1987

I used to think I hated vegetables as a kid. Turns out I hated my parents "cooking"
- My mom used to make liver every Thursday. She now denies that ever happened, which is hilarious.
- What's even more silly about this is that you never bothered to cook it yourself to experience better cooked food and the reason is? Idk for me it was because I am lame and too shy to ask to change the established way of life. On the other hand I have adjusted to eat food of all sorts even though it is displeasing. Except foods that have capsaicin or or peppers, I'm allergic to them.
  
  because fresh vegetables are expensive and have short shelf lives
  
  You would first have to believe that better tasting vegetables was a possibility before you start looking for it.
  
  Do you want to talk about it?
  
  Things were much different before the internet. "Food porn" wasn't really a thing (unless maybe you sought it out in cookbooks, and even then...). Hell, Food Network didn't exist until the mid-90s, and back then it was a third-rate cable channel that nobody watched.
  If you're a child in that world, how would you even know that vegetables could be good?

Yes, that is what home made food looks like sometimes.
You're not in a restaurant, the "cook" isn't payed, and presentation is not high on the priorities list if you also have to do dishes, wash clothes, and organize life for the family, possibly in addition to a job.
- Right? And let's be honest, I bet that hotdish is fire

fun fact, that plate has lead in it.
- showing lead (Pb) from the pattern.
  
  Damn is this your picture? Did my comment cause you to go and test for yourself? Cuz thats amazing if you did lol
  
  That is not a cheap toy. I've heard of them, never seen one. What is it and how much was it?
- I'm pretty sure that's Corelle. Do they still do this today? Because all of our dishware are fucking Corelle
  Edit: Ok so they stopped putting lead since 2005 so we should be safe. But how come they only stopped in 2005
  
  But how come they only stopped in 2005
  Probably ran out of their stock of lead around that time
  
  Not sure, regulations probably? Too worn out from existing today to Check
  
  I have corelle (or corealle?) but mine are all white and don’t have the decorative print. Does that mean mine are safe from lead?
- What part of the plate has lead? The plate itself or the paint?
  
  The paint in the pattern
- I still own a few of those plates... 😶
  
  i do too, they aren't used anymore though.
- That's not very fun
  
  It sure will be when the lead-induced delirium kicks in.
- Oh no, I ate off plates like this as a kid. That explains a lot.
  
  You're fine. The lead is bound in inert glass and only in the design. You would have had to chip off the design and eat it to have any problems.
  
  I think we still have one of those plates in the cabinet. It's not in normal rotation, tho.
- You can play poker with the symbols on the outside.

This is why Americans aren't allowed to make fun of British food.
- 1987 was nearly 40 years ago...
- Hey most of us stopped eating that way.
  
  And started eating way, way worse
- Not even comparable😂 Americans look back at this and laugh or cringe, Brits still eat their old-timey slop

Most of that looks like it already passed through a person once.
- At least once..
  ..the brown slop on the left could easily be a two’fer!

“French cut” green beans make me irrationally angry.
- They have a uniquely terrible taste, but I don't understand how just the way they're cut could produce that taste. I think maybe they're also soaked in lye or something. Or maybe the exposed inner part of the beans absorbs metal from the can.
  
  I'm guessing it's more dependent on the brands you're buying, but there shouldn't be that significant of a flavor change. Also most cans have a liner inside them to protect the contents from chemically affecting the contents. I just checked a few sources for various products, and all of them were simply the beans in a water solution.
  Some did include salt, which may be having a minor effect. The French cut, julienne, provides a higher surface area / volume ratio. This means the beans will "marinate" in the solution more effectively than larger cut beans. As in, the salt and water have better access to the inner parts of the beam, leaving them more tender and "marinated."
  I'm using that weird very loosely because I honestly can't remember the right word.
  
  It’s not the taste so much as the texture. The difference in a green bean casserole made with French cut green beans and whole, cut, green beans is night and day. And by that I mean only one is worth eating. The other is just mush.
- Please, explain
  
  The anger is irrational and thus cannot be rationally explained.

Dogfood on the right, catfood on the left, goat chow in the middle

- I also feel seen in a really weird way. That Corelle, the gray hot dish, the lump of "salad". Except the french cut beans. Mom never sprang for that. Dad did sometimes though.
  
  I don't know what that grey lump actually consists of, but for some reason I think it probably tastes really good. I have no basis for this belief, but I would try that. I'd probably take a too-large helping and regret it shortly thereafter.

I don't know why, but the word "hotdish" bothers me; I guess because I assume it refers to sort of dish/vessel rather than food.
- It's a dish served hot! As opposed to those crappy cold cuts they usually serve.
- It’s a sex thing.
- in which case, "hotdish" is a calque of "casserole" as both refer to the vessel
  
  Sort of. When signing up to contribute something for the potluck at the local Lutheran church, you can specify if you're bringing a hot dish (food that requires cooking) or cold dish (not cooked).
  Since most people go for something easy to prepare, the hot dish just became all casseroles.
- If you're putting the actual serving dish into the oven, as you do with casserole, I kind of get it.

My mom used to make me add a can of mixed vegetables to my instant ramen until we agreed that I could eat them separately. So I would quickly force down the bland, mushy veggies then enjoy my ramen in its pure form.

Actually that wild rice dish looks fine. Mirepoix, manoomin, cream of mushroom... bit of seasoning and it's a nice hearty dish in the winter.
- Meals like this are exactly why I don't ever use condensed soup in anything I make. I've had a lot of meals like that growing up. My family, my grandparents, my friends families.. My wife still will make stuff like this sometimes. It's all just lazy mush to me. I can't stand it. Even my mother-in-law, who makes her own soup stock and makes bread and has her own chickens will make condensed soup and canned green bean mush. I just do not understand.
- Food conglomerates had tried to sell a more efficient vision of the kitchen to working mothers:
  Less food prep time meant more time for family and career. But it also meant more sales of processed food and the extinction of the skills required to prepare food.
  The children of the seventies and eighties were among the first to experience this change toward preprepared foods.

Calling dinner supper is super Minnesotan, too.
- Wait until you have family that say that daily meals are chronologically "breakfast, dinner, and supper."
  
  WHERE THE FUCK IS LUNCH @_@
  Are you telling me they call lunch "dinner"?!
  
  What do they call brunch, brinner?
- It's kind of Bostonian too, but then it's pronounced "suppah".
- Supper is eaten from 4-6 while dinner is eaten from 5-7 in my experience. Dinner is usually a heavier meal than supper, as well.
- Wait, no one else calls it that?
  
  Others do, it's a Midwestern thing.
  
  Where I'm from, it's interchangeable.

Idk what rice hot dish is but it looks just like my vomit from last week.
- It's actually really good although the stuff in the picture looks like it wasn't made very well.
- You can get wild rice soup from places like Panera, it's really good! The hotdish version is thicker/baked. The stuff in the photo basically looks like the wild rice, carrots, and just a cream of potato base, probably not much flavor to it.
- It's casserole.

This got re-posted to !minnesota@midwest.social, where we actually know what a hotdish is.
(It's a casserole. /s)
- A? Hotdish?!? Get him!

TEETH ARE OPTIONAL IN THIS HOUSE

You know that jello salad slaps though. You can just tell.
EDIT: upon further inspection, that's ambrosia fruit salad. Probably no jello, but rather Coolwhip. Quite tasty still.

How the fuck is that Jello
- yeah, no, that's ambrosia for sure. cool whip and mandarin oranges
  
  Oddly enough, probably the only thing on that plate I'd eat a bite of
- Jell-O makes pudding mixes too. You use Mandarin oranges, whipped cream, and (usually vanilla) Jello pudding to make the dessert.
- Are you asking how is it as food or challenging the claim that it is even Jello?
  
  I was in disbelief that it was Jello because it does not look like Jello

Oh man.. my mom called it "rice stuff." It tasted like it looked.

I was alive in 1987 and I was never served anything resembling this. What in hell is that?
- Alive in 1987... but in Minnesota or the greater midwest, USA? Alive doesn't cut it. Did you even live life if you didn't eat this?
  
  I risk I lived a better life by not having eaten it.
  Again, what is that?

How got-dang popular were those plates? Had me hundreds of (probably lead-tainted) dinners on those bad boys.
- My folks still have those dishes. It's their daily driver.
- Got-dang? Is that supposed to be a stand-in for goddamn?
  
  More of a bastardization of it. Not something I use often, it just carries a certain tone and energy with it.

Boomers across the country still have china hutches FULL of these plates. With probably more plates in storage.

So how many times was this eaten before?

I know its meant to represent 1987 but why canned?
- I was born in '87 and I distinctly recall eating a lot of canned veggies growing up. I'm sure it's what my mom grew up (in Newark, NJ) eating, and so it probably just passed on down when she was a young mother. I'm curious if canned veggies were just the rage at the time or if it was so because access to the fresh stuff wasn't as available.
  
  I grew up with frozen vegetables, my wife grew up with canned... Just one of our many incompatibilities...
  
  Similar experience in rural Michigan, same time period. I'm sure that's how my mom grew up as well. Fresh veggies were quite available out there, but we still got canned. My grandma wasn't a great cook, and even though my mother has a ton of fantastic skills, cooking isn't one of them.
  
  In Europe it would have been a thing because of Tschernobyl blowing radioactivity across the land for a while.