Chicken soup made from scratch
Snow cones
Any kind of processed fruit snack
Swiss Miss hot chocolate with the mini dehydrated marshmallows

Toast with butter and cinnamon sugar
Cheese toast
Eggs and toast in a bowl (toast cut into tiny squares and a fried egg with runny yolk on top)
Bagel Bites
Sarah Lee pound cake
Rice krispie treats
Hamburger stroganoff

Dinner was always a protein (meat, chicken, fish), a vegetable, a starch and a fruit. Sometimes it was a vegetable medley and sometimes it was fruit salad. Sometimes a piece of cheese along side. Always just enough, no leftovers. My parents did not like leftovers for some reason. I do similar, but I make enough for leftovers for lunch the next day. The starch has turned into whole grains of some sort, and I often roast several veggies but always a cruciferous one in the bunch.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:fresh strawberries
fresh milk
boiled, mashed, and roasted potatoes
roasted pork
fried eggs
root vegetables stews
goulash
black currant jam
fresh white bread
pancakes
herring
oatmeal
butter with everything
everything pickled
cucumbers, tomatoes
cabbage/sourkraut
different sausages, ham, smoked fish
meat, carrot/cabbage, and jam turnovers
potato salad
beets

You are from Eastern Europe

(So am I)

Yes, the most northern one. Nothing really grew there but strawberries and black currant. Those are happy memories of course. Since we were always hungry after running around, anything tasted good.
My dad was a hunter and a butcher, and both of my grandparents had farms. Grandma would milk straight into my little glass. I ate lots of meat, mostly pork. Herring was available daily while flounder was special occasion.
Daycare and school food was always local and fresh. Those ladies knew how to cook. Every kid has awesome memories from school food. We all ate the exact same 20 meals. Lots of different soups with dark rye bread and then dessert ofcourse.
I try to eat like I used to, but I can't cook to save my life. TJ salad once a day, fruits, and rye bread sandwich.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, it’s amazing how processed people’s childhood diets were. Almost everyone except the Eastern European person lists multiple UPFs.

The processed foods were "treats" in my house because they were so rarely allowed. My mom cooked, until she went back to work, part time, but when my sibling and I were in 4th and 6th grade, we each were responsible for dinner one night per week (cook dinner, real food, a vegetable, grain and protein).

Same. They really stand out because they were rare. I grew up in a house where everything was homemade (and I thought boring) and we didn't have the money for chef boyardee or tv dinners or whatever.

We ate so many pudding pops in the summer.

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, it’s amazing how processed people’s childhood diets were. Almost everyone except the Eastern European person lists multiple UPFs.

Because in many cases, those were the memorable treats.

Anonymous wrote:Hawaiian Punch in a big can you had to punch triangles into with a bottle opener. Also V8 in a big can.
“Western” salad dressing that had bull horns on the label and it was basically French.
Salad with blue cheese in it on holidays.
Hickory Farms gift boxes of summer sausage, cheese, and sweet hot mustard on Christmas.
Hostess pies in blackberry, lemon, peach and chocolate (I think you can only get them an apple and cherry now).

It was such a privilege to be the one to punch the triangles in. I can still remember that feeling of the metal curling in.

Lender’s egg bagels from the frozen section.

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, it’s amazing how processed people’s childhood diets were. Almost everyone except the Eastern European person lists multiple UPFs.

The processed foods were "treats" in my house because they were so rarely allowed. My mom cooked, until she went back to work, part time, but when my sibling and I were in 4th and 6th grade, we each were responsible for dinner one night per week (cook dinner, real food, a vegetable, grain and protein).

The smell of my mom cooking for Passover. She'd cook every day for two weeks leading up to the seder and every day when I came home from school our house smelled amazing. Even when she was cooking food I wouldn't eat (looking at you, meatballs wrapped in cabbage).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peas with those little pearl onions. I can't find them anymore. They were still in the stores a few years ago, both frozen and canned, but seem to have gone the way of the dodo now...

Laseur still makes them..saw cans recently at Lorton Food Lion

https://lesueurvegetables.com/vegetable/le-sueur-very-young-small-sweet-peas-with-mushrooms-pearl-onions-15-oz/

Anonymous wrote:Peas with those little pearl onions. I can't find them anymore. They were still in the stores a few years ago, both frozen and canned, but seem to have gone the way of the dodo now...

Laseur still makes them..saw cans recently at Lorton Food Lion

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
For context, I’m 55 and grew up in Fairfax County

Coke Slurpees

candy necklaces, candy cigarettes and candy lipsticks - all from ice cream truck. All chalky.

Original Doritos original flavor

Spaghetti drenched in a soup of Ragu sauce.

Campbell’s chicken noodle soup

Campbell’s minestrone soup

a very specific brand of very spicy, large, thin sliced bbq flavored chips. Heavy on the orange spicy powder and I can’t recall the brand and seemed to vanish by 1979. Mirrored interior bag.

fizzy, cold Schweppes Ginger Ale. So bubbly it made my nose itch. Can’t be replicated. I’ve tried.

Were they Eagle brand. I saw your description and my brain flashed "Eagle". those were the primo BBQ chips.

Or maybe Wise brand chips? Those bbq chips were the rage in the 70’s

Gosh, it’s amazing how processed people’s childhood diets were. Almost everyone except the Eastern European person lists multiple UPFs.