If It Wasn't Meat, What Did They Eat?

Lilyplonk

Judi wrote: »

Born in '62 i remember eating.

Liver
Sausages
Belly Pork
Egg chips and peas
Stew made with neck of lamb (which me and my bro used to call Glush)

I remember trying brains once but wasnt a fan.:rotfl:

I was born in 1951 - and my parents had a 'ration book with my name on it ...........

• We have liver about once a month - it used to be every week when I was a child.
• We still eat sausages - but they're grilled before going into a Sausage Casserole with Mixed Beans/Pulses and/or Veg. My grandkids just like them on a butty/toast.
• We still eat Belly Pork - but I grill it and serve with new potatoes, veg and apple sauce.
• Egg, Chips and peas is only served very occasionally - we prefer to have an omelet instead.
• I make Lamb Stew with 'Lamb Stewing Pieces' from Asda. These are 'rough, misshapen, off-cuts' - sometimes there's 'neck', 'small shank ends' and 'strangely-cut chops'.

However, you wouldn't get me anywhere remotely close to 'brains' :eek:

Florenceem

ash28 wrote: »

I know, it was the same here, pear drops or pineapple chunks were my favourites and I used to suck them until the roof of my mouth was sore....

Another favourite was a Milky Way or Mars Bar (only got those if I ran messages for the neighbours) and I used to nibble all of the chocolate off them before I started on the filling - could make one last for ages.

Also cola cubes, sherbert lemons and american hard gums. My Dad liked hazelnut creams - pink fondant with a nut on top.

Patchwork_Quilt

Thanks again to all who have contributed.

It is interesting to hear the comments about how much tinned food we consumed. I remember the taste and texture of tinned carrots (yuk) and peas. For us, tinned salmon was a Christmas-time treat. And I was looking at sardines the other day in the supermarket and remembering what they tasted like on toast ...

The comments about biscuits rang a bell with me too. I never had a chocolate biscuit until I was fifteen and went to DH's house. A custard cream was the height of luxury. One of my fond memories of my Dad is his rule that you had to have 'a plain biscuit with a fancy biscuit.' I can't work out whether this was to keep the cost down or some Puritan idea about not having too much of what you fancied. Anyway, the only time we had a biscuit was at supper-time, with a glass of milk. There was definitely no snacking in our house.

The comments about pizza and 'foreign' food were interesting. Dad would not entertain the idea of pizza, as he said it was 'a swizz.' That is, he thought it was ridiculous to pay for what was really bread with a bit of tomato sauce and cheese on top. They hardly ever ate rice and curry was mince with a bit of curry powder and a handful of sultanas stirred in. To this day, I find fruit and meat a difficult combination.

Lastly, I thought the comments about refridgeration were the most telling. In the days before fridges and freezers, it must have been difficult to keep meat fresh and I suppose that's why we traditionally relied on cured meats like bacon or tinned meat, like corned beef. Ordinary folk could keep their own pigs in certain areas, too. My grandparents had a pigsty at the end of the garden in their tiny cottage, so I suppose it was a meat we were familiar with. Now, it comes from all over the world. Times have changed.

storytime

I grew up in the 60's and we ate 3 meals a day, all home cooked and shopped for daily, no snacks. Meals were meat, potatoes and vegetables( I seem to remember a lot of cabbage!) such as liver, stuffed hearts, steak and kidney pudding, rabbit stew and mum stretched the joint- cold Monday and minced on Tuesday. Even though we had potatoes we also had bread to mop up the gravy. Mum also made puddings and cakes and we usually had custard but if we were good we had a block of ice cream from the ice cream van( no freezer then). Sometimes as a treat we had a bottle of pop when the Corona van called usually dandelion and burdock, cherryade or cream soda but that was rare. I think we only started to have pasta in the early 70's when mum cooked our first macaroni cheese. My brother and I hated it and didn't finish it so we had to have it cold for breakfast!
We sometimes had afew pennies to buy sweets so we bought handfuls of black jacks and fruit salads ! Oh the good old days.

meritaten

actually, no refridgeration wasn't the huge problem we think it would be.
Just asked OH as I know his grandparents used to keep a pig to slaughter every year. and heads together, this is how we think they used to prepare the meat to last!
first - Salt! you can either brine meat or salt it - it WILL last months then, even in higher temperatures.
second - Smoking - not quite as good as salting or brining - but the meat will still last quite some time.
then you would cook things - am thinking of brawn making, faggots etc. OH says that they often got bartered for other foodstuffs!
my nan didn't have a fridge - but she did have a pantry and so did mums house! nans pantry had a marble slab and it was always cold! mums house had a granite slab - I can remember in the summer the milk was always kept in a saucepan of cold water placed on the slab and a wet teatowel covered it! cant remember it going off! butter, cheese etc were also kept on the slab.
and in both cases the pantries were on the north side of the house - so nearly always cool or freezing!

[Deleted User]

ladymarmalade wrote: »

It's surprising really how many of the meals you all used to eat contain rich and fatty ingredients! It just goes to show how our lifestyles have changed. Most are nowhere near active enough to eat stew and dumplings/hash/roast dinners etc every day.

Yes they contained fatty ingrediants but then most folk either walked or caught a bus .Few folk owned or had use of a car.My dad went to work on the train and I went to school via shanks'pony.It wasn't considered odd to walk anywhere.The library was around a mile away and I would always welk there on a Saturday afternoon and back again carrying my books.I only caught a bus when I went to my second school as it was 4-5 miles from home and I had a free bus pass for that.Today it seems more people drive, even short distances to the shops.I use a stick to walk with and do drive but If I can get the bus I will as my bus pass(due to my old bones ) is free so I save the diesel for longer journeys if I can.

The biscuits Mum bought were Water biscuits as they were my Dads favourite I hated them and thought they tasted like bits of cardboard,but she would now and then buy half a pound of broken biscuits from Woolworths where they had lots of square tins all laid on top of the counter and were sold in quarter or half a pound white bags.At night the salesgirls used to just lay a white cloth over the top of the biscuits so sometimes you would find small black curranty bits which Mum said to throw away i am supposing they were droppings from what ever enterprising small mammal managed to climb up in to the tins :):)Put me right off of Garibaldi biscuits for life:):)
Sugar was bought from Sainsburys (not a supermarket then) but a shop with real sales assistants, and came in a dark blue poke of paper a bit like an ice cream cone which was folded over at the top.It was measured very carefully and treated like gold dust.Half or a quarter a pound of sugar was sometimes the only bit we had to last the week.the same with tea which was weighed out from the big box behind the counter.If mum thought the box was getting near the end she would wait until the new box was opened as she didn't want any dusty end bits of the tea box.
I can remember when Brooke bond started their divi tea and she saved all the little stamps from the packets to fill up a card I think she got 5/- for a full card
Butter was chopped off a block with two wooden paddles and the man could gauge it exactly four ounces of butter which was wrapped in greaseproof paper.My Mums gimlet eyes never missed a trick and if she asked for four ounces of bacon thats exactly what she got no more and no less.Eggs were 1 penny halfpenny or 1 penny three farthings or large ones were 2d each and you could buy exactly the amount you wanted. It wasn't all about being short of cash it was also the ability to store stuff for any length of time and as shopping was done almost daily it wasn't a problem

ash28

Judi wrote: »

Liver - No
Sausages - The men have them as a traditional breakfast yes but not on a dinner
Belly Pork - No - Hubby wont look at anything with a bit of fat in
Egg chips and Peas - Not had that for ages
Neck of lamb - Have you seen the cost of it lately? :eek:

We have liver - either fried or casseroled - not very often - I did buy some at the weekend - we'll probably have it tomorrow.

We don't generally have sausages for a meal tbh, we do have them in the freezer - sometimes the grandson will have something like cowboy pie if we are having something he really doesn't like - a curry or a chilli - he doesn't like spicey food. Though the chilli I can get away with by taking his share out of the pan before the chilli goes in.

OH doesn't like anything with fat either but a slab of slow roasted belly pork is absolutely delicious - the meat is roasted long and slow and the fat between the layers just disappears and leaves you with a lot of fat in the pan (great for roast potatoes and gravy), and succulent fall apart meat....and delicious crackling. It is so tender you generally have to "pull" it and not cut or carve it.



Don't have egg and chips - but I could.....

Neck of lamb (scrag end) not posh chops is £5 a kilo in our local butchers - 500gms does us for a casserole. It's got bones in, but makes a good casserole.

BAGGY

I was born mid 60's to older parents.
I never ate veg from tins other than baked beans or toms. We had tinned fruit, ham and corned beef, fish and evap. Pasta was long spaghetti in a blue paper wrapper or macaroni.
We ate lots of cheap meat - lamb a lot, sheep's waistcoat roated, scrag of lamb stew bulked with root veg, boned and rolled shoulder. Mince was once or twice a week as spag bol or cottage pie. Sausage toad or sausage plait (big pasty that could be also made with left over roast). Always had fresh veg. Seem to remember lots of cabbage - dark with mint sauce mmmm.
Breakfast was shredded wheat with hot milk or porridge. Only dad was allowed cornflakes. I had school dinners in primary school.

Mojisola

JackieO wrote: »

Sugar was bought from Sainsburys (not a supermarket then) but a shop with real sales assistants, and came in a dark blue poke of paper a bit like an ice cream cone which was folded over at the top.It was measured very carefully and treated like gold dust.Half or a quarter a pound of sugar was sometimes the only bit we had to last the week.

the same with tea which was weighed out from the big box behind the counter.If mum thought the box was getting near the end she would wait until the new box was opened as she didn't want any dusty end bits of the tea box.

Butter was chopped off a block with two wooden paddles and the man could gauge it exactly four ounces of butter which was wrapped in greaseproof paper.My Mums gimlet eyes never missed a trick and if she asked for four ounces of bacon thats exactly what she got no more and no less.Eggs were 1 penny halfpenny or 1 penny three farthings or large ones were 2d each and you could buy exactly the amount you wanted. It wasn't all about being short of cash it was also the ability to store stuff for any length of time and as shopping was done almost daily it wasn't a problem

And each department was separate so you had to queue to get your bread, then go to the butcher's section, then the dry goods counter.

SailorSam

Chicken giblets are for making soup, although i can't remember the last time i saw them.