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

[Deleted User]

Way back when most housewives used to shop every day for what they needed, so the need to refridgerate was obviated a little, I do remember though in the summer months that the milk would go slightly off overnight and you would have floaty bits in your tea in the morning, and the butter would be oily and cheese the same. I remember my Mum going to the shop for 4 slices of whatever it was as she knew it wouldn't keep. It still all got used up though, whatever state it was in unless it was definately off, it got used in cooking as we couldn't afford to throw stuff away!.

[Deleted User]

the milk in our house was stuck in the bottle into a galvanised tin bucket and kept in the dar in the cellar to keep it cool, but if there were any 'floaty' bits you just fished them out and carried on drinking.If it had really 'gone over' then it was used to make soda scones onSunday night that would last until Turesday toasted for breakfas.Mmmm my Dad made the best soda scones ever on the big black girdle on top of the stove.It had been my grandmothers and he had grabbed it when she past away.I hate to think how many scones and things she had baked on there over the years

SailorSam

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I remember my Mum going to the shop for 4 slices of whatever it was as she knew it wouldn't keep.

Yes MrsL, i remember my Nan sending me with a note to the corner shop for slices of 'thinly' sliced roadied bacon, .......... what was roadied bacon ?

ash28

JackieO wrote: »

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

I can't remember what the prices were - but I can remember going to the Coop in our village (that would be the early 1960s) for butter - cut as you describe. Flour could be bought loose - but we had Bero.

My mother used to buy the occasional bag of broken biscuits - again as you describe - all the tins in the Coop were on the floor. A big treat for us was if she ever went into the nearest town and went to Woolworths, she used to bring back piece of fruit cake - cut from a slab.

She used to buy cracker biscuits that my dad would have with cheese and we would have to dip in a hot drink made with an oxo cube. OH had never heard of this - he can't have been as hard up as he thought he was! He will have a hot Bovril drink with a couple of crackers on cold days.

BAGGY

We had a proper pantry under the stairs with a meat safe and a marble shelf. And I remember not having a fridge (or phone, or tv). People at work thought I was bought up in victorian times when I mentioned this and the fact my mum used to brine stuff. She worked in David Greggs and I have a lovely photo somewhere of her patting butter as she worked on the deli counter before she married.
Forgot to mention. We also ate boiled bacon a lot. Peas pudding and dumplings and cold with mash and salad or chips. Gawd I love 'old fashioned food'. Bet it will be very trendy in some posh restaurants soon. Lamb shanks are now and they were cheap once.

cat_smith

JackieO wrote: »

I lived in Oakcroft Road and went to school at All Saints which was the church school attached to the beautiful church on the heath.In those days Blackheath was a village and we had moved from the East end of London as my late Dad thought Blackheath was a safer place to live and wouldn't get bombed as much (vitually no industry there) as my Mum had been bombed out twice(now there's bad luck for you)It was a lovely place to grow up in and I have walked across the heath many times during the foggy weather of the early 1950s and often found my shoes wet as I had walked into the ponds up there :)We were the only family to hold Hogmany in our road as both my parents were Scots and the rest of the road thought we were really odd to want to stay up on New Years Eve:D but to hear the ships hooters on the Thames at 12 o'clock used to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up
P.S. by the way for years I thought tuna was only for cats

I know Oakcroft. Parents started in Belmont Grove and are still on Lee Terrace. Went to Blackheath High. Despite being Scots they don't do Hogmanay, but I married a Scot and we do, and all Scottish celebrations. Including (fingers crossed) the Rugby!

Grandparents in Edinburgh didn't know what ready meals were, nor my mother. She 'doesn't cook' (food for her is fuel not pleasure) but she's actually a great cook, although limited. Dad is meat and two veg - brought up in Gravesend. I remember Clootie Dumpling from Grandma, also Porridge (yuck - oatmeal with water and salt from my grandpa) Mum converted it to Porridge oats with milk and brown sugar - I've even converted my DH.

gollygosh

I always remember the porridge! the cream off the top of the bottle if the blue tits hadn't got at the bottle first! always went to dad and on high days and holidays we had gold top! always with loads of sugar not an ounce of fat on any of us, I guess (well I know) we all moved about quicker and for longer.
Lots of rabbit stew here (the guy across the road shot lots more than he wanted)
my mum always baked lots more in the winter, sundays were always her 'baking day'
we used to have a cheese souffle once a week
smoked haddock with mash and tinned tomatoes or peas
lots of stews and casseroles
liver 'yuk'
my mum fell in love with her new pressure cooker and we were the subject of many an 'exploding culinary experiment'
egg and chips (she bowed to pressure here and threw away the chip pan as soon as she could)
then there was the new chest freezer, well she went 'bulk mad'
no joking she bought peas form the local farm by the sack and dedicated hours to blanching them and filling that freezer.
she also bought whole lambs and half pig to fill it.
I can remember going on the 'monthly shop' (yes really) 2 trolleys to a very early wholesale place to fill the freezer, they had a bakery there that sold these sweet bloomer loaves with jam and cream in the middle 24p huge and the treat for going.
It was all pretty basic stuff and always with puddings. rice pudding, giant jam tart with custard, custard tart, all manner of sponge and cake covered in custard, sponge puddings jam roly poly, sweet maccaroni, semolina, treacle tart and so many others.
looks like we did pretty well considering they both worked full time and money was always tight (I didn't know about that until I was much older)
Apparently the 'haven't got any money dinner' was homemade stuffing (without the pork)rolled into sausage shapes wrapped in a slice of streaky bacon shallow fried with boiled potatoes and veg (they grew lots) I always loved that one.

Linda-Lou

Hi everyone! What a great thread, bringing back lots of memories.

I was born in the mid fifties, and mum cooked all our meals from scratch. Like her mum, she had certain days for certain jobs. Monday was always washing day, and I remember her doing the "whites" in a big galvanised tub with a little bag of "dolly blue". Anyone else remember these?
There were just the 3 of us, mum, dad and me, and I think we ate very well.
Sunday lunch was always a roast of some description, but we always started with a yorkshire pudding, made in a large rectangular tin, served with proper onion gravy. It used to rise 2 or 3 inches above the tin, and was gorgeous! For pudding we had ice cream, from the "Mr Oddy" the ice-cream man. Mum would time lunch so we had just about finished the main course when we heard the music from the ice-cream van, and she would send me out with a large dish for " 3 scoops and some juice please" !
Looking back, I was never a great meat eater ( am veggie now), but vividly remember the day mum presented us with a "new kind of chicken" for tea. It tasted funny, and when she finally admitted it was rabbit, my plate and the contents went up in air in my scramble to get away from the table! To me, rabbits were, and still are, pets that we kept in the garden. Never touched it since!
Our fruit and veg were bought from Mr Brown, a local greengrocer who came round every Saturday morning with his shire horse Robin pulling the cart - like a market stall on wheels. Mr Brown wore a blue and white striped apron and was very tall, or so it seemed. He often gave me a free piece of fruit, when mum had finished her order. Robin's field was at the top of our street, and once Mr Brown let me ride him round the field bareback. I felt very brave!
Dad was partial to a nice piece of fish, and mum would send me down to the fishmonger for " tail end of cod, about half a crown please" This shop was maybe 10 mins away from our house, and is one of the first places I was allowed to go on my own for the errands.
The weekly shop was done at the corner shop across the road. I loved going with mum, to see everything being weighed out. Later, when I was old enough to go on my own with "the list", I was allowed 6d for myself to spend on sweeties from the penny tray - what a lot we got for our pennies then - white mice, prawns, black jacks,licorice etc. This shop was where we also bought bottles of pop, special occasions only though! I loved dandelion and burdock, and my dad's favourite was cream soda. At Christmas mum liked "black beer" which was added to lemonade - wonderful!
Mum was and , at 82, still is, a great cook. She made wonderful cakes, scones , biscuits and bread, and was a patient teacher. I can well remember my first attempt at creaming the butter and sugar - and dropping the bowl -twice! Mum just said, never mind, we've all got to learn, and calmly started me off again. To this day, I don't know how she kept her temper that afternoon.
Sorry for rambling on, but the memories just keep flooding back!
Take care everyone xxx

FairyPrincessk

I've just had a response from my grandmother. I asked more about refrigeration etc. I didn't realize that sugar had been rationed in the United States, and in a way I'm surprised as the area my grandmother lived in for some of her life produces a lot of cane sugar, so it wouldn't have needed to be imported from the Caribbean like it was in the UK--but perhaps they didn't produce enough?

It seems they had a calf, a pig and whatever fowl they could raise as meat every year.

I've changed some details from her e-mail to keep location etc. private. She now lives near her brother on some of the same land, so when she says "here" she is referring to the land where the dairy was built, which is also where the house she was born in used to be.

I was born in the old house that J (her brother) tore down to build his house - when I was 3 months old we moved to (a very small town in the deep south) so we had electricity there. Prior to moving we didn't - food was kept in the safe that I now have - it had screen on the doors so that food would stay as cool as possible - of course there was no ice delivery out here. In (Small town) we did have ice delivery but I was too young to remember it. When I was 4/5 we moved to (bigger town) and there again we had electricity so had a refrigerator with ice trays. When I was 5/6 we moved to (Big City) and I don't know if we had ice delivery there or not. I do know we had milk delivered in (Small and medium town) and (Big City). We moved back up here and stayed at Aunt F's when I was in the second and third grades - no ice delivery - did have electricity so assume we had a refrigerator. We moved back to (small town) and I went to school there in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades - I remember milk delivery but no ice delivery so guess we had ice trays then - I know we had electricity. I do remember coming to visit relatives out here and they still used lamps and had mosquito nets around their beds. When I was in the seventh grade we were in process of moving back out here and starting the dairy so J and I stayed with Aunt F until the move was complete so we wouldn't have to change schools. We had electricity and a refrigerator. This is why chickens tasted so good in the spring when the got large enough to fry - they didn't buy meat in the store like people do now. There was a locker plant in (tiny village) which had boxes that you rented to store your meat in - they would make a trip up there on Sat to get what meat they could keep in the refrigerator freezer. We bought a freezer when we moved back (approximately 1949) but still used the lockers in (tiny village) until funds allowed Mother and Daddy to buy a freezer that was extra large - of course it was filled with vegetables from the garden every year. Daddy would have a calf killed every fall and Uncle B had hogs and Daddy would buy a hog from him and have it killed and that was meat for the winter along with the vegetables that they raised. They carried corn to the mill and had it ground for meal - so grocery store purchases were slim - sugar (when it wasn't rationed) flour - condiments - etc. when sugar was on sale they would buy extra to have for canning fruit, jams, jellies, perserves - Daddy planted an orchard over by where K lives and we had plums, peaches, apples and pears - of course the fig tree that is in my yard produced figs. After buying the second deepfreeze they didn't rent the locker any more. I remember one time that something started stinking in Daddy's car (he always had a car) and they started hunting for whatever was stinking and found that a pkg of hamburger meat had fallen behind the extra and had rotted - I think after that they managed to have a box to put the meat in so that wouldn't happen again. We raise chickens for the freezer (but the first one killed in spring and fried was still the best), all of the vegetables that we ate.. Potatoes were raised and when they were dug and picked up they were stored in the old house that I was born in and they would cover them in lime to help preserve them. This soil wasn't good for raising sweet potatoes so Uncle R always brought us sweet potatoes. One year Mama, Aunt F and Aunt H decided to raise turkeys - (that was a dumb bird) - they didn't raise turkeys any more - they did raise ducks and geese - Prior to having a deep freeze or the locker they would smoke the port - the sausages were stored in the lard in 5 gallon pails. They would trim the fat off the hog and put it in the wash pot and cook it down to make the lard - the pieces of fat after being cooked were called cracklins - it was eaten as is and used to make cracklin corn bread - I never liked either of them - too greasy. they used lard for cooking and toward the end of winter there wasn't much meat eaten. I don't know if it was available in stores or not but we didn't buy it. We didn't have meat every meal like people do now - we always had meat on Sunday -usually they had a roast or would kill a hen and cook her -During the fall they would go rabbit hunting, squirrel hunting and deer hunting to supplement the meat. I guess that is why I like vegetables so much - that is what we gew up on - peas, beans, corn, potatoes - with corn bread and biscuits. Mama liked corn bread and Daddy preferred biscuits so we usually had both. If we had a lot of left over biscuits she would make bread pudding using them - the left over corn bread was saved and used for making dressing. There is no bread pudding as good as that made from left over biscuits - I have made it and it is still good - I hope this has answered some of your questions - it was a different way of life then. I remember they (Aunt F and Mama) bought a loaf of bread to make my lunch with and Aunt F saw me trade it for a biscuit and a rabbit leg so that was the end of light bread in my lunch - Money was scarce and Mother and Daddy were very saving with what they had - Let me know if you have any more questions - Love you

[Deleted User]

FPK that is a wonderful insight into life in America back aways, a fascinating read and so real I could see it in my head, thank you so much for sharing it with us, and please thank your Grandma for sending it, just lovely, Thanks Lyn xxx.