Unhealthy/Gross foods growing up
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i remember during the summer my mother would work at a ta office and we would go with her. our big treat was getting to bring lunchables with us and using the microwave to melt the cheese on the pizzas or ham sandwiches we made.
my mom always cooked beautiful homemade meals but my dads a junk food junkie o occasionally there would be a boxed mac and cheese or ramen night.
we did spaghetti sandwiches with a good 1/4 inch of butter on the bread. we also had lunch sandwiches of butter, bread, ketchup and a thick slice of cold meatloaf
buffalo breaded chicken with blue cheese on hard rolls
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tracybear86 wrote: »The 2 strangest I can think of that I loved as a kid were:
Creamed eggs on toast = hard boiled eggs sliced up and mixed with white gravy served over toast
Spam and pea salad = pan fried spam and peas mixed with mayo, chunks of cheddar cheese and onions
Also my grandfather used to buy a beef tounge about once a week. My grandmother would cook it and then he would use it for sandwiches throughout the week. I have the worst memory of the first time I opened their fridge to find an entire tounge on a plate!
I forgot all about Spam and pea salad. Loved it!
We butchered our own beef. Mom cooked the tongue one time. Dad said "I don't care how poor we are, we don't EVER have to do that again."
We didn't. But I loved beef heart.
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My mother wasn't a good cook either but she liked to be praised after every meal. If we were silent, she would pat herself on the back.
I remember partially cooked spaghetti mixed with American cheese...the pasta was still crunchy. Yuck! I don't like macaroni and cheese for that reason...too sticky/gummy flavorless.
We ate canned sardines often. Also boiled eggs.
All meats were pretty much breaded and fried, cold cuts or fried hamburger.
Our vegetables were a wedge of lettuce or sliced tomatoes. Any other vegetables were boiled (out of a can).
She would buy frozen pot pies that would bake in the oven for an hour....she acted as if she slaved over the stove.
Cakes were always boxed cakes and either uniced or iced with boxed frosting. Pies were too complicated (thankfully).
My grandmother lived next door and we would go out in the garden and eat the vegetables off the vine...cucumbers, cabbage, or tomatoes. We had no idea what a bell pepper was...thought they were poisonous and smashed them.
Bell peppers are my favorite vegetables now....Then I didn't know that peppers were edible.
When I was 15, I ate my first slice of pizza....mushroom...it was from a restaurant and not very good.
I was actually undernourished, growing up....very skinny.4 -
SpaghettiOs with "hot dogs." I don't know if Chef Boyardee changed the recipe or my tastes have changed, but BLECH!
I admit to still liking this one - baked bean sandwiches. Baked beans (sometimes heated, sometimes cold) on bread. I still have them sometimes (like twice a year), but now the bread is whole wheat instead of Wonder white.
I used to melt Nestle's Crunch candy bars over the toaster (this was in the dark ages before microwave) and eat them melted. Actually, I would eat any chocolate melted.
Chocolate milk chocolate powder. I didn't like milk but I loved the powder!
Cheese sandwiches. I lived on them in college. White bread slathered with mayonnaise and two slices of American cheese. I couldn't eat them now (I wouldn't want to, actually too much mayo and the cheese tastes like wax to me) but I lived on them then.0 -
Looking at what you all have written here, I notice how different the „usual practice for a cheap meal” in households is around the world. I have never ever heard of spaghetti with buttered bread! My grandpa eats watermelon with bread, though.
Buttered bread was one of my favorites growing up. I spent part of my kindergarten and first two years of school in Austria, where we grew our own herbs as an educational hobby and used to cut a bit to put on the Butterbrot we ate during the break. Can't remember eating a lot of unhealthy food when I was there, but we were a bit strapped for cash and mom used to sometimes make cooked zucchini with a bit of leftover melted cheese and call it „fondue”. I thought it was fancy, and the edge of the matured cheese made the dreaded vegetable go unnoticed.
The rest of my childhood (before and after Austria) I lived in Romania. It was post-89 so we did have all the usual commercial sweets and commodities. As far as unhealthy goes, I loved the Chupa Chups lollipops, the ones that made your tongue blue, and 7Days croissants because they came with collectibles. My absolute favorite was the Kinder Egg, I was on a one-a-day diet.
My grandma was a fan of making things easy so I remember a lot of Alphabet instant Soup and instant strawberry pudding.
A household staple was frigănele - leftover bread soaked in a milk, egg and sugar mixture and then fried. They were heaven.
Oh, later edit for gross foods (foods which for me are not gross, but for others might be): Tripe soup (fantastic), fried breaded brain, hot fresh marrow, salted, spread on fresh bread.3 -
I still eat pretty much all of the snacks that I made myself at home as a child, with a few exceptions of course. Sometimes when I had a sugar tooth I would take yogurt and dump a few table spoons of cocoa powder and sugar, until it had the consistency of pudding. Ew, that's one tradition that's better left in the past. Here's the funny bit - a few weeks ago while skyping with my mother, she told me that she had made up this incredible chocolate pudding by doing that exact same thing I did back then. Great minds do think alike I guess
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Those foods I bought from the school snack booths though....I can't believe I ever found any of the snacks there appealing, just thinking about them now kills my appetite. Allow me to murder your cravings with the following list:
1. Miserable $0.90 pizza's with the most disgustingly cheap toppings and the most baffling colouration of the dough.
2. Traditional (in my country) soft pastry, which dripped fat when warm and could be used to excavate fossils once it got cold.
3. $0.15 juice box, which was water with toxic-looking bright red, yellow, green, and blue colour and very artificial tastes.
4. Cheap chips and puffs that apparently were supposed to be pizza flavoured, but smelled like hobo socks.
5. Folded and toasted pita sandwiches with a choice of questionably fresh mayo & non-mayo based salads, sauces and meat/cheese. The hygiene was terrible, there were sometimes cockroaches, the woman there wore no gloves and would occasionally drop coins in the mayo salads and then scoop them out with her fingers and finish the order.
Edit: My home country does not use dollars, but let's assume it does for the sake of relateability.0 -
lolothedragon wrote: »I don't ever remember eating anything especially weird, except maybe butter. I would eat with a spoon in allowed.
I feel kind of weird about cinnamon sugar toast now...I never thought it was strange. I still eat it on occasion. I think it's delicious. lol
I'm kind of wondering about that as well! What's unhealthy or gross about cinnamon sugar toast?! We never had "American" (???) white bread (as in Wonder Bread or the like); I'm not even sure if I've ever eaten that kind of white bread. So, our cinnamon sugar toast was always on wheat. As an adult I rarely eat it, but that's because I want a generous amount of vegan butter and cinnamon sugar. Calorie wise, it's a treat because it's just not very filling.
Husband loves cinnamon sugar toast. He was telling me that as a child they would buy jars of this pre-made cinnamon/sugar spread and asked me I would keep an eye out for it. He loved it as a kid and wanted to have it again.
Well after several weeks of looking I finally told him I can't find it anywhere. He looked online for it and found out it was taken off the shelf in the late 80's as it's a carcinogen
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We had "bread and butter" with spaghetti which was just a slice of untoasted wonder/white bread with a generous slather of butter on top. It was my favorite meal as a kid just for that bread lol I know this isn't very far from garlic bread/toast, but the thought of just plain untoasted white bread makes me want to gag!
Oh god we did the same thing... though I think we had wheat bread... which somehow sounds worse?
Also I remember eating saltine crackers with butter on them at my grandparent's house!! ahhhh lol
Although same grandparent's house.. we ate canned peaches without draining them and chopped up bananas and put in the juice. THAT still sounds good!
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My grampa always served buttered saltines whenever he would make chili. I don't eat them as an adult much though, because that extra butter adds up fast! Sometimes I have been known to sneak a few though because they still taste delicious.2
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I used to melt cheddar cheese in a cup and eat it that way, just the cheese after pouring off what oil came out of it. I used to like Little Debbie's snacks. My favorite was the oatmeal cream pie at my grandparents. I used to sneak them and hope they didn't notice a bunch missing. Later in high school, my idea of breakfast was a Charms blow pop and a diet Coke.3
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I used to melt cheddar cheese in a cup and eat it that way, just the cheese after pouring off what oil came out of it. I used to like Little Debbie's snacks. My favorite was the oatmeal cream pie at my grandparents. I used to sneak them and hope they didn't notice a bunch missing. Later in high school, my idea of breakfast was a Charms blow pop and a diet Coke.
A typical day for me in high school (90s) was this:
Breakfast - mini bag of Famous Amos choc chip cookies, mug of 2% milk
Lunch - Little Debbie Starcrunch or fudge round and Dr. Pepper
Dinner before work - Taco Bell Mexican pizza with sour cream added, Lipton peach tea
Snack at work - Reese's cups and Dr. Pepper
I cringe at this now! LOL. And I was very overweight btw. BUT all my friends ate similarly and were thin.
About twice a week I didn't work in the evenings and ate something reasonable like a chopped steak with ketchup or a baked potato with cheese, maybe a frozen burrito...but rarely any veggies.
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I forgot about taking mozzarella cheese sticks and melting them in the microwave....0
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In high school I got a job as a grocery store cashier. I remember one night I had to work late, and then had to work on a paper for school once I got home. I bought a jar of marshmallow creme at the grocery before going home, and then proceeded to eat the entire jar while I worked on my paper. Totally unhealthy, but not gross at all!! I'd still love a huge spoonful now and then!!1
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And I just remembered--I lived with my dad and stepmom in 6th grade, and my dad introduced me to his version of cinnamon toast. He would melt butter in a pot, add brown sugar and cinnamon, slather that onto bread, and toast it in the oven. It was awesome! So awesome, that I ended up aquiring the habit of coming home after school to an empty house and making up this butter/sugar/cinnamon concoction in a mug, microwaving it, and eating it with a spoon while I read my book. I was sneaky, too, and didn't tell my parents what I was eating.
I wonder if I would still like that now? Probably...1 -
lightenup2016 wrote: »In high school I got a job as a grocery store cashier. I remember one night I had to work late, and then had to work on a paper for school once I got home. I bought a jar of marshmallow creme at the grocery before going home, and then proceeded to eat the entire jar while I worked on my paper. Totally unhealthy, but not gross at all!! I'd still love a huge spoonful now and then!!
I actually still buy it several times a year, especially at Christmas when it's on sale really cheap...I eat it 1-2 spoonfuls at a time so it lasts for awhile but total guilty pleasure "snack"!
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The grossest for me was canned beef stew and 'Smash' (dried potatoes) when we went camping as children - it was gag inducing, yuck! and just thinking about that now would put me off my food ( it's a good job dinner time is over LOL )1
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Definitely gross: Mom would combine Hormel potted meat (a.k.a. tripe) with scrambled eggs and feed it to us as a sandwich on white bread. As a child, I liked that. As an adult, I bought a single can of potted meat and attempted to recreate the concoction. Perhaps I did. My tastes have changed. I admire her devotion to protein, but that's not the way to do it.6
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Samquentin wrote: »Cinnamon Sugar Toast. -toast bread, butter toast, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture. (my mom actually had a little container that always had cinnamon sugar in it!)
Hawaiian Delights... graham cracker, with butter on it, and brown sugar sprinkled on top, heated in the microwave for 30 seconds.
Yum I love toast with cinnamon sugar on it!0 -
potted meat/ deviled ham in a can on crackers, Franco-American Macaroni w-cheese sauce in a can, cream chip beef on toast, chicken ala king on white bread...LOL oh the 80's1
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LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »The grossest for me was canned beef stew and 'Smash' (dried potatoes) when we went camping as children - it was gag inducing, yuck! and just thinking about that now would put me off my food ( it's a good job dinner time is over LOL )
Oh god. That's what we had on camping trips too. Utterly vile. And for a change, we would have a tin of something called Chunky Chicken mixed with a tin of new potatoes. Equally vile.2 -
BruinsGal_91 wrote: »LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »The grossest for me was canned beef stew and 'Smash' (dried potatoes) when we went camping as children - it was gag inducing, yuck! and just thinking about that now would put me off my food ( it's a good job dinner time is over LOL )
Oh god. That's what we had on camping trips too. Utterly vile. And for a change, we would have a tin of something called Chunky Chicken mixed with a tin of new potatoes. Equally vile.
Chunky chicken ! That takes me back too LOL ...we still get that here but I won't be buying it either.0 -
Oh and canned ravioli!! Double yuck!
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Chef Boy R Dee Ravioli or Beefaroni for lunch every day. Processed cheese slices. Tang. Corned beef hash. Salisbury steak and gravy in a plastic bag. Thin spread of mustard on white bread (until that time it gave me severe indigestion).1
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LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »Oh and canned ravioli!! Double yuck!
My mom would put canned ravioli in a casserole dish (she usually "doctored" canned foods, but I don't remember her adding anything to this) and put crushed potato chips on top & baked it. It was one of my favorite meals. The last time I had it was the last time she made it
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LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »The grossest for me was canned beef stew and 'Smash' (dried potatoes) when we went camping as children - it was gag inducing, yuck! and just thinking about that now would put me off my food ( it's a good job dinner time is over LOL )
I'm trying to decide if this is as bad: I still heat up a couple of cans of Chunky Sirloin Burger soup, add a considerable amount of cooked frozen veggies, and serve it over real mashed potatoes. Yuck factor?0 -
My dad still makes shell noodles and butter with hot dogs. I secretly crave it on the daily.
I think my entire adolescence was fueled by yodels, big macs, white castle and diet coke.
I used to eat a lot of liverwurst too - never popular at the lunch table lol. I still love it, but the fat content makes it pretty hard to fit sometimes.
My grandma used to serve me gnocchi in butter then covered with sugar *audible drooling*
Ooh also fried chicken dipped in honey.
UGH I miss it all 1 -
LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »The grossest for me was canned beef stew and 'Smash' (dried potatoes) when we went camping as children - it was gag inducing, yuck! and just thinking about that now would put me off my food ( it's a good job dinner time is over LOL )
I'm trying to decide if this is as bad: I still heat up a couple of cans of Chunky Sirloin Burger soup, add a considerable amount of cooked frozen veggies, and serve it over real mashed potatoes. Yuck factor?
I didn't do the mashed potatoes. A pile of Ritz, saltines, or Cheezits, oh yes!0 -
LivingtheLeanDream wrote: »Oh and canned ravioli!! Double yuck!
I used to have canned Chef Boy R Dee ravioli a few times per week for lunch when I was in college. It was my favorite. Then one day I bought some cans from the supermarket and noticed "New improved flavor!" printed on the label. It was so disgusting that I couldn't even finish the bowl I had heated and tossed it out.
I haven't bought a can since (20+ years). 0 -
Bologna, butter, mustard, and cheese sandwiches. I think the butter was unnecessary. My mom put sugar on strawberries for us to eat. My great-grandmother always had Little Debbie cakes around.0
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Confession time: as a child I knew I wasn't allowed to eat salt straight, and I knew I wasn't allowed to eat sugar straight, so when my parents were both gone sometimes I'd mix the two together and eat it. It tasted AWFUL, but the rebellion factor was sweet.
That's what I always think of when I think of bad food from my childhood. It makes me gag a little bit.7
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