Childhood foods.

​     When I was a kid, eating at a restaurant was a treat. I can remember when my favorite meal was a from Mr. Weenie’s. Dad would ask what we wanted to eat, and I’d ask for the foot long Spanish hot dog. Mom told me I didn’t need it, but dad would say you’re only a kid once and order it. 

     I remember Burger Chef, the Burger Barn, and Taco John’s, but we didn’t eat at those very often. I remember Mr. Weenie’s because it was an adventure. It was really the only time we ate in the car.

     I remember going to the Dormitory with my neighbor and eating off of their weekly dinner menu when I was twelve. After my neighbor and I mowed a couple of the neighbor’s yards each week, we’d spend a couple of bucks for dinner at the Dorm. I can’t remember what day they served it, but the meatloaf was my favorite.

     The Dorm was our first taste of the freedom of adulthood. We had a choice of what we wanted to eat at the Dorm which wasn’t something we had at home. You ate what your parents ate. You didn’t have a choice. 

     TV dinner’s weren’t an option. These microwave dinners that take five minutes in the microwave today didn’t exist. A TV dinner in the seventies took 30-35 minutes in the oven. They were in aluminum foil trays and didn’t taste as good as the microwave meals do now.

     We made popcorn in a skillet on Friday night. It was good, but it didn’t have the buttery flavor of movie popcorn. Once in a while mom bought us Jiffy Pop. 

     Jiffy Pop was the only way to get anything like movie theater popcorn at home when I was a kid. It came in a skillet shaped aluminum pan with a wire handle and folded aluminum top that expanded as it popped. You peeled off the cardboard caver and shook it over a medium flame until it stopped popping. You ended up with what resembled an upside down bowl. We had a big Tupperware bowl that we dumped it in. 

     In the early eighties my parents bought a microwave. They didn’t work as well as the ones today do. Microwave meals were rubbery and flavorless when I first ate them. They have gotten much better over the years, but I didn’t use the microwave for much back then. It made popcorn that was better than Jiffy Pop, but my dad hated the smell it made. We couldn’t make microwave popcorn when dad was home.

     Once in a while, I think that microwaves limited my kid’s sense of adventure. I knew how to cook by the time I was a teenager. I wasn’t an expert chef and still am an amateur, but I could cook well enough to feed myself. 

     I don’t think my son could survive without a microwave, chicken strips, and pizza rolls. He’s hooked on stir fry, though, and is obsessed with seasonings. Maybe there’s hope for him yet.