Foods from you childhood you don't miss.
When I was a kid, the fad among moms was to pack the lunchbox full of manufactured microwave convenience foods. To this day, I cannot stomach a Hot Pocket. Don't even want to smell them. However, what took the cake was those microwave french fries that came in a little box with a grid of the browning paper inside. They fries tasted like that paper. I haven't seen them in years, fortunately. So what now discontinued food were you glad to see go the way of the Dodo?
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52 Comments:
Scrapple. I have cholesterol issues and want to live to enjoy my grandchildren.
janaatwg at 9:22PM on 08/28/09
Any kind of lunch meat. My dad used to make us sandwiches every day with salami, ham etc. I don't think I ever ate them - I really hated the taste of lunch meat, and usually just ended up skipping lunch. To this day, I don't like bread or most deli meats...though prosciutto has changed my mind on sliced meats in general : )
firni at 9:32PM on 08/28/09
Tater tot casserole, glasses of milk that had to be drunk before you could leave the table (turns out I have lactose problems), scrambled eggs with ham, and any recipe that used cream of chicken soup, which was my mom's fave ingredient.
kpope at 9:49PM on 08/28/09
Wonder bread, for sure
deefine at 9:55PM on 08/28/09
tuna noodle casserole. just typing the words gives me the dry heaves.
juliebugsmama at 10:29PM on 08/28/09
My mom liked to boil okra for soup, unfortunately enhancing the viscous nature of the vegetable.
runnereater at 11:44PM on 08/28/09
lamb.
pjracz10 at 1:14AM on 08/29/09
Carrot. My mom used to forced me to drink straight carrot juice after I found out that I had bad eye sights. She said, carrots are good for my eyes, but I found out that it's bad for my soul. HATE them.
eviliciouz at 2:01AM on 08/29/09
Velveeta
Mixed frozen vegetables boiled in water
Tuna casserole
"Mint tea" my uncle used to make with mint piced from out front yard. It was basically just hot, green water. I still hate mint of all kind.
PumpkinBear at 4:08AM on 08/29/09
Salmon patties on Fridays . I could and can tolerate grilled cheese and tomato soup on Fridays . Sliced uncured and unsmoked pork belly for breakfast meat . "Side meat" . Now I'm always looking for good pork belly and lardo !
jfitz at 6:16AM on 08/29/09
wheaties. the texture! the texture! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! :(
machellebelle at 7:44AM on 08/29/09
Meatloaf and sloppy joes. I never did like ground beef.
dhorst at 8:37AM on 08/29/09
Hot cereals ~ hated them all! Especially cream of wheat and Wheatina. Oatmeal was gag worthy. It was and still is a textural thing. Love oatmeal "stuff"; i.e., muffins, bread, streussel toppings and cookies. Most horrible was Maypo. Tasted like maple flavored sand. Even my dad wouldn't eat it!
duncan1205 at 8:40AM on 08/29/09
Hot creamed tuna on toast - "shudder"
canned vegetables boiled until gray
Olive loaf
hard as a ROCK hamburger patties served without a bun (like a pork chop)
radley24 at 9:10AM on 08/29/09
Ooops - the foods I listed were things my mom made - nothing "discontinued" like the OP asked....we didn't eat too many pre-made meals in the 70's/80's.
radley24 at 9:12AM on 08/29/09
Hungry Man Salisbury steak in the old tin foil like TV dinner tray. Not the salisbury steak itself, who doesn't like 15,000,000 mg. of sodium in a mystery meat patty?! But rather, the little chocolate "hockey puck" cake that came with the meal... BLECH!
Pavlov at 9:20AM on 08/29/09
The entire line of fake cakes I ate as an (uninformed) child. Suzy Q's? Twinkies? Devil Dogs? Hostess Cupcakes? Honestly, WTF was I thinking...
Pav - ITA about the Hungry Man dinners. We thought we were getting a big treat I guess due to the novelty but they are so salty and... fake.
therealchiffonade at 5:05PM on 08/30/09
i can one up you pavlov. vegetarian salsbury steak in a can. gag! (ok, i dont know if they make it anymore; if youve seen it, my sympathies.)
blizcheetah at 5:43PM on 08/30/09
ring balogna
canned cream corn *sudders*
over cooked beef liver
CJ McD at 6:06PM on 08/30/09
brown rice pilaf...
sorry, mom.
Christina at 7:16PM on 08/30/09
MY PARENTS WERE AWESOME COOKS so I struggled with this topic for actually quite a while. But my parents were mean!.....
We were asked to eat liver and onions on Halloweeen before trickertreating.
Didn't finish your liver?
You're staying in.
*shudder*
love living on my own now.
hungrychristel at 3:03PM on 08/31/09
Carrot juice. I'd pour it in the toilet when mom wasn't looking.
Bologna. I never ever want to eat bologna ever again. Ever.
Eggos.
Raisin Bran cereal.
LHSK12 at 3:43PM on 08/31/09
Have to second the Wheatina and cream of wheat. What a revolting texture!! I could only wish they were discontinued!
Editmom at 3:43PM on 08/31/09
@Editmom
LOL I used to put so much stuff (raisins, sugar, etc.) into the smallest bowl I could get away with and then shovel it down as quick as I could! This helped a lot with not tasting/feeling the slime and kept the gag reflex at bay until I was done..... Really ticked my dad off!
Oh, and milk went down the drain if I had enough time, before a parent came back into the kitchen (must remember to run water to wash drain stain away!)
duncan1205 at 4:35PM on 08/31/09
Mine is topped only by runnereater's. My mom boiled turnips until they turned kind of pinkish-brown, then doused them with vinegar. I hated it so much that It was actually the only food I was allowed to eat only a couple bites of.
ChloeA at 8:21AM on 09/01/09
Sloppy Joes, because I always seemed to get a mouthful of gristle. Fried pork butt slices - as tough and dry as any meat could be. Lunchables, with their chewy, gristly processed meat slices. Frozen mixed veggies, boiled within an inch of their lives and still oozing water on the plate. Bologna.
Junie at 9:30AM on 09/01/09
someone once convinced me that sour cream sprinkled with sugar tastes good, like ice cream. after liking it for a few years when i was younger (5 - 7?), i realized whoever told me that lied. eating sour cream with sugar by the spoonful = not a good idea.
korovka at 10:54AM on 09/01/09
Spaghetti-Os. I liked them as a kid, but tried them again a couple years ago, and couldn't stomach the smell. What was I thinking?
Also, those awful TV dinners covered in tin foil - salisbury steak with mixed vegetables and mashed potatos. That stuff didn't even resemble food.
LizGiff at 2:33PM on 09/04/09
My mother never used prepared foods. The only thing I hated was Cream of Wheat (not instant). My mother was a great cook but for some reason the lumps didn't bother her. Yuck.
Jeremiahc at 2:57PM on 09/04/09
Spam! I know it still exists, but why? My mom fried it for some awful reason. Then she served it with sliced boiled turnips that had butter on them. Yuck! Oh, does anyone remember Bosco? Ovaltine's ugly, tasteless twin? I am a child of the 50's and 60's and we had some really terrible stuff.
queenbleu at 3:36PM on 09/04/09
Reading this post & the comments has made me retrospectively grateful my mom & dad didn't really "do" processed/convenience foods. And there were a few things mentioned that I happen to love (tuna casserole, tater tot casserole) - they seem like comfort food to me. Not exactly fine dining, but sometimes, the nostalgia makes the sum better than its parts. :)
However, I can't get over Velveeta. My mom still keeps blocks of it in her house. Taste, texture - no thank you.
SconnieGirl at 4:13PM on 09/04/09
Green jello and cabbage.
yellowrice at 4:55PM on 09/04/09
Anything with "cream of...." soup in it. I grew up in Minnesota and that seems to be a common ingredient for "hot dish" and just about everything else. I don't think my mom knows how to cook anything that doesn't contain a pound of ground beef and some kind of condensed soup. Gross.
jillybean081 at 5:03PM on 09/04/09
Good Lord, maybe it's just me, but having to sit in the dark and look at a can of overgrown adult peas, cold on my plate...and not being able to leave until I ate them, is something I still remember.
Even to this day, i love split pea soup, but cannot stomach eating even those tender young peas they push now.
Big Peas in a Delmonte can....yuk.
But then again....mom made everything else in a black skillet. AND....maybe I am the weird one...I used to enjoy the stuff outta the tin containers as a kid.
MAYBE THAT'S WHY I HAVE BORDERLINE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE NOW.
Sorry mom.
Scoreboard44 at 6:48PM on 09/04/09
And I drank a lot of carnation instant Breakfast in Junior hig. Probably the reason I had zits.
Ugh.
Scoreboard44 at 6:49PM on 09/04/09
That's Junior High. I believe they call it "Middle school" now. Kinda like Middle Earth.
Scoreboard44 at 6:50PM on 09/04/09
Pretty much anything that comes in cans except albacore tuna and imported tomatoes. Gray canned asparagus was about the worst.
salpico at 6:55PM on 09/04/09
OMG! That photo brought back horrible memories! Those TV dinners were absolutely disgusting. Gag! My folks also loved canned spinach - my mother ate it drizzled with vinegar and my father ate it with mayonnaise slopped on top. I cannot believe those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s ate such awful stuff. Spam...Ovaltine....Cream of Wheat...Velveeta...All gag-producing! And they're still around.....AUGH!
old_desert_rat at 9:50PM on 09/04/09
Luckily my mom didn't do the TV dinners, though there was an occasional pot pie. My least favorite food had to be tuna casserole, beef stroganoff and creamed corn. At least they were not on the same night.
notirish at 11:52PM on 09/04/09
underwood canned deviled ham. it was the 60s and early 70s and i have no idea how i ever ate the stuff. Gak. Just thinking about it makes me nauseated.
then again, the childhood kitchen results weren't always the best. I was 25 before I had ham that wasn't out of a can and almost 30 before I learned to like red meat rare or medium rare instead of BROWN.
mizmoose at 7:22PM on 09/05/09
Not that I ever ate this on a regular basis, but I still remember the geoduck that would be served for "special occasion" dinners at our favoured Chinese restaurant. Bad memories of being harassed by my family into eating it, because it was an expensive delicacy... you know, given enough time and careful thinking, I could make a killing off cooking tire rubber as a delicacy.
avaryne at 12:29AM on 09/06/09
Chipped beef on toast (SOS)! Just the smell of it would send me into hiding.
alijah at 11:32AM on 09/06/09
I revisited this thread after having been the first to reply and it has been very, very amusing. I am imagining a reunion of all of you and this is what you would discuss. A lot of emotional scars being hidden behind a lot of laughing out loud.
janaatwg at 11:53AM on 09/06/09
If these are the worst of the emotional scars, then we're very lucky. At least most of us had parents who put food on the table. There are some kids today whose only family meals take place at McDonald's.
Jeremiahc at 3:14PM on 09/06/09
Swanson's Beannie weenies with molasses cake and spiced apples, My sister and I ate this a lot in the early 70's!! (no longer avail. thank god)
stacemace at 4:01PM on 09/06/09
Chun King chicken chow mein. For a while it came in a set of two cans, one containing crispy noodles (usually a bit stale) and the other with the chow mein. It was an ambitious packaging concept but the result was not good. To my parents' credit, they only tried it on us a couple of times before they realized we were not fond of it and the convenience wasn't worth it.
McNormal at 4:04PM on 09/06/09
I cant think of anything discontiued but my list includes: Carrots, bananas, rice, cheese sandwiches, those crackers that come with the cheese and red stick oh and weird but chocolate I think i ate too much of it and anything candy especially gummy bears and sweet tarts , skittles that sort of stuff makes me nasceous
tenille10 at 11:54AM on 09/07/09
Spam, Milo, cheese or fruit danishes, pop tarts, cereal
tenille10 at 12:03PM on 09/07/09
@korovka: my mom used to give us sour cream and bananas sprinkled with sugar. i remember thinking that i really didn't like it but she loved it so much that my tastebuds must have been wrong.
i still can't eat sour cream at all.
alexandrapace at 6:08PM on 09/07/09
I love Cream of Wheat still, and the lumps are the best part! Definitely don't miss the TV dinners of any variety, or Cream of anything. Though my mom was an excellent cook, and rarely bought processed foods...and I consider myself lucky that we always HAD food.
Oh, and I used to love Spam, though I don't think I could stomach it now.
mare09 at 12:39PM on 09/09/09
Snotty eggs, Cheerios, Kraft American Cheese Slices.
Pointy at 1:32PM on 09/09/09
PBJ. It was my lunch for the entire first grade. I've never wanted to look at another PBJ since then.
AnnieNT at 1:55PM on 09/09/09