Where did you live and what did you eat growing up?

[Anonymous]

Grew up in India and the food in my house was great. My mom was an eager cook and cooked all manner of North Indian and South Indian foods. Three meals a day and a tiffin all cooked from scratch. We rarely ever ate out. No sweets unless it was was a festival or a birthday. No fried foods either. Store-Bought cookies and pastries a few times a year. I started eating pizza, IndoChinese and Mexican foods when I was in high school and loved all of them. Man, I had it good. Despite all this exposure, I am a lazy cook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Grew up in a very small nothing town in upstate NY with amazing Italian American food, and Greek and Polish.

So very good pizza/calzones/pastas like stuffed shells were always available. My dad was a huge buffalo wings fan so every once in a while that would show up in our house. Tangy.

Birthday dinner for everyone in the family was always at "Symeons" Greek restaurant, where we always ran into other people we knew also having birthday dinners. Very very yummy.

People in that town are also obsessed with a food called "Chicken Riggies" so that was a common party food. (A kind of pasta with chicken and a spicy creamy sauce. It's good.)

I swear, there is nowhere in DC that comes close to the level of pizza and Greek food. Maybe Greek Deli in Dupont.

My parents are Indian (Bengali) immigrants, so my mom cooked extremely delicious Bengali food throughout the week -- Dahl, chicken curry, puris, fried fish, etc. They also had lived in Scotland for a decade so they made a lot of British/Scottish food, like sausages rolls, "mince and tatties (ground meat and mashed potatoes)", a big breakfast with eggs and baked tomatoes and beans. She also grew to like chicken with barbecue sauce and potato salad? And filled in lots of meals with frozen chicken tenders or chicken patties. Also lots of homemade french fries.

Syracuse? Massena? If, yes, give me some pizza places in Massena and Watertown area, I'd love to try it.

Maybe Utica? I think that's the home of the chicken riggies.

I also grew up in upstate NY. My mom was a good cook, but my dad was a picky eater. So most of our dinners were simple meat (pork chops, steak), boiled potatoes, and boiled vegetables. Feel free to guess my ethnicity!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you were white it doesn’t matter where you grew up, you were probably eating the same variety of bland church cookbook food mentioned in the last 2 pages. American cuisine was shockingly uniform. Food Network really opened up people’s eyes to better ways of eating and trying different cuisines.

Have you even read the replies? Plenty of us generic white folks grew up in areas with ethnic European food traditions. Italian, Irish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian. You had exposure to your family’s traditions, but also what was offered in the community. Not everywhere eats/ate bland church cookbook food.

+1

Dh's family from middle America ate the same 4-5 meat and potato dishes, on rotation - 95% of the time it included potatoes and corn. My side's (New England) diet included fresh fish every Friday (year round), fresh vegetables year round, veal, chicken, steak, lamb - cooked all different ways. It seemed we had a constant, giant vegetable garden, but in reality, it was June to October.

Neither side grew up with much money, but the differences in diet and sustenance, and attitudes toward and around food, are nothing short of stark.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in an east coast suburb that was pretty white and middle class. But I'm not sure it really mattered where I lived, because I was raised by what I guess these days would be called an "almond mom" who was always on a diet, which meant that we were all on a diet. She cycled between WW, Jenny Craig, and for a long stretch in the late 80s, Deal-A-Meal. So much cottage cheese, so many "lite" foods, so many portioning cups and scales.

At the time I knew we ate differently than most people but it's only as an adult that I really understand how much I was affected by her issues around food and weight. I have worked had to not pass those things on to my own kids.

[Anonymous]

NY/NJ, immigrant parents.

Ate a lot of food from home culture, frequented Stop and Shop and Korean market for food.

Also ate a lot of bodega and deli food, like bacon egg and cheese, pesto chicken, Italian subs, Boar’s Head sandwiches, mozzarella sticks and fries from the corner store or slice of pizza when I was in high school. Hot bar and cold bar always had a good mix of salad and “ethnic” foods.

Looking at my in-laws (my siblings and I both married spouses from the Midwest several generations over), we ate a much more varied diet and a lot more fresh fruit and vegetables. We also ate way more fish and seafood than meat.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in Florida. My mom never used seasoning, on anything. She baked or boiled everything. Basic American foods, with no frills or flavor. We never ate fish, and I still don’t even know how to cook most of it. My mother is not at all creative in the kitchen, even though she always watched cooking shows. We went to restaurants with some frequency. I assume that was my father’s choice.

We also had an Italian grandmother. Food was a big deal over there, and cooking together was what the women and girls did on holidays. It was a damn party in that kitchen, and I loved every minute of it.

[Anonymous]

Grew up in CT in 80s-90s. Single parent mom (widowed; German/English ancestry, but not entirely sure of all of it) as 100% Italian dad died when I was little.

Breakfast: Cereal (Cheerios, Rice Krispys, but my mom generally refused to buy sugary ones like Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, much to my dismay). A lot of zucchini bread (made with zucchini from our backyard haul every summer, then frozen), eggs, yogurt.

Lunch: cold cut sandwiches - bologna, olive loaf (which I loved as a kid), ham, salami. Sometimes sub hot dogs and ketchup on white bread if we were out. Probably w/ a piece of fruit like an apple or banana that didn't require cutting or keeping in a container. I lived for the sweet treats that I always got in my lunch like hostess cupcakes or Little Debbie - My favorites were Star Crunch, Nutty Buddy, etc.

Dinner - all sorts of things, but a lot of:
Breaded and pan fried chicken cutlet or pork chops
Beef stew
Pasta with red sauce/meat sauce (or ravioli or shells)
French bread pizzas
Soup. Favorite was tortellini in chicken broth with some veggies like carrots/celery and/or peas. Sometimes split pea soup w/ ham.
Boiled cabbage and ham/brisket
Hot dogs, hamburgers
Steak (cheap cuts)

Sides were frozen or canned veggies, sliced and fried potatoes, rice (sometimes
rice and black eyed peas).

In the summer, we had a garden in the backyard so there was a lot of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers tossed in olive oil and vinegar. Zucchini and eggplant would be thin sliced and fried (sometimes, but not always breaded), sometimes turned into like a zucchini/eggplant parm casserole.

Always had ice cream in the house.

[Anonymous]

Midwest

-lots of pasta
- roasted chicken, meatloaf, beef stew
- pB&J for lunch almost every day
- many dinners were chicken, some vegetable (often frozen or canned), and either rice or potatoes
- lots of iceberg lettuce salads
- takeout Chinese
- pizza

[Anonymous]

Pacific Northwest, small-ish town.

Lots of seafood - salmon, halibut, cod, crab were all in regular rotation.

Lots of meat/starch/veg dinners. Salmon with rice and asparagus. Pork chops with mashed potatoes and broccoli. The occasional casserole, pasta dish, or tacos thrown in.

Honestly, not that different from what I eat now. I think the biggest difference is that we had little or no exposure to any ethnic food. There was one "Chinese" restaurant that was about the level of Panda Express ....maybe. When I was around 10 there was a Mexican restaurant added, about the same quality. There was one good sushi restaurant. Never had Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, South American, Spanish, etc until I was a teenager and we moved closer to the big city. Never saw any cuisine from any part of Africa until my 20s. No tropical fruit, just apples (3 varieties, red green or yellow), oranges, bananas (1 variety) etc. We have much better global variety available now.

[Anonymous]

So Cali

Classic Yank
Meat Loaf
Fried Chicken
Steak
Noodle soups
Curry Chicken
Chinese - Roast Pork, dim sum as treat
Mexican - Tamales, Tacos
Local seasonal fruit & vegetables

Had sushi really early

[Anonymous]

Bethesda- I remember eating hamburgers on white bread and the bread would turn pink.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grew up in CT in 80s-90s. Single parent mom (widowed; German/English ancestry, but not entirely sure of all of it) as 100% Italian dad died when I was little.

Breakfast: Cereal (Cheerios, Rice Krispys, but my mom generally refused to buy sugary ones like Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, much to my dismay). A lot of zucchini bread (made with zucchini from our backyard haul every summer, then frozen), eggs, yogurt.

Lunch: cold cut sandwiches - bologna, olive loaf (which I loved as a kid), ham, salami. Sometimes sub hot dogs and ketchup on white bread if we were out. Probably w/ a piece of fruit like an apple or banana that didn't require cutting or keeping in a container. I lived for the sweet treats that I always got in my lunch like hostess cupcakes or Little Debbie - My favorites were Star Crunch, Nutty Buddy, etc.

Dinner - all sorts of things, but a lot of:
Breaded and pan fried chicken cutlet or pork chops
Beef stew
Pasta with red sauce/meat sauce (or ravioli or shells)
French bread pizzas
Soup. Favorite was tortellini in chicken broth with some veggies like carrots/celery and/or peas. Sometimes split pea soup w/ ham.
Boiled cabbage and ham/brisket
Hot dogs, hamburgers
Steak (cheap cuts)

Sides were frozen or canned veggies, sliced and fried potatoes, rice (sometimes
rice and black eyed peas).

In the summer, we had a garden in the backyard so there was a lot of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers tossed in olive oil and vinegar. Zucchini and eggplant would be thin sliced and fried (sometimes, but not always breaded), sometimes turned into like a zucchini/eggplant parm casserole.

Always had ice cream in the house.

That's kind of how we ate. I guess it could have been better, but overall, it seems pretty balanced.