Those special little things you relished when you were a kid. One of mine was real butter. Money was always tight, so Mom mostly bought margarine. For cooking, she used bacon grease whenever possible. Butter was pretty much a treat for us. To this day, I feel a twinge of guilt when I buy a pound of butter, knowing Mom must be shaking her head in disgust at such callous spending.

Another was Mom's home made bread. We never ate a loaf of store bought bread. Wednesday was bread making day. Nothing else occurred on Wednesday till the bread was done and the kitchen cleaned up.

Last but not least, Mom and Dad's home canned pickles. Man, they were good.

What's your guilty pleasures from your childhood?

Govt cheese

Young women.

my mammas cookin , as much as I love my wife ( and she is a great cook ) I miss the family coming to dinner on sunday afternoons and mom fixed it all by scratch!!!

You still like young women? That’ll get you in trouble.

About July was when the green onions would start to grow to bulbs. My grandmother would make bread, we’d get some sour cream and I’d go out to the garden and get the biggest green onion bulb I could find, usually about the size of a small apple.

I’d slather sour cream on a slice of bread, dip the onion in salt and take a big bite of both.

Once in a while now I find onions iike that at the farmers market and take the fixins to work for lunch. Drives the woman I work with crazy seeing me crunching into that big onion.

My Wife... Before menopause.

Virgil B.

Real milk with high cream content in glass bottles.

Great grandmothers fried pies.

Mom’s cooking always has to be at top. I was much younger than my siblings. They grew up in a much poorer household than I. Dad was doing well by then. I ate as much as 3 normal men and worked it all off on the dairy farm. Dad was convinced I was the best hay crew in Clarke County Iowa. Eating and sitting looking at the lake behind our place we’re two great pleasures. It was better 50 years ago.

Booze...man I miss booze.

My liver says no more booze, so, no more booze for this cat. I love a good buzz.

Should try weed at some point I guess.

Lemme guess, you liked to "Play Doctor".

I remember margarine and bacon grease. Drippings were all saved.
Not guilty pleasures but creek fishing all day alone or hunting squirrels, baseball in cotton uniforms, playing hockey with no helmet and junk equipment. Got a hand me down .270 at twelve as a gift, my uncle then allowed me to help handload for it. I remember mechanicing on my bicycle to keep it rolling and it needed to. It was my transportation for these things

My Mom’ canned fruit, cherries, peaches, plums,apricots

Grandma's apple jelly.

Fried okra.

When my Mom made bread and butter on the same day.

Grandma's bread pudding and/or baked apples both served in a bowl w/heavy cream. Mom or Grandma's pie-crust scraps sprinkled w/Cinnamon and Sugar and baked to a crisp.

My granddad's pickup truck.

When I was a boy, I spent every summer helping him at the ranch.

That old pickup had a smell of it's own, and I loved it!

Smelled like oak leaves, cow cubes, smoking tobacco, leather, and cattle.

Opening day of deer season each year, he'd get me up about 4am, and before daylight, we'd be at the cattle guard going into the ranch.

That old pickup still smelled great, and even had a fall/deer season hint added on opening morning!

Wish I still had that old pickup...

Playing football, I miss that.

Climbing, hard skiing, 20+ mile days in the mountains, hair.



mike r

Leaded gasoline.

fishing for bream, with a cane pole at dick kelberg park when i was a young kid.

Best cheese ever!

Donuts.

My back not hurting...not going to work every damn day?

grandma putting out a huge table from scratch every Sunday

Never realized it was possible to fry in anything but lard.

Pro wrasslin, dry roasted peanuts and Tree Top apple juice.

And Grandpa.

Mom was not much of a cook. Kitchen chores were an obligation she simply could not avoid.

But Dad's Mom taught her how to make bread, and she took real pride in that. Well justified pride. Once a week she made a dozen loaves. And while we had a dairy, butter was not made at our house. We survived on margarine.

But Grandma made butter from fresh Guernsey cream, Heaven was to be at Grandma's house on baking day.

I miss all the things associated with a farm kitchen well supplied with whole milk and eggs, wholesome homemade custards, and puddings, and ice cream.

Probably I miss most, an endless supply of fresh whole milk, and the metabolism which allows one to consume it as a beverage of choice.

My wife and I both grew up milking cows. Margarine was rarely found at our house and we only eat with real butter now. But, I have to admit my Mom's pan fried chicken was a favorite treat on every 3rd Sunday. It was a pork roast or beef roast on the other 2 Sundays. It would be so great to have everyone together again but I know it will never be. My Mom also did pickles but so does my wife and they are just as good.

kwg

Mom's home-made fudge.

First day of hunting season (pheasants and rabbits) and the smell of paper shotgun shells after they were fired.

The tastes and aromas of my childhood hold a special corner of my memories but what I miss the most are mom and dad, us 5 kids and both sets of grandparents getting together after church for a big Sunday supper. I helped mom cook so I’ve absorbed her menus and can prepare most of what mom made and replicate it well. I do the cooking for my family so I’ve had many years of practice and mistakes.

Mom was the organist and choir director at a couple of churches so Sunday’s were busy but somehow (my mom like a lot of moms was a superhero and was relentless in her care of her family) she was able to still prepare a giant supper after church. In the later years mom worked at 3 churches on Sunday so my grandma and I would make supper so mom didn’t have to. I miss the childlike simplicity with which I viewed the world. It was the love of family that made the food taste so good. My wife and I took over the cooking for mom about 15 years ago so I had the privilege of cooking for and serving mom for a number of years. Mom loved the idea that her oldest son and the only outdoorsman in the family cared enough to learn how to cook. I was the oldest as well as a black sheep since I marched to my own beat and lived life on my terms. Dad wanted me to be a cop but I wanted to be a firefighter, I initially gave in to make dad happy but I hated it and told dad there’s no way I’m going to spend a career with those types of people and went back to being a firefighter, a career I loved!

I miss the family that’s passed away and look forward to a grand reunion someday.

Pencil fights on the school bus

Home made chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream, and stove top popped popcorn, made in an old dented aluminum pot. Hot maple syrup on snow. The treats I always loved as a kid.

Dad saying, "Time to Rise and Shine" about 3am as we're heading out on some grand adventure.

....and paint. Modern paint doesn’t taste the same. 😁

Fresh unsalted Butter right out of the churn, buttermilk too

My dad was a city boy so my grandpa took me fishing and hunting. I was the son he never had and he was the best friend a young boy could ever have wished for.

I miss grandpa coming in and playing reveille at 4am after making coffee for he and I before headed out to the fields, forests, rivers and bays. I decided where I wanted to go and grandpa took me.

My God I didn’t realize how great my life was until I got older. It was so simple, I had the world by the tail and not a care in the world. I’d get off the school bus and grandpa was waiting for me with a coke, an after school snack and a box of either 20ga shells or .22 shells for my after school starling hunts and crow safaris. My life back then feels like a dream today.

As a young kid my dad would slaughter a hog and have everyone over for New Year's eve. All day event and a big feast. Miss that but mostly the stories my parents would tell about their lives growing up in the old days and weird stories about my great grandparents who were gypsies from Hungary.

Carpet. I still rub my feet in carpet,and remember cold bare floors. Catch myself sometimes but my wife catches me and jabs me about it. Sometimes little things bring you a dose of perspective. I have never considered a trailer house on my own. I've rented a dump, but it was a house.

Waking up to the smell of coffee, bacon or pork chops frying in the pan, blue gills and homefried potatoes, homemade bread or biscuits baking in the oven, hamburger and onions frying, freshly mowed grass, the smell of water evaporating off your girlfriend's skin as you lie in the hot sun after a dip in a cold lake, bannock baking by a campfire...

The taste of Golden Bantam corn on the cob slathered n butter, salt and pepper; the smell and taste of a scallop eaten raw, right out of the shell, as soon as you get back to the boat after prying it off a rock; the smell of the ocean breeze while sailing offshore.

My grandfather was the milkman,so even though we were poor,we always had milk and butter,thank God for him.what I miss the most,just being able to move and run pain free.

Regaining consciousness after grabbing the electric fence pulling yourself out of the swimming hole.

H4831 powder for $1.20 a pound.
270 bullets for $4 a box.
49 cents for a 50 round box of 22 LR (when bought in full cases)
Free 30-06 brass.
20/10 vision.
Time.... before bad injuries.

Mom's cooking. She didn't waste anything, fried potato cakes with left over creamed taters, fried fish cakes with leftover fish. Sundays ham or fried chicken with all the good things from the garden. Flour bread or pan bread hot with molasses and butter.
My best friends Dad waking us up at 4 AM loading us in his old Ford truck to meet his friends for a fox hunt then waking up to the hounds raising hell. Later there would be stew cooked in a wash pot, might be goat or deer or just had to guess sometimes but it was always good. Fishing with my buddies and our girlfriends at night.......
All the many days I spent on the KD range shooting high power matches with some of the best folks in the world.
I have had fun and very few bad days, lucky I guess.

Young girls was a good thing too, lots of pretty ones in my high school.

Catching Crawdad’s in the neighborhood ditch, Horny Toad’s in the field & Firefly’s in a Miracle Whip jar. It would be busy on the weekends.

We had a cow so butter and milk was there all the time along with home made bread. We never bought canned vegetables and we canned everything from the garden.Never had much meat except what we shot.

About every other week, my mother would buy a whole log of bologna and we would grind it up in a hand cranked grinder. She would make ham salad which was our lunches.

Best thing was the neighbor had welsh pony that they bought for their kids and they didn't want to ride it. So I did. I rode that pony like rented mule. I was about 9 or so, and I have been riding ever since except maybe four years .So I have riding for about 60 years

Setting on the porch with my Grandpa, listening to a ball game on the radio-- Pittsburg Pirates--
I was a little guy then, but time with him was great--

my dad use to make fudge every Christmas, can't remember the last time he did.

Mead

made some awhile back.

Mom's peanut brittle, home-made plum jelly, eggnog, etc.

My Mother's ravioli. I use to turn the crank on the "meat grinder" that she used to mix the filling. She would place a bowl on the ground below the grinder and our dog would lay there drinking the drippings from the leaking seals.

Hard to find good mead anymore.

Black raspberries from the bush behind grandpa's barn with sugar and real cream from the dairy a block away. The sludge at the bottom of the bowl.

What's mead guys? I've heard of it, but have no idea what it is. Some kind of alcohol? Thanks for all the great replies guys.

Mom’s cooking & childhood friends.

coke from a bottle with peanuts
home made divinity at Christmas
Sears wish book before Christmas
Christmas dinner with all the fixings
bacon, eggs and fried potatoes around the fire before sunup at deer camp.

Being able to go to deer camp with my dad, my grandpa and other older uncles and cousins. Smelling breakfast cooking and getting woke up and coming down stairs. My grandfathers brother was the cook and if anyone complained, they were the dishwasher. One time a cousin was handed a plate of eggs that were black with pepper. He made a comment about how much pepper were on the eggs, everyone looked at him and he quickly added he liked them just like that. The stories that were told during deer camp were repeated many times but it sure was great to listen and become part of the adults. My cousins used to bring special meats and cheeses that we only got once a year. Good times.

I still find the sound of crackling wood in an old slow combustion cooking stove relevant to creating a certain type of atmosphere.

one of best Christmas rural home lunch spreads I had was done on such, the device cooking the food also warming the cottage.
I would not have traded it for the fanciest 6 star hotel in the world.

Mostly being young, but I was not smart enough to know that at the time.

Mead is fermented fruit and honey, with added spices. It comes in a lot of various flavors depending upon what fruit and honey were used. (Clover honey is very different from buckwheat honey, or orange blossom honey, ect. )
It is a sweet white table wine or sorts, and a particular favorite of mine.
I had friends in college who made it, and they had a ten year waiting list for a single bottle.

A minor correction:

Mead is made purely with honey. I don't know about adding spices, though I suppose it's still mead

However add fruit to a mead before fermentation and you get a Melomel. Add grapes to ferment, and it's a Pyment. Pears and honey get you a Perry.

Fresh baked bread, slathered with butter. Dad told mom if she ever stopped baking bread, that was grounds for divorce!
Picking blueberries with the family and friends. Eating them with fresh cream.
Haying. I know a lot of people considered that hard work, but I still fondly remember the smell.
Hunting with dad, uncle, and cousins, and the smell of ruffed grouse and fired paper shotgun shells.
Fishing with my uncle. New guy (me, for several trips) was cook, until someone complained, then they became cook. The last morning of the last time out, I was frying eggs and dropped one. By the time I got done cleaning it up, the eggs were very well done. Uncle held one out horizontally, it barely sagged. His only comment was "Jeez! It's a good thing I like them this way."

Grouse . Grouse hunting was a wonderful thing. They are pretty much non existent now, here in NW Pa.

Perhaps I have found a new Vintner? might you have sample bottles ? You might have more than a few customers here on the Fire alone.
There are 4 commercial meads available here, none I actually like, and one of them is spiced. (German, iirc). There is one available by the glass that's not bad, but $10.00 a glass. That's a rare occasion item.
If you know how, and chose to use that skill, you could do well.....

Eggs for supper. Let me explain: Dad could not stand eggs in any form. Didn't even want us to eat them when he was around. Result of the smell of powdered eggs in the jungles of WW II. When Dad would work a double shift at DuPonts, Mom would break out the eggs and we'd have a feast. I miss them both so much.

Mom was absolutely forbidden from bringing Spam into the house. Dad ate so much of it in Europe during WWIi that he never wanted to see another can of it as long as he lived. Mom worked with a very meager budget for buying food, and always lamented the fact that she couldn't on occasion use a can of Spam, especially when all the venison and other wild game had been eaten up. June and July meals were very interesting
if we weren't catching a lot of fish. September brought the opening of squirrel season, and fresh meat for the table again.

My grandfather was the same way about soup and bread. Never ate 'em again.

Tagging along with my grandpa.

The smell of my Dad coming home after a hunt. He smelled equal parts, campfire, cigarettes, gunpowder, beer, and blood.

I read these and am reminded again how much my kids are missing by
not being poor country kids. Honestly, they are the kids I looked at with a mixture
of disdane and jealousy. I would have judged them rich and spoiled. (Even though the 16
year old girl is at work by choice, missing the football game) (bragging, sorry)


Home made bread, butter, and good homemade elderberry jelly. With fresh,
cold, unmolested milk.

Let's say a loaf, a full jar, and a quart.


Dang keto, I haven't had bread or jelly in 3 months.
And this ain't helping.

Dinners with my grandparents and extended family, deer hunts with my cousins, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade biscuits, fresh corn and sweet tea my grandmother used to make. Fall leaf burning and cast iron cookware cleaning with my grandpa. All are gone now and I sure miss them.

So many memories.

I'll add one: Cooking jiffy pop popcorn over a campfire. The ones with the folded up tinfoil over the top of the disposable aluminum frypan. It would uncurl as it popped into a dome as you shook it. Then, when ready just slice it open to a most wonderful smell and the popcorn inside!

WWII rationing of butter and sugar. The people were told that it was so they could feed the troops but it was a political ploy to keep people in the war effort. Dad was in the navy and assigned to a sub chaser doing convoy escort duty out of Florida. He told me that they were sent to escort 2 barges loaded with butter and sugar 200 miles out to sea where the barges were then sunk. The butter and sugar were called 'surplus' while the rationing was in affect.

About that margarine...years ago I had an old beater of a camp trailer that we used for a storage shed for 10 years. I know it was 10 because of the license plates. I decided to clean it up and sell it. When I got to the ice box, I found a pound of margarine that I'd overlooked the last time I used the trailer. 10 years old and it hadn't molded, dried up, or anything. It was as good as when it came off the grocery store shelf. Anything that can last 10 years without deteriorating isn't food, it's plastic. I haven't knowingly eaten margarine since.