Flame me if you will, but women today just don't cook like mom did!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Appearance of actual TV Dinner may vary from illustration.

I went to school near Crozet, Virginia, which is where Morton Frozen Foods had one of its manufacturing plants. We would stop at the factory store and stock up on chicken pot pies and those little single servings of fruit pies for like ten cents each. Man, we ate well back then.

Morton Frozen Foods

Morton Frozen Foods is the brand name of a now-discontinued line of frozen foods, including honey buns, jelly donuts, and pot pies, that was distributed nationwide in the United States for almost 50 years. It was ultimately acquired by ConAgra Foods.

History

In 1940, Harold Morton began making a chicken and noodle dish sold in glass jars in Louisville, Kentucky. The business transitioned to frozen foods after World War II, and the product line expanded to pot pies and dessert pastries. The manufacturing plant relocated to Crozet, Virginia, in Albemarle County and Webster City, Iowa.

Morton Frozen Foods' ownership changed several times. Its owners would include the Continental Baking Company, Del Monte (which itself was a division of R.J. Reynolds), and finally ConAgra Foods, which shut down the Crozet plant in 2000.

[Wwcd]

9. LOl.. "Contents may vary" ..it may be Stew

Army Base Spam Stew

[Floyd R. Turbo]

20. Fried pies were awesome! 😋

[tonyt53]

51. People have no idea of what they are missing with real fried pies.

Apples dried on white sheets laying the yard. Peaches done the same way. Fried in lard!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

55. And dusted with cinnamon and sugar! 😋

[tonyt53]

61. Oh hell yes!!!!!

[samnsara]

2. love it. i dont cook at all...i will fry bacon, spuds and eggs for breakfast but thats it...

...hubby does all the rest of the cooking. he enjoys it!


I can still taste those tv dinner spuds... yum.

[RobinA]

13. Jeez, Tell Me

My sister and I couldn't get enough of those Swanson mashed potatoes. I can still taste them!!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

21. Almost as good as library paste! 😋

[vlyons]

3. Suggest you meet some different women

Have you tried taking some cooking classes?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

22. I'll have you know I can boil in the bag with the best of them! 😏

[Butterflylady]

4. I agree,

Born in the late 40's, my grandmother never had fast food or take out so 3 meals a day was how it was, and a lot women also were not in the work force.

[TlalocW]

18. My grandmother was born in 1903

When she got married she lived on a farm in Kansas until she couldn't live on her own anymore. At that point, she moved in with an aunt (whose children had already moved out) who moved to my hometown so mom could help support her as well. She really didn't need any help other than being driven to doctor appointments, etc. and still did a ton of cooking every week and especially over holidays. There were a few times we all went out to nice sit-down restaurants, but for the most part it was still homecooking for her. There was a funny story though where she took her only plane trip out to California to visit another daughter who has a small avocado grove on her property. She and her husband took grandma out for tacos for the first time, and they were, "just the best things ever."

TlalocW

[Floyd R. Turbo]

23. Fast food at my house was when the old man threw the salt shaker at me!

[Glamrock]

38. Hahahaha!

[Faux pas]

5. Probably because

they're working 3 jobs and don't have time.

[Kittycow]

6. I thought I was deprived as a child since we never had these.

[WhiteTara]

14. me too! I begged my mom and it was a big no.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

24. I only had when I ate a a friends house. Come to think of it, I was the only one who had one and

I had to eat it on the back porch!

[MontanaMama]

7. My mom woudn't allow Swanson anything

into her house. That said, we learned to cook early and it kind of became competitive with the women in my family. My mom was a fabulous self taught cook. My sister is a trained chef and I learned from the two of them. That said...portion sizes were a bit more reasonable back then...there's that.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

25. Good for her!

[Soxfan58]

8. No

But I do!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

41. 👍🏻

[Ohiogal]

10. We only ate these

in instances such as if my mom was sick with the flu and couldn't be propped up in front of the stove.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

42. Damn! That's harsh! 😂

[kurtcagle]

11. Millennial Cooks

In general, women Boomers and GenXers neither cooked or sewed as much as their mothers (and men, almost not at all). Part of this was simply the easier availability of "fast food", but the desire (and eventually the near requirement) that both parents worked often meant that they simply had less time for cooking and often had much smaller groups to cook for (my mother was born on a farm, and was used to feeding 5-6 farmhands in addition to her own family).

Millennials (male and female) seem to be bucking this trend. Part of it is less money, part of it is that cooking shows, such as Iron Chef, made cooking cool. You see the same thing on the sewing side - there are far more Millennial women (and men) who engaged pretty heavily in cosplay, and who now consequently are quite competent around a sewing machine. Cooking and sewing shows on Youtube are some of the most heavily watched.

[lunasun]

15. ++Agree & Z gen will follow I believe . Has been trending for awhile men and women

[Floyd R. Turbo]

43. I must've been the boomer exception. Being the eldest of seven I learned to cook, clean, and mend

at an early age!

[Frustratedlady]

12. Where's the brownie?

I actually picked up a Swanson TV chicken dinner a month or so ago and the brownie tasted just the same as in the 60s.

The kids couldn't wait for us to go to a movie because they knew they would get a Swanson chicken dinner.

[WhiteTara]

16. that was one old brownie!

[Docreed2003]

17. Lmao...the brownie was always the best part of the fried chicken dinner!!

[Squinch]

27. Or the "apple pie." I loved the Salisbury steak!

[Glamrock]

39. Wasn't there cherry pie with the Turkey?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

44. We never had brownies! 😢

[Brother Buzz]

19. TV dinner is the meal that I'm lovin'. Take off the foil, 30 minutes in the oven

Get a loada'
RC Cola
TV Dinner
A plate of Twinkies
It takes a pink burrito
For to keep me clean

[Floyd R. Turbo]

45. Nice! 👍🏻

[flibbitygiblets]

26. That's what we ate all right, but mom was never dressed remotely like that

Think blonde bouffant, leopard miniskirt and white gogo boots.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

46. Likely the most popular mom in the neighborhood. Amongst the preadolescent males anyway! 😏

[flibbitygiblets]

63. Yep, and the post-adolescents too.

[PJMcK]

28. Every single day, you crack me up!

Thanks, Floyd. Keep it up!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

47. My pleasure!

Thank you!

[Freddie]

29. Those were good!

Mom was an OK cook but the Swanson TV dinners were a treat. Especially the yummy fried chicken and the mashed potatoes that got a little brown on the bottom in those aluminum trays...mmm. Today’s microwave frozen meals in the plastic are mostly yuck.

[KT2000]

37. a treat in our house too

never had fried chicken like the tv dinners and thought it was great!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

48. True about nuked food! 🤢

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

30. We had these once in awhile.

We kids thought of them as a treat, which Mom found insulting since she was a good cook. However, she did try to make us eat Brussels sprouts sometimes. We much preferred TV dinners to Brussels sprouts.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

49. I grew to appreciate Brussels sprouts! Especially with bacon and horseradish sauce! 😋

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

50. When I grew up I thought I might like Brussels sprouts if they were cooked differently.

So people said roast them with olive oil, some other suggestions. So I tried those other cooking methods but they were still terrible and I still hate Brussels sprouts. Even bacon can't save them. And I also hate horseradish.

Sorry...

[AncientGeezer]

62. I love sprouts...with butter...I have to try your version...

Drool is running out of my face....how did I miss this variation?

[The Blue Flower]

31. I don't cook like I did when I was Mom

I used to make everything from scratch. Now that they're grown and gone, and I'm living alone, just don't feel like it anymore.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

58. Yep!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

32. My mother's cooking was so bad that

when I first had airline food I thought it was terrific!

Mom had little interest in cooking and no aptitude for it. I started doing serious cooking around the time I turned five. Unfortunately, for a long time I wasn't a very good cook myself because I'd essentially learned from her. Eventually I learned that there were more seasonings than salt and pepper, or that you didn't have to fry a porkchop for thirty minutes. I'm now high end chef, but I'm a decent cook and mostly like doing it.

[kimbutgar]

54. My mother hated to cook and her cooking reflected it

She would make a big pot of something and we’d have those left overs for days. By the 3 or 4th days it was dry from being over heated. I myself developed an aversion to leftovers which my husband broke me of years ago. He insisted I make enough for two dinners so we would have the leftover the following week. Now I’m ok with it as I have some weeks where I only have to cook one meal.

Both my sister and I are better cooks than our late mother.

And I also loved those special times I got those frozen TV dinners.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

59. Cool!

[lapfog_1]

33. I remember those TV dinners.

some of them weren't awful.

Just some.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

60. And some weren't half bad,

they were all bad!

[Delmette2.0]

34. My sister's 14 year old grandson loves to cook and bake.

I taught him his great grandmother's doughnut recipe and he taught me eggplant parmesan. We had a blast that day. And agreed to share recipes over the next year and more when he come back next July.

I have my Mother's Betty Crocker cookbook from the late 1940's. Cooking and baking was very different back then. One guess who gets that cookbook someday.

[d_r]

35. I too was

Raised by a color tv

[Boxerfan]

36. "Mystery Meat are you ready for your Mystery Meat"

That was a song we altered for those dinners....ZZ said it right about the blue turkey.


And I ALWAYS get burned with the fried chicken. No meat-gristle deformed crap whatever. Gave up on them but the picture sure looked nice. And the biscuit brownie-hockey puck quality but a decent chew if you appreciate such things.

[zanana1]

40. I live alone now...

My husband died last year and for awhile, I just sat around and didn't feel like doing anything. I used to cook a hot lunch and dinner for him. After a while, it dawned on me that I didn't have to cook anymore, at least on a schedule, and now I eat when I'm hungry and I very rarely cook. Those frozen dinners taste good to me!

[GemDigger]

52. That is when TV dinners were actually tasty. Now, not so much.

Although Jimmy Dean breakfast bowls rock

[Laffy Kat]

53. We only got to eat TV dinners when our parents went out and we had a baby-sitter.

They were such a treat, LOL!

[Bayard]

56. The only frozen dinners we ever had

Potpies before church on Sunday evenings. You had to hurry and eat so we could make it on time. Loved the potpies, hated church.

[LeftInTX]

57. An abomination!!

[Xolodno]

64. Let me just say, I'm thankful my wife doesn't cook like my Mom did....

...or her Mom.

I like to cook, don't have the time mostly. So my wife has learned to cook from me. If its bad, I screwed up.