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My grandma lived through the depression, her cooking was god awful, I had to teach my mom how to cook and season food. She didn’t know why people used paprika.

Some family recipes are heirlooms. Others are evidence.

That's the one really positive thing about the internet. One doesn't need a grandma who could cook to have access to good recipes any more.

Case in point:

did you know you can buy those jelly soaked weenies? and dont let them convince you they were made in vienna

Turns out I don't actually dislike vegetables, I just dislike how my mother's and grandmother make them. Did you know they can be served with colour still on them?

Grandma’s cookbook had two categories: comfort food and culinary crimes.

My grandmother would put food in the oven before turning it on. When the timer would go off, she'd be frustrated that the food was dehydrated and undercooked, so she'd try her best to salvage it by starting the timer again for the same amount of time. Then she'd ask "what smells funny?" before pulling the food out from the oven, and complaining that the recipe was bad.

She never cooked before she got married, but she was married for somewhere around 70 years.

70 years.

In 70 years, she was never able to understand the concept of preheating the oven. When I was a child, she'd come over to my parents' house. If my mom was preparing dinner, and the oven was preheating, my grandmother would turn off the oven and tell my mother that she shouldn't leave the oven on. My mom tried so many times to explain preheating the oven, but my grandmother insisted that it was a waste of energy.

It can't be overstated how many of those recipes were some con to sell canned shit that Grandma cut out of a magazine. There's very little "in the old county we cooked like this..." that made it through the Boomer food filter. Best case scenario is it's Betty fucking Crocker.

Utah, is it?

yeah, depression / ration era cooking for anyone not of reasonable wealth was pretty bad, and they stuff they dreamed up on the far side where they were no longer rationed.

My grandmother took a pack of 15 bean soup, added butter beans and lima beans, the broth was basically butter with a touch of milk/cream and a touch of salt. Then a dish of Mrs Weiss kluski noodles also served in butter occasionally with a little chicken. My father always raved about it.

Funny part, she always complained about how long it took her to make the noodles, told us all they were hand made. After going up there for over a decade, one day she left the bag in the sink. That dinner was a HOOT

My grandparents ate boiled potatoes with boiled vegetables and watery meat. When I lived at my parents we often at the same. Thank god that we've adapted the cuisine from countries that actually discovered that food can have taste

The Jello thing must be American.

In the UK we made everything with potatoes and Spam.

And here I am in Spain, laughing, and crying, and barfing a little in my mouth.

Church potluck every Sunday when I was a kid. A whole buffet line of jello based not dessert dishes. Usually peas in green jello, shredded carrots in orange jello,or hotdog in jello abominations. If not jello, there were at least 10 mayonnaise based atrocities.

I ate a lot of dinner rolls.

My Irish American grandma on my dad's side had two recipes. 'Roast Butt ', some pale greasy meat that was boiled until it was falling apart, yet still resisted cutting and chewing once it cursed your plate: the left overs of this were tossed into a pot with a can of La Choy 'Oriental Style Vegetables' and a bottle of some sweet sauce and dubbed 'Chop Suey', which was probably from a recipe she got out of an ad in the back of a TV guide in the 60s.

The woman could boil a mean potato, though.

My Oklahoma dust bowl era meemaw never really cooked anything that didn't come from a can, but she baked bread and 'English Muffins' from scratch that held up well when frozen.

The bread was really dry and tasteless unless you really slathered on condiments. The 'muffins' were flattened little lumps of dough that were as dense as a dying star, not a single nook or cranny in sight, with a chewy raw consistency not unlike chewing gum.

I actually liked those a lot, and was disappointed later in life when I had store bought English Muffins, which were more like a mutant crumpet than anything else.

My mom and sister have the recipes, but neither have attempted making them. I'm afraid to read them because they'll probably just say:

One box Jiffy baking mix, water, salt. Bake until done.

I had an elderly aunt that made "oyster stew" on special occasions. The recipe was as follows:

One gallon of 2% milk
One 16 oz. jar raw oysters with juice
Salt and pepper to taste

That's literally all that was in it. She'd mix it together, heat until steaming, then serve. Just a big pot of hot, oyster scented, salty milk, served with oyster crackers. Everyone hated it and none of her children carried on the tradition.

That recipe deserved to die.

Edit: oops, broken line breaks.

My grandma wouldn’t give me her recipe for my favorite dessert and she died:( My aunts try to reassure me by saying she probably didn’t have a recipe she probably felt it out.