Tag: 1960s

Boomers Had “Family Recipes”

If you have been watching any of the food competition shows that appear on multiple networks these days, you know they generally fall into two categories: professional cooks and home cooks. When you get into the home cook category, a common thread that appears in these shows is that sooner or later, the competitors are asked to present one of their favorite family recipes. That got Mister Boomer thinking: if he were involved in such a competition, what would he choose?

Mister B does not profess to have a favorite dish from his childhood, let alone a cherished family recipe. To be sure, there are boomers who do, and many who, in fact, are still cooking recipes that have been passed down for generations, as their relatives came here from “the old country.” Yet in Mister Boomer’s experience, many of the “family recipes” that boomers may remember were of more recent lineage.

For example, as Mister B executed the mental exercise of running through some usual dishes served in the Boomer household, it was easy enough to trace the bacon slices cooked into pancake batter recipe from the side of a Bisquick box. Pork chops with mushroom gravy came from a Campbell’s soup can. Even his mother’s baked beans and hot dogs recipe came from the side of a jar of B&M Baked Beans.

When it came to the holiday season, Mister B does have some nostalgia for cookie, cake and pie recipes, but he knows that these, too, came from packages, not from his ancestors. His mother’s Banana Cream Pie recipe was on the box of Jell-O pudding. Her Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe was printed on a Duncan Hines cake mix box; her “from scratch” shortcake biscuits for Strawberry Shortcake came from a Bisquick box as well.

Recipes on food packages began to appear during the Industrial Revolution, when mass-production of food items became a reality. Companies began hiring women to create recipes made with their products for this purpose. The idea was to get consumers interested in trying their product. Then the recipes had to keep changing so consumers would continue to buy the products, in order to try these new recipes.

Very possibly the most famous food packaging recipe ever was for the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie. The recipe was created by two chefs at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts back in 1938. Nestle printed their recipe on the back of its chocolate chip bags, and it has become the quintessential chocolate chip cookie recipe against which all others are measured.

Food packaging recipes during the Depression helped home cooks work within their limited budgets to stretch meals for families. During WWII they were altered to fit into food rationing requirements, such as substituting oleo margarine or shortening for butter; and molasses, sorghum, honey or maple syrup for granulated sugar. The parents of boomers grew up on these recipes, and a good many boomers that Mister B speaks with remember these types of recipes in their childhood as well.

Mister B note: This video is nearly 13 minutes long, but it’s amusing:

The heyday of food packaging recipes occurred during the prime boomer years of the 1950s and ’60s. There are many videos and such available these days that make fun of Tiki-inspired dishes and strange combinations of foods that might turn up in a packaging recipe. Take a look at what you have in your cupboard now; you just might find a few recipes there to try on your grandkids.

So, the question is, boomers, is that nostalgic or even cherished memory you have of a favorite recipe a genuine family heirloom, or did your mom find it on the back of a box, package or can?

 

Boomers Had Strict School Dress Codes

This time of year, Mister Boomer recalls the daily dread he felt as the Labor Day holiday weekend approached. It meant one thing: summer was over and school was about to begin.  Another dreaded part of every impending school year was the mandatory back-to-school shopping venture. As growing boomers, clothing from the year before often would no longer fit. For many boomers, including Mister B, school clothes were different than casual clothes. School dress codes had a great deal to say about that.

Mister Boomer and his siblings went to parochial school. Therefore, girls were required to wear uniforms, and boys wore dress pants, dress shoes, dress shirts and ties. Styles and fit were strictly enforced. Girls could not have a skirt hem land more than one inch above their knees, and it was often checked with a ruler at the school entrance. Boys were allowed the leeway of a bow tie or clip-on neck tie, but in Mister B’s early days, the shirt had to be white, light blue or pale yellow. Girls had two styles of collar that was allowed on their blouses, and had to wear plaid jumpers or skirts and black patent leather shoes with a single strap over the instep — known as a Mary Jane. Boys were required to wear leather dress shoes with laces. That was all that was allowed.

Mister B’s public school neighbors had rules that were a bit more relaxed in that they did not require boys to wear ties, but their shirts were required to have a collar. It was preferred that girls wore skirts and blouses or dresses, though by the mid-1960s, pants were allowed.

As the rebel images of James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized dungarees in movies of the 1950s, kids wanted to embrace the fashion. There were protests, mild and polite by today’s standards, by students from coast to coast. Still, for several years, the students lost the argument. Long before dungarees became known as blue jeans, dress codes explicitly forbade them for both boys and girls. As loafer shoes and penny loafers became a trend, they were banned by many school districts.

The sixties changed everything, man. Many point to The Beatles for popularizing longer hair for boys, from the moment they landed in the U.S. with their “moptop” hairdos. In Mister Boomer’s observation, though, there was a sea change in 1967 after the Summer of Love. Take a look at audiences at rock concerts before that time and after, and you’ll see a marked difference in the way boys and girls dressed. Before 1967, you’d see kids dressed like they were going to school. This is quite a contrast when you view early videos of Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones or The Beatles, for example. However, after 1967, there were Bohemian and Eastern influences that helped to create what we now know as the cliché of sixties fashions.

Before the mid-sixties, a great many school districts did not feel there was a reason to have written guidelines on hair. Boomer boys and girls tested their patience by adopting every trend that came along, and that necessitated a reaction to “keep the kids in line.” There were all sorts of seemingly random rules designed to limit everything from girls’ bangs and hair height to boys’ sideburns and overall hair length.

In the last half of the 1960s, school dress codes slowly began to loosen. In public schools, most school districts allowed “clean” blue jeans, and bans of loafers quietly disappeared. The styles of the day slowly brought athletic shoes into the casual realm as the ’60s became the ’70s.

By most historical accounts, the confluence of culture and modernized education methods of the 1960s altered the way dress codes were viewed. The era of Civil Rights brought about in some small measure an understanding that dress codes could be culturally biased, and it was a time when the concept of “students’ rights” was being discussed. For boomers who were in school at the beginning and end of the 1960s, there was a huge difference in what school clothes their parents were shopping for as the new school year approached.

Take a look at the way kids are dressed when they head to school today, and it appears to old Mister Boomer, there are no rules governing dress whatsoever. Mister B recalls many students in his day either altering their look once they left the house (girls rolling the waistband of their skirt to make it shorter, for example), or literally changing clothes when they left the house and again before walking into school. These fashion rebels were definitely mild compared to the beyond-casual presentations of today’s kids.

Whether boomers welcome or lament these relaxed school dress codes, today’s kids have boomers to thank for their sartorial freedom. Boomers blazed the trail over three decades to set the stage for today’s casual class-wear.

What memories of school dress codes do you have, boomers?