As a kid I was raised in a family of 6. I lived in a 1/2 a house (or duplex if you will) in an old mining town. My parents were not rich. My dad had worked for a company called NAVco but kept getting periodically laid off. My mom would occasionally work a minimum wage part-time job here and there. One was at Hills department store. Eventually my dad got a job with the Post Office and things got a little better. I have to say that we always had enough. I never remember being hungry.
Very rarely if at all did we have things like packaged snack cakes, name brand chips, steaks, or roasts or the gimmick treats like dunkaroos or gushers. I remember homemade pizzas, baked mac n’ cheese, honey bread, peanut butter and jelly roll ups, and shit on a shingle. Well we actually didn’t call it that back then. My mom simply called it cream of mushroom soup over toast. My mom didn’t swear much and she didn’t want us to call it that. This was the poor man’s version of shit on a shingle (S.O.S.) . You can find recipes online that actually call for chipped beef and a bunch of ingredients. From my understanding that is the true shit on a shingle but this is the version I grew up with.
I disliked cream of mushroom soup, I preferred cream of chicken soup over toast. BUT, my mom and dad like cream of mushroom soup so that’s what it usually was. I just scraped the mushrooms off and ate it anyway.
I heard it started as a food many service people ate during the war. My grandfather talked about how it was a meal in the mines.
Today I have my own family of 6 but we’re better off than my parents were. I still introduced my kids to S.O.S. and they like it too. It’s not something we have all the time. It’s just one of those things I like when the mood hits.
Have you ever ate S.O.S.?
