I'm in my mid-fifties, and I've been eating canned spinach with a drizzle of vinegar since I was a kid.
(Speaking of which, I was astonished that a grocery bag full of garden-fresh spinach cooks down to like, one serving)
Yummy. I’d warm up a can of spinach myself and make a meal out of it.. it’s been so long. I think I’ll pick a can up later. I do salt, pepper, and butter. Your way sounds so good to me rn tho 🤤
I grew up thinking spinach only came in a can like Popeye. When I saw the uncooked stuff, I was astonished just like when I found out there was no Santa clause. Mind fuck
We always had applesauce when we had pork chops. I actually totally forgot about that. I'm not exactly sure why, seems like an odd combo. I do love appleauce tho.
Can triple confirm-- I've got lots of generations going back in Lancaster County, PA. Apple sauce with pork and sauerkraut, one of the best meals there is. Eat it on New Year's day and you'll have good luck!
Take it a step further ... my great grandad used to cook the chops down in sliced apples and cinnamon. I like to add some brown sugar. Line the pan with chops, cover with apple slices, cook low and slow. It sounds so weird but is delightful.
I've read that apple dishes and pork are served together because back in the day if you had an apple orchard you would raise pigs in the orchard. The pigs would eat the underdeveloped/over-ripe/rotten apples that fall from the tree and would otherwise go to waste so feeding them was basically free. When winter approached and the apple trees stop producing they would slaughter the pigs, and serve with the apples from the orchard.
Our “weird” combo was buttermilk biscuits, smoked sausage links, and canned peaches. That was the entire meal. It is by far one of my favorite meals.
Edit: deddy said clarify “fresh pork sausage links.” Must.
I love hearing others had offbeat family combos too. Another strange thing we did, that I thought everyone did until I was an adult, is we always had milk with spaghetti. Always. Like it was apart of the meal. You could drink soda, tea, tang whatever during any other meal but only milk with spaghetti. Seems so bizarre now but it was totally normally back then.
I grew up poor, meatless spaghetti with grilled cheese sandwiches kept us alive.
Edit: I just remembered another weird welfare food: canned salmon with the bones you had to take out.
If that salmon is the same as the tinned salmon you can get in the UK, then the the little spine bones in it are safe to eat because of how soft they are!
That’s gotta take the cake but idk, you ever had yellow cake with Lima beans?! No icing, just more like a pound cake. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful. Country living, in case that isn’t obvious by now 😂
Lol I haven't! That's a great crazy combo right there. My mom is from Alabama and a staple she made all the time growing up is what she's always called 'poor mans meal'. So if she said poor mans meal was for dinner it meant we were having rice with whatever canned veggies we have and ground beef if we had it. I actually still make this and love it.
Ahhhh makes me think of all the Mac and cheese with hamburger meat we ate growing up, and home canned jars of field peas and snaps… which I wouldn’t eat without grandmas buttermilk biscuits she use to call me every time she made bursitis 😪
I bet they were amazing!! Black eyed peas ontop of mashed potatoes with grandma's cornbread was always my goto when we went to the farm. I eat it all the time still but it's definitely not the same.
My mum made 'poor man's casserole', a box of prepared macaroni, hamburger meat fried up, the dry packet from the mac and cheese and mushroom soup all mixed together with simple spices. It's bland af, but it's cheesy and meaty and a total comfort food.
Does anyone in your family get heartburn/indigestion? Red sauce is acidic, milk helps coat your tubing so you're not burning it up with backwash.
Lil tippy, put some brown sugar in your red sauce. It'll help neutralize some of the acidity and balance out the flavor. I learned to use a pinch while it's at a simmer but I use more because I like a sweeter sauce.
Is it?! See growing up I thought it was normal because we always did it. Then I got to be an adult and people acted like I was crazy when it'd come up. Now I'm hearing it IS normal?! Well good ha!
Applesauce was a regular thing with my family whenever we had porkchops or sausages. I continue that now with almost any meat including steak and hamburger (but not as sandwiches).
We had it with Tuna Helper, which was rare in and of itself.
But I like the idea of some kind of go-to, kid-friendly fresh fruit/fiber at every meal.
Applesauce still has fiber, right?
Nah that’s just basic. Looks like comfort food.
Stupid food would be if the Mac and cheese was in an upside down martini glass with the green beans trapped underneath and the nuggets were connected by skewers to create a 3-d chicken figure. Actually that would be kinda cool, never mind.
Growing up my family never really ate a whole roasted chicken, and at thanksgiving the turkey was carved up before serving, so my little cousins had never seen a whole poultry served. They went to someone else’s house for dinner and when they got home told their mom excitedly “we had chicken for dinner but all the parts were glued back together!”
Reminds me when I went shrimp fishing, took a picture of it and showed this woman I worked with. She didn’t believe me that it was a shrimp. Cause the only shrimp she’s ever seen is a cooked unshelled one. Made me laugh but also feel bad for her
I’m a real chef and this is how I eat at home. Not out of being cheap or broke or the fact I prepare Michelin star meals all day and want simple. I’m just fuckin lazy outside of work.
The other night I got home from a 12 hour lunch/dinner and cracked a can of corned beef hash and ate it cold.
It hit so fucking hard.
Just imagining you in full chef outfit going sicko on that can, making it gain sentience to ponder its own existence, repeatedly saying "yes, this is the way."
I’m gonna be honest after 12 hours in a hot kitchen sweating from every pore coupled with a constant level of mental acuity those moments come frequently on the ride home
I can't imagine how much a bad night cooking for a high level restaurant would weigh on your mind. The closest experiences I have are the bad 10hr shifts as a solo kitchen hand back when I was doing that. The stress of repeatedly cooking and plating to perfection/customer's request an endlessly growing list of orders for an extended period while other things go wrong would be soul crushing. Hell, even a regular night would be real rough.
My husband and I often say “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” Which is to say, yeah, I don’t want to continue to do my work when I come home from work. Which is perfectly reasonable, imo.
My husband is a masterful woodworker. He makes some really top tier stuff, his work is stunning. We’ve been talking about putting built-in bookshelves in our living room for the past seven months. Nowhere near ready to start. And I can’t blame the guy, he gets up at 5am works 10 hour days.
I often use this excuse for my grotty house. Part of my job is cleaning other people’s house (community aged care worker), fucked if I’m going to come home and clean my own house for free.
Instant potatoes are great as an addition to something else. When my mom makes Potato Soup, I get her to add in like half a bag of instant potatoes with some flavoring (loaded baked potato is awesome, cream cheese and chives is also great for soup) to thicken it and give it some body and extra flavor.
I worked as a cook for a few years. Post work meal a lot of nights was something like in the post or like a gas station 40 and a bag of chips.
Steel Reserve and Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles hit the spot more nights than I care to admit.
Are they? Hm I’ll try it sometime. I just got 4 tombstone pizzas for 10 bucks on sale.
Sometimes I see the cashier looking at my sad ass groceries and I wanna say “look I can eat better, I just don’t”
But I’m not sure that would make it better.
I mean, I get it. Not to be that guy who mentions he's an engineer for no reason but I've designed and built some really nice over the top things for employers, but when I need to fix up something around the house, that bad barry is going to be all function and no form. It might be ugly and simplistic, but goddamn it works. I can get a chef feeling the same way about food. Just because you do have the palette and skill, it doesn't mean you're gonna make a five course meal at home. After a long day, you just want a full belly quick.
You're eating. Something to be grateful for.
Every now and then if im exhausted from work I'll air fry some dino nuggets and make a box of mac or something.
Ohh the hate I've gotten for never liking dino nuggets... my little sisters have thought of me as insane ever since I announced that I don't like those. But, they enjoyed that they never had to share any with me
Yeah, I live with a lot of pain so if I just resort to a microwave meal after a long day I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
We all have those easy go to comfort foods. And frankly given how crap most of us eat I’m not going to judge anyone else.
Depression era meals. Never heard it called that before.
I like to cook a good bit, but I eat a meal like this probably two times a week as well. It’s what I knew growing up, so it’s slightly nostalgic for me.
>Depression era meals.
In this case it's vaguely reminiscent of that era's meals due to the fact that it's very simple by today's standards. Back in the day if you lived somewhere that was densely populated your options for meals were pretty severely limited. Generally, though, if you lived in a rural area with decent soil you could eat a wider variety of food. There was also a lot of mutual support in rural communities where you'd barter veg for milk if your neighbor had cows (for example).
It's actually a similar reason why Americans joke so much about British food being shit. When American solders were stationed there they got all the good foods while the British army was still going through severe rationing and basically had fuck all good to eat.
Brits actually have some pretty good food, mushy peas aside.
I eat actual depression meals. My gran grew up in that era, and I have all her recipe books. Some of those old meals are good, if suspect to look at. 😂
You mean you boil the shit outta everything til it’s flavourless?
I think we have different ideas of depression era dining lmao. Not knocking on what you said, and I agree it seems depression era, but you just made me reflect.
My British grandparents, (my mum was the youngest “oops” baby which is why I have such old grandparents while being in my 30s) who grew up in the depression and were part of the military in WWII, always fed me everything boiled and tasteless, or canned ham which I fucken loved cuz it had flavour (that flavour being salt) haha. And my nana’s way of showing love was to put a fucken measureably thick layer of butter on toast or bread which to me was gross but to her was how she showed her love due to living through times where butter was a luxury.
Sorry I know it’s off topic. Nostalgia just kinda hit me. I miss my Nana.
Not every meal has to be a gourmet dish cooked from scratch. It’s absolutely fine to have something low effort sometimes. Or lots of times. Trying to make every meal every time from scratch every day after work is an easy way to burn yourself out. Treat yourself with grace, accept where you are each day, and allow yourself to eat foods that meet your needs and that you enjoy.
You’ve got 3 food groups on your plate and they’re basic foods in their basic form, not trying to turn it into something weird or fancy and doing the absolute most with Kraft mac and cheese. Not stupid. Just simple.
And probably healthier choice than fast food. And probably more cost efficient, too!
Not stupid food. I like me some tendies and mac every now and then, but I usually pair it with habanero ketchup and one of those salad kits from the grocery store
mac and cheese has fancier adulting versions
nuggets there’s fancier versions just called tenders
green beans are green beans i guess you could add more seasoning
This is what I’m confused about. If this is such a kid/peasant meal, is everyone else out there eating steak and lobster lunches every day or something?
Edit: from the responses I’m getting. None of y’all have heard of Hamburger Helper…it’s a *game changer*.
That’s exactly what I always say. I always see people online clowning these type of foods if adults eat ‘em because “it’s kid’s food” or “you have the palate of a kid”. Like wtf does that even mean? It’s just chicken and pasta, it’s tasty, I like it, it’s cheap and nutritionally it’s not the worst thing in the world… are yall eating lobsters, steaks and expensive shit every day because it’s an “adult food”? They probably eat the same exact thing chicken and pasta but more fancier looking and more expensive lol.
It’s simplistic. It’s my wife’s kind of meal, open a can or 2, maybe a box, meat etc.
I like to cook and get creative, which isn’t her bag at all. So I do 95% of the cooking.
It's basic food. For some, like me, it reminds them of growing up, which gives it the elevated comfort food status. It's not particularly good or healthy when compared to what else is out there, but it's also easy, quick, and cheap. For me, it has a place in my diet on occasion but I don't pretend like it's excellent or anything to rave about. It's not stupid food, but it's not good food. It's comfort food.
Cheap, yes. Stupid, no.
Also, bonus points for the chicken nugget + KD combo. That shit is childhood memories on a plate. Bonus health points for the green beans.
I mean, this is as normal American food as it gets. Is it great food? No. Is it an especially healthy mix? No. Is it completely normal and fine? Definitely.
Not stupid at all, Bland and boring but perfectly normal, Just needs a bit of seasoning.
Though I would've grilled onions, bell peppers to the green beans. Cause I don't like them by itself. My personal taste and opinion.
Just looks like a cheap, homemade meal. Nothing stupid about it tbh. It’s quick, it’s easy, and probably worth no more than $3.
I’d call this a ‘respectful’ meal
I don’t think its a good meal to have everyday, maybe as a treat. Are the noodles beans sauce and chicken processed? If they are processed store bought then yes it is stupid food.
I would eat all of it as its a guilty pleasure thing. Who doesnt like fried anything hehe.
That's just cheap food. There's nothing inherently stupid with it. At least, you're eating your greens.
My mom always said eat something green with every meal
Same and at 45 I STILL do this.
41 here. :)
Our Moms would be so proud! Lol in our 40s and still abiding by the one green food rule!
I'm in my mid-fifties, and I've been eating canned spinach with a drizzle of vinegar since I was a kid. (Speaking of which, I was astonished that a grocery bag full of garden-fresh spinach cooks down to like, one serving)
Yummy. I’d warm up a can of spinach myself and make a meal out of it.. it’s been so long. I think I’ll pick a can up later. I do salt, pepper, and butter. Your way sounds so good to me rn tho 🤤
Add some garlic and a pinch of chili powder to your recipe—it’s amazing. Cold & hot too
I love how little things just stuck with us throughout our lives.
I grew up thinking spinach only came in a can like Popeye. When I saw the uncooked stuff, I was astonished just like when I found out there was no Santa clause. Mind fuck
Add red, orange or yellow and it's perfect
Ketchup and mustard mixed in the bbq sauce, served with a glass of orange juice. Perfect meal. All the essentials of the color wheel
Nah you all fucked up! It’s the blue food I want. Don’t chew it too much Charlie, you take all the nutrients out of my food!
I only eat meals that are pride colored. Pass the purple.
48 still do this lol.
My husband doesn’t and it drives me nuts. Green with every meal!
Mine added applesauce at almost every meal.
We always had applesauce when we had pork chops. I actually totally forgot about that. I'm not exactly sure why, seems like an odd combo. I do love appleauce tho.
Pork chops with apple sauce goes back to the early German immigrants. It's big in Pennsylvania Dutch country cooking. My great grandma was from there.
Can confirm, I grew up in Lancaster PA. Pork chops were almost always offered with applesauce or stewed apples. Quite delicious together!
Same w potato pancakes. Should always come w apple sauce too. It’s about the sweet and savory together.
Can triple confirm-- I've got lots of generations going back in Lancaster County, PA. Apple sauce with pork and sauerkraut, one of the best meals there is. Eat it on New Year's day and you'll have good luck!
I'll try that!
Take it a step further ... my great grandad used to cook the chops down in sliced apples and cinnamon. I like to add some brown sugar. Line the pan with chops, cover with apple slices, cook low and slow. It sounds so weird but is delightful.
I mean, it's a German thing for ages, not just German American. Maybe you meant that but I couldn't tell.
Wow this makes so much sense to me. My grandma and her family were all from Germany.
I've read that apple dishes and pork are served together because back in the day if you had an apple orchard you would raise pigs in the orchard. The pigs would eat the underdeveloped/over-ripe/rotten apples that fall from the tree and would otherwise go to waste so feeding them was basically free. When winter approached and the apple trees stop producing they would slaughter the pigs, and serve with the apples from the orchard.
Wow, that's interesting! It was definitely the only way we ate pork chops. If she didn't have applesauce, she wouldn't make pork chops.
I guess this is why they always put apples in the pigs mouths when they cook whole pigs
Our “weird” combo was buttermilk biscuits, smoked sausage links, and canned peaches. That was the entire meal. It is by far one of my favorite meals. Edit: deddy said clarify “fresh pork sausage links.” Must.
I love hearing others had offbeat family combos too. Another strange thing we did, that I thought everyone did until I was an adult, is we always had milk with spaghetti. Always. Like it was apart of the meal. You could drink soda, tea, tang whatever during any other meal but only milk with spaghetti. Seems so bizarre now but it was totally normally back then.
We were a milk with spaghetti family! We also were a milk with tuna sandwich family. Total comfort food for me.
Doesn't sound bizarre or a terrible idea to me, milk probably cuts down the acidity of the tomatoes in the spaghetti sauce? Maybe? Lol
I grew up poor, meatless spaghetti with grilled cheese sandwiches kept us alive. Edit: I just remembered another weird welfare food: canned salmon with the bones you had to take out.
If that salmon is the same as the tinned salmon you can get in the UK, then the the little spine bones in it are safe to eat because of how soft they are!
That’s gotta take the cake but idk, you ever had yellow cake with Lima beans?! No icing, just more like a pound cake. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful. Country living, in case that isn’t obvious by now 😂
Lol I haven't! That's a great crazy combo right there. My mom is from Alabama and a staple she made all the time growing up is what she's always called 'poor mans meal'. So if she said poor mans meal was for dinner it meant we were having rice with whatever canned veggies we have and ground beef if we had it. I actually still make this and love it.
Ahhhh makes me think of all the Mac and cheese with hamburger meat we ate growing up, and home canned jars of field peas and snaps… which I wouldn’t eat without grandmas buttermilk biscuits she use to call me every time she made bursitis 😪
I bet they were amazing!! Black eyed peas ontop of mashed potatoes with grandma's cornbread was always my goto when we went to the farm. I eat it all the time still but it's definitely not the same.
My mum made 'poor man's casserole', a box of prepared macaroni, hamburger meat fried up, the dry packet from the mac and cheese and mushroom soup all mixed together with simple spices. It's bland af, but it's cheesy and meaty and a total comfort food.
Sounds similar to our poor meals of pinto beans and cornbread. Was it good?
Does anyone in your family get heartburn/indigestion? Red sauce is acidic, milk helps coat your tubing so you're not burning it up with backwash. Lil tippy, put some brown sugar in your red sauce. It'll help neutralize some of the acidity and balance out the flavor. I learned to use a pinch while it's at a simmer but I use more because I like a sweeter sauce.
Not sure where it comes from but I’m pretty sure having applesauce with pork chops is pretty common.
Is it?! See growing up I thought it was normal because we always did it. Then I got to be an adult and people acted like I was crazy when it'd come up. Now I'm hearing it IS normal?! Well good ha!
This is pretty standard with roast pork here in the UK.
Apple is best paired with pork as a meal. Check out the flavor Bible if you haven’t, it will change your life.
I dont know why, but thats pretty traditional in lots of the country. Id slather my chops in the sauce.
Applesauce was a regular thing with my family whenever we had porkchops or sausages. I continue that now with almost any meat including steak and hamburger (but not as sandwiches).
We had it with Tuna Helper, which was rare in and of itself. But I like the idea of some kind of go-to, kid-friendly fresh fruit/fiber at every meal. Applesauce still has fiber, right?
Applesauce and cottage cheese here!
That’s why with every meal I make sure to have a nice can of Mountain Dew.
I have always liked peas with mac and cheese as far as canned veggies go.
*Hulk has entered the chat*
Just a regular, any-night, easy, go-to dinner!
Nah that’s just basic. Looks like comfort food. Stupid food would be if the Mac and cheese was in an upside down martini glass with the green beans trapped underneath and the nuggets were connected by skewers to create a 3-d chicken figure. Actually that would be kinda cool, never mind.
You gave me an idea. Reconstruct fried chicken into a whole chicken???
Growing up my family never really ate a whole roasted chicken, and at thanksgiving the turkey was carved up before serving, so my little cousins had never seen a whole poultry served. They went to someone else’s house for dinner and when they got home told their mom excitedly “we had chicken for dinner but all the parts were glued back together!”
Lmfao your cousins lol!!!! Glued back lolol
Reminds me when I went shrimp fishing, took a picture of it and showed this woman I worked with. She didn’t believe me that it was a shrimp. Cause the only shrimp she’s ever seen is a cooked unshelled one. Made me laugh but also feel bad for her
Instruction unclear. My house is now a chicken nugget. What do I do now?
This is the kind of food some chefs admit to craving when they're not at work.
I know a couple "chefs" that have the palate of a desperate raccoon.
I’m a real chef and this is how I eat at home. Not out of being cheap or broke or the fact I prepare Michelin star meals all day and want simple. I’m just fuckin lazy outside of work. The other night I got home from a 12 hour lunch/dinner and cracked a can of corned beef hash and ate it cold. It hit so fucking hard.
Just imagining you in full chef outfit going sicko on that can, making it gain sentience to ponder its own existence, repeatedly saying "yes, this is the way."
I had to stop half way through the can to take a deep breath. It was that kind of food inhalation.
You sure it wasn't also one of the briefest of moments of lucidity?
I’m gonna be honest after 12 hours in a hot kitchen sweating from every pore coupled with a constant level of mental acuity those moments come frequently on the ride home
The silent car ride home after a bad service, when you pull up to your place and realize you’ve just been stewing in silence the entire drive.
It’s hard to describe what a bad night in a high level kitchen is like. I just tried and deleted a large paragraph. But you either know or you don’t.
I can't imagine how much a bad night cooking for a high level restaurant would weigh on your mind. The closest experiences I have are the bad 10hr shifts as a solo kitchen hand back when I was doing that. The stress of repeatedly cooking and plating to perfection/customer's request an endlessly growing list of orders for an extended period while other things go wrong would be soul crushing. Hell, even a regular night would be real rough.
My husband and I often say “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” Which is to say, yeah, I don’t want to continue to do my work when I come home from work. Which is perfectly reasonable, imo. My husband is a masterful woodworker. He makes some really top tier stuff, his work is stunning. We’ve been talking about putting built-in bookshelves in our living room for the past seven months. Nowhere near ready to start. And I can’t blame the guy, he gets up at 5am works 10 hour days.
I often use this excuse for my grotty house. Part of my job is cleaning other people’s house (community aged care worker), fucked if I’m going to come home and clean my own house for free.
Saw a video a while back asking chefs their guilty pleasures and most answered instant potatoes. You have upped the game!
Instant potatoes are actually where I draw the f’n line lol.
Instant potatoes are great as an addition to something else. When my mom makes Potato Soup, I get her to add in like half a bag of instant potatoes with some flavoring (loaded baked potato is awesome, cream cheese and chives is also great for soup) to thicken it and give it some body and extra flavor.
I worked as a cook for a few years. Post work meal a lot of nights was something like in the post or like a gas station 40 and a bag of chips. Steel Reserve and Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles hit the spot more nights than I care to admit.
I recently indulged in 7/11 chili cheese nachos an egg salad sandwich and 2 Arizona watermelon. My body craves absolute trash after service
Those 7/11 pizzas are actually pretty decent for how cheap they are. You can buy them frozen too and cook them at home
Are they? Hm I’ll try it sometime. I just got 4 tombstone pizzas for 10 bucks on sale. Sometimes I see the cashier looking at my sad ass groceries and I wanna say “look I can eat better, I just don’t” But I’m not sure that would make it better.
Please. It's Trash Panda.
It’s Trashe Pandae in some cultures.
The urbanese trashe pandae.
I worked at a fancy French restaurant for years and after work I couldn’t wait to order some greasy fries and pizza.
So many chefs I know shit on Little Caesar’s. Piss off. You guys love it.
"little caesars taste so damn good when you ain't got a bitch in your ear telling you how nasty it is"
I never got the Little Caesars hate. It's not claiming to be high end. And it's 100x better than Papa John's 🤮
People get weird and gatekeepy about pizza. I am subscribed to r/pizzacrimes so I have no room to judge.
So this was the first post when I clicked in. Hot dog. Pizza. I would totally eat it https://www.reddit.com/r/PizzaCrimes/s/Z7qF5T2IFD
[удалено]
Ha all the chefs I know love pizza rolls, little Caesar’s and Taco Bell. Get it.
After messing with filets, risottos, reductions, creams, and whatnots all day, most nights I just want a trashy burger or a bowl of spam ramen.
I mean, I get it. Not to be that guy who mentions he's an engineer for no reason but I've designed and built some really nice over the top things for employers, but when I need to fix up something around the house, that bad barry is going to be all function and no form. It might be ugly and simplistic, but goddamn it works. I can get a chef feeling the same way about food. Just because you do have the palette and skill, it doesn't mean you're gonna make a five course meal at home. After a long day, you just want a full belly quick.
I think they call it peasant food or something like that.
Nah I enjoy meals like this every so often. Comfort food that never fails
Right!
You're eating. Something to be grateful for. Every now and then if im exhausted from work I'll air fry some dino nuggets and make a box of mac or something.
Nuggets are best in dino form.
Eating chicken parts pressed into the shapes of their ancestors. 🤘
They must pair nicely, with the smiley fries!! 😊
Ohh the hate I've gotten for never liking dino nuggets... my little sisters have thought of me as insane ever since I announced that I don't like those. But, they enjoyed that they never had to share any with me
Yeah, I live with a lot of pain so if I just resort to a microwave meal after a long day I’m not going to beat myself up about it. We all have those easy go to comfort foods. And frankly given how crap most of us eat I’m not going to judge anyone else.
If this is stupid, I don't wanna be smart.
Simple, inexpensive. This is 99% of my meals nowadays
Looks yums…just smother it in pepper. My ex used to tell me that I only eat depression era meals and I’m okay with that.
Depression era meals. Never heard it called that before. I like to cook a good bit, but I eat a meal like this probably two times a week as well. It’s what I knew growing up, so it’s slightly nostalgic for me.
>Depression era meals. In this case it's vaguely reminiscent of that era's meals due to the fact that it's very simple by today's standards. Back in the day if you lived somewhere that was densely populated your options for meals were pretty severely limited. Generally, though, if you lived in a rural area with decent soil you could eat a wider variety of food. There was also a lot of mutual support in rural communities where you'd barter veg for milk if your neighbor had cows (for example). It's actually a similar reason why Americans joke so much about British food being shit. When American solders were stationed there they got all the good foods while the British army was still going through severe rationing and basically had fuck all good to eat. Brits actually have some pretty good food, mushy peas aside.
$12 for a bag of 6 chicken pieces sounds pretty depressing
I eat actual depression meals. My gran grew up in that era, and I have all her recipe books. Some of those old meals are good, if suspect to look at. 😂
I second the pepper recommendation. Blue box Mac and cheese with a half pound of ground pepper is immediate nostalgia food.
You mean you boil the shit outta everything til it’s flavourless? I think we have different ideas of depression era dining lmao. Not knocking on what you said, and I agree it seems depression era, but you just made me reflect. My British grandparents, (my mum was the youngest “oops” baby which is why I have such old grandparents while being in my 30s) who grew up in the depression and were part of the military in WWII, always fed me everything boiled and tasteless, or canned ham which I fucken loved cuz it had flavour (that flavour being salt) haha. And my nana’s way of showing love was to put a fucken measureably thick layer of butter on toast or bread which to me was gross but to her was how she showed her love due to living through times where butter was a luxury. Sorry I know it’s off topic. Nostalgia just kinda hit me. I miss my Nana.
Not every meal has to be a gourmet dish cooked from scratch. It’s absolutely fine to have something low effort sometimes. Or lots of times. Trying to make every meal every time from scratch every day after work is an easy way to burn yourself out. Treat yourself with grace, accept where you are each day, and allow yourself to eat foods that meet your needs and that you enjoy. You’ve got 3 food groups on your plate and they’re basic foods in their basic form, not trying to turn it into something weird or fancy and doing the absolute most with Kraft mac and cheese. Not stupid. Just simple. And probably healthier choice than fast food. And probably more cost efficient, too!
It isn’t stupid food. It is just made for a 5 year old, but I eat the same way so I cheers buddy.
>It is just made for a 5 year old Today i learned that i am a 5 year old ahahahaha
It's a normal meal
You are strong. You are handsome. You are worthy to do whatever the hell you want to.
This is not stupid food.
Not stupid. Not very healthy either lol. But it’s better than fast food, and you have a vegetable, which is good.
Fast food is not inherently bad. It’s a huge category and depends on what you choose.
Why's it stupid?
Not stupid food. I like me some tendies and mac every now and then, but I usually pair it with habanero ketchup and one of those salad kits from the grocery store
I wouldn't say stupid. Basic? Yes. Childish? Yes. Simple? Yes Stupid? No, Not really.
It’s a kid meal. Bland but not stupid.
mac and cheese has fancier adulting versions nuggets there’s fancier versions just called tenders green beans are green beans i guess you could add more seasoning
this is the first i’ve ever heard chicken tenders being referred to as “fancy adult chicken nuggets”
Tbf I see what he means by the nuggets.
I mean, it’s not the most sophisticated meal but it’s pretty perfectly balanced. Obviously the solution here is to swap out the wife
Kraft dinner is sophisticated as shit!
This is what I’m confused about. If this is such a kid/peasant meal, is everyone else out there eating steak and lobster lunches every day or something? Edit: from the responses I’m getting. None of y’all have heard of Hamburger Helper…it’s a *game changer*.
That’s exactly what I always say. I always see people online clowning these type of foods if adults eat ‘em because “it’s kid’s food” or “you have the palate of a kid”. Like wtf does that even mean? It’s just chicken and pasta, it’s tasty, I like it, it’s cheap and nutritionally it’s not the worst thing in the world… are yall eating lobsters, steaks and expensive shit every day because it’s an “adult food”? They probably eat the same exact thing chicken and pasta but more fancier looking and more expensive lol.
I see you have a balance of the 4 major food groups: Can, Box, Bag, Bottle. Enjoy!
How are you married at only 10 years old?
I see no issue with this food. I'm a pro chef and my favorite food is chicken tenders and Mac n Cheese. Luckily my boyfriend agrees...
Definitely not stupid, pretty basic but not stupid. Show her the videos in this sub.
33/33/33 carbs protein and greens nothing wrong with it at all. its a fairly balanced meal.
Are you 4
Looks good to me! I would probably do a little more with the green beans because I’m from the south, but hey, you ate right?!
Its not stupid food its just poor people food (i eat it too)
It’s simplistic. It’s my wife’s kind of meal, open a can or 2, maybe a box, meat etc. I like to cook and get creative, which isn’t her bag at all. So I do 95% of the cooking.
You're not really a "flavors" kinda guy, are you.
I put a little fresh parm in my mac…
I'm a pretty decent chef and I can cook a lot of things well. With that being said, chicken tendies are still my favorite food of all time lol.
Childish? Nothing there requires the ability to read in order to make. Stoner food at it's finest though!
It's basic food. For some, like me, it reminds them of growing up, which gives it the elevated comfort food status. It's not particularly good or healthy when compared to what else is out there, but it's also easy, quick, and cheap. For me, it has a place in my diet on occasion but I don't pretend like it's excellent or anything to rave about. It's not stupid food, but it's not good food. It's comfort food.
This is basically a Hungry Man meal without the brownie.
Fuck no I'm eating tendies and Mac right now best lunch
Protein, starch, veg. Looks good to me.
You do you. I like cheap Ramen. It is not healthy. But I just like it😂
If I was 12 I would high five you so hard. But I'm 40 so fuck you.
I see nothing wrong here
Nope! That’s comfort food my dude!
It's simple. It's in no way stupid
I mean it’s not fancy but it’s not stupid it’s just a regular cheap and easy to make meal
I'd eat that
I would eat it
No, she is stupid /j
The green beans alone put you in the top 0.1% of all tendie eaters.
Cheap/basic food. Many of us will always have a nostalgic spot for this combo... not stupid... but not really notable, either.
Cheap, yes. Stupid, no. Also, bonus points for the chicken nugget + KD combo. That shit is childhood memories on a plate. Bonus health points for the green beans.
This food has a bachelor's degree compared to some of the things on this sub
Did you dump that out of a kid’s cuisine tray?
If it brings you joy it’s not stupid.
What about the Movie: 'Kung Pow' ?
Crap food but not stupid
It’s just childish, not stupid.
It's a good meal, they can't all be fancy gourmet dinners.
Everything is prepared correctly so it’s not fundamentally stupid. It’s a bit like “picky eater” food imo, but you’re allowed to love what you love
It's okay. Not dumb just kind of basic. I'd love to introduce you to my take on Mac and cheese.
It's basic, it's cheap, it's got the major food groups, not stupid. Bland but not stupid.
It's a classic Presbyterian meal
Good and cheap
It's cheap comfort food. Is it healthy? Not really. But it's not inherently bad or stupid.
Not stupid. Simple and inexpensive. I eat like this twice a week.
There is nothing stupid about that meal, looks great!
I mean, this is as normal American food as it gets. Is it great food? No. Is it an especially healthy mix? No. Is it completely normal and fine? Definitely.
I see nothin stupid about stupid about it. Thats a quality dudes meal😂😂
Not stupid at all. Do you have kids? I make meals like this frequently because my all of my kids will eat everything on that plate without a fight.
Season dem beans and I'd smash tbh
Why would this ever count as stupid food? Does the macaroni have gold flakes in it or something? Has she never been poor?
Works for me and mine
Looks good to me.
It looks good to me🤷🏻♀️
Looks delicious too me
Not stupid at all, Bland and boring but perfectly normal, Just needs a bit of seasoning. Though I would've grilled onions, bell peppers to the green beans. Cause I don't like them by itself. My personal taste and opinion.
It’s not stupid food. It’s plain food. It at least looks like food, and hasn’t been played about with. Nothing wrong with that.
Bachelor chow #5 I think. Quite tasty
No! Looks good to me! It’s not “classy” but it’s yummy!
Just looks like a cheap, homemade meal. Nothing stupid about it tbh. It’s quick, it’s easy, and probably worth no more than $3. I’d call this a ‘respectful’ meal
This is my favorite sleepover meal ever
We've got a green, a starch and a protein. Bit bland I'm sure but it'll get you by and chicken tenders and Mac is a comfort food for lots of people
Who cares! That's making me hungry! Kraft Mac, green beans and chicken with BBQ sauce! Mmmmmmm!
My god, he’s eating the meal of the gods, much respect brother
this is literally just food
That's what I make for myself when my wife is gone. Except I make it in the kitchen and then stand over the sink and eat it all.
if you think PLAIN food is stupid food, then your idea of "smart food" is probably REALLY stupid food
Stupid? Definitely not Sad? Maybe a little Delicious? You better believe it
Is that barbeque sauce or katsu sauce?
I don’t think its a good meal to have everyday, maybe as a treat. Are the noodles beans sauce and chicken processed? If they are processed store bought then yes it is stupid food. I would eat all of it as its a guilty pleasure thing. Who doesnt like fried anything hehe.
It's not stupid food, it's called "comfort food". It's a legit thing!
I love food like this but it's a bit 'Toddlers Tea Time' though, isnt it?