Well, my mom was a good enough cook as were my grandparents. But my dad got me and my sis for 1 yr before I went to college, and he couldn’t cook, and at that point I couldn’t either. So at least 4x/wk he made us baked frozen fries with broiled cube steak with some bottled bbq on it. I don’t recall what else we ate. Also, just for giggles, we were in a small apt and hadn’t yet sold our house across the country, so he and my mom decided not to ship the furniture and not to store it either. As such, we ate cross legged on the floor off throwaway plates that were perched on a travel chest. Yep. Good times. That was Sept-May of 1990-91, until our house sold in May and we were able to get a table in the place. And some beds.
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“Couldn’t Cook” is a little hyperbolic, no? With big successes like those you list, perhaps they weren’t particularly interested in applying themselves to exploration.
I also urge you to consider the “child feedback loop”–E.g., if a child doesn’t like X, there’s not much incentive for parents to make and perfect it. As an adult, I learned that my continued childhood raving about my babysitting aunt’s fried chicken and gravy actually caused Mom to stop making it.
Let me ask you this: Did your parents use cookbooks? Many cooks of my parents’ generation didn’t. I found ONE cookbook (Joy of) when my mom passed, but I never saw her use it. OTOH, she had shoeboxes full of recipe cards cribbed from friends, relatives, clubs, etc. But she stuck to 15-20 core preps that were seasonal and that she knew her diners liked. And she was a very good cook.
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I also found only one book when Mum died. Good Housekeeping’s Cookery Compendium. First published in 1952, this edition, which I still have (but have never cooked from) dates to 1954. Maybe it was updated that year as 1954 marked the end of meat rationing and all other still rationed foods.
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Yes, so do I. But putting salty fish in lovely, crisp cucumber salad? No, thx!
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Yes, today we take for granted how accessible recipes are. What few cookbooks there were were not that stellar, either. Hence the recipe cards and church lady compilations.
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I don’t remember what cookbooks my mom may have had. Her recipes are on index cards in a couple of mini binders. When I moved out she gifted me a big fat hard bound Good Housekeeping Cookbook so maybe she thought that was good… it isn’t, and I haven’t opened that relic in decades.
I have about a dozen cookbooks (including French, Italian, Alaskan, etc.) and they all pretty much suck with the exception of Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen, Wolfgang Puck’s Cookbook (the original), and The Joy of Ice Cream, with Paul’s being my fav. Back in my So Cal days his “Orleans” restaurant was a frequent visit, and just about every dish they offerred is in this book.
Tasso & Oysters Pasta and Jalapeno Rolls… Yum! Too bad I can’t get fresh oysters where I’m at these days.
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Mom was competent but unenthusiastic. I was already a picky kid (see ‘I don’t like X’ thread). Her mother was praised for her cooking. I think she just didn’t want to compete. She went to work in the early 80’s so dinner was never an elaborate affair.
I never appreciated chopped liver as a kid (her/my grandmother’s recipe) is the best, but as a kid I wanted… ground eggs.
Stuff a hard boiled egg through a meat grinder (which is out for the chopped liver). Salt and pepper and for whatever reason I LOVED this, even though I would normally loathe if any speck of egg yolk would dare contaminate my plate.
We always had blue box Mac and cheese around, but my mom also managed to teach me to make it using 4-5 slices of Kraft singles instead of the cheese powder and plain elbow mac.
I still make that today when I’m in a particularly DGAF mood. Must remember the lactaid, though.
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I think I was gifted that book, if it’s the illustrated one. It was during the Early Paleozoic, but I learned techniques from it. Would I have preferred Pepin’s Ma Technique or Peterson’s What’s a Cook to Do? Sure. You have to start somewhere.
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Satay with peanut sauce… Yum!!! You were a lucky kid as I never had anything like it growing up.
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My mom was a good cook. My dad didn’t cook at all (well he’d man the grill occasionally), except for one dish he made every Sunday: vinegary home fries. Cube up potatoes small, soak generous amount of onions in white vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and tabasco, dump over potatoes in large cast iron skillet, add lots of pepper, put plate over pan while potatoes cook and absorb liquid, remove top and let crips a bit. Spicy, peppery, vinegary, so good.
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Well, close. I have one from 1967, sent to me by my grandmother (and another copy of it she sent to my late mother) compiled by the local ladies of the Order of the Eastern Star. It’s hard bound, but not typeset. Looks like it was printed off typewritten copy and hand-drawn illustrations. Lots of handwritten scraps and yellowed newspaper clippings in my mom’s Good Housekeeping cookbook.
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These are better filters, IMO, than modern cookbook reviews. You just have understand that not every contributor was a star and everyone got to contribute. Not a bad general model.
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Picture worth 1000 words. This was our dining room and dinner table for almost 10 months. I am the older one, and my little sister is with me. And also the requisite fries and barbecue steak.
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That sounds tasty!
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Amazing find. Also, beautiful.
ETA: is that a newspaper tablecloth? 
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Why yes it is. Also you will see our phone, and a corner of a sleeping bag, which my dad used. The girls had the bedroom, so our sleeping bags are out of view! I badgered him after a month of this to get a t.v. But otherwise, there literally was no furniture. I did all my homework (senior yr) sitting on the floor.
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Grammies chicken. Buttered , dipped in flour and baked in the oven .
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Oh, my. Well, you turned out well despite or because 
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In life I am a pretty simple pleasures person. And not very materialistic. I never really thought that that period of my life might’ve been formative in these things, but maybe you’re on to something.
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There are a few nostalgic dishes I still enjoy from my childhood. I had a working-class upbringing in the 70s in Pennsylvania deep in PA Dutch country, with literally zero exposure to fine cooking or “ethnic” cuisines of any kind. My father was a SUPER meat-and-potatoes dude, and mother cooked out of necessity, not pleasure.
In the summertime, we made “shish kebabs” on our charcoal grill. Cheap beef marinated in a mix that came from a packet (and has sadly been discontinued), cherry tomatoes, pineapple chunks from a can, parboiled new potatoes, a few other mundane things. You could make your own kebab with just the things you liked, then they were brushed with butter and lemon juice while grilling.
We still do this in the summer, with the only changes being (1) gas grill and (2) I typically make kebabs with all the same ingredient on them, for easier grill management. Then everything is stripped off the skewers and piled into bowls, and you take what you like. It’s very good.
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