Dateline: my youth. Any other latchkey kids out there? What is a latchkey kid you ask? Dictionary def: a usually school-age child who regularly spends part of the day unsupervised at home while the parents are at work. Mum worked 2nd shift most days as a nurse, ergo 3pm-11pm. Ergo, I was usually on my own from age 11 on. Got 7 days a week paper route. Afternoon on weekdays, way early on weekends. I loathed that gig, the first of a couple dozen gigs I would also loathe.
I've cooked & eaten a mountain of macaroni & cheese from a box. Surely hundreds of boxes back then. Occasionally I still buy them. Now it's the organic type, or at least fancypants boxes. Stop me when this gets too exciting.
Another craptastic menu rotation: Chuckwagon sammies. Anyone else remember them? It's essentially a half pound of salt & nitrates inside shite bread. Microwaved.
I have a single vivid memory of taking the morning schoolbus during middle school, eating a chuckwagon on the bus, everyone staring at me. Were they jelly? I'm guessing nay. Maybe they were thinking about their own normal household where brekky was prepared for them, eggs, mebbe cereal, flapjacks, who knows. Most likely they were thinking what a sad, weird kid I was. Not too far off the mark.
Let's not forget ye olde faithful: TV dinners. Also ate a mountain of these. Often the Salisbury steak. Jelly? Sometimes I wonder just what the fuck I was eating. What are these actually made of? Of course, way back in the day, in this case the 70s into 80s, at least the food was more organic than it is now. I think. Probably. As they say: what did our grandparents call organic food? They called it food.
Onto the single unhealthiest item ever, outside of margarine mebbe (i.e., a block of trans fat): microwave popcorn.
How many bags of this cancer in a bowl did I eat? 100? 200? Where was the FDA then? wtf gov.
Lastly, whatever I cooked used either the microwave or Teflon pans. Ancient, flaking Teflon pans. Looked like this:
Never occurred to anyone apparently that ingesting Teflon flakes as a kid isn't the most nutritious snack. So, any of this sound familiar to you? Mebbe depends on when you grew up. Nowadays parents more likely to hover over their kids nonstop. But back in the day? Not nearly as much.
