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Menu Monday ~ 1950s Style

March 13, 2017 By Deanna Piercy 20 Comments

This week we’re going to eat like it’s 1955…or thereabouts. I spent a couple of hours this weekend looking through old cookbooks and family recipes. Let me just say – they ate some weird stuff back then. And they had a strange compulsion to put all manner of food stuffs in gelatin. Still, I think I’ve come up with a menu we can live with, for a week, anyway. 

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Dee’s Menu – 1950s Style

Monday

Apparently folks in the 50s hadn’t developed much of a palate for herbs and spices. The recipe for spaghetti and meatballs in my 1950s-era Better Homes and Gardens cookbook relies solely on a single bay leaf to season the simple tomato sauce. I’ll have to tweak that a bit to our tastes. 

  • spaghetti and meatballs
  • green beans in crumbs
  • tossed green salad with oil and vinegar dressing
  • garlic toast

Tuesday

  • baked pork chops
  • baked cauliflower topped with white sauce and cheese
  • buttered corn
  • baked apples

Wednesday

  • chicken pot pie
  • pineapple salad (will share recipe later)

Thursday

I asked my mom the other day what sort of meals she grew up on. Both of her parents were incredible cooks and in fact, many of my cookbooks had belonged to them. My grandpa was a scuba diver and they spent most of their weekends on the beach near the Santa Monica pier. He then cooked his catches – my mom recalls complaining about having lobster “agaaiiin!”. Grandma loved to bake and tended to do more casseroles. Stuffed bell peppers was something she made often. And because no 1950s menu is complete without gelatin, I’m including her Cranberry Star Salad. 

  • stuffed bell peppers
  • lettuce and tomato salad with homemade Thousand Island dressing
  • Grandma’s Cranberry Star Salad (I’ll share the recipe soon)

Friday

  • Swiss Steak
  • scalloped potatoes
  • buttered carrots
  • peach and cottage cheese salad
  • pineapple upside down cake

Saturday

We’ve been invited to our daughter and son-in-law’s house for dinner. I’ll bring a dessert.

  • 1950s Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

Sunday

  • pot roast
  • mashed potatoes
  • broccoli with Hollandaise sauce
  • tossed green salad
  • hot rolls
  • leftover dessert (either pineapple upside down cake or chocolate cake)

~~~~~

This sounds like a LOT of cooking and a LOT of dirty pots and pans. I’ll report back on my impressions after the week is over. If you have a favorite vintage recipe I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment and a link if you have one.

 

 

 

 

Better Homes and Gardens cookbook

 

This post is linked up at I’m an Organizing Junkie. Take a peek for more menu ideas!

 

And check out this FREE printable menu planner from Joyful Homemaking:

 

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Filed Under: Dee's Kitchen, Menu Monday, Vintage

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Comments

  1. lynne says

    March 13, 2017 at 12:50 pm

    There was always bread and butter on the table, and a jar of “table syrup,” which is a sort of un-maple maple syrup I think, to put on the bread and butter as a side. Also pickles and olives. Growing up in the northeast, we rarely had salads until summer when we got veggies from the garden; but when we did have salad, it was ALWAYS iceberg lettuce. Quarters of iceberg lettuce with salad dressing over them — impossible to cut and eat daintily. Your menu looks very familiar to me — it is close to what our school lunch menus looked like!

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 13, 2017 at 1:12 pm

      I was talking to my parents about this menu Friday night and my dad made the comment that they always had bread and butter with their meals. He dated my aunt before my mom and ate dinner at their house occasionally. The first time he ate there he asked where the bread was – that wasn’t something they did. He grew up in Oklahoma and then moved to California where my mom was born and raised. Very different food cultures.

      Like you, our salads were always iceberg, too, although not in quarters. We also had tomato on them.

      Reply
      • Tanya Hunter says

        January 30, 2020 at 2:38 pm

        Do you give links to all of these recipes? I’ve recently started my own journey to back to basics meal planning and would love to try these recipes, if you wouldn’t mind sharing them!

        Reply
        • Deanna Piercy says

          January 31, 2020 at 9:23 am

          For the most part they were from family recipes or old cookbooks so I don’t have links for all of them. However, you’ve given me a good idea. I’ll start going through them, remake each one and share the recipe. Then I’ll be able to link to them in this post. I do have a few of these I made recipe posts for. I’ll link them. 🙂

          Reply
      • PixelOkie says

        September 26, 2021 at 2:07 pm

        As an Okie, I can confirm that it’s normal to see bread and butter with the meal. Sometimes we would even have an extra slice of bread and butter but with one of my grandma’s homemade jams on it, as dessert! My fav jam was her jalapeño mint jelly.

        Reply
  2. Miz Helen says

    March 13, 2017 at 4:52 pm

    Hi Deanna,
    What a fun week, I want to come for sure on Monday, Thursday and Friday, oh well why not all week. It all looks fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing!
    Miz Helen

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 13, 2017 at 9:45 pm

      Come on over. I’ll set another place at the table. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Tori says

    March 14, 2017 at 5:48 am

    I wonder what it is with the lack of seasoning thing? It’s the only thing I don’t like about my Nan’s cooking, actually.

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 14, 2017 at 12:43 pm

      Fortunately most of us have more developed palates these days. I like my food very well-seasoned. Bland just doesn’t do it for me.

      Reply
    • Amanda says

      May 22, 2018 at 8:36 am

      I have noticed savory dishes tend to be bland and not use much seasoning, however, it seems like a lot of sweet recipes are more spiced than our modern recipes. I often find myself cutting back on the amount of cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon in sweet recipes while adding seasoning to the savory.

      Reply
  4. Shelly says

    March 14, 2017 at 10:00 am

    Your menu looks yummy! I grew up eating many of these dishes. We also had gelatin regularly with bread and butter too.

    I hope you have a great week!

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 14, 2017 at 12:42 pm

      My dad grew up with bread and butter on the table for every meal.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  5. loyda says

    March 16, 2017 at 9:55 pm

    great article! I am hispanic so for us growing up instead of bread there was always fresh homemade tortillas. With every meal there was pinto beans.. And on a side dish for my Father green chile. Occasionally red chile for my Mom.

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 17, 2017 at 10:25 am

      I love homemade tortillas! I’ve made them a time or two and would love to get in the habit. Do you have any favorite hispanic recipes? I accept guest post recipes if you are interested.

      Reply
  6. holly says

    March 18, 2017 at 7:14 pm

    oh my goodness, that is right out of my mother’s repertoire! I spent my childhood in a small town in southern Wisconsin. my mother didn’t work outside the home so these menus were on our table on the daily. being a child, I worked that diet off each day. now in my sixties, I would look like a loaf of ciabatta.

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 19, 2017 at 1:40 pm

      Ha! I was surprised to discover I lost two pounds this week. I don’t know if that’s just a fluke or not but I did find these meals extremely satisfying.

      Reply
  7. Elizabeth says

    March 21, 2017 at 9:51 am

    My husband’s grandpa was a chef at a ritzy hotel in the area. My mother in law laughs about all the gelatin desserts served with mayo on top. They definitely had a different style 🙂

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      March 22, 2017 at 11:51 am

      Yes, it was a different time – ha! Do you have any of your husband’s grandfather’s recipes? My grandfather learned to cook in a mining camp in Alaska. He was pretty amazing. I have quite a few of his cookbooks which I treasure. I do wish he had lived longer so I could have learned more from him. He died shortly after my first child was born. He lived in California and we had moved to Oklahoma so I didn’t see him much.

      Reply
  8. Heather Dormer says

    October 12, 2019 at 8:13 am

    I love vintage cookbooks/recipes. I inherited my Grammy’s and Great Grammy’s recipe boxes and cookbooks. Score! Chocolate mayo cake with chocolate frosting is a fave. Add whoopie pie filling between the layers. You won’t be sorry. I make a McCalls Best Sour Cream Pound Cake that is from my Mom’s wedding present from 1969. An old blue hardcover McCalls cookbook. The beef stew in there is awesome!

    Reply
    • Deanna Piercy says

      October 12, 2019 at 1:29 pm

      What a treasure! My maternal grandfather was an incredible cook and I have quite a few of his cookbooks. That pound cake sounds wonderful. I’d love to try it if you’d be so kind as to send me the recipe. deepiercy@gmail.com

      Reply

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I’m Dee, a Francophile with a hippie heart, trying to create a beautiful life in the country while dreaming of Paris.

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