I was introduced to chipped beef on toast, or SOS (sh*t on a shingle ) as it was called in basic training. It was eat it or go hungry so I developed a taste for it.
Is chipped beef the little dried, salty shavings of beef that used to come in a little jar ? I remember my mom used to get that and we had it for sandwiches sometimes, She would also buy round steak, which was pretty cheap back then, and she would take a butter knife and scrape the meat from the steak, and it was like fine ground beef after she scraped it. We ate that on a slice of bread and butter, and then we cooked what was left of the round steak and made stew from it, or Swiss steak with tomatoes and onions cooked in. I think that my main “euww-food” is still kimchi. I know it is good for me, and I can stand a little of it, but I just do not care for the taste at all.
I love SOS. There is a frozen brand that I buy for myself because my husband doesn't care for it. Just heat and add toast.
In first grade SOS was the only thing from the cafeteria I refused to eat. Even after the teacher kept me in detention until I ate it. I won! Looked like someone already ate it and threw it up on a piece of toast—POS!
Yes. In fact it's still available; made by Armour I believe. I bought a jar for my grocery hoard during the lockdown so I probably need to use it.
We always called it "dried beef" and that's what it said on the little jar. Fried in butter and then added to a gravy of flour and milk and then poured on toast was always a popular snack at our house when I was a child. Besides....those little glass jars made excellent (and free) orange juice glasses.
I arrived about 2am by plane from OKC to Fort Polk for basic. All of us got on a bus and they drove us to an open mess hall. I'll never forget what we had, it was wrinkled up weenies and diced cold potatoes. I swear some blood hound in Arkansas probably had a better meal than that crap. It never got any better but on a good note in Vietnam we had a decent PX that sold canned goods and little canned burners to heat it with. I remember flying all night and all of us crew went over to the mess hall to have coffee and something to eat and the SOB wouldn't unlock the door. Someone walked over to the CO's little hootch and told him they wouldn't let us in, didn't take long for them to unlock and grease the grill. I never ate there but maybe two times in almost two years. It was better than my first company because I got sick eating in that first mess hall. I believe it was really due to very poor refrigeration of the rations awaiting delivery to us and others. The Bn headquarters was 40 miles north of us and they had one of those air blow up refrigeration units so when I saw that I knew immediately you would be taking a big chance eating anything perishable from that unit.
Kimchi was cabbage and a few other organic foods fermented much like pickling in vinegar. A heck of a lot better than rotted birds or eggs, which they do eat in Indo China, they love the stuff...............whew, the smell just lingered in the area it was exposed. I like that chipped beef, just a dab of garlic is something which makes it a bit better, but the better the white flour gravy the better the meal.
Wet melted licorice always reminded me of an open oil pit around an old well. It was much more potent in the 50s but we kids managed to finish it off. Everything in the fifties was the real deal not the cheap imitation stuff of today. It's like these cheap quart bottles of pop I buy. The only flavors not those caffeine tainted ones are the coke and Dr Pepper and I grab them each shopping trip, often they go down to 99 cents a quart and I stock up even if I don't need them. Highest price to date has been like 1.55 ea.
You would be surprised to see how many GIs felt the same in the early 60s. It really depends on who cooks it how good it is and looks for that matter.