Do you mean to tell me vegetables can be cooked some other way besides boiling? And you can put seasoning on them?!? My grandfather would be disgusted by the thought.

Boggles my mind oven roasted asparagus and broccoli were not a thing as a child.

Turns out I love Brussels sprouts, so long as you don’t cook them til they’re grey.

I've made delicious strawberry ice cream. One way to get the strawberry flavor in there is to steep the milk/batter with berries and let the berry juice seep out of the berry. Fun fact! If you do this, you get white ghost berries so strain them out. If you want berry chunks, add new berries afters.

Frozen is way better than canned

This was me with soup. My mom would use all the dregs of whatever she had around to make "soup," and it was disgusting. Real soup made with the good parts of fresh ingredients is amazing, and I didn't even know until I was in my mid-20's!

Sounds like granny was a full blown dumbass.

that's not a waste of energy, but i bet there was also other habit that is: unless you want to specifically evaporate water, things will get boiled just the same on low or high heat. (heating up to boiling point is most economical using high power) there's zero reason to keep thing boiling on high heat then add water. also, using hot tap water. water heater is much better at heating water than open gas flame, yet i see people insisting on heating entire pots and kettles of cold tap water

I still can't do potlucks because my parents forced me to eat all sorts of random bullshit at the church potluck, because they felt like being seen eating someone's dish conferred some weird church status.

"Go over and tell Miss Borley how much you liked her chicken liver and salmon casserole."

On the other hand, this also contributed to my powerful disdain for church, so I guess that's something. The only way out is through... a senile lady's disgusting casserole, or something.

In defense of my old church:

Pizza biscuits.

Get Pillsbury biscuit dough, slap down one, slap down mozzarella, marinara, pepperoni/sausage, slap down another biscuit over top, do this 12 times, cover and bake.

Sorta like a poor man's calzone... or, arguably, they're just super sized pizza pockets.

Don't pair well with grape juice imo, but they were honestly pretty good.

We did eventually get an Italian soda station bar type thing, no clue if we just aped that from the Mormons or came up with it independently.

Mayonnaise PLUS jello, with hotdogs. Perfect.

Apparently I missed out. Post church social time was coffee and pastries. The big meals were normal (turkey with mash, green beans, and cranberry sauce, for example).

But I’ve read the cookbooks.

I've always thought this was some sort of mass hysteria. Who ate any of that stuff and thought "oh, hell yeah, so good"? Who would make it twice? Let alone more?

Ha. I know where you went to church.

Probably. Because we were there together. I think. Those were nasty jellos

Y'all's churches were weird. Growing up catholic in a German part of America we just did fish fries with beer battering and pig roasts, both with copious beer, though the kids had to stick to a single sip of wine. My wife's catholic upbringing was more Italian American and her church did meatballs in tomato sauce.

I must have lucked out, the oddest thing at my childhood churchs' potlucks were the ambrosia/watergate salad where they used ingredients that they liked instead of what the typical recipe calls for, or waldorf salads which had just a little too much mayo and not enough whipped cream.

That’s why one day I insisted on standing next to my grandma to take notes. I‘m glad I did because otherwise her „I don’t have a recipe“ noodle dish would have been lost forever.

I wonder if all great cooks "feel it out" or if that's just something I tell myself to help my disorganized ass sleep at night.

The secret ingredient was dust, dander, and flop sweat.

Source: my grandmother's kitchen. No disrespect granny, but your kitchen hygiene was awful.

Oyster milk! It's fight milk but you get a refreshing seaside holiday while you drink it

All my family recipes come from my male ancestors. Sure it's also various ways of making canned food work, but it's also been an evolving process since the 1800s so it's evolved from somewhat edible to outright good. All of them are trail/camping recipes for context, lots of meat, starche, and grain.

I would bet you money that is you search for the exact recipes online or in some newspaper archive, a fair number would pop up as having been published elsewhere first.

Might've been beetroot. It's excellent at coloring things pink and also used as a food dye...

I dont necessarily agree - my family (including my mother who has run a few restaurants into the ground) didnt have any recipes worth passing down - unless you count dumping a jar of ragu in a pot with some spaghetti.

By the time I was 20 I could match or improve the flavour of any dish from childhood (about the only good thing to come out of going to a culinary scam college), and I ended up not cooking... Basically any of it. I still pop open a can of smoked oysters on cheese and cracker nights, but thats more for remembering my grandma than anything else.

I blame the fact that everyone in my family smoked like a chimney and had no tastebuds left.

Hush up and eat your hooves