About the dry milk, at that point in time dry milk was much less expensive than fresh milk. It was both an acquired taste and a learning curve to make.
It was definitely an acquired taste. I liked it, but I never felt it tasted like milk from a carton. It had an almost malty taste to it. Also, it was never creamy. I think that’s cuz the only one I ever tried was non-fat. It tasted “thin,” if thin had a taste!
@@tonyboloni64We got whole milk from my uncle’s farm. It had been through a mechanical separator but there was usually still an inch or so of cream at the top of the jar. Mom would often skim some of the cream for coffee but most of the time stirred it into the milk. Then she’d “cut” it by adding an equal amount of prepared non-fat dry milk. It stretched the milk and we never noticed a difference in taste.
I lived in northern Virginia in 2008, and had no transportation, it was too far to walk to the store. If I ran out of milk, I was up the creek. So I started buying powdered milk. After losing my job, I lived on eggs, bread and powdered milk. I survived😂
Late to the comments, but I have to say something about reconstituted dry milk. My mother used it to extended regular milk. With 2 teen aged boys and 3 girls, my mother bought 8 gallons of milk each week and it wasn't enough to get through the week. Toward the end of the week she'd extend the milk by mixing half whole milk with half powdered milk. We always knew. We called it "googie milk ". 🤢
As a kid in the 80s, I liked to take a teaspoon of the dry milk powder and eat it, as is. I don't think my mum knew. Well, that's probably just wishful thinking. 😂
My second mom always had powdered milk when we were growing up in the 80s. Ahhh…the memories. She used to put on an apron on and get her pad and pen and take our order even though she knew we wanted Mac and cheese and she had already made it! 😂
I make spoon bread regularly and would recommend adding sage or poultry seasoning to the chicken bread and i also make it with ham and add thyme and oregano and cheese to it. I also add sautéed vegetables to it. It’s sooo yummy. Love your channel and love the Pyrex.♥🇨🇦
As a person who likes some of the weirder parts, like liver and tongue, I can attest that they have traditionally been cheaper than other cuts of meat but have also gone up in price a LOT in this time of food inflation. I was shocked at how much tongue was at the store the other day! Anyway, organ meats are probably not something one picks up a taste for as an adult. The only people I know who like to eat things like tongue developed a taste for them when they were kids and so it's nostalgic comfort food for us ☺
Now it's gourmet. Mom cooked chicken liver, gizzard, short ribs, minute steak, and old-time frankfurter that had natural cases. All of them were cheap as dirt. I was going to make or hubby Mom's braised short ribs, a divine, tender dish, and found beef short ribs are outrageously expensive. They are bougie now, not poor people food.
I learned to cook beef liver as a young kid because while my mom would buy it for me, she wouldn't touch it. She would actually lose all color and would truly look sick. I only craved it a few times a year, so I didn't terrorize her too much.
How are they "weirder" parts? I'll never understand that line of thinking. How is eating those any worse than eating the rest of the corpse? If I ate mammals, I'd have no issue eating those. I only wouldn't if I didn't like the taste or texture. But I wouldn't think of them as "weird." Now people who eat and enjoy eating colon, those people are weird. 😂
Powdered milk was a thing that housewives/home cooks kept in their pantries. It was cost effective. It was shelf stable. People were still making Jello salads to show how they had a refrigerator large enough to hold items beyond a couple days' worth of food. Into the early 1960s my mother marketed daily until she could afford a fridgerator. My parents were starting out, trusting in the fiture, not really poor.
Something that may explain the dry milk is that it used to be given out to low income families as a commodity through the USDA. Cheese loaf was another commodity item. Chicken liver and chicken hearts are still pretty cheap. I haven't priced beef liver in a few years. Tongue and oxtails pricing has gone insane. Neckbones have more than doubled and smoked turkey has gone up. Best price on meats right now is chicken leg quarter bags. They consist of thighs, drumsticks and back in a bag of like 10 lbs. Nothing wrong with them but the market forr wings and BS breasts leaves a lot of dark meat unloved so this is a way of selling those.
I was born in 1952. Dried milk and canned milk was often a staple. We lived miles from a grocery store. We had a milkman though. And dried milk was still sometimes distributed as a commodity postwar as was cheese.
I was little in 1970 but I remember that my parents had a tough time both getting and affording milk. And my dad was in the military! If you used powdered milk, it went a lot farther and it was much cheaper. When the recession was on in the early 70s, you would drink powdered milk but if it was a special occasion you made it with half milk and half water. Organ meat is cheaper and they were predicting that NO ONE would eat liver in ten years. But, it's making a comeback because of the high nutritional values.
Unknown to a lot of the younger generation, the US was in a major recession in the early 70's. Cheap meals were a necessity. Tongue and liver are expensive too. Oxtail is another item that used to be a really cheap cut. Velveeta was cheap and made with real cheese at that time. The taste was so much better than todays mess. Beef ribs were also a cheap cut of meat. Dry or powdered milkwas always in the pantry for emergencies or for making our own instant cocoa with the addition of 1 canister of nestle quik and powdered sugar and non dairy coffee creamer. My mom used to make stuffed beef heart, pickled tongue, liver and onions. They are not what I'd call cheap now.
Hi, Esther from Wisconsin. To answer your question about organ meats. Liver is easy to find and one of me favorites. Tongue, heart and kidneys are scarce. I've never tried these meats. When I was a kid my Uncle used to bring these organ meats over for my Mom to cook for him because his wife refused to cook them. I remember looking into a dutch oven on the stove and seeing a huge beef tongue and being totally appalled , of course I was probably 8 years old at the time so that would have been in the late 50's. I think if you order a half or whole cow from a butcher you can request the organ meats. I'll stick with my liver and onions thank you very much! I love your show on U-tube by the way, and love your variety of aprons and cook books.
I buy 8 oz blocks of cheese when they're on sale and freeze them. You can't slice and eat them straight up because freezing usually gives a crumbly texture, but it melts just fine when cooking and baking with it.
I have a pork Spoon bread recipe. Just fix the corn meal just like you did here, and add 1 pound of cooked breakfast sausage, 1can of diced tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of minced onion, 1 tablespoon of diced celery, one teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of pepper. (I use stewed tomatoes chopped up and omit the celery and onion). It’s an easy recipe. Sometimes we add grated cheddar on top. Cheers!
As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s…we always had powdered milk in the house. My mom used it in mashed potatoes, and a few other things for cooking. It wasn’t for drinking. My parents were well off, but grew up during the Depression and WWII, and that made them very frugal and weird about money and saving (but some of the things were good practices!) I’ll be a vegetarian before I eat liver (ever again…forced on me as a kid) or any other organ meats. The dry milk may have also reflected that there weren’t grocery stores open 24/7/365. Ours were closed on Sunday, and closed around 7 or 8 pm? So, it may have also been…oops, ran out of milk, store is closed, need to make dinner…Edited to add: I do like Better than Bouillon, but not the chicken version. I bought a giant jug of Knorr chicken (pollo) powder from Amazon. I think it’s more common in Latinx culture, so is usually in that section, and the Spanish is prominent over the English…but it tastes like chicken (not spiced with peppers or anything.) Very inexpensive, and has a great seasoning blend!
Berea, KY is known for their yearly Spoonbread Festival. I had never heard of it until I started working for Berea College and it’s almost a “rite of passage” for newbies to try the Spoonbread (and like it😅)
I make spoon Bread alot I make it on the stove I mix up my mixture for biscuits and fry it on the stove growing up my mom called them Flitters no it is flitters not fritters like apple fritters some people might call it pan bread.
I love this recipe and cookbook review, Anna! I’m also a big fan of the phrase “no funny business.” And oh, my! Those blue cabinets! And that blue casserole dish! 🥰
I tried this recipe and loved it. I took you seriously regarding the seasoning - I increased the salt a bit and added thyme and poultry seasoning. This is a keeper! I love your channel. I now own the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook and the Cookie Book as well. Thanks so much for featuring these classic cookbooks!
I think Velvita used to be cheaper. My mom used to make homemade mac and cheese with it in the 70's. If it was expensive, I don't think she would have bought it.
I live alone and got tired of paying more per oz for smaller jugs of milk so I could manage to use it all before it went bad and started just keeping powdered milk on hand. It's more convenient than dividing up a gallon and freezing most of it. It doesn't taste great if you try to drink it AS milk but it works great for cooking and as a base for hot chocolate. Since it's non-fat I add a little melted butter to it to make it into "whole milk". I still buy actual milk when I plan on a treat like cookies and know for sure that I'll use it.
The better than bouillon ham, garlic, and onion (as well as the chicken) are staples in my house. I use them all in my dried beans, soups and stews, etc. I had no idea you could get them in bigger jars!
By the mid to late 70's inflation was very similar to today- where meat is almost a luxury- so this book was timely. Milk was expensive and my mom would stretch the milk with dry milk- we could tell- it was nasty. lol But in cooking it was more palatable. You can substitute tuna or salmon for any mackerel.
Have not seen a meat spoonbread but sounds good. I make a corn spoonbread and it's my favorite corn recipe. I add some roasted peppers but not many. Spoonbread is a Native American tradition. Also fry bread, which is flat.
When my kids were little on Friday night after I got off work and I was off for the weekend I would make a fast and easy 1pot or 2 an meal 1 of their favorites was I would brown hamburger meat add some seasoning salt and bacon bits and mix it into some macaroni and cheese simple be sure to drain the fat
Beef heart is still inexpensive. I like to cook, drain and use to make a stew or taco filling. Tongue is expensive (popular taco filling). And ox tails are very expensive. Makes the best soup ever, but popularity of bone broth upped the price. Chicken hearts are good buy and very mild. I cook once, cool a bit, trim up and quarter and cook again with onions and thyme. Make a little gravy and serve over rice. One of my favorites small meals to make.
My mum always had a packet of dry milk incase we ran out of normal milk in a bottle and grandma used to put a pinch of salt in it then it taste like normal cows milk...but great for egg custards or rice puddings..etc... Also U were asking about different meats well I saw at winter time in Australia Oxtail used to be cheap for soup like less than $5-00 kg but it was $30-00 which was crazy...can U make the beef cheeks in your book sounds great... Everything has gone crazy these days...in food...😂❤😂❤😂love your show and the old things you have...
I have a small collection of BHG cook books. This is one of them. Pork and potato supper on page 46. It been a staple in my family since I was a kid. I'm 54 now. This looks good! I think gravy for the over top. So I have all of this in the house. I'm going to try it.
With 5 of us kids, my mom frequently bought big boxes of powdered milk. This was in the 60s, before we knew our whole family was allergic to the milk protein, or casein (casienate). It was affordable for large families, but us kids hated it! It just wasn’t the same on corn flakes! 😅
The pyramid is now the plate, at least last I heard. I definitely get the sense that milk powder used to be a more common staple, and I think there were even ads/commercials for it once upon a time. In the 80s and 90s my mom usually kept a box on hand, but only for specific recipes, not ever to drink (if anyone tries telling you it’s an acceptable alternative outside of cooking, they are probably the same folks who enjoy things like liver and mackerel. If you encounter them, just smile and nod politely as you try not to gag at the thought of those things, then switch topics to something like jello salads (the sweet kind only, still avoiding that nausea). A few more unasked for notes: More Dottie breaks, please! Dang those are some big eggs. Why do I never see eggs like those where I shop? Margarine, at least the kind I’m familiar with from my childhood (I think there must be some different kinds out there now, but probably marketed towards vegans), has a history of being mistaken for a healthy alternative to butter before it was discovered to be worse for one’s health. If anyone here doesn’t know about trans fats, now is a good time to look it up. Butter is better in so many ways. If you need the cooking difference of oil, then just use oil instead. K, I’ll hop off my horsy now. I’m sure nobody needs to know this, but, my kid and I were talking about polenta right before I watched this, and that’s actually the second coincidence that’s popped up from that conversation. But what were we discussing about polenta? Well, unfortunately neither of us like it. But if this is more like cornbread… ? I dunno, I’m a bit picky about foods including cornmeal. This spoon bread stuff isn’t exactly what I was expecting, and I doubt I’ll be making it, but I always enjoy these videos regardless. I find them kinda therapeutic, and they invoke nostalgia for the times in my childhood when my parents would include me in the cooking/baking. My dad is an excellent cook, but he did work on Sundays for a long time, so, on those days, my Mom and I would cook a hot meal from scratch to have ready for him when he got home (he filled more of the traditional mother role usually, doing most of the cooking, caring for me and various domestic tasks, even while he worked and for a time was also pursuing a Masters degree, so take that stereotypes!). While we cooked, frequently making something from the old Betty Crocker bible that they still have (love those pictures of the galaxy cookies!), we would listen to the oldies station and do the old dances, like the twist and the swim, around the kitchen. And she’d often tell me about her memories of growing up in the sixties and seventies, or even whatever she knew about her parents’ life stories, so I feel I got the whole retro experience those days. We don’t get along great now, but I’ll always appreciate those memories.
I remember in the seventies my mum keeping dry milk on hand all the time. Now it seems dry milk has fallen out of fashion not to mention it is quite expensive. I loved the stuff especially Carnation dry milk the government dry milk was delicious too.
My grandmother would reconstitute a quart of dry milk and add it to her regular milk to stretch it farther. She was a pro at stretching and cost savings.
Hi Anna Politics plays a role in your powdered milk questions. In the late 60's up until susidies to the dairy industry were stopped, too much milk was produced to use before it would go bad (further back than that, but late 60s fots our time frame well). Dried milk took care of that, extending its shelf like like crazy. Government promotion of dried milk got more people using it. I see that on the hoizon again. Tacos de lengua (tongue) are a thing here. The mest is very tender and very lean.Tripe also big.
I used to make Pork spoon bread. It had breakfast sausage and diced tomatoes in it with a tablespoon of onion and celery. Everyone loved it. The recipe got misplaced during a move, but I still make a version of it today
Used to eat beef heart, kidneys and liver as a kid ( 50 + yrs ago). They were much cheaper and u got them at the local market. Supermarkets don’t carry them anymore (as with salt pork which we used to make chowder, bacon doesn’t compare). Oh well
My mom was first generation Italian (her parents from Italy) so I didn't grow up eating food like this. She made some Italian food but mostly things like chicken cutlets, meatloaf, steak, pork chops. She never made casseroles because "they were for poor people". She grew up very poor in a household of 10 kids during the depression and I guess she vowed to never eat like that again. She sewed her own clothes, but she made sure we ate well....and we were working class.
I never got used to dry milk. It had a odd taste I couldn't stand. Not as a drinking milk. Guess it works better cooked in something. Some brands taste better. Just got to try a lot of brands.
I've seen beaten egg whites used in cloud bread. So, maybe a hybrid of some kind. I believe the "processed cheese" was the government cheese that was given in a program similar to WIC, not sure. Powdered milk used to be waaayyy cheaper than fresh. I knew people that would mix half fresh and half reconstituted milk to stretch their food budgets.
In the 1970’s the US government gave out large blocks of processed cheese and giant cans of shredded chicken. Maybe this influenced some of these recipes.
Yea, Velveeta makes sauce creamy for casseroles. Many recipes from way back when, were written using Velveeta, so it became a staple for many of us. I just bought the larger box of Velveeta Con Queso for a Mexican casserole. Stupid expensive. More than the chicken.
I do one called Daniel Boone Tavern Spoon Bread that is similar, but you don't need to separate the eggs and adds cream corn for part of the liquid. It's a bigger recipie too, about twice what was made here. So I cook it in a large oval casserole dish. It's a great side for a fall or winter dinner.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. Love spoon bread, but have never seen chicken added to it! However, it was always served with chicken, so that makes sense.
We use powdered milk for the puppy. She loves her whole milk but we don't drink it so we started making up the powdered milk and she loves it and none of it goes bad as she only gets so little and we can male it up a coup at a time. Plus it's dead cheap.
A lot of meats that were commonly used by ethnic families, frequently considered undesirable or nasty by others, used to be really cheap. Media has popularized many of them and led to a steep increase in price. The two that really come to mind are tongue and oxtails. My family eats tongue in tacos and its delicious, but it isn't cheap really
I grew up in the 70s. My mom always had dry milk in the house. A couple times she'd try to pass it off as regular milk but you could definitely tell the difference. But it was good for cooking or putting on cereal. I've heard of spoon bread don't think I've tried it but it sounds good.
Mmmm... melted butter and chicken? Yes please!! This sounds like a delicious ton of fun! Love the idea of mixing it up with some more seasoning and herbs... maybe sage would be nice? That matching plate and casserole dish by the way... gorgeous! Loved this one Anna!
Sage would be lovely in this! We have some growing in front of our house and I meant to grab a few leaves but forgot. I'm hoping to find more pieces in the Snowflake Blue pattern to showcase in my videos. So pretty! Thanks for watching!
Other Anna answering your questions in the comments: re non fat dried milk: it has always been covered by WIC and other food assistance programs, fresh milk has not. Spoonbread: if you love early American recipes, you’ve probably had spoon bread. It’s a species of hasty pudding and it’s pretty common to add cheese, meat, onions, chiles etc. Also, that base? It’s corn meal mush. Which I grew up eating for breakfast, fried with maple syrup or apple butter. Organ meats: centeralized butchering is what has made organ meat more expensive. In order to sell it to consumers you have to divert it from the waste streams that currently sell it for industrial uses like pet food and feed manufacturing which now adds cost. Previously your butcher got the whole animal or whole primal and had to figure out what to do with the less desirable bits themselves which is what made off cuts cheaper.
Thank you for this response. This is what I understood to be true about the way "off cuts" are priced now, except in My area there's the extra price bump bc of demand - a growing ethnic population with food traditions around organ meats and off cuts also in same grocery store buying population.
I think dehydrated milk has improved in flavor over the years as the taste of the stuff I buy(instant milk) is nothing like the orange box of dehydrated milk powder my mom would buy in the 1970s. Flavor is improved and it instantly mixes into the water vs the old style stuff.
I had forgotten all about spoon bread until I found this episode. My mom used to make it all the time. I love watching you use your vintage stuff my mom had a lot of the items that you have I wish I had got some of them
I used to make corn spoon bread quite a bit, Haven’t in a long time. I never added anything else except creamed corn to the mixture. It was always delicious. Great with chicken, turkey, or any stew
Grandma always used powdered milk towards the end of shopping week, it was awful. However, I loved eating it dry off a spoon (it did stick to the roof of my mouth though😂)
Your videos are taking me back to my childhood and so many memories. I remember one of my aunts who had 6 kids used to reconstitute powdered milk then mix it with regular milk in big pitchers in the fridge. I thought it was “fancy” lol but I’m sure it was a cost-cutting exercise. My mom used to use evaporated milk in most of her recipes, always diluted with half water. I didn’t care for the taste but it was great in her baking recipes. Her homemade chocolate pudding or chocolate meringue pie used half evaporated milk & half water and it still tastes better than any I’ve ever had, hands down. Ps. Since the pandemic started I’ve been such a homebody except for work and seeing grandkids. You’re really inspiring me to get back out there and search for more vintage cookbooks. I have a lot but would love some more. The Southern Living ones from the 70’s are fabulous.
Hi there! I'm so glad I could help bring back memories and inspire you to go out and search for more cookbooks. I have exactly one Southern Living cookbook from 1982, and it just so happens I'm planning a future video with it right now. 😄
I agree that thyme would enhance the flavor. Some veloute sauce (French for chicken gravy, in case you didn't know that) would probably be good on it, too. Unfortunately, you don't say how much cornmeal and flour.
Hi there! A lot of the recipes on my channel are pretty cost effective, even if I don't include 'budget friendly' in the title. The tofu recipe a couple of videos back came out to less than $1 per serving (using ingredients sourced from Aldi, your cost may vary depending on where you shop).
I can't stand liver either. The only time I cooked it was when my golden retriever was pregnant. I would buy whole beef livers and boil them. Mom- and pop-to-be knew it was for them, so they'd sit patiently in the kitchen until it was done. Each would get a big plate of chopped liver. One time, my brother came over while I was boiling liver, and he ate some as well (he didn't sit on the kitchen floor, though).
I do something similar, but used Jiffy cornbread mix instead of doing the bread from scratch. I started making it a few years ago with Thanksgiving leftovers, so it was poultry seasoned turkey, left over vegetables, a bit of shredded cheese, and for the milk portion I went with half chicken broth half milk (doubled, so 1/3 cup each). Shockingly tasty! lol Now I've seen how to do the bread portion from scratch, I'm going to have to try it out.
Beef heart and chicken livers are still pretty reasonable (although still twice what they cost not so terribly long ago). Beef tongue is WAY harder to find, and has skyrocketed in price to luxury cut prices.
I think my Mom still has that book. I made so many recipes from it as I was teaching myself to cook as a teenager. I remember there was quite the selection of powdered milk at the time, liquid milk was only available as whole from the store and Mom would make a weaker powdered milk that was lower fat.
My mom blew a chunk of my inheritance on cookbooks but because she's never really been into cooking, she's passed most of them onto me. I know I have this one somewhere but It didn't pass the test to make it into my bookcase. Now I'm thinking I'll revisit and give it another look.
Another great episode! I TOTALLY used that photo of the BH&G books to help me find what books I was missing! LOL And I am always shocked at the price of Velveeta and I'm grateful that Wal*Mart has it's own Great Value version called, "Original Melt'n Dip Easy Melt Cheese". 16oz. Velveeta = $5.48 16oz. Great Value = $3.88
Oh my gosh, I love that you also used the photo! 😂 Unfortunately the Walmart stores near me either don't carry their brand of Velveeta or it's always out of stock. Most likely it's because the stores in my immediate area are not Supercenters, and only dedicate a small amount of space to groceries. I know Safeway also has a house brand of processed cheese, but it's not available in my store either. So weird, I know! A few months back I checked the price of Velveeta at my local Target....$13.99. Can. You. BELIEVE.
