Originally Posted by raptureready
So many have remarked about missing Mom's cooking and how we(me too) can't duplicate it. Do you think that maybe it's because our mom's used lard, butter, meat grease, homegrown veggies, real sugar, eggs from the henhouse out back, nothing from a mix, etc.? They used things that we don't have access to or have learned to do without because we've been told they aren't good for us. JMHO
Yes and no. My mother never used lard and rarely butter, we didn't have homegrown veggies or a henhouse (we were city folk) and I don't recall her baking from scratch. But no question, things with additives taste different, especially baked good. Store-made cookies, cakes, breads, etc aren't even worth buying most of the time. They just taste wrong.
And in my mother's case, she was a talented cook, who could improvise and always have it turn out wonderful. I can't do that to save my life.
Maybe part of it is that many of our mothers didn't work at outside jobs and could spend more time on cooking.
Also, I suspect their pots and pans were "seasoned" so the flavorings in them added to whatever was being cooked. Nowadays, most of us scrape our pots clean.