My Parents Had a Style of Cooking That Was Efficient, Reliable, and Adequate. We Could Really Benefit From It Today.

It started one night in the dead of winter, when I prepared two fried eggs for dinner. I had kale wilting in the refrigerator and grand plans to cook a stew with beans, coconut, and fresh turmeric; my past self had intended for my weekly meals to be both nutritious and exciting. However, it was late, I was exhausted, and on that hungry Thursday, my collection of glossy cookbooks felt like they were judging me from the shelf. Instead, I fried two eggs sunny-side up, toasted some bread, and added a smear of ketchup—hardly a meal by today’s standards, which dictate that we should be crafting balanced, scratch-made dinners every single night.

But my makeshift solution, while not exactly gourmet, left me satisfied, and it prompted a realization: perhaps the process doesn’t need to be so complicated. When I was a child, my father would occasionally handle dinner when my mother was away by frying a few meat patties and serving them on bread with ketchup. There were no vegetables, no potatoes, and no formal place settings—just the two of us eating at the wooden cutting board that slid out from the counter, sharing a quiet moment over a simple meal.

Weeknight dinners felt much more straightforward during my childhood, I remarked to my mother a few days later. “I’m so over these ‘easy’ dinner recipes that pretend they’ll take just 30 minutes but never do,” I complained. “Back then we usually just had the same dozen-or-so things over and over, right?” She confirmed my recollection—it was mostly variations of ground meat (game cakes in brown sauce, beef balls in soup) and ground whitefish (balls in white sauce, cakes in brown). There were also multiple kinds of milk-based porridge served with cold cuts (cinnamon-topped velvet porridge is delicious, I promise), as well as spaghetti with meat sauce and, in a pinch, tomato soup with boiled egg.

This was the Norwegian countryside in the 1980s, and my parents prepared the food that was available to them. “It was the food that we had,” said my mother. Dinner was simple, and that was by design. “No one got creative with food on a Tuesday night back then.”

I would argue that I am a slightly more versatile cook than my parents, though I remain somewhat disorganized in the kitchen and have never been convinced that toasting nuts is worth the effort. However, what they lacked in culinary adventure, they made up for in sheer consistency, and honestly, I think we ate better. Food experimentation was reserved for weekends and special occasions, and no one would have dreamed of opening a cookbook on a Monday. “Having so many ingredients in your meals makes it taste really good, but it can be a bit much sometimes,” said my mother. “Meat cakes with just potatoes and carrots are fine too.”

I remember my childhood dinners as quality food, even if they were a bit heavy on red meat. While they may not have been innovative, they were certainly reliable—sustenance provided with efficiency and care, served at a reasonable hour. So why am I standing here at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, feeling pressured to find a recipe that uses up that jar of dukkah I bought for a single dish back on New Year’s Eve?

Apologies to that dukkah, but after talking with my parents, I decided to try an experiment inspired by their 1980s habits. I have lived in London for over 20 years and my tastes have evolved, so I won’t be recreating my childhood favorite of fish balls in white sauce (served with potatoes, ketchup, and grated carrots on a separate plate so the foods wouldn’t touch). The core concept remains the same: memorize a small repertoire of dishes that I can prepare quickly and easily, without much thought, during a rushed, hungry moment.

When I began, I only knew one dish by heart: lentil pasta with store-bought pesto, topped with vegetables sautéed in garlic, lemon, and chili—it is simple, and the ingredients are versatile. I realized this was the key after asking my mother how she managed meal planning back then. “I tried to go food shopping just once a week and planned for some variety, so we’d have meat one day, fish one day, and porridge one day,” she said—certainly, no one made special trips to source holy basil for pad krapow, the Thai stir-fry that relies on this herb to taste right. My dad reminded me that our local supermarket had a very limited selection compared to today, so you weren’t overwhelmed by options: “We’d come home from work and were hungry, and it was about making something quickly. There wasn’t much to think about.”

My parents didn’t keep three types of fresh herbs in their fridge in the 1980s; the only way to acquire them was to grow them yourself. I still wanted pad krapow as one of my dozen staples, though, as it is quick and easy to make using ground meat and pantry basics like fish sauce, chili, and egg. Perhaps I could compromise by using the Thai basil available through my grocery delivery service? It isn’t authentic, but it is pragmatic, which feels appropriate for a Norwegian experiment.

I soon discovered that cooking from scratch is actually much faster when you rely on memory. Homemade tomato sauce is surprisingly easy (the secret is cocoa powder), and I realized I could use the same base for both a quick Bolognese and chili. To incorporate more fish into my routine, I took a page from the 1980s and bought some fish cakes for the freezer—I remember eating plenty of fish fingers in that burgundy kitchen. You have to prepare for days when you are short on time, my mother noted: “These days, everyone talks about cooking from scratch, which is great,” she said. “But after a few weeks of that, you’re bound to be tired one day, and then it’s OK to reach for a tin of stew.”

Living in London, I used to order takeout at the end of a busy day. Now that I have stocked my pantry with some convenient options, I am much more likely to check there first. “It’s good to eat a bit more plainly and sensibly sometimes,” said my father—not every dinner needs to be a culinary event. This mindset has saved me money, too. While I dine out far more often than my parents ever did in the 1980s, my perspective on cooking and eating is gradually shifting toward something that happens at home more frequently.

I am still working on memorizing my dozen dishes—which now include miso tofu and aubergine bake, satay chicken curry (using peanut butter from a jar), and beetroot soup—occasionally checking my cookbooks to ensure I haven’t forgotten anything. Even in this simplified form, my kale stew contains more ingredients than my parents’ meatloaf. But I am far less likely to approach dinner by asking myself what I feel like eating. Now, the question is: What do I have? Because I already know it will be whatever is in the refrigerator. And if I have failed at my grocery planning, there are always lentils to whip up a quick dal with spinach. Fresh leaves are certainly nicer, but I keep a tin of spinach in the pantry these days to make things as easy as possible. Canned vegetables might be unfashionable in 2026, but as I have learned through this experiment in parental kitchen wisdom, going retro can be surprisingly satisfying.