Comfort Food from the 1970's

Jonathan & I have a weakness for Tuna and Pea Rolls. I don't make them often, but every time I do (as I did last night,) I'm transported right back to my mother's kitchen circa 1974. Jarred mushrooms, frozen peas, canned tuna, bright orange Kraft cheese, jarred dried herbs, creamy white sauce... takes me right back to my childhood. Rolling up the filling in cooked lasagna noodles made it seem so "gourmet" that you could serve it to company, perhaps with some Pillsbury Crescent Rolls on the side. Sure, I could substitute fresh mushrooms, fresh peas in season, cooked and flaked fresh tuna, fresh thyme, and grate some "fancy" cheese on top, but it just wouldn't satisfy in the same way.

Poor photo, that doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea:



Anyone else still pull out an oldie, but goodie, from the 70's on occasion?

Lynn,

While you experienced it in the 70's. I think this is another variant of tuna noodle casseroles that swept the country in the 1950's. My friend Penelope Bingham has a whole lecture on "Whatever Happened to Tuna Noodle Casserole."

The mere mention of "Tuna Noodle Casserole"—the one made with canned tuna, packaged noodles, and canned soup—to an American of a certain age can call up powerful memories. Love it or hate it, Tuna Noodle Casserole has been an icon of American home cooking since the 1950s. The program invites the audience to think about the ways in which the family dinner table and American culture have changed since the days of Leave it to Beaver and to consider the role of the food industry in American food culture.

I did look around to see if there were other recipes with tuna rolled up in the lasagna and didn't immediately find one. There were lasagna variants, but not yours. I would venture to guess it was considered a tuna stuffed manicotti. I remember reading the box of lasagna about stuffing and rolling it up a lasagna noodle it became manicotti.

My Mom did make tuna casserole a few times. I've been thinking of making one since Penelope brought up the topic a while ago. Your post is pushing this desire just a bit further to the top.

Thanks!

Regards,

Tuna casserole is one of my favorite meals. MMmmm!

Check out the cool tin tray..sweet!

.49 and .89 cents nice buy and easy fixing. Tasted OK, would love to see the back of these boxes to see whats in the food and how many fat grams and stuff.

cbot,

I like the TV dinners where the front of the box suggested a TV. The dinner was in the screen and there were knobs on the bottom. I remember the pure joy of being allowed to eat a TV dinner. It usually tied in with having a babysitter.

Regards,

cbot,

I can't even tell you how many times I had that exact Swanson fried chicken meal before my parents headed out on a "date" night. It was always a treat to be able to eat the warm apple dessert thing first. Swanson frozen chicken pot pies were also big at our house around that time. I can't imagine what it would taste like to me now, but I sure liked it back then. At some point, the Swanson meals disappeared from our household and if my parents went out without me I moved on to Kraft mac & cheese and Tombstone frozen pizza. Hard to say which items had the least nutritional value - probably the macaroni and "cheese."

Those Swanson TV dinners were big in our house on my parents' night out during the 60's. I always dreaded the rancid, greasy fried chicken and the mystery-meat Salisbury steak, but found the pork loin (barely) acceptable due to the side of stewed apples that accompanied it. Still, the whole thing tasted like the aluminum tray and the freezer and made me feel miserable. I'd rather eat canned soup any day than a TV dinner. I'd say they are the opposite of comfort food.

By the time I reached my teens in the 70's, I had learned to cook, so these "meal solutions" aka "meal problems" were a thing of the past. For me, 1970's comfort food fell into the hippy-dippy category: homemade granola, avocado-sprout sandwiches, my college boyfriend's carrot-potato curry over rice, or the "French" category: quiche, chocolate mousse, cheese fondue, spinach salad with bacon.

I still like my own granola and avocado-sprout sandwiches.

Josephine wrote:I always dreaded the rancid, greasy fried chicken and the mystery-meat Salisbury steak, but found the pork loin (barely) acceptable due to the side of stewed apples that accompanied it.

I remember wondering how those apples could approach the temperature of the sun after only being warmed in a 350 oven for 30 minutes. Ouch.

Didn't have tuna casserole growing up, but this thread brings to mind a dish that was my favorite back in my youth. It was macaroni with sour cream, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and smoky links. Boy, did I love that. Makes me want to dig out the old recipe card and see if it still tastes good to me (can't imagine that, with that much fat, it wouldn't.)

Our main frozen meal fall-backs, also remembered with fondness (though I wonder how they'd go over today) were Stouffer's spinach souffle and, just for me (neither my mom nor dad liked it), Stouffer's creamed, chipped beef.

Ah, memories.

I remember many of these

My mom had a couple of regrettable regulars in the 70s as well as a couple of winners.

Of the winners were a french bread pizza loaded down with ground beef, pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella. I was also pretty fond of her stewed chicken with Bisquick drop dumplings. There was also this great soupy stewy combination of chicken and shrimp in a sherry cream sauce over white rice. I wouldn't mind how to know making that today. We ate lots of baked chicken seasoned with lemon and soy sauce.

To this day, Mom won't eat a vegetable unless its covered in some cheesy, creamy can of mushroom soup based sauce. She also made a "baked chili" which I now know to properly categorize as "braised" that used good lean beef, lots of spices and dried kidney beans that cooked in the braise.

The losers included Turkey Tetrazzini, an abomination of spaghetti, peas, turkey, canned mushrooms and some god awful white sauce. We could always find a friend's house to eat dinner if we had enough warning on a turkey tetrazzini night.

She also used to champion her sweet and sour chicken recipe which she claimed was prepared exactly the way it was in Hong Kong (we were simple people and taught to believe what our parents said). It was a vinegary combination of chicken, green peppers, canned pineapple and sugar. I cringe at the thought of it even today.

Hi,

My Mom and her brother went ga-ga over Apian Way pizza. Last year I bought a box for Mom to relive the memories. It was a Bisquik type dough and sauce. The cheese in a can was no longer present. While Mom didn't particularly like it, I know Apian Way circa 1955 still lives on in her mind.

How was Chef Boyardee?

In true 1970's food memories, I recently tasted Lasagna Soup at Bob's Pantry and Deli in Highland Park. It tasted exactly like the canned lasagna purchased heated from a vending machine at Elm Place Junior High in the early 1970's. While in retrospect it was a waste of 35 cents, which I did pretty frequently back then.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:My Mom and her brother went ga-ga over Apian Way pizza.

I have a good friend who absolutely loved these. I loved the concept but the reality never really delivered.

I certainly ate my share of Swanson dinners but for some reason the frozen dinners I really remember (liking) are the short-lived Libby The Kid dinners. Not only did I actually enjoy them a lot but having one usually meant that the parents were going out and a babysitter was coming, which meant we were going to have some relatively unsupervised fun.

Am I the only person here who remembers these . . . ?



=R=

Ah, the Swanson tv dinners! We also were treated to these special meals when my parents were going out on a date. If we didn't get these, it was usually a bucket from the Colonel. I think that was the only way we ever got to eat fried chicken in our house.

I also remember when they took Tab off the market, my mother ran to the store and stockpiled it in the basement.

Suzy

I remember when the Swanson TV dinners came in foil trays, covered in foil. It used to Pi$$ my Mom off big time that I liked the Swanson meatloaf better than hers. Her meatloaf was HORRIBLE (Sorry Mom), very dry and over cooked. I made my meatloaf for her last year and she LOVED it. I remember her saying "Where did you learn to make meatloaf like that?....Wow". I wish I could have made my meatloaf-cor-don-bleu for her. I think she would have loved it.

sdritz wrote:

I also remember when they took Tab off the market, my mother ran to the store and stockpiled it in the basement.

I understand. We had a pantry full of at least a two year supply of Sweet N low when the FDA banned saccharin.

Hi,

I was in 5th grade the first time I tried Tab, which was post cyclamate version. All it tasted of was chemicals. My friend Janet drank it eagerly. I sipped that poison all afternoon and never finished it. I've heard Tab with cyclamates was quite acceptable. It's a drink I have no interest to revisit.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

I was in 5th grade the first time I tried Tab, which was post cyclamate version. All it tasted of was chemicals. My friend Janet drank it eagerly. I sipped that poison all afternoon and never finished it. I've heard Tab with cyclamates was quite acceptable. It's a drink I have no interest to revisit.

Regards,

Man, I used to love Tab -- couldn't drink Coke, as it was too sweet -- but Tab, it was just barely sweet, but was still cola. Of course, it was better with cyclamates, but I remained faithful long after it changed. And I wasn't alone. I remember finding (and saving) a cartoon where a corporate executive was sitting at a huge desk in a huge office, and there was a soda fountain spigot with Tab on it on the side of the desk. Fellow Tab drinkers used to notify each other where they found it, as it was slowly withdrawn from the market.

But now, aspartame makes me sick and high fructose corn syrup makes me loopy, so it has been maybe fifteen years since I drank mainstream soda.

There was a short blip where they tried to introduce a pink beverage that they called Tab, but it was awful and didn't last long.

Sigh.

Not exactly comfort food, but fond memories.

But back to enjoying now delights from the '70s -- I did just pick up a favorite from the past that I haven't had for years -- and it was every bit as good as my memories -- I got a box of Triscuits. They've been around forever, and they're still just fabulous -- only now they're even better. Anyone tried the black pepper and olive oil version?

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

My Mom and her brother went ga-ga over Apian Way pizza. Last year I bought a box for Mom to relive the memories. It was a Bisquik type dough and sauce. The cheese in a can was no longer present. While Mom didn't particularly like it, I know Apian Way circa 1955 still lives on in her mind.

How was Chef Boyardee?

It was so long ago I can't remember anything really significant other than I liked it. Part of that may have been the excitement of constructing and baking it.

Cynthia wrote:But back to enjoying now delights from the '70s -- I did just pick up a favorite from the past that I haven't had for years -- and it was every bit as good as my memories -- I got a box of Triscuits. They've been around forever, and they're still just fabulous -- only now they're even better. Anyone tried the black pepper and olive oil version?

We LOVED various Nabisco crackers that my mom would only buy when we had a babysitter.. most of the favorites are still available as "Flavor Originals" (Chicken in a Biskit, Sociables, Vegetable thins). But missing from this category are Dip in a Chip and Swiss Cheese crackers! Looks like Swiss Cheese crackers were available until recently

But the link above is the only thing I find on poor old Dip in a Chip. I swear, I could polish off a whole box of those myself when I was a pre-teen. Even if I found them, I would probably find them vile- all sour cream and onion powder and MSG and way too salty.

My mom use to make us grilled cheese with tomatoes back in the day. They were great with the fat slices of tomatoes on em!

While making turkey pot pies on Sunday I mentioned to my wife we used to eat a creamed tuna on toast dish when I was growing up... she thinks it sounded good, and I commited to make it(athough I will make a scratch version instead of using a cream soup from a can for the base).

tonight for supper is a baked porchop and rice casserole dish(not sure why alot of 70's type dishes were one dish concoctions).

Hi,

My Mom made creamed tuna on toast. I had totally forgotten this until your last comment. I remember liking it quite a bit. I'd race to eat it while the toast was still crisp. Don't especially like soggy toast of any kind.

A friend's Father grew up in Ohio. The only fish he will eat is canned tuna. One of his favorite dishes is Sweet and Sour Tuna from a Good Housekeeping-type recipe from the 1960's. He does not like green pepper nor pineapple, but it is kept in for the flavors it contributes to the dish.

Regards,

the tuna casserole economic trend indicator:


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mba ... y_id=52220

Cathy2 wrote:cbot,

I like the TV dinners where the front of the box suggested a TV. The dinner was in the screen and there were knobs on the bottom. I remember the pure joy of being allowed to eat a TV dinner. It usually tied in with having a babysitter.

Regards,

I have the same memory! I also remember the taste being pretty blah, the chicken was never crispy, always mushy.