Sick wife wanted comfort food. Making it from scratch takes longer but is so much less expensive than glop from a can. Potatoes, onion, butter, salt, pepper.
Cost per person, 70¢ not including the pepper sauce. A standard can of condensed is almost three times the cost.
I would come home from school, cut up an apple and put it on a plate of white sugar and cinnamon. Needless to say, I was a latchkey kid. I paid for it with fillings.
No latch for me. I may have seen my dad just once a month for about a year of middle school and then maybe twice a year the rest of the time. I needed 6000 calories a day on the cheap and this ‘snack’ offered 2400. It’s probably impossible to eat 2400 calories in sugared apples in a single setting. That’s probably 15 apples and half a cup of sugar. Or 25 apples with no sugar.