Childhood "Treats"

[PurpleDingo99]

god, i just had some leftovers with some of those cut-up microwavable hotdogs and a can of bush's baked beans. I forgot how great beenie weenies can be!

[kellycolorado]

Me too! Whenever my mom made steak, she would get out the soft white bread to soak up the drippings and encourage us to do the same, also with ample salt.

My husband thinks this is the strangest thing he's ever heard.

Toast and dripping, with lots of salt. Surprised no one has mentioned it yet...

Especially if it was beef dripping, with some of the jelly and that an onion had been cooked with the joint...mmm

←

I had forgotten about that:

The once-a-week London broil broiled (natch) in the under-the-stove broiler. My special treat was bread slices soaked in the juices from that.

[pam claughton]

OMG, fried chicken skin.  *drools*

I could never understand people who DON'T like chicken skin.  I love chicken skin...it's-just-so-delicious!

←

I used to be one of those people, totally repulsed by chicken skin, any skin, any fat, if it was still quivering.

But then, I was recently introduced to good chicken skin, by way of a batch of chicken wings that were left in the oven too long.

The skin shriveled, and crisped up, and was the most delicious thing I've ever had. I ate every scrap of skin and meat off those bones...and if you ever saw the way I used to eat chicken wings, you'd know what a big deal that was. I had a friend who at first laughed at me, then happily ate the chicken skin that I would peel off my wings, yes, you read that correctly. Who does that? Well, not me, not anymore, as long as the wings are turned into crackings in the oven, I'm good.

:)

[Gastro888]

You're like my friend who likes things fried "hard". I think it's a Southern thing that she likes food fried "hard" (crunchy?). I like chicken skin in all forms...cracklin, crisp, roasted and squishy bits like you get from soya sauce chicken or salt roasted chicken.

Sidebar-how does one make schmaltzy potatoes? Do I just take raw chicken skin and raw potatoes and throw them in the oven? Or do I have to render the fat?

[howard88]

elswinger:

As an adult, do you serve your mother the fat from

pork and steak? Damn thats one I never heard before.

My mother (and I love her dearly) confided in me as an

adult. When she wanted to get me pissed as a child she

would anounce "Howard, we're have dairy tonite", which

was bananas and cream with bread and butter. I wanted

her standard fare which was half a plate of mashed potatos

and gravy, a meat offering and vegetables. I know why I

am so food obsessed as an adult but I kind of like it.

[Ling]

Sidebar-how does one make schmaltzy potatoes?  Do I just take raw chicken skin and raw potatoes and throw them in the oven?  Or do I have to render the fat?

←

You have to render the fat.

[khm99]

Maybe my family were the only ones insane enough to think this up, but I fondly remember raised yeast donuts split down the middle, toasted, and then buttered. Mmm, talk about gilding the artery-clogging lily... I bet that would be good with Krispy Kremes

[outofthefrypan]

Maybe my family were the only ones insane enough to think this up, but I fondly remember raised yeast donuts split down the middle, toasted, and then buttered.  Mmm, talk about gilding the artery-clogging lily...  I bet that would be good with Krispy Kremes

←

This might be close: Every Sunday after church we would go to my grandma's and scarf some kind of pepperoni-stuffed bread from the Italian bakery--slathered in butter. Never had any inkling that there was any harm in eating as much of that as one wanted.

[daniellewiley]

Hmmm...

Am I the only parent out there who still lets their kids eat cookie dough batter raw, doesn't mind a regular bit of candy in the diet and and ould care less about trans-fat?

←

I allow the first two, but I am a fanatic about trans fat.

[bbqer]

In my preschool years I would demand that my mother make me a big plate of noodles with lots of pure butter for lunch nearly every day. I would salt and pepper it to oblivion and then gorge. It's no wonder I'm taking cholesterol and blood pressure meds today.

[Viola da gamba]

And to be really honest, what I really prefer is raw pie dough.  Oh, man!

←

That was one of my favourite treats - raw pastry. Occasionally there was too much raw pastry for Mum to feel comfortable letting me eat it all so she'd make cheese straws - roll out the pastry, grated sharp cheddar on one half, fold over the pastry, cut into strips, bake at 325 until golden. I've made them, but it's not the same.

I used to like making lettuce sandwiches.  Mayo, squishy white bread, and crisp iceburg lettuce.  Salt and pepper.  Completely lacking in nutritional value. 

←

Mum always baked bread - so bought squishy white bread (abbreviated to SWB in our house) was always a huge treat.

Getting to eat the last piece of pie out of the pie-dish.

Oh - and if I was really good I got the chicken tail when she made parmesan chicken.

Toasted crumpets slathered in butter & jam.

Ripe bananas mashed up with heavy cream, brown sugar & raisins.

Edited February 4, 2005 by Viola da gamba (log)

[Mabelline]

Butterscotch oats from my gram: old style oats, molasses, and butter. Heavy cream after it all melted into a lava pool.

[Idlewild]

My mom is Scots,  so after frying up bacon and sausages for Sunday breakfast she would fry thick slices of homemade bread in the bacon and sausage fat and top them with fried tomato slices.

My cholesterol is fine regardless and boy was it good.

←

oh, boy. This reminded me of my the grilled cheese sandwiches I discovered in high school. I would occasionally make them with bacon, and then I discovered frying the sandwiches in the bacon fat.

I don't make them like that anymore.

*edited* again to add, welcome to eG, Idlewild! What a great first post...

←

Ooh, I just saw this post. Thank you, I registered especially to join in this delightful thread, even if it did end up making me hungry for bread and dripping. ;)

[Cusina]

I can't believe I haven't seen this yet:

When my mom made pie, which was a couple of times a month, she'd put the trimmed raw crust on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, and bake it along with the pie.

And I must confess, I did that last week when I baked pies for Thanksgiving.

←

Yes! My mom did this too and I loved it. What a treat.

I'll confess that I make a Peanut Butter cookie with Bisquick recipe for my kids expressly because there are no eggs or other raw no-nos in the dough. We eat most of it raw and it's fun. The baked product is pretty good too, they have that "stick to the roof of your mouth" consistency. This recipe is similar... http://www.dianaskitchen.com/page/recipes0...tter_cookie.htm

I use butter instead of the shortening.

I'm not fanatical about fat and sugar with my kids. I avoid processed stuff as much as possible though (Bisquick cookies are an exception, I guess) and try to keep things balanced. My mother was extremely strict with my brother foodwise thinking he was "sensitive" to all sorts of things when he was little and I think it backfired. He lives on crap now.

[Cusina]

and oh my gosh... how could I forget the multitudes of little debbie oatmeal cream pies I consumed in college. Those things were awesome.

[browniebaker]

Pink cocktail: maraschino-cherry juice stirred into a glass of cold, whole milk

Cheap-o fake danishes from the grocery store, cello-wrapped onto a cardboard tray, and made with hydrogenated fats and yellow food-coloring -- I could eat all six in one sitting

Mom would grate carrots into a batter and drop spoonfuls into hot oil to deep-fry -- delicious eaten hot, out of hand

At dinner, the special treat was the fatty layer off the red-braised pork belly -- unctuously good!

After dinner treat: We five would be watching TV and someone would say, how about some turnovers, and my mom or I would run to kitchen and whack a tube of refrigerator dough against the counter to quick-bake up jam-filled turnovers with white icing from a plastic tube squeezed over them. Gosh, I wonder if they still make sell these in the refrigerator section.

I'm another of those parents who are laid-back about sugar, fat, trans-fats, food-coloring, and deep-frying. Everything in moderation.

[djbeers]

I see that no one has mentioned those "machine cuisine" treats that I know as "banana flips". These are the sponge cakes that are folded like tacos, with creme filling in the middle. They have about 800 calories, with 1200 of those calories being fat and sugar <g>. But they sure are good....best with a huge cup of strong, black, coffee. Take a bite of the flip, then fill your mouth with coffee, work it around a little bit, then swallow both at the same time.

[alchemyst]

In high school, Baby Watson Cheesecakes, the small, not individual size, eaten all by myself. I didn't mind sharing the leftovers if I couldn't finish it, but part of the whole experience was not having to share if I didn't want to...when I went away to college my aunt would send me Lindy's cheesecakes, large, which were just as good but impossible to hide in a dorm room.

When I was in grade school we would walk to the candy store at lunch time. I loved devil dogs with the filling scraped out & discarded. There was something about the rich chocolate flavor & the way that the cake stuck to my teeth and the insides of my mouth. I haven't had one in decades.

Last but not least, Eddie's Sweet Shop. In junior high school I had a friend that lived on the other side of Eddie's (far on the other side) and we would take the bus together after school and get out there for ice cream sundaes. Hers with extra whipped cream (the homemade kind, they would pile it up in these big bowls and walk through the ice cream parlor with them), mine with no whipped cream. The place would be almost empty at that time of day and we would sit in a booth and discuss our day & all of friends while enjoying our homemade ice cream sundaes. I would usually alternate between caramel and hot fudge. We would do it once a week and then catch our respective buses and go home for dinner. As I got older I lost touch with my friend and switched over to black & white ice cream sodas. These days I'm lucky to make it there once a year when I'm in NYC and I almost always order two sundaes (one hot fudge & one caramel) and enjoy the memories along with my ice cream.

[Viola da gamba]

After dinner treat: We five would be watching TV and someone would say, how about some turnovers, and my mom or I would run to kitchen and whack a tube of refrigerator dough against the counter to quick-bake up jam-filled turnovers with white icing from a plastic tube squeezed over them. Gosh, I wonder if they still make sell these in the refrigerator section.

←

Is it bad that I know the answer to this and that it's "yes"? Or at least they were still available up here last time I was in Safeway ...

[hazardnc]

Reading these new posts took me back to my childhood.

My father was a banker, and as such, he and mom often entertained clients on weekends. While they went out for fancy dinners, the kids stayed home and had our own treats.

Favorite meals: Kraft macaroni and cheese (my sister topped hers with torn up pieces of dry toast), beanie weanies, fish sticks(I still like them) with tater Tot, chicken pot pie (the Swanson's variety) and Nighthawk's frozen Salisbury Steak dinner. mmmmmm good!

We rarely ate "fast food" - though it did exist way back in the late 60's. It was just easier and cheaper to feed us what my mother-in-law refers to as nursery food!

[browniebaker]

After dinner treat: We five would be watching TV and someone would say, how about some turnovers, and my mom or I would run to kitchen and whack a tube of refrigerator dough against the counter to quick-bake up jam-filled turnovers with white icing from a plastic tube squeezed over them. Gosh, I wonder if they still make sell these in the refrigerator section.

←

Is it bad that I know the answer to this and that it's "yes"? Or at least they were still available up here last time I was in Safeway ...

←

That's scarey-good to know. See you in aisle 9!

[designchick88]

Great thread.

When I was little, my mom was of the opinion that giving your kids things like Hostess Cupcakes, McDonald's Happy Meals, or Froot Loops was akin to giving them a pipe full of crack cocaine. She was sometimes undermined by my dad or grandparents, but that didn't happen often. So needless to say, I didn't get to eat much of anything really bad until I got old enough to have money and a bike and was able to go with my friends to the local Circle K to buy junk food.

My favorites were:

Swiss cake rolls (why did they call them Swiss? I never have figured that out). Cake-and-icing rolls covered in plasticky chocolate. We would peel the chocolate off first, and then eat the cake part.

Drumstick ice cream cones.

Pretty much anything we could squish or suck the filling out of - Twinkies, Zingers, Ho-Hos, Hostess Cupcakes, etc. got rave reviews.

We also used to eat those little prepackaged fried pies that ostensibly had either "fruit" or "chocolate pudding" filling in them. I have no idea why those were so appealing, but I ate a ton of them the summer I turned 12. I looked at the nutrition label on one a couple of years ago - those things have like 40 grams of fat, about 30 of which are saturated fat grams. I think any plaque on my arteries has got to be about 90 percent chocolate pudding fried pie, all left over from that one summer.

[LindaK]

With the grand exception of fried chicken skin, most other posts have been about sweets. I now realize that one shows a preference for sweet v. savory early in life. My favorite childhood food treats:

- apple slices dipped in Marie's chunky blue cheese salad dressing

- potato pancakes topped with sour cream. lots of sour cream.

- codfish cakes (made with salt cod). This must be my all-time favorite, since I would sneak some of the uncooked mixture before the cakes were fried, eat fried cakes until stuffed, and the next morning would bolt to the refrigerator to eat the leftovers cold for breakfast. I still crave salt cod.

yes, my sisters thought I was wierd. Anyone else have any similary odd food "treats" as a kid?

[racheld]

An afterschool slice of my Mammaw's cold, flabby, more-flour-than-meal cornbread grabbed from the old Hoosier cupboard on the way out to the garden. Sprinkle salt into other hand. Find and pick the ripest, juiciest tomato from the plants; rub one surface briskly on front of shirt to sanitize. Take a bite, dip into salt, alternate with bites of cornbread. Feel the breeze. Hear the birds. Take a detour by the backyard faucet for a long cold drink and a cleanup.

She was also the summer purveyor of her favorite teatime snack: a quick trip into the house for a Wonder Bread, Blue Plate Mayo and homemade blackberry preserves sandwich, eaten carefully to avoid drips. I liked them all separately, but in tandem, no. But there was always that three-layer pineapple cake with 7-Minute, waiting in that same cabinet every day of my young life.

She made one every Friday afternoon, after she had cleaned up the noon-dinner dishes and mopped the kitchen floor. I got to sift the flour from the built-in sifter in the cabinet, and measure it out, along with the baking powder, sugar, salt and soda. And sometimes I would go out to the chickenyard for four fresh orange-yolked eggs (a MUST for cakes---they made the layers a lovely deep gold). She'd crank up the big old Sunbeam mixer and get that cake in the oven in ten minutes flat. The whites would go into the top of the double boiler with cream of tartar, water and sugar, to be beaten every minute of the seven minutes. I did the careful timing, watching the little red second hand of the old white Bakelite Philco clock as it made its slow journey. The runny, slimy whites mixed into a magical, creamy concoction the glossy-white of mountain snow (though I had never seen any).

A "tall can" of Del Monte crushed pineapple was drained in the big strainer and further squeezed as dry as possible by hand. The layers were placed one by one on the big round platter and sprinkled with the pineapple syrup, then smeared with the white frosting. Onto the frosting went tiny fingertip dabs of the pineapple, little clumps all over the surface. All the layers were stacked this way, then a final coat of the frosting, with the requisite swirls and curlicues, then the last of the pineapple dabbed all over the top.

The Friday-night cake was elegant and beautiful, its golden layers falling tenderly beneath the knife. The Sunday cake was a little disheveled, with its frosting beginning to droop a bit, and the little pineapple divots sinking further into the snowy cushion. By Monday, the frosting had taken on the receding look of Winter's last snowfall, with craters and show-throughs and bits of brown crumb emerging through the white, but the taste just got better and better, the layers moister and more flavorful. The Midweek cake, what there was left of it, was still standing, though the layers were listing to one side, testament to their valiant days of patience in the dark of that cupboard; the frosting was just bits and crumbs of crystals, sugary crunches that fell prey to all passing fingers. The crumbs left on the platter were gummy and drying, and better than the best bar cookies or lemon squares or chess diamonds. Thursday night, the scrape of fork tines claimed the last rich, fruit-essenced bits, and the week was done. Friday was cake day, and all was right with the world.

She'd be 110 next month. God bless all the dear patient women who teach children to cook.

[DTBarton]

I guess this isn't "taboo" since it's church related. Another grandparents story. My mother's parents lived in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia and were devout Presbyterians. Some of my favorite food memories are of being taken as a child to outdoor church picnics in the summertime. A bonanza of fattening, delicious homemade stuff with no one counting calories, cholesterol, or portions. All the church ladies encouraged the youngsters to indulge and the competition was pretty fierce. Fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, BLT's, burgers, macaroni and cheese, it was great.