Sunday tea treat

Butterfly_Brain

Being a child of the 60's We had dinner at 1pm after we came back from Sunday school usually beef or pork because chicken was an expensive meat in those days, we had either rice pudding, macaroni pudding or tinned fruit and evaporated milk. Then dad and us kids did the washing up and putting away. Mum always did a salad and cold meats or tinned salmon sarnies, and there was always cake and a cup of tea, before we were bathed and sent to bed at 7.30pm.

Pthree

Oh this has brought back some memories!

We always has Sunday lunch at my Grans, a roast of some sort then Dad would go to the pub and be home for 5 or his mother would kill him.

Sunday tea was ham and or cumcumber sandwiches (crab if there was someone other than family there) on the crusty white freshly sliced bread with with real butter! and suger sprinkled over the cucumber. Followed by tinned pears and evaperated milk (I think, it came out of a tin) and victoria sponge cake. All served with a pot of tea, I cant even remember the last time I had tea out of a pot!!

I was eating tinned pear and ham sarnies, before they changed it to fresh pear and parma and made it all trendy

I live on my own but support any movement to bring back proper Sunday tea!

P3

scaredy_cat

we would have a roast dinner about 1pm, and pudding was pie or crumble and custard, then us kids would wash up, make a tray of tea and coffee and watch the afternoon film - usually a war or cowboy film on tv!

Tea was about 5-6pm, pilchards, ham, bread and butter, cakes and left over pie. then we'd watch the sunday night drama programme and play cards for pennies. When we got older we'd have a bit of supper about 9pm - cheese on toast or cheese n crackers.

[Deleted User]

My Dad would cook proper scones on a 'girdle' and they were a round divided into four, and floury on both sides.He would cook them on Saturday night and they would be for 'high tea' on Sunday buttered with a smear of jam or bramble jelly on they were delicious.The scones were made with milk that had gone on the 'turn' If there were any left by Monday morning these would be split in two and toasted for breakfast.We had an old cast iron 'girdle' that weighed a ton and covered two gas rings.It was my late Granny's and my Dad prized it highly.It was cleaned with a rub over with a damp cloth and a screw of greaseproof paper with a slight bit of marg or butter on it to keep it shiny.I bought a 'girdle 'when I was up in Scotland years later but could never quite get the taste of the scones my Dad made.He insisted that they were made on Saturday as he didn't like the idea of baking on a Sunday as Sundays were always busy with church in the morning ,sunday school in the afternoon and evensong in the evening.No wonder my knees are clapped out I seemed to spend half my life on them when I was little.My Pa was a very strict Scots Presbyterian.
Sunday lunch's prep was always done on Saturday night.High tea on Sunday was always sandwiches of left over meat from lunchtime,scones ,fruit cake and if we were lucky maybe tinned peaches and evaporated milk, or a rice pud that had been left on a low light from lunchtime to cook during the afternoon.If we had a relation staying (not often as it was over 400 hundred miles to come from NE Scotland then the family would really push the boat out with salmon and cucumber sarnies and small fancy cakes.The first time I took my late OH to Scotland back in the 1970s we went to visit my Auntie Lizzie for 'High Tea' I did warn my OH not to eat too much lunch as it was going to be quite a bit at tea time .My two small daughters eyes nearly popped when they saw the spread.My Auntie Lizzie was an amazing cook and her table was groaning with goodies bless her.You name it it was on the table.several days later we went to visit her ma-in-law who wanted to meet us 'London folk' and she lived in a tiny cottage up in the hills.We had high tea there as well and she had a fold down gate-legged table that almost filled her sitting room, that too was laden down with food God know how she did it as she was miles from the nearest shop but it was delicious.it seemed to be the custom there that visitors (especially southern ones ) needed feeding up.My Auntie Lizzie was a fabulous lady who could could like a dream and never once looked at a cookery book her recipes were handed down from her Mum and Granny and she kept them in her head.

Linda32

Yes, I remember Sunday Tea, Tinned Fruit Salad with TipTop and if at my Grandmothers, thin sliced white bread spread with marg with every singe scrape used up.
Honestly the tub was as clean as if it had been washed by the time she had finished with it.

Eenymeeny

Isn't it funny how the tinned fruit with evaporated milk (and bread and buttter!) seems pretty standard throughout the country? Marvellous memories...
I think that the OS moneysaving message here is how to fill hungry kids as cheaply as possible...;)

Eenymeeny

Linda32 wrote: »

Yes, I remember Sunday Tea, Tinned Fruit Salad with TipTop and if at my Grandmothers, thin sliced white bread spread with marg with every singe scrape used up.
Honestly the tub was as clean as if it had been washed by the time she had finished with it.

I remember my Gran placing the upside down margarine tub on top of hot mashed potatoes to drain the last bits out! We still have a lot to learn from those ladies eh?:D

angeltreats

Pooky wrote: »

We're not cake eaters here so I don't do anything fancy for Sunday tea but it's normally a cold meat sandwich and a proper pot of tea. In the winter it's often toasted bread or crumpets over the open fire, always tastes better that way.

Toasting bread over an open fire sounds like absolute heaven, wish I had an open fire!

We never had Sunday tea, or at least not with lovely cakes and scones and the best china (in our house it was Royal Albert). I'm a child of the 1980s so perhaps I was born too late, although my mum was born in 1940 so perhaps she would have had them with her own mum, I'll have to ask her. I love the idea of it, when I have a family of my own I will have to start doing Sunday teas, but right now it's just the two of us so it would just be a bit greedy

I did grow up watching my parents eat tinned fruit and evaporated milk, and I cannot abide it. I like most tinned fruit by itself, but not with evap poured all over it, and fruit cocktail is horrible! Oh and my mum would occasionally make trifle, which consisted of trifle sponges, sherry, tinned fruit cocktail, and raspberry or strawberry jelly. No cream or custard. I despised it and still to this day refuse to ever eat trifle.

Sometimes Sunday lunch was a salad, which meant buffet-style slices of cold chicken and ham, potato salad, coleslaw, tinned pineapple, cubes of cheese, chopped spring onions (which were called scallions), lettuce and tomato, and sometimes boiled potatoes mashed up with a bit of salad cream which is still one of my occasional guilty pleasures.

Spendless

bargainbetty wrote: »

We'd have the full Sunday roast with all the trimmings at lunch time, and tea time would be cold meat sarnies, with leftover cold roast spuds. Little bit of salt on the spuds, and I was in heaven. Masses of tea was drunk out of mugs while the family sat around the living room with the sandwich plates on our knees.

No cakes though, but the leftover roasties were better than sweets!

That's what we did, minus the roast potatoes. Don't think they were ever any left from the roast but even if there had been, to this day my Mum wouldn't serve/eat cold roast pots with a sandwich (unlike my own family). Antiques roadshow was on as we had them. It was the only meal we were ever allowed to eat anywhere other than the table.

1sttimer_2

I just love, love, love this thread. Ah the memories it evokes! As a child of the 50's I was born at the end of rationing so meat was pretty scarce, but still can remember my mum's sunday dinner. If she could get some meat we'd have this with 2 or 3 veg with Yorkshire Puddings or if no meat it would be a pie of somekind, always followed by a pudding, either baked rice or some stodgy treacle pudding with custard (heaven!). It was one way to fill us up cheaply I suppose - and we were never overweight!

Sunday tea was something else, along with everyone here it was brown bread (usually hovis) and real butter with tinned fruit usually pears because dad did the shopping and he loved them, with carnation milk. If we were lucky and mum wasn't too tired, she'd bake a victoria sandwich or scones. Drop scones were a quick and enjoyable treat. As we grew older my sister and I used to cook something tasty to help out (and learn how to I suppose).

I come from the North East and moved to Yorkshire when I was 8 to be near my mums family so Sunday afternoons were usually visiting my Nana's and Granddad's where my aunts, uncles and cousins used to meet (she came from a large family) and we'd have a mixed tea of whatever anyone brought (like a faith supper!) I really don't know how we all fit into their small 2 bedroom terrace with just a small kitchen and room but we did!

When my DDs were young, Sunday tea was a strange -help yourself- affair, when I put bread, salad, crackers, cheese, jam, pickle etc all on the table for anyone to pick at. DD's friend once came and remarked to DD 'Do you know your mum's emptying her cupboards onto the dining table'! She thought it very strange! (I do now TBH!).

Oh happy times indeed! I rarely do a Sunday lunch now as my family have grown and moved on. Hubby and DD1 are vegetarians so a roast is only done when DD2 and family are here. Then it's like the old days when I push the boat out!

Thank you so much for the fond memories.