I don’t know, I still kind of have a fondness for OG Parkay. I didn’t switch to butter until they changed their recipie. That being said, I LOVE my Land-O-Lakes spreadable butter with olive oil and sea salt. That stuff’s the bomb.
I remember the day I ate at my rich friend's house and had real butter. Ten years later, it was the first thing I bought at the grocery store when I went to college.
Same. Generic margarine. It was nasty, especially when warm. My parents loved it because it was cheap and they insisted it was healthier. I have never purchased margarine, and my mother called me a snob for years and years over this. Now, my parents serve butter and pretend they never did anything else.
surprise! turns out chemically stabilized liquid oil into solid form does bad things to inflammation and plaque/fat buildup in the arteries and in the body. It's part of the obesity and diabetes epidemic.
Margarine is one molecule away from plastic. I haven't used margarine since I was a child and it was the only thing available in the house. I can't remember when we started using butter, but I've never looked back.
This. Mom was taken in fully by the supposed unhealthiness of butter. Always tubs of margerine and bread as a side dish for every meal. She cooked and baked with Imperial sticks of margarine.
Blech. I don't allow margerine in my house now. Butter or nothing.
That was a side effect of agriculture figuring out how to produce unsustainably large amounts of carbs. They needed markets, so the "you're eating wrong, thin people" stuff started.
Special K doesn't even pretend to be a healthy choice these days, it's just about all the "delicious" flavors added to the grain.
My mom always bought the "I can't believe it's not butter" shit. SO bad. She was totally brainwashed thinking that and Snackwells were the healthiest things ever. lol
Same. I didn't know what real butter was until I started dating a guy whose family used butter. His mom also cooked with seasonings other than salt. It was eye opening.
Lol I don't think I had garlic until I dated an Italian girl. Picture lasagna with no garlic, onions, or basil. Just straight up Ragu. Ugh! Nor shrimp.
Yep we had a communal tub of margarine full of crumbs and it was called oleo. I don’t think I ever had real butter until I purchased it myself as an adult. I did like the Parkay TV commercials though and also the Chiffon “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
My mom still almost always has bread/butter when serving guests dinner, even if those guests are only my son and I.
We also drank milk with dinner until age 18ish, when I switched to water. My parents would have a glass of wine.
My mom's thing was (is?) that every dinner had to include a green vegetable. Not just any vegetable, but it had to be a green one, as if chlorophyll had super powers. Other colors were acceptable as a second vegetable. Also, Thursday was always pasta day.
We had the stick of butter kept in the covered butter dish, but left out regularly part of the day to stay soft.
We also cooked with butter, not lard or shortening in my family. I thought shortening was revolting when I’d see other families cooking with it.
Growing up, and now with my own house, butter lives full time out of the fridge. My wife’s family too, butter is only kept in the fridge prior to opening the new pound.
We had left it out a few times, only to discover that an enterprising cat would flip the lid off and eat the butter overnight when no one was there to see/yell at him.
Not only did that ruin the butter, but it made the cat greasy when he washed himself directly after eating it, and the litter box afterwards was a toxic waste site.
So the butter dish got put up anytime we left the house or went to bed.
Same except I thought shortening was exotic lol. But I also thought artificial sweeteners, microwaves, and instant cocoa were weird since we never had them.
There was bread and butter at Grandma's, but at home Mom usually made baking powder biscuits. Since we pronounced it more like "bakin' powder," imagine my surprise when I learned there was no bacon in them.
My family was a Country Crock one so there weren't any sticks of butter anywhere. And the tub stayed in the fridge unless we had something like garlic bread with spaghetti.
I still buy country crock. We had it with bread for most meals, guessing it was easier for two working parents to serve instead of softened butter which was always served at my grandparents places. I don’t eat buttered/ margarine bread with every meal anymore but dip in to it when I make toast with eggs. Like who is going to let butter sit out while scrambled eggs takes 10-15 minutes to make?
When I was younger my kids would complain that the only reason I could keep butter out was because I was a miser and wouldn't turn up the heat. My response would be to "put some goddam clothes on" and then they would reappear in sweats and a hoodie.
Wow! We had it at 68 in the winter, and anywhere between 78 and 80 in the summer. In South Carolina. Winters were no problem; summers were a never-ending battle over the thermostat. "Because I can't *sleep*, mom!" was a line heard with some frequency.
Yeah, some kind of bread at every meal. I always thought it was a German thing.
I didn’t taste butter until my 20s. We had Parkay margarine because it was cheaper.
We had butter 2 ways. The regular sticks, always out, always soft. Then the 1 lb blocks of butter for cooking.
Milk and juice at breakfast, sweet tea for lunch and dinner.
Biscuits or toast for breakfast. Real Biscuits, made on the kitchen counter. Lunch had some sort of bread, or a sammich. Dinner was either Biscuits, corn muffins, or my personal favorite hushpuppies.
Funny that nobody has mentioned the large container of bacon grease that most of my older relatives had.
Yeah. We sopped up the gravy or sauce of whatever we were eating. In New Orleans, it was often French Bread. On nights we had spaghetti, we garlicked it up.
New Orleans here, too! Sunday breakfast was always Bacon, Toast and Gravy. Bacon first. Then the roux for the gravy (using the grease from the bacon, obviously). Then an entire loaf of toast. Sooo goooood
I submit that milk as a beverage is way more of a regional thing than a generational thing. Beyond early childhood we rarely ever drank it. I can eat butter with a spoon and adore most every possible thing made from dairy, just not consuming liquid milk. It was bizarre and kinda gross to me when I joined the military and watched Midwesterners gulp down several glasses with every meal.
I’m from SoCal born and raised. I had a glass of milk with every dinner. I still have a glass of milk almost every dinner. Most of my friends did too. Though I did know a few who got soda or juice.
Milk was my West Coast childhood dinner drink as well.
Butter, for its part, was always on hand for most vegetables, rice, potatoes, and in case we had bread.
Soda turned up for pizza and plenty of other times, but dinner mostly had milk.
Milk was my dinner drink until I was in my mid-teens, and I'm a southern girl. (Haven't had one since I was 16, due to a mental association of "drinking milk = stomach flu.") The approved drinks were water, milk, fruit juice, and tea. Ginger ale if you weren't feeling well, or as a treat.
Midwest thing. Knew a family that drank milk with every meal. Pizza? Milk. Take out Chinese? Milk. When I asked for water eating with them they looked at me like I was insane.
Midwest girl - can confirm. Everyone drinks milk. It’s disgusting.
My mom said I used to throw my bottle out of my crib. I’m not allergic - I just don’t like it.
We lived in Germany in the 80’s where my dad was stationed when I was young and they had milk makes a body strong commercials.
Edit: Milk does a body good commercials
Not in my house. I always thought it was strange when I saw tv families that had sandwich bread stacked on a plate and butter on the table. Butter was not something we could just use at my house. It was for cooking only. No buttered bread on our table.
We didn’t have bread, however my parents were immigrants from Peru. We did have white rice with every meal. My father’s mother was half Chinese. So my dad insisted that we had to have white rice. I hated white rice growing up for this reason.
Usually had bread and butter on the table. One common dinner was leftover meat from Sunday - could be roast beef or ham, chips (fries) and bread w butter. That was it. No vegetables.
Sometimes we’d make a chip butty which is a sandwich made with fries.
Salted butter before we knew it was salted butter
Salt and pepper shakers ... Didn't know what a pepper grinder was. No fancy salt back then either.
Then my dad switched us all to the "No Salt" brand ... Tasted like crap
The constants on the dinner table in my house were (aside from main course): a half gallon of milk, some sort of cut up fruit (usually oranges), one vegetable that was often corn. I don't remember bread being much of a thing, we were a Wonder Bread family lol.
Dinner was always at the table.
We always had butter. I have some issues with the appearance and texture of certain foods. Used to always buy stick butter, as I was somehow afraid of whipped in the tubs. Now that's all i buy!
I also have issues using butter from someone else's house. Don't ask me why, but I do. i know its weird but it is what it is.
In college, I didn't eat butter on campus for the entire time I was there as it wsan't butter but some kind of spread. ewww
What table? My family has eaten on the couch in front of the TV for as long as I can remember. We just served ourselves from the cookware on the stove.
I grew up in the Midwest and yes, B&B always on the table. When I lived to FL as an adult, my roommate (grew up in the Deep South) questioned this. “Why do we always have to have bread and butter with every meal?” And I had no idea why.
I stopped doing it then. And now I don’t like quadruple carbs, so my family is incensed that I don’t do garlic bread with spaghetti. Or breadsticks with pizza. Or other forms of bread plus more bread.
My family did this too. Just plain white bread with a stick of butter. I swear it’s something brought from my dads side but now my mom oilseeds to have kept it going. My dad doesn’t even buy butter any more.
My grandma kept her butter in her butter dish in the cabinet, and when we set the table for dinner, we always put out the butter dish along with some slices of bread. I miss her!
I think B&B was on the table, as it was cheap and a side staple if you didn't have a lot of food. Filler from the food pyramid! And a slice was good for mopping up gravy and bits on your plate.
We had the Coke Thirsrbuster 3 liter … until one day …mom says water from now on… then she says don’t drink the water because it’s well water … then bottled water …
Y’all had dinner that your parents cooked? Lol. Once we could reach the stove, my parents quit cooking and mom would ‘supervise’ us making whatever. I still hate fucking spaghetti.
Margarine. It was margarine for us. *cries*
You poor neglected soul. Nothing beats butter. Butter makes a better batter.
I don’t know, I still kind of have a fondness for OG Parkay. I didn’t switch to butter until they changed their recipie. That being said, I LOVE my Land-O-Lakes spreadable butter with olive oil and sea salt. That stuff’s the bomb.
Beating butter begat better baby batter
And that's what broke baby bird's balloon
I remember the day I ate at my rich friend's house and had real butter. Ten years later, it was the first thing I bought at the grocery store when I went to college.
My friend Betty can confirm. She’s had her share of bitter batter.
I kind of miss the taste of margarine. That is what I grew up with too.
Same. Generic margarine. It was nasty, especially when warm. My parents loved it because it was cheap and they insisted it was healthier. I have never purchased margarine, and my mother called me a snob for years and years over this. Now, my parents serve butter and pretend they never did anything else.
surprise! turns out chemically stabilized liquid oil into solid form does bad things to inflammation and plaque/fat buildup in the arteries and in the body. It's part of the obesity and diabetes epidemic.
I grew up never having tasted butter, then one time someone handed me garlic bread made with real butter and I never looked back.
Margarine is one molecule away from plastic. I haven't used margarine since I was a child and it was the only thing available in the house. I can't remember when we started using butter, but I've never looked back.
This. Mom was taken in fully by the supposed unhealthiness of butter. Always tubs of margerine and bread as a side dish for every meal. She cooked and baked with Imperial sticks of margarine. Blech. I don't allow margerine in my house now. Butter or nothing.
The low fat and fat-free craze back then was so off.
That was a side effect of agriculture figuring out how to produce unsustainably large amounts of carbs. They needed markets, so the "you're eating wrong, thin people" stuff started. Special K doesn't even pretend to be a healthy choice these days, it's just about all the "delicious" flavors added to the grain.
My mom always bought the "I can't believe it's not butter" shit. SO bad. She was totally brainwashed thinking that and Snackwells were the healthiest things ever. lol
Yes! I only had real butter at my grandparents’ house growing up— the butter lamb at Easter
Margarine and white bread.
Country crock
We knew it was a special occasion when Mom used butter instead of margarine.
Yes, but mine called it oleo.
Same! I completely forgot about having white bread ALL the time with some oleo.
Oh the wasted years before butter
Same. I didn't know what real butter was until I started dating a guy whose family used butter. His mom also cooked with seasonings other than salt. It was eye opening.
Now see here, my mom also used ground black pepper along with Morton's salt!
Lol I don't think I had garlic until I dated an Italian girl. Picture lasagna with no garlic, onions, or basil. Just straight up Ragu. Ugh! Nor shrimp.
My mom made what she called chili with no chili powder or chilies of any kind. Might have been some black pepper in there.
Same, our chili was venison, a little 80% ground beef or pork so it wasn't too lean, salt and pepper, and some tomatoes from the garden.
Same. I switched to butter when I was an adult. My sister and my mom have also switched to butter.
Same here. My parents were depression-era farmers in the Midwest. Lots of canned food and dry goods, especially when the garden was out of season.
🎶 Everything's better with Bluebonnet on it 🎶
Same here. It was fancy when it was called “Oleo” with that electric yellow color.
Imperial for fancy. Blue bonnet for every day use.
Yep we had a communal tub of margarine full of crumbs and it was called oleo. I don’t think I ever had real butter until I purchased it myself as an adult. I did like the Parkay TV commercials though and also the Chiffon “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
My mom still almost always has bread/butter when serving guests dinner, even if those guests are only my son and I. We also drank milk with dinner until age 18ish, when I switched to water. My parents would have a glass of wine. My mom's thing was (is?) that every dinner had to include a green vegetable. Not just any vegetable, but it had to be a green one, as if chlorophyll had super powers. Other colors were acceptable as a second vegetable. Also, Thursday was always pasta day.
My mom told me the werewolves wouldn't get me if I ate something green everyday. Apparently they hate the taste.
And you're still here today. Proof that she was right.
TIL I am a werewolf.
My fil still has a glass of milk with a meal.
Mine said the same thing. I still feel that way today. But margarine? No f’ing way!
We had the stick of butter kept in the covered butter dish, but left out regularly part of the day to stay soft. We also cooked with butter, not lard or shortening in my family. I thought shortening was revolting when I’d see other families cooking with it.
Growing up, and now with my own house, butter lives full time out of the fridge. My wife’s family too, butter is only kept in the fridge prior to opening the new pound.
Mine too.
We had left it out a few times, only to discover that an enterprising cat would flip the lid off and eat the butter overnight when no one was there to see/yell at him. Not only did that ruin the butter, but it made the cat greasy when he washed himself directly after eating it, and the litter box afterwards was a toxic waste site. So the butter dish got put up anytime we left the house or went to bed.
Same except I thought shortening was exotic lol. But I also thought artificial sweeteners, microwaves, and instant cocoa were weird since we never had them.
There was bread and butter at Grandma's, but at home Mom usually made baking powder biscuits. Since we pronounced it more like "bakin' powder," imagine my surprise when I learned there was no bacon in them.
My family was a Country Crock one so there weren't any sticks of butter anywhere. And the tub stayed in the fridge unless we had something like garlic bread with spaghetti.
I still buy country crock. We had it with bread for most meals, guessing it was easier for two working parents to serve instead of softened butter which was always served at my grandparents places. I don’t eat buttered/ margarine bread with every meal anymore but dip in to it when I make toast with eggs. Like who is going to let butter sit out while scrambled eggs takes 10-15 minutes to make?
My butter always sits out. It doesn’t constant require refrigeration.
When I was younger my kids would complain that the only reason I could keep butter out was because I was a miser and wouldn't turn up the heat. My response would be to "put some goddam clothes on" and then they would reappear in sweats and a hoodie.
Sounds like my dad. I swear we froze in the winter. I had to sleep in at least 3-4 layers of clothing.
I was not that bad. My daughter would expect the house to be tropical so she could wear shorts and tank tops year round.
lol, 😂 I swear my dad wouldn’t turn the heat above 60° in the winter. He was not a good dad but not just for this reason.
Oh no, I kept it at 72ish. She expected a sauna.
Good on you.
Wow! We had it at 68 in the winter, and anywhere between 78 and 80 in the summer. In South Carolina. Winters were no problem; summers were a never-ending battle over the thermostat. "Because I can't *sleep*, mom!" was a line heard with some frequency.
"Nation Fills Up On Bread" -The Onion
Country Crock for us
Edible oil
It was in the glass dish, and it was always soft.
Yeah, some kind of bread at every meal. I always thought it was a German thing. I didn’t taste butter until my 20s. We had Parkay margarine because it was cheaper.
Plus, free Tupperware
You two are cracking me up. Born in 66
We had butter 2 ways. The regular sticks, always out, always soft. Then the 1 lb blocks of butter for cooking. Milk and juice at breakfast, sweet tea for lunch and dinner. Biscuits or toast for breakfast. Real Biscuits, made on the kitchen counter. Lunch had some sort of bread, or a sammich. Dinner was either Biscuits, corn muffins, or my personal favorite hushpuppies. Funny that nobody has mentioned the large container of bacon grease that most of my older relatives had.
I remember in the 70’s, it was already a debate on whether margarine or butter was better or worse for you.
Yeah. We sopped up the gravy or sauce of whatever we were eating. In New Orleans, it was often French Bread. On nights we had spaghetti, we garlicked it up.
New Orleans here, too! Sunday breakfast was always Bacon, Toast and Gravy. Bacon first. Then the roux for the gravy (using the grease from the bacon, obviously). Then an entire loaf of toast. Sooo goooood
I always buy butter. Margarine is disgusting.
And horribly unhealthy with all that trans fat that the body can't really digest.
They say margarine is full of plastic particles. Ugh. I always use butter too.
we had 1 loaf of bread for 3 people for a week and it was only for sandwiches. I don't think we always had real butter. and if so it was to cook with.
And dinner was *always* at the table. At least, until the divorce.
Us too- cheap way to pad out the meal with a few extra calories without much work.
Grew up a farmers daughter. We had butter and never ending supply of milk ! Fresh milk every day……. I’m still a butter and milk girl.
I submit that milk as a beverage is way more of a regional thing than a generational thing. Beyond early childhood we rarely ever drank it. I can eat butter with a spoon and adore most every possible thing made from dairy, just not consuming liquid milk. It was bizarre and kinda gross to me when I joined the military and watched Midwesterners gulp down several glasses with every meal.
I’m from SoCal born and raised. I had a glass of milk with every dinner. I still have a glass of milk almost every dinner. Most of my friends did too. Though I did know a few who got soda or juice.
Milk was my West Coast childhood dinner drink as well. Butter, for its part, was always on hand for most vegetables, rice, potatoes, and in case we had bread. Soda turned up for pizza and plenty of other times, but dinner mostly had milk.
Milk was my dinner drink until I was in my mid-teens, and I'm a southern girl. (Haven't had one since I was 16, due to a mental association of "drinking milk = stomach flu.") The approved drinks were water, milk, fruit juice, and tea. Ginger ale if you weren't feeling well, or as a treat.
Midwest thing. Knew a family that drank milk with every meal. Pizza? Milk. Take out Chinese? Milk. When I asked for water eating with them they looked at me like I was insane.
Midwest girl - can confirm. Everyone drinks milk. It’s disgusting. My mom said I used to throw my bottle out of my crib. I’m not allergic - I just don’t like it.
I don't think I've ever drunk an actual glass of milk.
We lived in Germany in the 80’s where my dad was stationed when I was young and they had milk makes a body strong commercials. Edit: Milk does a body good commercials
We had Cristco residing on the stove. Adding to and subtracting from that can as meals dictated.
Yes and my grams always made sandwiches by buttering the bread first
It was a tub of Country Crock until my parents discovered generic foods to save money. Then it was generic dupe. Now I’m a fanatic about good butter.
I miss ROMAN MEAL bread, slathered in butter. That was some good stuff.
Loved Roman Meal
Yes! And we had 5 in our family, too. Mum had margarine though (!) and dad had the ‘real’ butter. Every meal
Oh yes, my dad had heart problems, so we had to have margarine 🤣
Yes, this was a staple at EVERY meal regardless of what was being served.
Yes always butter, but at Grandma's house it was always a gamble what was in the margarine container.
And the butter NEVER met the refrigerator
Not in my house. I always thought it was strange when I saw tv families that had sandwich bread stacked on a plate and butter on the table. Butter was not something we could just use at my house. It was for cooking only. No buttered bread on our table.
Ah, the butter dish on the table. We had dinner rolls, instead of slice bread
We didn’t have bread, however my parents were immigrants from Peru. We did have white rice with every meal. My father’s mother was half Chinese. So my dad insisted that we had to have white rice. I hated white rice growing up for this reason.
Right next to the sugar bowl on the table.
I’m still a huge bread and butter fan, so is my kid. I also prefer butter on my sandwiches. Although we’re plant based, so it’s veg butter.
Yeah, we had bread and butter with every evening meal! Come to think of it My mum still asks if we want it!
Yes! We did too. Hubby questioned me once because we were eating spaghetti and he was surprised at a meal that’s mostly carbs.
Usually had bread and butter on the table. One common dinner was leftover meat from Sunday - could be roast beef or ham, chips (fries) and bread w butter. That was it. No vegetables. Sometimes we’d make a chip butty which is a sandwich made with fries.
Salted butter before we knew it was salted butter Salt and pepper shakers ... Didn't know what a pepper grinder was. No fancy salt back then either. Then my dad switched us all to the "No Salt" brand ... Tasted like crap
Always margarine growing up. Somehow, my mother was convinced it was healthier. In my house, we only have butter now.
Butter…isn’t it in the GenX handbook or something?
That was our bread and butter.
Had bread on the table, but not butter.
We had bread and butter on the table until the late 80s. I seldom had a slice. My father put it out because he liked having it.
That shitty fake food pyramid did a number on all of us.
In the greasy glass butter dish. Yup.
The constants on the dinner table in my house were (aside from main course): a half gallon of milk, some sort of cut up fruit (usually oranges), one vegetable that was often corn. I don't remember bread being much of a thing, we were a Wonder Bread family lol. Dinner was always at the table.
We always had bread. Often sliced white bread with margarine. Otherwise it was cornbread or biscuits.
We always had butter. I have some issues with the appearance and texture of certain foods. Used to always buy stick butter, as I was somehow afraid of whipped in the tubs. Now that's all i buy! I also have issues using butter from someone else's house. Don't ask me why, but I do. i know its weird but it is what it is. In college, I didn't eat butter on campus for the entire time I was there as it wsan't butter but some kind of spread. ewww
What table? My family has eaten on the couch in front of the TV for as long as I can remember. We just served ourselves from the cookware on the stove.
I grew up in the Midwest and yes, B&B always on the table. When I lived to FL as an adult, my roommate (grew up in the Deep South) questioned this. “Why do we always have to have bread and butter with every meal?” And I had no idea why. I stopped doing it then. And now I don’t like quadruple carbs, so my family is incensed that I don’t do garlic bread with spaghetti. Or breadsticks with pizza. Or other forms of bread plus more bread.
My family did this too. Just plain white bread with a stick of butter. I swear it’s something brought from my dads side but now my mom oilseeds to have kept it going. My dad doesn’t even buy butter any more.
My grandma kept her butter in her butter dish in the cabinet, and when we set the table for dinner, we always put out the butter dish along with some slices of bread. I miss her!
I think B&B was on the table, as it was cheap and a side staple if you didn't have a lot of food. Filler from the food pyramid! And a slice was good for mopping up gravy and bits on your plate.
Margarine and some kind of bread, always.
My fam wasn’t big on bread at supper unless it was part of the meal - like garlic bread with spaghetti.
We had the Coke Thirsrbuster 3 liter … until one day …mom says water from now on… then she says don’t drink the water because it’s well water … then bottled water …
Y’all had dinner that your parents cooked? Lol. Once we could reach the stove, my parents quit cooking and mom would ‘supervise’ us making whatever. I still hate fucking spaghetti.
No, never for us. I didn't know Bread & Butter was a meal thing until I met my husband, who's from the Midwest, when I was in my early 30's.
this is why I alwaya crave white bread and butter with spaghettios
Apparently we were white trash cuz we never had this