Inventive budget meals your mom used to make?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

Memories of how something used to taste so good yet be so simple. Can still remember the smell and taste.

Powerful mix, love and food!

One of mine... Hot dogs ( always cut on an angle with onions and peppers, a can of Hunts tomato sauce over rice. Bet the whole thing costed under $3 for family of 6.

[Walleye]

1. Fish sticks and stewed tomatoes with corn

Pork chops and applesauce

[Laura PourMeADrink]

5. Oh wow had forgotten about fish sticks we had them all the time

Especially being Catholic every Friday you had to have fish. And stewed tomatoes wow flashback. My mom used to mix stewed tomatoes with elbow macaroni.

[Beatlelvr]

6. Creamed chip beef on toast

A bowl of rice for breakfast like it's cereal, tuna in mushroom soup over rice, tomato soup with crumbled saltines, homemade "maple syrup". My dad's favorite dessert: crumbled cornbread and milk in a tall glass. The Depression was the mother of invention.

[Walleye]

14. I still like creamed chipped beef also grilled cheese sandwiches

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. What's homemade maple syrup? Reminds me of how we couldn't

Get the store bought cinnamon and sugar mixture that came in a teddy bear container and we had to make our own for cinnamon toast

[FoxNewsSucks]

20. S*** on a Shingle was my first thought too

But I'd forgotten about eating rice like cereal. I actually liked a bowl of rice, milk and a lot of sugar better than a bowl of cereal.

[mitch96]

41. God I hated that stuff... My father called by the Navy name....

Shit on a shingle... He always had such "picturesque" speech... Not always PC but you know what he was talking about
m

[LAS14]

52. My dad loved the same. But often with buttermilk as well. nt

[gibraltar72]

2. Mac and cheese.

[HUAJIAO]

3. Mac and cheese.....sometimes with sliced hot dogs

[Doc Sportello]

4. Ham gravy mix

Leftover ham, hard boiled eggs, white bread and a gravy mix. Mom used Knorr's white sauce as a "classy" alternative but any white gravy will do. Separate the hard boiled egg whites from the yolk, chop up the whites and mix into the gravy, along with chopped up ham, serve over pieces of white bread (or noodles) and then top with crumbled up yolks and salt and pepper. Think it was a longtime family recipe handed down over generations of family Southern cooking. Still make it 50 years later. MMmmm.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

8. Yes! Did you hever have Daisy Ham? I think it was a cheaper alternative

But white sauce with pieces of ham over toast or mashed potatoes. Yummy. Have tried to make that and it never came out tasting is good. My mom never put eggs in but that's a good idea. We couldn't afford any mix so my mom got pretty good at making white bechamel sauce although she never called it bechamel LOL

[Doc Sportello]

10. Don't think Daisy ham was in our area

Bechamel sauce sounds great, as does serving over potatoes. But you know for some comfort food, we like to make it the way mom did.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

21. Sure! Sometimes I wonder if ingredients just tasted better

A long time ago. Definitely less chemical, eh

[alfie]

35. That sounds yum.

I'll try that next time I am looking for a way to use up left over ham.

[Doc Sportello]

36. That recipe was kept in an old tin box

That was probably 80 or more years old. When I fixed it for others, they love it.

[Yonnie3]

7. Tomato Soup

with popcorn floating in it.

One summer my father was out of work and we were broke (no saltines) and this actually became a regular dish that we enjoyed. We were fortunate that we had a tremendous garden and a few laying hens that summer.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

9. Like that. And bet as a kid having popcorn was so cool. Campbell's?

Or fresh tomato soup?

[Yonnie3]

16. Canned cream of tomato so likely Campbell's

The tomatoes weren't ripe yet and would be be used with other veggies for soup or salad. I don't recall Mom ever making cream of tomato soup from scratch.

Drop that popcorn in and spoon it out before it got too soggy. Yes it was fun. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

23. Brings up another good memory of walking to the garden and picking fresh tomatoes

Just cutting up and salting. All my life I have never tasted tomatoes that tasted like they did back then. And now they all seem to have this huge white hard core in the middle of them that I don't remember.

[Yonnie3]

31. I recall the same

Cukes too. I think the ripening on the vine makes a big difference.

[mitch96]

42. "memory of walking to the garden and picking fresh tomatoes"..Mom was always growing

SOMETHING in the back yard be it tomatoes, beans, squashes or Mellons.. Anything that grew well on it's own.
I remember one summer I would walk around with a salt shaker in my back pocket and eat ripe tomatoes like an apple. Right off the vine and You are right.. they somehow tasted better.
m

[MyOwnPeace]

30. MY favorite from Mom

was Campbell's Tomato soup with elbow macaroni in it! Mmmmmmm!

[Freddie]

11. French toast for dinner

No bacon or sausage. We always had bread, milk and eggs in the house, even the day before payday.
In the summer, corn on the cob and tomatoes from the garden for dinner. Yum.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

29. Never thought about that but it's true we always had bread milk

and eggs. I think we had lots of stuff over toast. Like cream of mushroom with tuna over toast. That is one thing that seems missing today. There is something really good about the flavor of toast with butter with something creamy over it.

[blueinredohio]

12. Macaroni and tomatoes.

[Nanuke]

13. Swanson Pot Pies

Pot pies over a slice of bread.

[Chipper Chat]

15. Green fried tomatoes

I never got tired of them.

[Doc Sportello]

37. Best I ever had was at the Tupelo Honey Cafe in Asheville, NC

They have other locations but I know that one is great.

https://tupelohoneycafe.com/location/downtown-asheville/menus#main-menu

[mitch96]

43. "Tupelo Honey Cafe in Asheville, NC" Ok you convinced me... Post covid. ROAD TRIP!!!! nt

[Laura PourMeADrink]

58. Sounds good !!! My favorite were at Owens Fish Camp Sarasota

w/ goat cheese and bacon

[Polly Hennessey]

18. Navy bean soup with ham and a side of cornbread.

[Cracklin Charlie]

19. Lots of them.

Beans and cornbread. (Still make it myself for my birthday every year).

Chicken and dumplins.

Larrupin’ good supper.

[Frustratedlady]

25. Navy beans is still one of my favorite foods...especially over bread/butter.

Our lunchroom at school (40s - 50s) had homemade ham/beans with cornbread. The cooks poured a ladle of regular (hot) Karo syrup over the cornbread. I learned later in life that they did that to eliminate the gas often formed after eating beans. With some of the boys in our class, that was a blessing, I'm sure.

[FoxNewsSucks]

22. Ground beef hash

We had some kind of slicing contraption that would cube potatoes to about 1/4". The hash consisted of the taters, ground beef, onions and whatever corn/peas or other vegetables were handy.

It was pretty good

[Laura PourMeADrink]

24. That sounds good! do you remember? Did you have to boil the potatoes first?

[FoxNewsSucks]

26. Boil the cubed potatoes,

add onion to the browned beef, then the taters and veg and some of the boiling water to simmer for a while. It wasn't a dry kind of hash. Not really sure what else to call it.

[Auggie]

27. Grandmother: One-pot boiled cubes of beef chuck, cabbage, carrots, onions and potatoes

It was her Great Depression special. My grandfather ate it nearly daily up until 1977. And my Dad obviously grew up with it. My grandfather would mash the veggies all together and mix it with cut-up pieces of beef.

Mom never made it for the kids. On paper it's a pretty healthy dinner unless you cook the crap out of it (which my Grandmother did).

[Laura PourMeADrink]

33. That sounds delicious. We had similar only always

Had with pork. Wonder if the pork was an eastern European thing? Cheaper than beef? Beef and cabbage work well with stuffed cabbage huh.

[Auggie]

34. Yeah. Could be regional style.

Wasn’t easy for either set of my grandparents in the 30s. They bought the end cuts and/or cheap cuts of meat and made the most of them.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

51. :). Like my mom convincing us that the chicken back was the

piece she wanted. Leaving the good parts to us.

[Dave in VA]

28. Biscuits and sausage gravy

sometimes with fried potatoes.

Macaroni with tomato sauce and some Italian seasoning. No meat.

Beans and cornbread.

[Binkie The Clown]

32. Franco American spaghetti with added ground beef. nt

[mitch96]

44. Ugg.. I remember a friend growing up use to eat it cold out of the can..After school snack..

Her mom did not cook well.. or cook at all. They had to fend for them selfs...
m

[Binkie The Clown]

48. To this day (I'm 75) I'll eat it as a treat once in a while. Yum, yum, yum! nt

[Laura PourMeADrink]

47. Used to love the white one? FA Mac and cheese?

[Retrograde]

57. Ugg. My mother cooked canned F-A ravioli

or maybe it was Chef Boyardee. Anyway, it wasn't until I moved to California as an adult that I realized that ravioli and spaghetti could actually taste good - if it wasn't from a can.

[Binkie The Clown]

62. I don't think F-A ever made ravioli. That was strictly a Chef Boyardee thing.

The C-B sauce just didn't measure up, in my mind. Not like the F-A sauce.

Of course it's all Campbells now anyway.

[Kali]

38. beans and cheese tortillas

big pot of pinto beans (always around), the treat was some sharp cheddar or longhorn cheese. grated and about a tablespoon mounded into the center of a corn tortilla, sprinkle of salt and baked until crispy. in good times you can add a lot more cheese. LOL

[Buckeye_Democrat]

39. Potato salad, egg salad, etc.

In addition to mayo (which was sometimes homemade), my mother used a sweet and sour dressing which consisted of eggs (thickener), vinegar and sugar that had been boiled together.

The sweet/sour dressing maybe wasn't healthy, but it made the salads taste better than anything found in stores or restaurants.

Edit:
The sweet/sour dressing she made was similar to this one, I suppose.
https://delightfulemade.com/2014/05/27/best-ever-potato-salad/

[Laura PourMeADrink]

49. Interesting. Other ingredients sound like what you'd put

On cole slaw minus egg. I'm gonna try it.. thanks for finding recipe!

[Buckeye_Democrat]

54. You're welcome!

I think my mother used these proportions:
1 cup sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 beaten egg

Mustard was sometimes added too.

The eggs need to be heated slowly to prevent curdling. The mixture will thicken upon cooling, and it can be kept covered in the refrigerator for later use.

It's not a good addition for people with diabetes, but mixed with mayo in those salads makes a big difference for the taste. Used for macaroni salad too, of course.

I've added it to store-bought macaroni and potato salads too, which tasted pretty bland previously.

Edit: You could mix some of it into the salad. tasting it periodically until you think it's the right amount. Or just follow the recipe in the link to get a rough idea of how much to use.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

60. You made me think. There are certain dishes that stay with

You all your life - the way you grew up remembering the taste of your mom or grandma's potato and tuna salads and cole slaw.

For me too, memories of my grandma's chicken soup. I've been trying to recreate it all my life and it's never quite good enough. My mom said that it never will be because her mom would walk to the butcher and buy fresh fowl that will never be as good as anything bought today.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

61. My mother did the same!

She grew up during the Great Depression, and her family was pretty poor on their small farm, so she'd usually buy inexpensive items at the grocery store. Yet when it came to fowl, she would get the meat from a nearby Dunker family that raised chickens and turkeys. She always bought fresh eggs from them too.

I'll never even try to replicate her chicken and dumplings because I doubt that I could emulate it.

My parents could supposedly tell if a chicken wasn't fresh from the appearance of the bones.

And I'd usually get the assignment of squeezing out any leftover turkey quills, still embedded in the skin, on Thanksgiving morning before it was cooked. Yuck! But the turkey was indeed good-tasting, so the previous unpleasantness didn't turn me into a vegetarian.

[Warpy]

40. Not my mother, my grandmother

My mother hated to cook and it showed.

My grandmother used to get odds and ends from an elder brother with a butcher shop and make goetta, something that's a staple among immigrants from the Franco-German border regions. It's steel cut oats, a menagerie of minced meats, onions, black pepper, and cam get spiced from there although she generally didn't bother. After it was all mixed together and cooked, she'd stuff it into tin cans and refrigerate it. It would be sliced and fried like sausage and was a complete breakfast in itself if the hens weren't laying.

There are recipes online that will give basic proportions and suggestions for seasoning, but nothing is set into stone. It's like meatloaf, it reliably tastes like what it is no matter what goes into it.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

50. Wow never heard of that - it kind of reminds me of scrapple?

Pennsylvania dutch? Very similar except they use cornmeal & pork and fry up in patties. Guess way to stretch meat huh.

[Warpy]

55. Scrapple got a bad rap because it's meat in mush

Pin oats give goetta a little more texture, so it's nicer IMO.

[Staph]

45. Mom used to make something called Peter Stuyvesant.

The recipe came from the back of a box of Ann Page elbow macaroni (Ann Page was once the house brand for A&P grocery stores).

It's basically homemade mac and cheese, with a can of tomato soup mixed in and a few strips of bacon on top, baked in the oven. Very filling, and with that name, considered to be a fancy dinner by us kids.

[Midnight Writer]

46. Lard bread. Cover a baking sheet in lard, than cover that with stale bread. Cook in oven.

I hated it, but one of my brothers eats it to this day.

For a treat, my Mom would take Karo corn syrup, mix it with butter, and spread it on bread. Pure fat and sugar rush for a kid.

We struggled to find food as a family, but there was a neighborhood bakery that would hand out old, unsold bread for free, so we got a lot of that. Same with a local Meadow Gold Dairy. You could go to the back door in the evening, bring your own containers, and they would give you free "blue milk" and butter that was returned unsold by grocery stores.

Another was my Dad's concoction. He would leave a covered bowl of milk out until it is gel consistency. Then he would stir in sugar and put it in the fridge to chill. He ate it with a spoon like it was ice cream.

My folks were children of the depression. To them, it was more about finding cheap calories to keep you alive than any esthetic considerations.

[LAS14]

53. Tuna fish casserole.

8 oz elbow macaroni.
1 can Campbell's Mushroom Soup
1 can tuna fish

Cook the macaroni, mix, and top with buttered bread cubes.

Still a favorite today. Even thought the mushroom soup isn't quite as good since they removed the whatcha-ma-callit fats.

[Retrograde]

56. Rice and milk

cooked together in sort of a porridge. Something like Chinese jook but without any additional flavorings

[Laura PourMeADrink]

59. Lots of people have mentioned this I never heard of it before

We had Cream of Rice you made from a box. Rice certainly is great comfort food

[Mr.Bill]

63. Crab Cakes.

I know what you're thinking, crab cakes are not cheap.

But turn back the clock to when I was a kid in Maryland in the 50s. Crab was cheaper than chicken. Hell, If you had a friend who went crabbing, they were often free. Saloons used to dump them out on the bar like they were peanuts, and they made them so salty and spicy you had to buy more beer to drink with them.

When the family would sit down for a big crab feed, they were usually so plentiful there were always some left over. My mom and some of the other ladies would pick the leftover ones and the next day she made crab cakes for the kids for lunch. Simple to make, you add cracker crumbs to make them go further, most of the ingredients like mayonaise and worcestershire sauce were in any pantry along with the sacred Old Bay seasoning. We ate them between saltine crackers with ketchup.

I've paid big dollars for crab cakes in some restaurants, and they have never been as good as the ones mom put between those crackers with ketchup.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

64. That's a beautiful story.