Legendary Meals from the 70s
My siblings and I are retired or close to it, but we still have conversations that start with "Do you remember when Mom made X?" Thus commences a discussion of Old El Paso taco kits, Chef Boyardee pizzas, waffle irons, liver, English peas and frequently, bread burgers, a 70s-era delicacy, that sounds a bit awful now, but actually wasn't that bad.
The grocery stores of my youth were a lot different than what we now have. They sold one kind of lettuce, iceberg, and two kinds of apples, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. In the south, where I'm from, the stores considered bagels to be a Northern affectation and didn't sell them. I was in high school before I learned such a thing existed.
The other factor from the 70s that played a part in food choices was the horrible economy. It was a decade of inflation, scarcity and interest rates in the stratosphere. Times were lean and feeding five people on a budget was a challenge.
Enter the bread burger. Then, as now, hamburger came in 1 pound packages. That's not a lot when divided into fifths, but back in the disco era, we had a solution.
"The practice of adding bread or breadcrumbs to ground beef was a common culinary technique in the 1970s, often referred to as 'stretching' the meat to make it more economical for larger families. This method not only increased the yield but also helped retain moisture, resulting in a softer, juicier patty."
Ok, that AI-generated description is accurate up to a point. The way they were made in our house involved shredding several slices of loaf bread, soaking that in milk and seasoning with salt, pepper, garlic, and Worcestershire sauce. This was folded into the hamburger, which was then formed into patties and cooked in a skillet. The result was dinner.
Over time, that mildly weird meal has evolved, undeservedly, into something vile. This actually brings me comfort.
Flash forward a couple of decades, and now I'm the parent trying to stretch the grocery budget. For a time, my whole family didn't eat meat at home. I was the family cook, and this made constructing filling dinners more complicated than I liked. One dish I made frequently involved mixing black beans, corn, lettuce, cheese and seasonings with a bottle of Catalina salad dressing. I didn't dare call it taco salad because of the missing meat, so I christened it bean mixture, and I have never heard the end of it.
My 40-ish kids make it sound like bean mixture was something you were sentenced to, not served for dinner. The fact that they grew into robust, athletic adults is, I think, a testament to my obvious dedication to their nutritional development.
When you have grandchildren, you get to pay your own kids back for mocking you. In my house, grandchildren can have anything they want to eat whenever they want it, and if I don't have it in the cabinet, I'll go to the store and buy it for them. You only live once. My mom, a retired nurse and walking health encyclopedia, infamously serves ice cream for breakfast to her grandchildren upon request. It takes some mental energy to understand that Nana Ice Cream and Mother Eat All Your Peas is the same person.
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