What to feed 7 kids
 

I have 4 older sisters and I was talking to one of them the other night. We were reminiscing-drooling actually about all the great meals our mom made for us as kids and how our spouses won't touch the stuff. It was all made on a budget of course, but the presentation made us feel like royalty.
Namely;
Macaroni and cheese in the oven, with toasted breadcrumbs on top.
Ghoulash/hamburger with noodles and tomato sauce in the oven
Whole casserole dishes of scalloped potatoes in the oven
Meatballs with cream of mushroom soup over linguini noodles
New potatoes and yellow beans steamed together with margarine on top
Creamed peas on toast
Buttered toast dipped into our hot chocolate
Chicken and dumplings in a homemade gravy with all the fixings.
Queen Elizabeth cake-which was really tomato soup cake with raisins and spices
Vanilla ice cream with canned peaches and syrup poured overtop
Homemade strawberry pie with real whipped cream
Homemade taffy poured over snow which was kept in the freezer and eaten on the hottest day in July
Fish cakes, which was really canned salmon rolled in breadcrumbs and fried in butter, served with mayo
Fried red tomatoes, caked in flower and covered with pepper.
Toasted tomato sandwiches with bacon lettuce and of course Cheez- Whiz (our one luxury)
:):):):)

Everything you listed except your homemade taffy on snow, fish cakes, Queen Elizabeth cake, and fried tomatoes.
We had our new potatoes with creamed peas.

We also had:
canned peas with carrots
pot roast with potatoes, carrots, and onion
desserts were jello, canned "fruit cocktail", and cornbread topped with sugar

You're so lucky, limegreenc.

All (most) of this says 'Northern Ontario food!!!' to me. Especially the chicken and dumplings, which I made for my kids ... the scalloped potatoes, the cream of mushroom soup casserole (although my experience was chicken pieces with rice, the smallest pieces going to the smallest kids :(), the BLTs.

What about the savory mince (ground beef browned with onions in a pan gravy, served over mashed potatoes)? And the shepherd's pie?

I didn't realize, until I was an adult with four children, that I grew up eating mostly Scottish foods. I made them for my kids, along with the Ukrainian foods my husband loved (vareniki, aka pierogi; holubtsi, aka tiny cabbage rolls; miasa na potechkia, aka beef kabobs; also Baba's Baked Chicken and Baba's Borscht). All of it is good, cheap, stomach-filling comfort food that families can afford.

Unfortunately, it's not the healthiest food. I've changed my menus over the years and now my kids prefer healthier things. But nothing beats these dishes (in moderation) for comfort on a cold winter day when the fireplace/woodstove is throwing enough heat that you can't sit within 10 feet, and the bread dough is rising on the hearth. Oh, and don't forget the beef stew/soup/bourguignon, or the coq au vin (which to my mind doesn't compare to chicken and dumplings) ...

Woodstoves. Casseroles. Homemade bread. :) :) :) :) :)

I grew up eating a fair amount of authentic Italian food.
Not that I knew it, but although we had two Italian shops in town they mostly sold ingredients. Mama and Nona would always have their own recipe which was far cheaper and far better than anything than you could buy. And made with love.

Mum had an evening cleaning job and many of the women were Italian. They had family at our convent and many went to the same Catholic church. So they passed the recipes along. My Nanny (Mum's Mum) was apparently quite a poor cook. I don't remember; maybe we ate mostly takeaways when we stayed with her. So Mum had one big (old) cookbook and a coterie of Italian women who were worried that she didn't feed us properly!

She substituted the Italian brands for what she could buy in the local Co-op, but aside from that we ate Italian at least once a week. Pasta and sauce, cannaloni, pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, garlic bread.

Other than that:
Home made chips (fries) with home breaded white fish
Casseroles/ Stews (both making meat stretch futher and/ or using cheaper cuts) the difference being casseroles were slightly thinner and topped with hearty suet dumplings
A varity of offal - liver, heart
Steak & kidney in a home made pie
Sausages - served in a casserole or in Toad in the Hole or sausagemeat with stuffing mix in a Sausage Plait
And sometimes when things were tough, cheese on toast, beans on toast, scrambled eggs on toast. Toast makes it a meal dontcha know.
Shepherds pie made with the cheapest mince the butcher had, so fat had to be skimmed five or six times before it went in the oven, often bulked out with a small tin of beans
Lots of mashipots, to fill us up - we were all greedy children, although Steven was very fussy

And we always had to ask if we could get down from the table. Our smaller portions, the fact we were served first and the way we hoovered it up meant we were finished well before Mum & Dad. We were called back for dessert and then expected to stay for the cleaning.

Sounds like 70s food to me.

We eat differently today. More steamed veggies, salads, side dishes.

Absolute typical 70s food.
HIgh in carbs and starch, all veggies boiled to buggery and only grown up eating salads.

But I have gone back in some ways to 70s food. At least of the hippy kind that my striaght-laced parents didn't embrace.
Added firbe, roasted vegetables, pulses/ grains as protein.
And others they did: buying in season and from local sources; food cookded from scratch; not loading your plate and not snacking between meals.

SEVEN?!?!?!

I'd feed them bastards to each other, 'til the numbers came down anyway...

The thread title makes me think of

HOW TO
COOK
FOR FORTY
HUMANS

Definitely very 70's, and I remember most of it. Yeah, it may not have been the healthiest, but funny thing tho, hardly anyone was overweight. And families sat down and ate together back then. At least ours did...my mom was a teacher, but cooked every night for the four of us.

In other words, "Feed 7 kids... to the wolves."

No HFCS back then.

:lol:

Yes Ortho, very Northern Ontario. My dad was French Canadian to boot, so whenever his family came down in the summer we'd all head to the beach, and his sister (who is 93) would make a huge pot of pigs feet right there in front of us-amazing. Once in a while mum would fry up some blood pudding (I tried making it once as an adult, but it ended up in the trash) and one of my brothers walks in and says to my dad 'sewer backed up again?' before they ran him out the back door.
It's true that none of us were overweight, and it was because of the portions. My father got the most, then it went down from there. They always had a huge garden and I assumed that every family had one too. Some of my friends today, don't know what an icicle or slippery jack pickle is. We always asked mum how many jars she had in the cold storage so we could mete them out till the next harvest-yumm

I know Slippery Jack. It's a card game.