What's even more silly about this is that you never bothered to cook it yourself to experience better cooked food and the reason is? Idk for me it was because I am lame and too shy to ask to change the established way of life. On the other hand I have adjusted to eat food of all sorts even though it is displeasing. Except foods that have capsaicin or or peppers, I'm allergic to them.
Things were much different before the internet. "Food porn" wasn't really a thing (unless maybe you sought it out in cookbooks, and even then...). Hell, Food Network didn't exist until the mid-90s, and back then it was a third-rate cable channel that nobody watched.
If you're a child in that world, how would you even know that vegetables could be good?
I also feel seen in a really weird way. That Corelle, the gray hot dish, the lump of "salad". Except the french cut beans. Mom never sprang for that. Dad did sometimes though.
I don't know what that grey lump actually consists of, but for some reason I think it probably tastes really good. I have no basis for this belief, but I would try that. I'd probably take a too-large helping and regret it shortly thereafter.
You can get wild rice soup from places like Panera, it's really good! The hotdish version is thicker/baked. The stuff in the photo basically looks like the wild rice, carrots, and just a cream of potato base, probably not much flavor to it.
They have a uniquely terrible taste, but I don't understand how just the way they're cut could produce that taste. I think maybe they're also soaked in lye or something. Or maybe the exposed inner part of the beans absorbs metal from the can.
I'm guessing it's more dependent on the brands you're buying, but there shouldn't be that significant of a flavor change. Also most cans have a liner inside them to protect the contents from chemically affecting the contents. I just checked a few sources for various products, and all of them were simply the beans in a water solution.
Some did include salt, which may be having a minor effect. The French cut, julienne, provides a higher surface area / volume ratio. This means the beans will "marinate" in the solution more effectively than larger cut beans. As in, the salt and water have better access to the inner parts of the beam, leaving them more tender and "marinated."
I'm using that weird very loosely because I honestly can't remember the right word.
It’s not the taste so much as the texture. The difference in a green bean casserole made with French cut green beans and whole, cut, green beans is night and day. And by that I mean only one is worth eating. The other is just mush.
My mom used to make me add a can of mixed vegetables to my instant ramen until we agreed that I could eat them separately. So I would quickly force down the bland, mushy veggies then enjoy my ramen in its pure form.
Yes, that is what home made food looks like sometimes.
You're not in a restaurant, the "cook" isn't payed, and presentation is not high on the priorities list if you also have to do dishes, wash clothes, and organize life for the family, possibly in addition to a job.
Meals like this are exactly why I don't ever use condensed soup in anything I make. I've had a lot of meals like that growing up. My family, my grandparents, my friends families.. My wife still will make stuff like this sometimes. It's all just lazy mush to me. I can't stand it. Even my mother-in-law, who makes her own soup stock and makes bread and has her own chickens will make condensed soup and canned green bean mush. I just do not understand.
Food conglomerates had tried to sell a more efficient vision of the kitchen to working mothers:
Less food prep time meant more time for family and career. But it also meant more sales of processed food and the extinction of the skills required to prepare food.
The children of the seventies and eighties were among the first to experience this change toward preprepared foods.
I was born in '87 and I distinctly recall eating a lot of canned veggies growing up. I'm sure it's what my mom grew up (in Newark, NJ) eating, and so it probably just passed on down when she was a young mother. I'm curious if canned veggies were just the rage at the time or if it was so because access to the fresh stuff wasn't as available.
Similar experience in rural Michigan, same time period. I'm sure that's how my mom grew up as well. Fresh veggies were quite available out there, but we still got canned. My grandma wasn't a great cook, and even though my mother has a ton of fantastic skills, cooking isn't one of them.