really old style living?

jackyann

You don't mention breakfast: porridge always good - I'm not a fan of the Scots' "water only" method, but I use dried milk powder, which is cheaper than the real stuff.
Lunch: try Bedfordshire clanger: suet pastry with savoury at one end & sweet at the other. http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/bedfordshire-clanger.html
this recipe is stupidly expensive (you can google others) but I've linked it b/c it has the suet crust, and most modern recipes use shortcrust (more expensive). At the savoury end put kippers, sardines etc. Or use left-overs from any savoury meal; jam is fine at the sweet end, or any chopped fruit (tinned pineapple was a favourite). Suet pastry cooks well in the slow cooker so you save on fuel. If you are not used to making suet crust, it does sop up moisture a bit, and you may need a few goes to get the texture of the savoury bit just right.
Like the Cornish pasty, it was "one-handed" food, and the clanger was decorated with a twist of some kind to mark each man's.
It is the right time of year to make blackberry jam. My grandmother & mother would save their precious sugar to make the jam, and then it was used whenever sweetening was needed (including the porridge).

I know this wasn't what you asked, but have you checked if you are entitled any benefits / tax credits? It seems wrong for a working family to be so short on money (apologies if I've stepped where not wanted)

mardatha

*Averting my good Scots eyeballs from the bad lady who puts milk & sugar in porridge* :D:D
The clanger sounds wonderful though, if I had hungry family I'd def try that

Rowan9

Hi WCS - we usually have HM soup summer and winter - nice and easy at lunch times but we usually have it before tea and it does fill up empty tums.
My granny lived with us when I was growing up and as she'd been a farmer's wife, she was great at presenting fab filling food! She baked a lot and also made steamed puds etc. My mum was a good 'basic' cook but the love of cooking and baking by-passed her! Childhood meals I remember - like others here, liver, usually braised with onions, sometimes sausages as well, then served with loads of veg and mash, other times we had fish cakes, mince, macaroni cheese, fish on a Friday I think, Saturday was pies and bradies (bridies further south and west I think!!) from the Co-op van, we quite often had cheesey tatties - anyone else have that? Just a big hot dollop of really cheesey mashed potatoes. Can't remember any veg with it! I can't remember having lots of biscuits or cakes. I think we must have been fairly stuffed from meals.
Great to see this thread up and running again. Hope it helps you westcoast scot. Your son does a terrific job and just yesterday we were talking about the hard life of a fisherman (I'm from east coast fishing village)
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mardatha

WMF, I was born in St.Andrews and my grandad had a share in a fishing boat out of Pittenweem. My dad was one of 10 and all the laddies worked on the farms in east Fife. Must've been a hard life, but 9 of them lived well into their 80s.

Rowan9

Mardatha, I think you're right about the hard working life being a 'healthy' one, for the long term anyway. My mum's side is farming, again big families and a lot of the men lived long lives. My uncle is in a nursing home now with dementia but he's v spritely and is 92. I love Pittenweem. It's one of my favourite places to visit in Fife. There's something so restful about fishing villages but that is if you don't have to work all hours on the boats I suppose. I love the sea. When I lived in Suffolk, we were 9 miles from the sea and that's the furthest away I've ever lived from it.
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westcoastscot

loving the bedfordshire clanger! I do make a kind of cornish pastie with jam at one end - my Dad used to eat those when he was down the mines. Shall have a go with a suet one - maybe more filling???

Apologies if I've given the impression that we're short of money, we're fine thankyou, just a working family finding prices galloping ahead of our wages. We're actually very fortunate to all three of us be working in jobs we love. I'm just trying to spend our budget wisely.

We do all eat breakfast - fisherman has yoghurt, fruit with cereal on top and then two rounds of bacon rolls, the rest of us have porridge at a more respectable hour . My fisherman also eats supper - about an hour after dinner, just to top himself off!!

WCS

Islandmaid

WCS

I love this 'food mood' at the moment, back to proper cooking, man cannot live by larks tongues in aspic alone LOL
As you say, its not that families are on the bread line, although some are its about being sensible with your families income, thats whats so brill about OS,ing

jackyann

westcoastscot wrote: »

loving the bedfordshire clanger! I do make a kind of cornish pastie with jam at one end - my Dad used to eat those when he was down the mines. Shall have a go with a suet one - maybe more filling???

Apologies if I've given the impression that we're short of money, we're fine thankyou, just a working family finding prices galloping ahead of our wages. We're actually very fortunate to all three of us be working in jobs we love. I'm just trying to spend our budget wisely.

We do all eat breakfast - fisherman has yoghurt, fruit with cereal on top and then two rounds of bacon rolls, the rest of us have porridge at a more respectable hour . My fisherman also eats supper - about an hour after dinner, just to top himself off!!

WCS

No need to apologise - and I celebrate your wisdom!

Do you make your own yoghourt? I used to when I had a large family to feed (now I am the only yoghourt eater left, it's not really worthwhile)

Clangers are so called in Beds & Northants b/c when rolled & tied in a cloth for boiling they look like the clangers on the end of bell-ropes.
My grandmother made a wonderful beef-&-onion clanger with all the meat & veg spaced out for maximum flavour!
Bedfordshire is the more famous one, the meal-in-one for the brickworkers. At Dunstable Downs they sell a supposedly "lighter" pastry version, but it is actually a lot greasier than the suet pudding (which is less fatty in itself)
I can remember my mum & gran talking about the cost of boiling these suet puddings on an ordinary stove - as they were traditionally boiled in the pot kept going over the fire.
Just shows how times keep changing, as my mum re-discovered these recipes for slow cookers.
I also remember her re-creating our local "ock-&-dough" recipe for our domestic oven. It was traditionally baked in the dying heat of the bakers' oven, usually as a favour to regular customers, or a copper to others (what a fuel saving that would be!)

Islandmaid

Hi all,

Don,t know if i,m allowed to post links to sites, but I have just come accross this one http://woottonbridgeiow.org.uk/recipes/wartime.php and its very interesting and I thought relevant to the discussion

westcoastscot

I agree suet pastry is less fatty, and more filling I think - need to make more use of it.
I make dairy yoghurt for myself and eldest, buy soya yog for youngest as he doesn't eat dairy or eggs. Haven't had a go at making soya yoghurt yet, but next time i'm up in Aberdeen i'm going to bring home some dried soya milk as i've run out, and then I can have a go. (I use dried soy milk to make up 'instant' hot chocolate mix for him for out on the boat).

Thanks for the link Islandmaid, shall have a good look later. I prefer wartime cookery books to anything as most of the recipes are egg free and they rely a lot of veggies, which tends to make them cheaper and more nutritious.