil them; I didn't discover steamed and oven-roasted veggies until I was an adult and doing my own cooking.

I LOVED the TV dinners in foil. Not only were the portions bigger, but there was something different about the taste. Especially the mashed potatoes, I don't know why. Mashed taters have always been and still are my favorite food. THe aluminum added something to the taste of the taters. Loved those!

I always love when I see a notification from you guys. Best channel I'm subscribed to imo.

People used to be able to afford food ????? Stuff at the Grocery Store has skyrocketed since the Pandemic started (if you can even find the item you are looking for)

To this day, I ( am 63) feel guilty if I waste food. We were taught to eat and appreciate the food on our plate. There were dishes that I know our dogs ate fairly well on but I remember that ground beef or chicken was special. My dad hunted , us kids gathered wild summer offerings and having spaghetti for birthdays was a treat.I still love goulash, my son adores meatloaf. Oh the days of wine and roses. It was home brew actually lol.

As a millennial with boomer parents this video is pretty much what I ate in childhood, minus the jello concoctions, white bread (We had wheat or sourdough bread), and diet sodas. Dad did all the cooking. Every Sunday we'd have a full breakfast with french-toast, sugared fruit (Peaches were my favorite), eggs, and either fried spam or bacon. Sometimes he'd make S.O.S or chipped beef on Toast instead. But on weekdays it was either cereal (Usually Raisin Bran) or brown sugar and Oatmeal for breakfast. He bought me school lunches about half the time and sent me with milk money, PB&J's and carrot sticks/ celery sticks/apple slices the other half of the time. So I didn't get to be the cool kid with lunchables or chips or junkfood ^-^' Dinners were more varied. Once a month or so we'd have "Taco Night" which was basically home made Taco Bell, but dad loved cilantro and Lime so we'd always have that. During the summer we'd often have burgers and hotdogs on the grill, sometimes steaks or ribs, usually served with potato salad and baked beans. In the fall, if the catching was good there would be grilled salmon, smoked salmon, and Salmon Chowder made in huge batches. Grandma cooked up a whole roasted turkey with all the sides every thanksgiving, and super good homemade pumpkin pie. But mostly I remember a lot of meat and potato dishes, casseroles, Soups, Pastas, and grilled sandwiches. Meatloaf or Salisbury steak with mashed potato's and frozen mixed veggies, Pot Roast thrown in a croqpot with potato's carrots onion and celery, Texmex casserole, Tuna Casserole, Casseroles I forgot the name of, Lasagna, Spaghetti, Mac and Cheese, "Chili-Mac", Fried Spam Sandwiches (Usually with fresh picked tomato), Grilled cheese with tomato soup, Tuna Melts, Patty Melts. Big pots of home made chili, Split Pea, and chicken noodle soup usually served with warm bread. There was also always a big bowl full of fresh fruit to snack on (Apples, bananas and whatever was in season). And yeah Ovaltine. Dad always thought it was healthier so that's what we had for chocolate milk/hot cocoa mix. Sodas were something we had to buy ourselves unless we were at a restaurant. When we ate out it was usually at Denny's or ihop or a Chinese Buffet, every once in a while a Mexican Restaurant. The Fast Food of choice was usually DQ, KFC, or Pizza delivery. But eating out was like a once a month treat. I was actually kind of envious of the kids who got McDonalds every night.... but I miss all the home made meals now... besides tuna casserole... thankfully I never spent enough time with grandma to be force fed liver. I've heard the tales.

Im surprised Campbells soup wasnt mentioned. "Soup and sandwich, soup and sandwich" the song went. It was cheap, filling if you added crackers, and tasted great (to a kid...). Great video with lots of memories.

I was raised in northeast Ohio in the 60s and 70s. There were no exotic foods at all. Cereal for breakfast, meat , potatoes or other vegetables all boiled. We had dinners on ocassion with a family that made real Italian food. The wife was Italian. We never grilled out and I didn't know anyone that did. We had our own meat and vegetables from our farm and garden.

Tks for sharing this information with us ☺️

I am 56 yrs old. Cornflakes was a pantry "staple" in our house, growing up. And, was used in a LOT of ways! Even as the "grain" in meatloaf, when we didn't have bread or oats! It was used to make "crumbs" too, to go on or in meat, for meat dishes other than meatloaf too! Not to mention, Cornflakes' main use, as a breakfast cereal! Most of these foods, we also ate in the 70s and early 80s, in my mom's house. I guess it's how I learned to "use what I got", sometimes, at least, while cooking. My mom mostly used "Spam" for breakfast dishes or sandwiches, as well as "fried bologna", depending on what was at hand. Got to say though, I never had "aspic", but my mom did make Jello molds, or banana pudding with "Nilla" wafers, when she could afford to buy them and could keep us kids outta the cookie box.🤪 She canned a lot of home-grown vegetables and fruits too, when I was young. My dad even had a grape harbor that he used to make "homemade" wine, which really STANK while fermenting! As well as us kids, just picking & eating the grapes. 🤪 Never had "chop suey" either. Drinks on the dinner table, while young, was usually water, koolade, or tea (maybe hot, in the AM, or cold otherwise). My parents drank a LOTTA coffee (my mom would even drink it cold (usually, if she was so busy that it got cold), unless my Dad was drinking beer, or booze, or homemade wine, which was quite often! LOL. 🤪 IDK WHY, but I just "felt" like sharing that "tidbit" about my youth, from a complete stranger, no less. 🤪 Sorry. 😦

My folks grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, during WWII. My grandfather on one side was the only veteranarian (Sp?) in the city and my other grandfather was a purchasing agent for one of the 3 or 4 (?) of the largest steel mills in the country. Grandpa C. used to help out the farmers for free or for free and was 'paid' in fresh meat, bushels of eggs or baskets of fresh vegetables. Grandpa B. had a meat locker with his brother where they kept the sides of beef that he was given as gifts for doing 'business favors' for other companies in the steel market. Amazing my folks didn't grow up to be little fatsos, considering all the good food to eat while the rest of the nation lived on rations. The C. Animal Clinic still exists in Youngstown today. 🙂

Been a lot of food episodes lately. To the writer who is clearly on a diet... I feel ya.

Really great info. Brought back a lot of memories.

I was born 1960....we ate around the table after dad got home...I don't have any memories of ever eating at McDonald's or in fact any place but home....their were 11 of us...played outside til street lites came on ...wonderful childhood...didn't have anything.... but happiness...

It's so sad what happened to TV dinners. Back in the day the original Banquet TV dinner was much more like a real high quality home meal served on a sturdy aluminum tray you had to use in an oven (microwave ovens were not yet a standard appliance). As far as iv heard they were amazing but unfortunately I'm much too young to have gotten to try them. Maybe someone in the comments can back me up. Cheers all and have a happy new year.

Another reason aspic and other gelatin dishes were considered a sign of affluence was because before prepackaged gelatin was invented, making anything with gelatin in it took hours to days, and required the expertise of a professional cook. Since that kind of time and effort was only available to people who could afford to hire someone else to do it, gelatin was seen as a wealthy person's food before the mid-20th century. It also would've probably been really unpleasant to make AND to eat, since it required boiling an entire calf's foot until the broth gellified (Ann Reardon from How to Cook That has a really interesting video where she makes it in a similar way, using a recipe from the 1800s)

Love thos view of history!! Good job!!

Thanks for sharing.