Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ohio, nice suburb of large ..for Ohio..city. Food was not good at all.

Chicken Romanov -called rolled up chicken, chicken ala king, baked chicken, Campbell tomato soup and grilled cheese, steak Diane -overcooked and drowned in sauce, sloppy joes, stuffed green peppers, scalloped potatoes, baked potatoes, corn, or salad which was iceberg with thousand island dressing from a bottle.

Eating out was Godfathers pizza, country club brunch or dinner usually surf and turf, Bobs Big Boy, Olga’s if we were in the mall, or Wendy’s.

Entertaining people would involve a hollowed out bread bowl with a cream cheese/chipped beef spread, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, chip dip made with onion soup packets.

The only ethnic restaurants were Chi Chi’s and one Chinese place that was very bland.

This sounds exactly like SW Michigan where I grew up. We also had Godfather's Pizza, Chi Chi's (where we all ordered chimichangas and fried ice cream) and Olga's at the mall (that place was soooo good).

Funny I grew up in the suburbs in CA and I remember Olga's bread.

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.

What is this staggeringly stupid ignorance?

The white kid who grew up in an Italian American family in Brooklyn ate differently from a white kid who grew up on a farm in Iowa who also ate differently from a Jewish kid who grew up outside Baltimore...

Kid, I'm old enough to remember life before Food Network. Sheesh, the ignorant stupidity of the woke.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:African-American and grew up in Pittsburgh. Grew up in the 50s and 60s. Mother was a SAHM, so everything was made from scratch. Our diet ran the gamut, everything from chitlins, beans and cornbread, to steak, chicken, pork chops, hamburgers, hot dogs, leg of lamb, shrimp newburg, chop suey, matzo ball, soup, to casseroles. Most meals had a serving of meat, starch and vegetables, sometimes salad. My mother was an excellent cook and baker. We had dessert regularly. I now own a restaurant and bakery.

Can we come to your bakery and restaurant?

Sorry, its not in the DC area and is a delivery only restaurant. My DD is a chef and I'm a pastry chef specializing in sugar-free desserts. I suppose its okay to link to my restaurant since it's not local, just to show the range of our food. https://taraperichicken.com

NP. This looks amazing, Chef! I am jealous of your customers. You had me at peach cobbler pies.

Anonymous wrote:African-American and grew up in Pittsburgh. Grew up in the 50s and 60s. Mother was a SAHM, so everything was made from scratch. Our diet ran the gamut, everything from chitlins, beans and cornbread, to steak, chicken, pork chops, hamburgers, hot dogs, leg of lamb, shrimp newburg, chop suey, matzo ball, soup, to casseroles. Most meals had a serving of meat, starch and vegetables, sometimes salad. My mother was an excellent cook and baker. We had dessert regularly. I now own a restaurant and bakery.

Thank you, PP, for bringing up shrimp newburg. That brought back some good memories.

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.

Food Network was building off of Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and later Martha Stewart. It’s important to note the true origins of food on TV. Countless chefs cite Julia as their inspiration, even because they were a kid and their mom watched it before Sesame Street came on. Talk shows like Oprah and Good Morning America having chefs come on and do cooking demonstrations also paved the way for Rachael Ray. I like Food Network, but there’s a lot of influence that let up to Food Network.

I grew up in West Germany. Breakfast and dinner was bread with things like salami, ham, cheese, cucumber, tomatoes and olives etc.
Lunch was a warm meal with a salad. We ate lots of fish, some meat, many local vegetables and rice, potatoes, or Spätzle.

Anonymous wrote:Ohio, nice suburb of large ..for Ohio..city. Food was not good at all.

Chicken Romanov -called rolled up chicken, chicken ala king, baked chicken, Campbell tomato soup and grilled cheese, steak Diane -overcooked and drowned in sauce, sloppy joes, stuffed green peppers, scalloped potatoes, baked potatoes, corn, or salad which was iceberg with thousand island dressing from a bottle.

Eating out was Godfathers pizza, country club brunch or dinner usually surf and turf, Bobs Big Boy, Olga’s if we were in the mall, or Wendy’s.

Entertaining people would involve a hollowed out bread bowl with a cream cheese/chipped beef spread, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, chip dip made with onion soup packets.

The only ethnic restaurants were Chi Chi’s and one Chinese place that was very bland.

This sounds exactly like SW Michigan where I grew up. We also had Godfather's Pizza, Chi Chi's (where we all ordered chimichangas and fried ice cream) and Olga's at the mall (that place was soooo good).

Grew up in the Baltimore suburbs, born in '79. Typical dinners were pork chops, lamb chops, steak, roast chicken, served with potatoes or rice, with peas or green beans and corn. Salad nightly. Occasionally we had spaghetti with meatballs. Meatloaf also made regular appearances. Once every other month we'd have sauerkraut as a side to the protein, usually pork. Once a week was fish, usually trout, sometimes swordfish. In summers we'd have sliced tomatoes and fresh green beans, crabcakes and steamed shrimp. Every now and then my mother would make an effort and serve steamed broccoli or cauliflower but they typically faded from the menu before she made an effort again. She was considered a good cook.

Lunches were usually cold cuts or tuna fish or peanut butter/jelly. Very typical.

I remember food becoming more "interesting" in the mid 1990s? Pastas other than spaghetti started becoming more common. Salmon started making an appearance. Asparagus started appearing regularly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Central California. Lots of good produce--my home county has a huge agricultural business. We tried lots of different recipes since my mom loved to watch cooking shows on TV on PBS. Like Ciao Italia, Yan Can Cook, etc.

When we went to San Francisco or Los Angeles, we would sometimes go to ethnic restaurants. We didn't go out much in our hometown, because the options were pretty boring and limited, though.

SLO?

New poster, I grew up in SLO county, too!

I’m from Eastern PA, Pennsylvania Dutch, and ate a lot of overcooked, bland food growing up. My mother believes salt and pepper are the only spices needed in cooking and is not interested in trying any others. I vividly recall the fish we ate on Fridays — a thin white filet baked at 375 for 1 hour. On the other hand, we had steak that was still cold inside — my father wanted to “see the blood run down his fork”.
At the same time, we also had lots of fresh fruit in the summer and good fresh tomatoes, onions, beans from the farmer who came around selling things from the back of his truck. Our neighbors had a sour cherry tree in their yard and we’d pick cherries for my mom to make a pie— using a store bought crust, but still great. Got apples from another yard and mom would make apple crisp.
I eat a vastly more diverse set of foods as an adult, but I still have very good memories of what I ate as a kid.
Also, there were lots of Eastern European immigrants in my area and I loved eating pierogies, halupki, kiffels, goulash, and other foods that were not part of my family cooking but available from neighbors, church festivals, etc.

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. At home, we always ate homemade meals Cantonese or Indian food that my mom (Indian) and dad (Chinese) made. Rarely ate out with my mom. She loves cooking and is a fantastic cook.

When out with my friends or my dad, we'd always opt for Pho, Cantonese or Japanese. Dim Sum, Hot Pot, Seafood. Occasionally, Thai or Korean. We didn't really eat fast food, or Americanized foods. There are endless options for authentic food where I grew up.

Grew up in Soviet Union. We ate lots of pork, ground beef, potatoes, eggs, black bread, root vegetables, cabbage, stews, milk, herring.
Most common was boiled potatoes with meat and gravy. I think we took Hungarian goulash soup and made it into gravy+potatoes thing instead.
We also ate a lot of soups as they were easy to make and kept us warm.
Milk, meat, eggs,vegetables were all local and fresh.
Nobody had time to make food into art form. I thought the food was great. I love warm food a lot more than cold.We ate fast and got back to doing things we really wanted to do. I love it that nobody seemed to be allergic to anything as the choices were narrow and all kids finished their food. Sugary things were not for every day unless lunch time at school.
I'm not a picky eater and it was not a thing to play with food or go on and on how one doesn't like something. It was shocking to see this throwing pies around in American movies and shows. I never starved, so it's not that. Playing and wasting food (and other things) is just not a thing to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:African-American and grew up in Pittsburgh. Grew up in the 50s and 60s. Mother was a SAHM, so everything was made from scratch. Our diet ran the gamut, everything from chitlins, beans and cornbread, to steak, chicken, pork chops, hamburgers, hot dogs, leg of lamb, shrimp newburg, chop suey, matzo ball, soup, to casseroles. Most meals had a serving of meat, starch and vegetables, sometimes salad. My mother was an excellent cook and baker. We had dessert regularly. I now own a restaurant and bakery.

Can we come to your bakery and restaurant?

Sorry, its not in the DC area and is a delivery only restaurant. My DD is a chef and I'm a pastry chef specializing in sugar-free desserts. I suppose its okay to link to my restaurant since it's not local, just to show the range of our food. https://taraperichicken.com

You have a beautiful family and your food looks incredible!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda, but very bland food. Like my mom put chicken breasts in the oven with nothing on them. Tuna Casserole. Terrible.

+1 in the California Bay Area, of all places. I was born in '79. Tuna casserole was frequent, or plain chicken put frozen on the grill. Cheese tortellini served with garlic bread and a salad. In high school I had cheerios every morning and a cup-o-noodle or white flour quesadilla every lunch. The carb-heavy menu was definitely a consequence of my mom's upbringing (1950s poverty cooking) but I also have clear memories of poor produce quality and stinking aisles in our local grocery, so maybe the retail grocery distribution network was not really developed in the 90s.

When I was a teen my parents started to realize that we had great fresh seafood available to us, so we had fresh fish at dinner instead. Spicy marinades, even. And in college I lived in a farming town and ate amazing fresh produce all the time. The produce I bought in college was fresher and more varied than what I can get in the DMV today, but DMV groceries are better than what I remember from younger childhood.

? I grew up in CA in the 70s/80s. I distinctly recall having fresh fruit year round. I grew up in Socal, LA County. Maybe our food distribution there was better?

I also grew up eating a lot of seafood, particularly fish.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:African-American and grew up in Pittsburgh. Grew up in the 50s and 60s. Mother was a SAHM, so everything was made from scratch. Our diet ran the gamut, everything from chitlins, beans and cornbread, to steak, chicken, pork chops, hamburgers, hot dogs, leg of lamb, shrimp newburg, chop suey, matzo ball, soup, to casseroles. Most meals had a serving of meat, starch and vegetables, sometimes salad. My mother was an excellent cook and baker. We had dessert regularly. I now own a restaurant and bakery.

Can we come to your bakery and restaurant?

Sorry, its not in the DC area and is a delivery only restaurant. My DD is a chef and I'm a pastry chef specializing in sugar-free desserts. I suppose its okay to link to my restaurant since it's not local, just to show the range of our food. https://taraperichicken.com

Your family and restaurant look great and fascinating, and I love Peri-Peri. I ate from Nando's in South Africa before it ever opened in Maryland! I might stop by, I drive from Canada to Maryland often, but don't take the Pittsburg route. Thank you for linking it here.