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Does anyone remember????

Mama Mangia

Mama Mangia

Super Moderator
AMERICAN CHEESE???

I mean - the original American cheese that would break when you tried to fold it. It was drier and not processed like all these Kraft cheeses today??

What I wouldn't give to get my hands on the good cheeses we had 50 years ago!


Heck - I miss the glass quarts of milk with the cream on top that we had to shake before drinking. Milk never lasted more than 2 days. And it was real milk - whole milk - not 2%, 1%.

Chocolate milk in those days was made with whole milk as well.

Cottage cheese didn't last long - and it was so good and creamy.

Neither did bread. Bread in the good ol' days was so good! You either baked or bought it daily.

Wonder bread came out and ruined it all. Although I have to say that Wonder bread USED to be good - changed the formula - yuck, yuck, yuck. and since when does "fresh" bread last for a month on the shelf????? Oh yeah - feed me more - I'm almost totally embalmed already from the preservatives!

I bought a bottle of Dad's Old Fashioned Rootbeer a couple days ago - not the same.

We had 7-Up - the good 7-Up. We had Coca Cola - the original formula - much better tasting - who cares if it took the rust off chrome bumpers! Even Pepsi has changed.

We had Veep. Another lemon-lime drink that was good. They came out with Sprite - too syrupy - not the same.

Bosco chocolate syrup was really good. Where's Bosco??? Even Nestle's Quik has changed!

Very seldom do I buy Campbell's chicken noodle soup - cripe - that stuff is nasty! They changed their forumla too. Bought a can last week for a quick lunch with a sammie - gag city!

I miss Holly Farms chickens - they were the best! Tender, juicy and not fat.
Thanks to Perdue - they are gone. Hate Perdue.

It was nice to shop in the olden days - you didn't have to read every dang blasted label to see what was in your food. If you bought tomato paste, you got tomato paste - not tomato paste with herbs, tomato paste with garlic, etc. Ditto with canned tomatoes and sauces!

You wanted Alfredo sauce you made it - no jars of it on the shelves. I think the only breaded meat in the freezers were breaded veal patties.

And shopping was easier and delightful - you didn't have to walk 35 miles up and down aisles to find what you wanted. You bought groceries in the grocery store, drugs at the drug store, etc.

And I miss the old-fashioned bakeries. Hate the grocery store bakeries. It's all crap! Comes in frozen - gets proofed and baked. Some just comes in frozen. What ever happened to the rule - if it's been frozen you cannot freeze it again??? Stores don't care.

And you can't tell me that the packages of chicken parts that come in the store are not already frozen! They claim they are packed in ice for shipping. NOT! they come in FROZEN - which means you cannot take them home and freeze them. Eat them within a day or two.

Voortman cookies anyone????? Dang things will last 2 years or more - check the dates the next time you're in the store - turns my stomach!

Don't depend on any can sizes when you're cooking - the sizes and weights are all changing.

Tuna for instance - 6 1/4 oz cans are 5 oz water, or oil, or olive oil and 1 1/4 oz of flaked (looks more like ground to me) tuna??? Maybe part of a fin???? You may get a samll sandwich from one can. Add a lot of onion and relish to make up for it. LOL

oh shut up Mama..................
 
MamaM I love you, you crack me up! But things did taste better back in the day.......
I am glad we can still cook from scratch!
 
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Mama, let me ask you something.. When you were younger, lets say, 15 -16, did those older than you dream about their good old days too?

I mean, if we watch video of the times before both our days, you see people basically with the same complaints as we all have today, that the world is changing for the worst and how great things were in their youth.

People are so worried today about tomorrow, yet I cannot even fathom what people were thinking when most of Europe was falling to Hitler. A time where London was about to fall to the Germans. Can you imagine what you would have thought going to bed at night after reading about the bloodshed drowning people just across the pond trying to fathom how any country could bomb women and children (target them mind you) and wondering what the world is coming to?

Imagine if you would, the Army of your countrymen coming into your town and shockingly gun down protesters such as what happened in Mass. in the 1700's. Would you wonder if the world was coming to an end?

How about when you and I were much younger and every night we wondered if some idiot who parked a bunch of missiles 90 miles from Florida would end civilization as we know it.. I remember thinking what this world was coming to, and yet today I think we can say at least in the aspect of immediate world destruction, we have changed for the better.

I think we as people are always concentrated in the now and think that everything we are going through today is new and nobody has ever felt the way we do right now. In reality, we are always in a state of flux. The good old days for you, were "Times achangin for the worst" for someone else.
 
jafo -

We all know that we cannot change all the horrible things going on in the world! And each generation will have good and bad memories - some worse than others.

But dang it - do they have to screw up our food! Do they have to change the formulas/recipes? It's the foods that I am talking about. I want the good ol' days of the good foods - made better - less preservatives - not having to read every label - no MSG hidden by one of it's 24+ other names, etc.

Do you think I want to go back to the wringer washer?
Do you think I want to go back to beating a cake batter by hand with 300 strokes?
Do you think I want to go back to telling the oven temperature by using my hand because there is no thermostat?
And having to light pilot lights in the oven and the stove top?
Do you think I want to go back to defrosting the freezer?
Do you think I want to go back to the days of Glass Wax?
Cripe - 2 black and white channels on TV with rabbit ears - and we appreciated it.

Been there - done that.

Stop screwing with our food! That is my complaint!
 
Cook Chatty Cathy said:
MamaM I love you, you crack me up! But things did taste better back in the day.......
I am glad we can still cook from scratch!
Click to expand...


Sure - if they stop screwing around with many of our products! Just wish I was 20 years younger - I'd be farming! Wouldn't need a sotre for a thing!
 
You're beginning to sound like my Mama, Mama.

Everytime we tried to get her to visit a reenactment, or if she saw us dressing for one, she'd snort. To the day she passed she couldn't undeerstand why we wanted to live in the past.

"The good old days are right now!" she'd insist. "I have no reason to go back."

Now Jaffo is right in one respect. Every generation, as it gets older, complains about how things have gone downhill. Mostly what they're complaining about, though, is change itself. It weren't that way when I was a boy.

We are the first generation (or multi-generation), however, in which "progress" actually represents a degradation in the quality of life. Our fresh foodstuffs arrive poisoned. Our canned and frozen foods are filled with chemicals, and salts, and antibiotics. Livestock is factory-farmed, and force fed unnatural foods.

Clothing and furniture are built shoddily, out of intentionally poor materials. Automobiles are deathtraps (hey! Who here remembers when Americans loved their cars? Now we barely tolerate them.) The country's infrastructure is teetering.

And the folks on TV get away with calling fantasies "reality."

These aren't merely feelings and opinions. These are facts. We are in the worst shape we've ever been. Where is the tomorrow they promised me when I was a kid?
 
I see you point Mama, and you have a good one!
Also, I want you to know I mean the way you express yourself just tickles me, I love it when you end by saying "Oh shut up Mama"........for some reason that just cracks me up!
 
Cathy - sometimes I just rattle - and you get me going and I'm ready to manufacture the concrete shoes! LOL

Just think about it - being on line I can stand on my soapbox and never get hit by the tomatoes being thrown. Hell - they're contaminated anyway!

KYH - our country is the pits. We have gone from being a superpower to the bowels of hell. Take a look at this "land of plenty" - plenty of people losing their homes with the mortgage crisis, plenty of people looking for work because companies have "down-sized" or more commonly called "right-sizing". Plenty fo nothing for so many - and no relief in sight.

The kids suffer today - one parent is struggling to put food on the table - 2 parents are working twice as hard.

The education system is so full of "unions" that they have forgotten that they are supposed to be teaching. The old school marms devoted themselves to the kids and their education. Today they would rather sleep with the students and pose for them and send it to their emails and cell phones.

Our country had gotten so greedy - from the highest officials to the homeless. It's me, me, me - so sad.

After 911 I thought our country would learn something - but apparently they didn't.

Ain't getting any better - just getting worse -

and in my final days -

STOP SCREWING WITH MY FOOD!

LOL!!!!
 
MamaM, I know our country has problems many many many of them. I still love America and will always be thankful that I am American! It is our duty (patriotic or otherwise) to make it the best country that we can, as much as we can. Like Jafo it is my desire to be the best I can be, teach my children likewise, and demand reform when needed, vote, and there again HOPE for a better tomorrow. We all have to do our part, and hold big businesses accountbale, and support the powers that be in trying to do a better job.
 
mama's piece is great! At 41 (older than some- younger than others) I can identify w/ many of the things she writes of.

I hate the huge mega-stores where one has to park 3-3/4 miles away from the entrance, and hike 183 square acres of square-footage just to buy deodorant, a lightbulb, radishes and a gallon of milk!

I don't remeber "Veep" soda but I do recall various flavors of "Faygo", then there was "Green Rover Soda", and "Cream-Sickle Soda" in the red coke machines that cost a quarter and the very narrow vertical window was pulled-open so you could pull hard to release your long-neck bottle from within the claws of the machine, then pry-loose the bottlecap in the little built-in gizmo provided alongside of the window.

I don't remember "Voortman" cookies but I used to love the various flavors of "Archway" cookies Mom used to buy. My favs were black walnut icebox cookies, lemon icebox cookies and molassess w/ the huge crystals of sugar. Yum!

We were raised on Campbells chicken noodle and vegetable beef condensed soups and not the fancy gourmet chunky stuff- rather the straight, "regular" type- nothing fancy about it! We also often ate mix & roll-out pizza, and spaghetti made from the boxed-mixes put out by Chef Boy-ar-dee (complete w/ tiny cans of parmesan "dust" provided.) These were weird looking back- but yummy to a 5 yr. old! I wonder if these 2 products are still sold?

We ate sammies a lot- with the "breakable" American cheese mama describes that one had to peel from the stack of other slices, no individually-wrapped slices for our frugal household!- also bologna we cut ourselves from the red rubbery cellophane covering, as well as olive loaf lunchmeat, ham & cheese loaf lunchmeat, and liverwurst with the rubbery strip of fat running a round the perameter of the slice...

I remember delivered milk, buttermilk, butter and cottage cheese... delivered eggs... I remember free tea-towels in large boxes of powdered "Breeze" laundry detergent, and free drinking glasses from gas stations w/ a fill-up, and of course a house-full of stuff redeamed from S & H Green Stamps!

For those lonely for the olden days, you need to check-out this nostalgic magazine put out my the same folks who publish "A Taste of Home" magazine:

Reminisce Magazine Subscription - History - Magazines.com Magazine Subscriptions
 
OH My! Reminisce Magazine has been a favorite of mine for yrs. now! I love it, and the photos are the best!

It is so funny the things we remember from "the good old days"! I gave up longing for foods from the older golden days though, I just really shop carefully now! I smell my produce YEP I SURE DO, if it doesn't have that certain smell I don't buy it! I still feel my bread [Mom taught me that!] My nose has never let me down, my eyes have! It may look pretty but it might be tasteless! When shopping I still open egg cartons and check for broken eggs, I even smell meats and fish! If it smells old my nose will know. I believe I have gotten some wierd stares, and impatient ones behind me in line, but they can go find something and come back later, yesterday it took me a good 5 min's to pick out a ripe watermelon, my granddaughter was with me and I was teaching her how to get a good melon, and believe me the majority of them were picked prematurely! So we must be responsible consumers, and buy that which we can use and enjoy eating! If there are u-pick it fields of produce or fruit orchards we can shop there, it is a little more work being so selective, but it is worth it 'cause I want now-TODAY-to be the good days!!! I like it the way KYH's Mamma said it These are the good old days!

I am glad for good memories, but I want my g-children to have good memories of great food too, and I love it when she has that beautiful satisfied look on her face when she is enjoying something! She loves strawberries-there again I smell 'em, and we do not buy inless they have that sweet smell! She loves her berries, but if they don't smell right she has to wait 'til they get some good ones in!
 
We've all got SO many wonderful memories from days gone by. Thank goodness for our recollections!

Not everything about the past was always good, though... My favortie country diva, Dolly P. has a great hillbilly song called "In the Good Old Days- When Times Were Bad". There's a line that says "No amount of money could buy from me the memories that I have of them- no amount of money could pay me to go back and live through them again".

But again- thank goodness the good memories for almost all folks, far outweigh the bad- at least I hope they do, anyway!
 
The words from that Dolly P. song are so much my philosophy!!!

But you are right hopefully we all have far more good memories, than bad ones!

I think I can remember being poor more than anything, that is not necessarily a bad thing as we truly apperciated everything we had, but it sure was hard. But hey we ate, had a roof over our heads, and clothes on our back and here we are we made it thru the rough times Thank God!
 
CAG - I love that magazine!

I remember the gas station attendant with the little cap, bow tie, washing the car windows and checking the oil and tires with every fill up.

I miss the milkman! I really do. I could get butter, cottage cheese, eggs, milk, sour cream - it was so nice if you wanted to bake something before doing your weekly grocery shopping.

We had a 101 (bleach) man - sold gallons (glass) of bleach.

And of course - the popcorn man, the little merry go round that drove around the neighborhood and the man that pushed a cart sharpening your scissors and knives.

Glasses came from the gas station - so did recipe cards! And for a while there - glasses came in your powdered laundry soap boxes.

That cheap pink dish soap cleaned very well and cut through grease.

LIVERWURST - OMG - to this day it is my all time favorite! I can't get enough of it. And yes, bologna (all beef of course), pimiento loaf, spice loaf, pickle loaf. Really do miss that cheese!

And the pinmiento cheese was so good! It was right along side the other American cheeses. Cheddar cheese actually crumbled! So good!

Everything had flavor!

No expiration dates and no one got ecoli or salmonella, etc. You could trust your butcher. There are very few butchers - the ones today are not real butchers. They open a large cardboard box and remove pre-wrapped meat packages that they weigh and put in the case. Many times it's already frozen - save them from having waste.

That should not be allowed! You cannot re-freeze meats/poultry, etc. unless you cook it first.

Oh - the wonderful memories...............
 
Coal and ice were still being delivered from a horse-drawn wagon when I was very much younger than I am. My grandfather would follow them around, collecting the droppings to use in his garden. He shovel up the manure and put it in a bushel basket---something else that's all but gone.

The dairy guy was modern, though, and used a step-van. But the dairy was still local: and we lived in the big city.

Mama, you remember leaving notes in the empty milk bottles (yes, children, bottles. Made of a magical substance called "glass.") when anything but the standard delivery was wanted?

The knife-sharpener didn't have a push-cart by us. He had a tricycle kind of deal, and pedaled around the neighborhood.
 
You are young, Cathy.

51! Hmmmmmph! Just a punk kid next to me and Mama. :p
 
You little p-pots don't know what a good life we had in those days. People were considerate too!

Take me back there anytime!

BTW - We'd nab some coal and write on the sidewalk as if we had chalk. Sure got dirty doing it from all that coal dust while dumping it down the cellar windows!
 
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