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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Back in the day: Nostalgia non sequitur

I was making myself some lunch yesterday...a tuna wrap on the tastiest new product I've found in a while, a huge flatbread aptly called "Flatout," which has 9 grams of fiber for you health nuts and only 1 WW point for those of you who like to keep up with things like that.

I was rummaging through all the jars and bottles in my refrigerator, making a mental note that I need to quit being such a sucker for every new food fad that comes down the pike, and I finally decided that a tad of mango wasabi would give the tuna salad just the punch I wanted.  OK, OK...I'm getting to the nostalgia non sequitur part.

Inexplicably, squirting that mango wasabi in the bowl triggered a childhood memory along with the realization that since the 60s, when I first set up housekeeping on my own, two condiments could always be found in my refrigerator, as well as in my mother's Kelvinator when I was a kid:  French's yellow mustard and Miracle Whip.  No matter how many fancy salad dressings or gourmet mustards I buy, those two sit steadfastly at the back of the shelf waiting patiently for me to return...and I always do.


 bonanza.com.


Every meal in the 1950s was eaten at a gray cracked ice Formica and chrome table that looked exactly like this one, exactly at 5:30 on the dot, Cleaver family-syle, after which my mother washed the dishes, and I dried them with embroidered cup towels...to earn my whopping weekly allowance of 25 cents.


americanlistings.com

5 comments:

  1. Oh! We had the same silver crushed ice formica kitchen table too! =D We kids were pretty hard on stuff, so went though a few chair changes, including tearing up the now-expensive fiberglass shell chairs (remember when those were thought of as plain old chairs and not some special $600 mid-century thing? lol...)

    And Mom always used regular mayo. Ick ha ha ha.

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  2. I think back on all the furniture my parents got rid of when they opted for some very expensive "Early American" stuff in the mid-sixties, and I grieve. On the other hand, my SIL likes the 70s mod look, and I'm sure he would be sick if he saw pictures of the brown Lucite and glass dining set I got rid of, thinking of it as "just old junk." And so it goes...LOL

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  3. This is funny, we have a Kelvinator and a grey cracked ice table! you can see both on my food blog, hungry-texan.com. I'm going to do a kitchen tour soon... Oh, I am Toshmahal's (Hank's) wife, btw :) Love your blog!

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  4. Aw, fun memories! Love it. I'll have to seek out the Flatout - sounds gooooood!

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  5. @Sylvia Oh, I found your wonderful blog when I was writing my post about Hank, and tomorrow I'm posting about YOU. :)

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