My kids haven't seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind yet and I thought it would be a fun surprise to recreate the meal eaten in the mashed potato scene and watch the movie with the movie dinner. (I can't wait to see if they put two and two together when that scene comes up lol.)
Obviously there's mashed potato. And I can see sweet corn. Kids are drinking milk. But I can't tell what the little meat things are. I assumed they were crumbed rissoles but having not been raised or lived in the US, I'm unsure if I'm missing a common protein that was eaten at dinner around the late 1970s. Meatloaf has also been suggested but in my country we never have mini meatloaves that I've seen so I'm unsure how accurate that is.
EDIT: Middle bottom, you can see a partially eaten meat thing which looks pink inside:
I also can't tell what is in the bowls beside Roy and his sons - to the top left of Roy's plate, right hand side of Toby and top right of Brad's plate. Maybe Ronnie and Silvia have one of these bowls too but I can't tell. You can see Brad eat out of his bowl at one point and it looks like something pale (I wondered coleslaw or macaroni).
EDIT: Screenshot of side
Anyway, anyone know or have an idea of what the little meat things are and what are in the side bowls?
It looks like everyone at the table has a bowl on one side or the other. This was a time when a common middle-class American family dinnerware place-setting might include a salad bowl with a simple salad: chopped iceberg or romaine lettuce with a store-bough salad dressing (ranch, blue cheese, 1000 island, etc). Probably not the most appetizing thing in the world, but totally legit given the era and setting (with Roy being a electrical line worker).
I did wonder if it could be a very plain lettuce like iceberg with a white coloured dressing. When Brad eats some, it looks thin and round which doesn't track with coleslaw but does make more sense if it's pieces of lettuce.