breakfast - we always ate breakfast growing up. my mom was the best (still is) and would pretty much have breakfast on the table for us every morning. my hands down favorite were toaster strudels. i think they were my mom's favorite too because she used to decorate them for us and i think this was her way of letting out her artistic skills. frosting art.
for some reason on special occasions like valentine's day, st. patrick's day, etc. we would have sno-balls for breakfast. yes, nothing like a healthy hostess dessert for breakfast. obviously the colors coordinated with the holiday. i have no idea why this was a tradition and it's probably not one i'll establish with my family some day but lord did i love it growing up.
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weekend breakfasts were almost always pancakes. i never ate eggs and my dad loves pancakes, so pancakes and bacon it was. they looked a lot like this photo except that i never used syrup and please use about four times this much butter. i still don't love syrup that much on my pancakes. some things never change.
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lunch - so it's pretty clear that healthy eating wasn't necessarily something i was concerned with when i was a kid. my favorite lunch was some variation on cheese sticks, pepperoni or turkey roll ups and crackers. they didn't come in ready made snack packs like this, but they looked primarily the same.
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i also was a big fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. well, peanut butter sandwiches at least. sometimes i'd have jelly, sometimes not. i usually had carrot sticks or celery sticks on the side and a bag of chips. always in a brown paper bag. and i probably didn't recycle it. gosh, i was the worst.
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dinner - my mom is a great cook. like...not only did i get all my skills from her but she is still about a billion times more impressive than i am in the kitchen (if i am in fact impressive at all). she's one of those tastes the food and knows exactly what it needs to taste even better cooks. i hope to be like that someday. but wow, was i a pain in the ass when i was a kid. i wouldn't eat approximately anything that she cooked and i would pitch a fit about it when anyone made me try. i also refused to eat seafood (except shellfish), my brother refused to eat red meat and pork and my mom thinks chicken is boring so most nights she made 2-3 different meals a night to make everyone happy. seriously - laurel is a goddamn saint and i don't know how she put up with us. some of my favorite dinners included...
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oh man, i love pork tenderloin, always have always will. we had a lot of pork tenderloin (and my mom would make some type of tilapia or something for my brother tim). always with a potato and vegetable on the side. dinner always included vegetables. i always fought to not eat them and then had to eat them cold. damn, foiled by my parents.
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my very favorite meal of all time: beef tenderloin with bearnaise. extra points if it was served with hash brown potatoes. this would be the meal i'd eat if i were on death row.
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and since it's approaching lent, fried shrimp and french fries were always our favorite lenten friday meals. my mom does in fact have a deep fryer and she would get to frying up shrimp and wouldn't quit. my brothers and dad could eat dozens of the things. again, not always the healthiest at my house.
putting this all together it looks like my childhood was entirely devoid of nutrition - i promise that wasn't the case. these were my favorites, but we had our share of salads and veggies as well and my parents have definitely started to eat a lot healthier in the past few years too. now when i go home to visit you're much more likely to see us having scallops served over greens and there's a lot less arguing when it comes to getting me to eat my vegetables.
what were your favorites as a kid?
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What a fun WIAW post!! I was a huge fluffer nutter lover (you know marshmallow & pb). I could honestly eat 2 or 3 at once :)
ReplyDeleteMy husband loves those snowballs and gets them for every holiday. I'm not a fan because I don't like marshmallow. Happy WIAW!
ReplyDeleteYum. I used to love toaster strudels! My favorites were the berry or strawberry. Did you ever try the one's with egg and cheese? I thought they were so gross! :) Lol.
ReplyDeleteI had pancakes every weekend too. Not during the week, but totally on the weekends. I'm glad I wasn't the only picky eater as a child since I ate about 4 things. Wait, I still do. Oh well, I'll get there. There's still hope, right?
ReplyDeleteAnd I feel like kids' meals never looks super healthy but your dinners were pretty balanced for the most part like mine always were and my parents always thought that was the most important meal to balance anyways.
Such a great idea for a WIAW post! My childhood was also full of toaster studels, eggos, and pop tarts!
ReplyDeleteHahaha, I love this post. It totally cracks me up! My dad used to make crepes for us on the weekends. We'd douse them in either lemon juice + powdered sugar or jam. So good!
ReplyDeleteeh what is being a kid all about. I never ate breakfast as a kid, probably why I barely eat breakfast now anymore as an adult. I think my sister and I were snack queens so we always had smaller meals but massive snacks. nommm
ReplyDeleteOh, growing up eating healthy and nutritious couldn't have been farther from my mind. Hehe. I chowed down on Spaghetti O's, Coco Puffs, Gushers... the list goes on. Every now and then I take a walk down memory lane. Or, more accurately, my taste buds do. ;)
ReplyDeleteI love snowballs, they are so fun to bite into! Love your WIAW post ;). I loved anything chocolate, kids yoghurts and my mum's flapjack fresh out of the oven. Oh and my before bed snack of an apple and goats cheese, so good!
ReplyDeleteAhh i almost did this today too haha...i was also a pain in the ass as a kid but my parents made me eat what they made..,my mum refused to cook more than one meal for everyone...chicken fingers and fries, pizza, and occasionally hamburgers were my favs :)
ReplyDeleteGreat post! It's always so interesting to see how much people have changed!
ReplyDeleteI never used to eat breakfast. I was horrible about it. My parents would complain and try to force me to eat it and then I would secretly throw whatever they gave me away. Awful. Who was I?
Also, my mom didn't like to cook and I was a picky eater so I ate a lot of mac 'n cheese, spaghetti-o's, and frozen chicken pot pies when I was little. I also loved canned green beans so you know, sometimes I'd just have a can of those for dinner. Again, who was I?
These are such a blast [from the past], I wanna jump on board and do one too :P I also cherish my momma for all the things that she put up with when my brother and I were younger... I wasn't picky whatsoever but my brother was a complete mess. And sorry, but Pop-Tarts > Toaster Strudels :P
ReplyDeleteThis is such a cool post! I love it! We had toaster strudels every now and again growing up, but I always thought they were lame compared to Poptarts haha. I was a BIG hot dog fan as a kid. Especially when my parents would put cheese in them and roll them up in crescent rolls. THE BEST.
ReplyDeleteHaha we were big on Toaster Struedels for a while! And I've never had those hostess snacks. I actually specifically remember trying at twinkie when I was younger (probably 7 or 8) and hating it. It's the only Hostess snack I've ever had.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think about how different my childhood eats were from the way I eat now and get a little sad. Sure they weren't the healthiest, but they were fun! And super healthy or not, I'd like to think that I turned out okay :D Some favorites? Poptarts, pancakes, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. Grilled cheese sandwiches, juice boxes, and fruit snacks for lunch. KD, chicken fingers, and french fries for dinner. Epitome of health, right there :D
ReplyDeleteI love this post! I'll have to do one sometime, too. I think the thing that I miss eating (on a regular basis) the most is Lucky Charms. Or bagels. I could eat those things every morning and not have to worry about any of the unhealthy consequences. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI miss the things I used to eat. Mostly the amount I used to eat! Cute post idea. :)
ReplyDeleteYour post and some of these comments (like Amanda's and Alex's especially) are making me sad that I've grown up out of my childhood eating habits. From what I remember, they were perfectly balanced and perfectly fun. Am I the only one who wishes to go back to a time when I didn't give a good flying squirrel about what I ate as long as I was happy? I mean, I'm really, really starting to get back there ... but sometimes I just wish that I could have some hotdog scoobi doo noodle casserole with corn, peas, broccoli and cauliflower without a second thought, you know?
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of this post! If I compare the food that I eat now with the meals that I ate in high school and college it almost sickens me. How I got any vitamins and nutrients back then is beyond me!
ReplyDeleteWhat a trip down memory lane! For breakfast on the weekends it was always eggs, bacon / sausage / hashbrowns (my dad is a beast cook and makes stellar hash browns) or we would do giant pancakes - during the week it was toaster scramblers all the way. Growing up my pancakes were always the size of the pan! Lunches were sandwiches or soups at home and in hs it was 2 slices of mushroom pizza from the local pizza joint. My dad is just a ridic cook so dinner was a different gourmet dish every night!
ReplyDeleteAKA childhood = heck of a lot more carbs!
LOVED this post! Funny thing: when I was young, my mum never put our picnic lunches in brown paper bags and I wanted them SO badly!! Not really sure what was up with my obsession with them ;p
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