Eating in the 50's

[George2615]

THIS IS Really Pretty Accurate:
EATING IN THE FIFTIES

Pasta had not been invented. It was macaroni or spaghetti.
Curry was a surname.
A take-away was a mathematical problem.
Pizza? Sounds like a leaning tower somewhere.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All chips were plain.
Rice was a milk pudding, and almost never, ever part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking.
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Chickens didn't have fingers in those days.
None of us had ever heard of yogurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognized food.
'Kebab' was not even a word, never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly muesli was readily available. It was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than gasoline for it, they would have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never ever had on/at our table in the fifties...was elbows, hats and cell phones!

 

[Sprinklerman]

How true , and a lot carried on into the mid 60's

 

[RobertN]

Well depends on where, and I would say this list at least was limited to parts of the US. I have old cookbooks that list pasta and/or more than two types.

The older cookbooks refer to margarine as "Oleo" which is different...

Old cookbooks also had more recipes using what is now less desirable thing; brain, tongue, squirrel etc.

 

[hawkeye08]

You can still buy lard, pie crust is so much better made with lard.

 

[ovrszd]

And, all water did NOT come out of a tap. Didn't even know what a tap was????? Pitcher pump maybe......

 

[murph1]

Ribs and chicken wings were for the poor or thrown away.

 

[/pine]

The older cookbooks refer to margarine as "Oleo" which is different...

When "oleo" was first introduced...it came with little yellow tablets so you could make it look more like real butter...

 

[Will_C]

It sounds like my eating in the 1970s! Pizza was a special treat, had my first chicken wing in college (1982), and never had shrimp, lobster, etc. until the mid 1990's.

Will

 

[TomSeller]

Ribs and chicken wings were for the poor or thrown away.

Went to make soup. Hog heads went to make head cheese. A hog head cooking on the stove always made my sister scream when she went to check what was for dinner.

 

[Wagtail]

Well depends on where, and I would say this list at least was limited to parts of the US. I have old cookbooks that list pasta and/or more than two types.

The older cookbooks refer to margarine as "Oleo" which is different...

Old cookbooks also had more recipes using what is now less desirable thing; brain, tongue, squirrel etc.

Parts of the US? Try the rest of the world (including your neighbour to the North). :laughing:

 

[check]

When "oleo" was first introduced...it came with little yellow tablets so you could make it look more like real butter...

I remember that! Ours came with little packages of orange colouring, and it was a real pain to mix it all together.

 

[Ken]

Breakfast was a meal of pan cakes made from flour milled at grain mill 4 miles away small town away bring in a sack of wheat put in mill and get a sack of flour. same with sack of corn. grown in field .
the eggs from chicken house and the milk from cow in barn yard.
the bacon and grease to cook with from hog grown for purpose of providing the hams and meat needed .
the yeast spices baking soda came from a trader that stopped monthly to sell item to the lady of the house hold.
Yearly we would raise sorghum for cooking into molasses at another neighbor that had the mill and copper pan for cooking. also a load of pine stumps for the rich pine to heat the fluid. helped to pay for the cost of cooking and filling gallon jugs for storage.

then picking the berries and making into jelly canning and stored in the storm cellar to keep cool.
Daily a pan of dried beans was put on stove to soak and then cooked in the evening for meal the next day,
Hominy made in barrel soaked with wood ashes from heating to soften the kernels.
Garden produce dried or canned to go with the meals.
Then the Coop came with power in the 50's the wood stove tossed out to use elec. for cooking to"save time"
clothes washing purchased washing machine and driers to "save time"
Air Conditioning and Heating all the labor saving devises installed .
Used to know every neighbor with in 5 mile radius of the place now don't know neighbor because they have a No Trespassing sign stuck gate post. Drives in and parks goes to house and doesn't reappear until next day. jumps in car and is gone .
The good old days were not that bad.

 

[oldballs]

This is the most interesting read and explains a lot of my confusion at restaurants and grocery stores and at the table with the grandkids....especially the wasted food, the hats, no shirt, phones and picky eaters.

 

[ovrszd]

Ken, I'm fortunate to not having many of those neighbors around. I still know all my neighbors within 5 miles and we wave at each other every time we pass on the road. Can hardly get my roadbanks mowed for waving at each vehicle that goes by. Wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[ovrszd]

This is the most interesting read and explains a lot of my confusion at restaurants and grocery stores and at the table with the grandkids....especially the wasted food, the hats, no shirt, phones and picky eaters.

Mike, I have two siblings. All five of us sat at the table to eat. Mom started the bowls around the table and they got to Dad last. He dumped the bowl on his plate and ate it, regardless of what it was. He tolerated no pickiness from us. When I think of childhood I often think of those meals.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

When margarine came out, it was called "Oleo Margarine". It came in a plastic bag at first, with a capsule of coloring that you had to break and then knead the bag until it was all colored. I hated having to do this. I believe the dairy industry had enough political pull to keep it this way for a while because it was in competition with butter. It wasn't long before it came out in 1/4 pound sticks already colored.

As for green tea, I knew one family that used it in the mid 50's, but I did not like it at all. It was a rare commodity.

The list is pretty much right on. Times were pretty tough where I came from, but they were tough for everyone...except maybe the very few prosperous farmers or the local pharmacist. We were all in the same boat, though, pretty much; I wouldn't trade growing up in the 50's for any time in human history. Us country folks ate pretty much what we could grow, kill, and catch.

 

[mjarrels]

There is an interesting show on NEXFLIX "Fannies last supper" about the effort it took in the late 1890's to put a grand meal on the table using only a large wood cook stove.

mark

 

[Egon]

There is an interesting show on NEXFLIX "Fannies last supper" about the effort it took in the late 1890's to put a grand meal on the table using only a large wood cook stove.

mark

The old wood stove fuelled with dry wood would probably outshine the electric stove for cooking.

As for home produce picking up potatoes in late fall was not high on my enjoyable list. Next came cleaning the hen house and butchering poultry.

 

[oosik]

I remember Oleo Margarine - my sister & I took turns kneading it. My dad had been in WWll and wouldn't touch the stuff. He only used real butter. When I sat down for dinner - I had to eat some of everything & I had to finish my plate. Didn't have to worry about phones on the table - come on guys, this was the 40's & 50's.
Easiest way to get slapped on the head - make a move to answer the phone while we were eating dinner. The phone was NEVER answered during a meal. Please & thank you were always used and you asked to be excused from the table.

And I seldom spoke to or asked a question of an adult - however, you were expected to respond politely to any adult question.

Ha,ha - I still remember the quail sandwiches I took in my sack lunch to school.

 

[grnspot110]

Our water came from a pitcher pump in the kitchen.

We milked cows, so no oleo in our house!