Where do we go from basics?

Mayflower10cat

I'm so glad I did 'Nutrition and Cookery' O' level all those years ago (1980, eeek!). It taught me so much about balanced meal planning, eating seasonally, and costing your ingredients. The syllabus was so rooted in the 50's/60's, looking back it was often quite amusing! The B&W illustrations in our textbooks were so like dear Fanny Craddock that you had to smile. I feel sorry for potential cooks who've tried to glean their knowledge only from TV chefs. My Mum didn't really cook from scratch unlike my paternal Grandmother, who used to use me as her 'little helper' when she would have a day's batch cooking for the extended family. She taught me so much about being creative with very little!

As students in the early '90's, we had to live on very little (but not as little as students now). In a house of six, we ruthlessly made a '7 dinners for 6 students' food shopping list every week. It was very pared down stuff, but I'm quite proud to look back now as for £18 a week then, we fed all 6 of us a cooked meal every day, with surplus ££s going on milk for everyone's use, tea & coffee and usually bog standard margarine and a cheap sliced loaf in the fridge. OK the meals were a bit repetitious but they were filling and tasty. Back then I still ate meat, as the others did so we all ate together and it worked well. We would each cook one night a week, and on Sunday we all cooked together some sort of 'Formal Roast Dinner'. Often there wouldn't be any 'meat' at all but it would be, say, toad in the hole with gallons of gravy and lots of veg. Or just yorkshire pud with gravy & veg. My friend Jane probably suggested the easiest (and cheapest) meal we ever ate and I recall being snootily skeptical about this, until I tasted it. She chopped up a small amount (about 2 rashers!) of fatty, cheap bacon into squares and fried it in a dry pan until the fat ran out. Then she added the cheapest tin of tomatoes, a couple of pinches of oregano and heated it all together. Boiled up the cheapest spaghetti we could find, added a tiny bit of marg and black pepper then dolloped the tomato'y sauce over the top with a very small amount of grated cheapo cheese over the top. I was amazed how good it was! We used to make this often, at least once a week.

Thinking back to the cheaply filling meals we lived on for two years, we never went hungry, unlike a lot of our fellow students. We never got scurvy, either! I do recall for a very, very occasional treat, we'd make our own kebabs with a couple of reduced price steaks from the little supermarket round the corner - 2 small steaks would easily feed six, sliced very thinly with loads of salad, some almost stale reduced pittas and some very hot chilli sauce!

Currently, DH and I don't eat meat but do eat fish. We are also cutting our food spend. Yes, so many basics have shot up in price of late. But I do one or two cooking session a week 'for the freezer' mostly soupy veggie stews with plenty of cheap protein filled barley, lentils, quinoa, chick peas and beans always lots of beans. We grow lots of beans on the allotment, dry some and freeze some fresh. Husband loves making bread and recently added Nans, pittas and Rotis to his repetoire. Oh and I almost forgot to mention Polenta! I make up a huge pack of Polenta, pour into oiled shallow dishes and allow to cool. Turn out and slice up into portions. Freeze. When defrosted, slice into chunky chips and fry until golden - so delicious and filling.

But mostly I'm glad that I was taught the real basics of cookery from an early age. And I'm very sad to see that so many children/young adults have never had any sort of cookery lessons. Cookery is fun and seeing friedns and family tucking into evern a very cheap meal that you've cooked is very special.

Lecture over!!! Forgive me.

saveabobortwo

youve brought back a few memories of when i was little especially really nice strawberry jam sandwhiches. thought your weekly menu is great and have copied it down to incorpoarate into our weekly menus thankyou we forget that sandwhiches are cheap to make and delicious and we hadalot of chops and veg and remember tinned fruit and carnation milk lovely foods and all keep you going sothis is what we shall be having this week;)

mardatha

YYY soup is my usual standby, I even like making it. Is like alchemy, turning a few manky bits of veg into a lovely filling soup. Must get back into makiing some asap. ty Kitts.

modern_millie_2

Dianadors, we must be from the same era/area - those menus are scarily familiar.
As a child in the 60s, we did have sweets but very rarely crisps or a "bought" cake. Cakes were made at home as were pies. Beans on toast was a treat (!) especially at my grandma's as she made toast on the open fire. We were sometimes quite poor (also a mining background) but I think food was given a high priority, maybe this is where some people go wrong now. Most veg was from the allotment, the remainder, and fruit, from the local market. We had few toys and as a household, few possessions in general but were always well fed and reasonably well clothed. My mum made nearly all my clothes until I was in my teens. In hindsight I think I was very lucky, I didn't learn all my mum's skills, but enough to see me through.

bluebag

All this tripping back down memory lane, but I don't care how poor I am I am not eating tripe and onions again for anyone... I'd rather starve!

JIL

My granny used to say have one good meal a day and you can have bread and jam for your tea. I loved visiting her house when I was young. She had a cooker type thing built around her fire in the living room. She used to bake her home made bread in there and made loaves and rolls and the best thing of all oven bottomers which we would have with her home made jam. She would also put potatoes in there which we would be given to eat in our hands. Her cauliflower was mashed up with the green outer leaves and I loved it. Why did it taste so much better in them days? My grandad would take us for really long walks as children, and encourage us to run up hills and slide down them on bits of cardboard. He would always produce an apple for us grand children which he would cut up and share with his pen knife. For the adults he made his own wine from foraged fruit whilst we were out walking. They are such happy memories, I often feel children today do not get enough of the simple pleasures and miss out.

redlady_1

bread and dripping! Yum....but tripe??? Wrong on so many levels!

I remember running down the field to my great grandma (we lived with nan for a while) jumping over the strawberries, over the ditch, dodging the dead pheasants hanging and to the bread with proper butter! I used to scalp that bread but the price was I had to have my hair combed!!! :eek:

Uniscots97

I was born in the 70's and remember the miners strike and the appeals for food outside the supermarket. I remember at the time thinking my parents were mean not giving anything. I didn't realise how tight things were. When my Dad lost his job, my parents downsized to a tiny 2 bed house (from a then modern 3 bed semi) which was built out of stone and had open fires. One of my chores was to take a shopping bag with me when I walked the dog and collect fire wood. We also burned any rubbish we had (with the amount of junk mail I get I wish I had open fires). My Mum grew vegetables in our garden and swapped extra she had for fabric, and toiletries and the odd bag of sweets for me. I grew up thinking this was normal! I think some of the younger generation need a shake as they'd be lost without electricity, a supermarket and their playstation!


I'm growing more of my own veg, trying not to waste anything. Revamping old clothes, using what I have (I found a bar of Fairy household soap I didn't know I had!), keeping the heating off as much as I can, turning items off at the wall, doing more surveys and clicks to earn a little extra.

sb44

As a child of the early 60's I was given sugar 'butties' to satisfy a sweet tooth!

Yep, that is right, two slices of buttered bread with a sprinkling of granulated sugar inbetween.

Is it any wonder I used to have 3 fillings at a time.

Gigervamp

sb44 wrote: »

As a child of the early 60's I was given sugar 'butties' to satisfy a sweet tooth!

Yep, that is right, two slices of buttered bread with a srinkling of granulated sugar inbetween.

Is it any wonder I used to have 3 fillings at a time.

Lol, same here!