Lunchtime question: Check in if you ever got free gub'ment cheese & why!

[HamdenRice]

And I don't mean cheese in your public school cafeteria. I mean the famous half a baseball bat length block of yellow cheese that those tax and spend Democrats rained down on us like manna from heaven during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

We used to get this stuff from my grandparents who were semi-retired tobacco farmers. It was from some obscure Dept of Agriculture program to distribute cheese and other surplus agricultural commodities to retired farmers. I can't remember my grandparents ever once eating cheese, so when we went to visit them in the summer they would hand off the cheese to my parents for us to take back north.

They also got and never used powdered milk and a few other things I can't remember.

I remember the distinctive packaging. If it was cheese, it was simply stamped "CHEESE". It it was powdered milk, it was just a white box with black letters, "POWDERED MILK."

They really should have called it PURINA HUMAN CHOW.

[flvegan]

1. I used to really go for the empty boxes. Baseball cards

fit PERFECTLY into them.

[slj0101]

2. Yep. got it when I was a kid.

Right after my dad split and left my mom with a ton of bills. It made really good grilled cheese. I used to put a couple chunks on bread and toast it in the broiler.

[skygazer]

3. I got it and I got it because I was poor

Damn well ate it, too.

Cheese, peanut butter in tubs marked PEANUT BUTTER. Powdered milk. Pork cutlets in a can - actually not bad.

There were commodity food distributions every month or two and I was usually in line. Very grateful for it, too - it helped me feed my kids at a time when I didn't have much at all to feed them.

[HamdenRice]

6. That's the one I didn't remember, PEANUT BUTTER brand peanut butter

Another commodity my grandparents never ate, and basically gave to my parents and aunts and uncles.

[formerrepuke]

4. Grandma got some.. I think she got all she could, then divided it off to kids/grandkids.

It was subsequently used for homemade mac&cheese, cheeseburgers, toasted cheese sandwiches, etc. It was yellow, and it tasted cheese-like.

[malta blue]

5. My grandmother got it. She didn't particularly care for it

but she would not throw it away. She would make little corn fritters with chunks of it in the middle so that the "cheese" would melt. I don't recall liking them much - but I ate anything my grandmother cooked because it was always served with lots of love...

My grandmother also got the powdered milk - she used it in her instant coffee.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. Yeah, sure did

We were part of the commodities program for a while in the early '70s. I particularly remember the big cans of peanut butter, that had a skin of peanut oil on the top. You had to stir them up first to use them.

[HamdenRice]

8. Yes! I forgot that!

You're bringing back memories. I remember that was the first time I had peanut butter you had to stir the peanut oil back into.

Funny thing is, today, more expensive natural peanut butters are the same way. My guess is that gubment peanut butter was actually more natural, less processed and had fewer or no stabilizers. I bet the cheese was actual cheese as well. I liked it myself.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. I think you may be right

Back then, preservative-laden food was considered the good stuff. Wonder Bead was the height of quality for sandwiches. Organics were really only getting restarted then after the "Chemicals are good for you" ideals of the 50s.

[stuntcat]

9. "half a baseball bat length block" lol

That's exactly how I remember it. My Mom worked for DSS in the 70's and most of the 80's. I don't remember eating it but somehow I know exactly how it tasted.

[NMDemDist2]

10. i loved that stuff

my ex was a welfare dad and he'd get it

[bearfan454]

11. I did when I was laid off from the steel mills in Gary

in 1984. Thanks to Reagan letting the German and Japanese imports flood our markets at below US sale prices. I guess that was free trade and NAFTA back then and we didn't even know it.

[AllegroRondo]

12. loved that stuff!

it never lasted long in our house, we would just cut off chunks and eat with bread.

[bedpanartist]

13. Why? Because it was free, that's why!

nuff said.

[lost-in-nj]

14. We got it

My parents had to go on food stamps for a while and that was a "perk"


No shame in it.... just yucky cheese....



lost

[Taverner]

16. Yes - we were working class poor when I was a kid

There was a period when my dad was on sick leave, and the money ran out. We had benefits, but no money - so government cheese it was. Nasty stuff.

[bleedingheart]

17. My great uncle was a retired dairy farmer...he would give us some of it

and it made great mac and cheese...

[ThomCat]

18. I lived on government surplus food for a while as a kid.

The peanut butter was the best!
The apple juice sucked.
I was addicted to cheese as a kid. Even the government surplus stuff, which wasn't very good.

Does the government still give out government surplus food? I hope so.

[lildreamer316]

19. Oh, but it was PERFECT for grilled cheese sandwiches!!

it was a bread-sized loaf of cheese; so you just sliced off a hunk and fried it right up!! Yum!
My grandparents were retired farmers.

[sniffa]

20. once a month we used to get the bLock

it used to make the most wonderfuL griLLed cheese sammiches. :9

the cheese is the onLy thing we used to get (from what i remember). they'd come to our buiLding every month with the stapLes and there'd be a Line out the door for them (since the eLderLy got up at 4 a.m. to get in Line).