What Weird Family Foods Did You Grow Up Thinking Were Normal?

One of the food blogs I follow posed this question:

"What weird family foods did you grow up thinking were normal?"

And it got me thinking.

But before I get to my choices, here are some from the food blog, Serious Eats.

• Peanut butter and onion sandwiches
  
• Cherrios pressed into a slice of good old Kraft American
  
• Saltines with mustard and sugar
• A Hershey's Almond bar sandwich...that actually doesn't sound half bad
• Oatmeal with kimchee
• Coffee soup...saltines with coffee poured on top and sprinkled with sugar
• Warm elbow macaroni with milk
• Waffles topped with coffee and yogurt

Highly appetizing, would you say?

Although, I am slightly intrigued by this chocolate sandwich. I do enjoy nutella crostini every now and then. Especially when topped with strawberries. Or bananas. Or pineapple. Ohhh...grilled pineapple!

But I digress.

Back to the "weird" food of my youth. I can't say that I've had anything as extreme as those listed above...but growing up in Hawaii, and with my family, you learned to be creative with your food. It was kind of an "every-man-for-himself" sort of environment. If you woke up too late, then breakfast was over. If you didn't ask about lunch early enough, lunch was over. And so on. Also, being from Hawaii and a plantation background, we ate a lot of what I like to call "plantation food". Which is basically 5 ingredients or less cooking. I can't say it's gourmet or even rustic really...but it was good, as I remember it anyway. Here's a sampling:

• Hamburger string beans: This tasty wonder is ground beef, string beans and 2 cans of tomato sauce. Most people add onions and garlic, but my sister is not interested in those, so our's was plain. You basically brown the meat, add the tomato sauce + 1 tomato sauce can of water. Add beans. Simmer and serve.
  
• Pork and beans: Canned food at its very best. Vienna sausage, canned barbecue beans, a few squirts of ketchup and mustard. Microwave and serve.
• Anything with spam: Really. Anything. Spam + random veggie + shoyu/sugar sauce + rice = dinner
• Potato chip sandwiches: Texturally satisfying.
• Raw egg on hot rice with shoyu: The rice cooks the egg...I promise! Ok...sort of cooks. Depends on what you consider "cooked".
• Cool Whip desserts: I grew up thinking cool whip makes anything a dessert. It seems greatly under-utilized here in California.
• Bananas and rice: We grew banana trees. I can't explain why I ate them with rice.
• Burnt toast: My mom likes her toast one way, extra crispy. I grew up not knowing that toast could be another shade besides black.
• Brown gravy on everything: Hawaiians are often criticized for their luv of mushy food because we drown everything in gravy. Mushy is delicious.
• Mayo + shoyu = Salad dressing: Huh? You mean it's not?
• Hot dogs in spaghetti: Yummy.
  
• Lots of seaweed: My grandma used to go to the beach to pick this crunchy red seaweed called ogo in Japanese.
  
• Honeysuckle flowers: My neighbors had this little honeysuckle bush. And I spent many an afternoon picking these flowers and squeezing the nectar out. Another neighbor grew some unidentified berries that I also raided on a regular basis

Nothing too strange, I think. Perhaps the non-eating is the weirdest part. I don't know anyone else who lost out on meals so frequently. When I was in 1st grade, my teacher, Mrs. Kinoshita asked us to draw what we had for breakfast that day. Well, I never had breakfast before school. Got up too late. My paper was blank. Mrs. Kinoshita was appalled to hear that I never had breakfast before school.

Did she make the class a pancake breakfast the next day?

You betcha.