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

ostrichnomore_2

Born in the 60s and we used to have meat or fish most days, but probably about twice a week something like egg and chips, or tomato soup and bread, omelette, tinned spaghetti (don't like beans) on toast, or spaghetti with grated cheese on it (my favourite, still love it!). Mum also used to make cheese sandwiches, cut them into 4, dip them in egg and fry them. Scrummy.

The meat had to go a lot further and we had a lot of the cheaper cuts, which are nice really, so breast of lamb rather than leg, brisket of beef roast rather than topside. I don't think we ate a lot of pork other than bacon or sausages. But chickens definitely made an appearance at the weekends quite regularly for the Sunday roast. Turkey was only seen at Christmas, it seemed really special then (boring now :-().

We always had afters. Ice cream, yoghurt, jelly and evaporated milk, fruit and evaporated milk, stewed apple, piece of cake (often swiss roll), rice pudding, lemon meringue pie, giant homemade jam tart thing that used to burn the roof off your mouth. I know my parents still see Vienettas as a sophisticated dessert.

People may have eaten less meat, but it was probably better for them. I can't find a link but I read a study a few years ago comparing the protein content of chicken now, to chicken from a few decades ago, and it had dropped by about a third (I think, from memory. Definitely quite a big drop).

E2006

I was born in the late 70's, grew up in the 80's but dad was self employed and times were hard when we were kids. There were three of us and mum often had very little coming in so had to be frugal. Dad was also a very traditional eater then (nopt any more) as a result of the way he was brought up by his parents who had a lot of mouths to feed with little income. We used to go to grandparetns every sunday for a roast. They had allotments so all the veg was home grown. Sunday tea was a 'picnic tea' - sandwiches, jelly and whatever cake mum had baked that afternoon.

Meat had to stretch as far as possible so dinners were bulked up as much as possible with things like onion pudding, leek pudding and dumplings. If we managed to get some lamb it was cooked in a gravy with pearl barley to bulk out the portions. Mum would make corned beef and potato pie, then the next day would be left over corned beef (a tiny portion) with chips and plenty of bread and butter. Egg and chips was a frequent meal as grandparents had hens so fresh eggs were plentiful. Again, egg and chips was bulked out with plenty of bread and butter and usually a home made pudding like semolina, rice pudding, jelly and carnation etc.
We never ate anything out of packets/jars. Everything was cooked from scratch. We stayed for packed lunches which were sandwiches (egg and tomato, cheese, jam) with a piece of fruit and home made cake/biscuit, and breakfasts were either cereal or toast.
For all my parents had very little money in those days, we never ever went hungry or felt deprived in any way.

Goldiegirl

YORKSHIRELASS wrote: »

Well I grew up in the 70s and we also had meat every day
I also remember having a large joint of beef on a Sunday, then cold sliced beef with veg and gravy on a Monday and the leftovers minced on a Tuesday.

I'm a child of the 60's and remember that we always had beef on a Sunday. My dad didn't like pork or lamb joints, so it was always beef, but it lasted until Tuesdays, in the way Yorkshirelass describes.

On Saturdays we had steak and chips, as a weekly treat.

The rest of the time things like chops and liver were on the menu, or 'meat pie' ( the meat was never actually specified). It was always bright yellow haddock on Fridays.

We only had chicken once a year for Christmas, although by the 1970's chicken drumsticks began to appear on the week day menu.

Shortly after my parents married my dad mentioned he liked curry .... so my mum prepared a very exotic (for the mid 1950's) curry dish with all the trimmings.

When my dad got home from work she proudly served it up, and my dad was like 'what on earth is THIS?!'

What he had actually meant was that he liked a tiny bit of curry power in his gravy.

I understand he nearly got the curry over his head! :rotfl:

FairyPrincessk

I was born in the 80s in the US, so my memories aren't necessarily that helpful, but I do have some slightly different stories that might interest some. My extended family consisted of farmers in rural areas and my family still eats some of their traditional southern recipes, many of which did not feature meat.

Beans and cornbread--usually blacked eyed peas grown on the farm for us, although in other areas of the south it might well be dried pinto beans. Cornmeal and the leavening is cheap and a store cupboard staple and cornbread generally requires only one egg and buttermilk, not fresh to make a large pan. Sometimes cornbread is simply crumbled into a glass of buttermilk--a sight I well remember gagging at as a child.

Fried or fresh sliced tomatoes, black eyed peas, fried or boiled okra, mashed potatoes, rice (served with gravy a lot like mash), greens (collard, mustard or turnip) cucumbers and peas were all grown and served as sides.

I hated soup as a child because it was made using whatever frozen vegetables were to hand, water, tomato paste and possibly leftover frozen beef--either mince or chunks of a thin type of steak. This is how everyone in my family made soup and the meat was usually pretty scarce and whatever had been collected in the freezer over a few weeks.

My favourite meal is chicken and dumplings. My mother and grandmother make it using a whole hen by boiling it and pulling the meat off the bones and returning it to the stock. Dumplings are made with flour and a bit of milk and then rolled out and sliced and dropped into the stock. It is then served with black eyed peas, okra, cornbread and whatever other vegetables are around. One pot can feed a large gathering. I suspect my great grandmother would have used just a carcass of a chicken to make hers.

Biscuits with gravy is a similar concept to yorkshires with gravy. The biscuits are a leavened quick bread, similar in texture to scones but using buttermilk rather than butter and no sugar. They could also be eaten with syrup--cane or molasses would be most likely.

My great grandparents had a dairy farm and grew all of their vegetables, kept chickens, and obviously had milk from the cows. If a chicken had been killed then it might be fried. My grandmother always says small chickens are best for this, although these days she usually fries two when the whole family is there, I suspect my great grandmother would have done far less chicken with far more vegetables. Fried chicken is always served with either rice or mashed potatoes (both if the group is large, to have a choice) and the above vegetables. Either cornbread or biscuits are also served.

Roast beef is done the same as chicken, although much much less often as chicken was far more available.

Pickles and preserves were also made, particularly crab apple and muscadine jelly (jam in UK speak) and a hot pepper pickle similar to a chutney in consistency called chow-chow.

It wasn't unusual for a meal to consist of fresh garden vegetables and cornbread in the summer. Meaty dishes were reserved for weekends, particularly sunday. However, I suspect that more meat was eaten during the week when there were farm hands to feed, but that was before my time. It was a hard life and although I often wish I had the fresh from the ground vegetables, I don't envy the lack of variety in the diet. My great grandmother had a stroke when I was a child--I think she was probably in her late 60s, early 70s. My great grandfather lived until his mid 90s although when he went to live with my grandmother she found him hoarding food. Having lived through the depression, he would keep tinned soups in his drawers hidden beneath his clothes.

To this day everyone teases my grandmother about cooking enough to feed an army. She grew up cooking for whoever was working on the farm, and my guess is that meat portions increased when she went to live in town in the 50s, but she kept preparing vegetables in the same quantities. Carbohydrates also make up a huge part of the diet, and were probably far more necessary for those doing manual labour than they are for me now. These days I wouldn't dream of making both biscuits AND rice for one meal, although my dad still reaches for the loaf of bread or the crackers (like water biscuits, but cheaper) if my mum hasn't made a quick bread to go with dinner--even if it already has carbohydrates. He just grew up that way.

Interestingly, many depression recipes from the US have similarities to wartime recipes here--less meat and strange ingredients used to make substitutions. There is also a strange reliance on pre-packaged in the recipes from that era, with tinned soups and vegetables and even baby food making appearances as ingredients. There is a famous tomato soup cake from this era, as well as a mayonnaise cake. I also have a cake recipe that my great grandmother made using baby food. Many cakes used oil rather than butter and don't have as many eggs as recipes from before the depression.

Although pre-packaged is certainly not as nice as fresh it played an important role before refrigeration and transport links made it possible to feed such a large nation with such diverse climates. I often find it short sighted when experts try to claim that the US should get away from pre-packaged and be healthier without addressing the historical significance of these foods in the culture. The addition of vitamin D in milk and B vitamin in breads and cereals almost completely eradicated both rickets and spina bifida in the US--for a long time, prepackaged foods WERE a healthy option and I think it will take a very long time to change the culture of eating this way--even if people now realise it isn't the best for them.

snowleopard61

As my username implies I was born in 1961, but my parents were born in the 1920s and my granny, whom we saw a lot of, was born in 1895, so I ate some meat products as a child that hardly anyone seemed to eat even in the 60s: kidneys, hearts and trotters, as well as the more obvious such as liver. Black pudding featured in breakfasts, and we loved it. My granny also cooked salt fish which had to be soaked before cooking, and often kippers. For pudding my gran often made baked custard (in old teacups) and sago (tapioca).

Surprisingly I enjoyed all the above. Roasted ox hearts took a bit of getting used to, but with stuffing they were actually quite tasty! The one thing I was given to eat (by an uncle) that I really found almost impossible to force down was tripe, which was unbelievably horrible.

For most of my adult life I haven't eaten meat at all - not because my childhood diet put me off it but because of the animal thing - so my diet as an adult is completely different, with lots of pasta and rice.

ash28

ostrichnomore wrote: »

Born in the 60s and we used to have meat or fish most days, but probably about twice a week something like egg and chips, or tomato soup and bread, omelette, tinned spaghetti (don't like beans) on toast, or spaghetti with grated cheese on it (my favourite, still love it!). Mum also used to make cheese sandwiches, cut them into 4, dip them in egg and fry them. Scrummy.

The meat had to go a lot further and we had a lot of the cheaper cuts, which are nice really, so breast of lamb rather than leg, brisket of beef roast rather than topside. I don't think we ate a lot of pork other than bacon or sausages. But chickens definitely made an appearance at the weekends quite regularly for the Sunday roast. Turkey was only seen at Christmas, it seemed really special then (boring now :-().

We always had afters. Ice cream, yoghurt, jelly and evaporated milk, fruit and evaporated milk, stewed apple, piece of cake (often swiss roll), rice pudding, lemon meringue pie, giant homemade jam tart thing that used to burn the roof off your mouth. I know my parents still see Vienettas as a sophisticated dessert.

People may have eaten less meat, but it was probably better for them. I can't find a link but I read a study a few years ago comparing the protein content of chicken now, to chicken from a few decades ago, and it had dropped by about a third (I think, from memory. Definitely quite a big drop).

YOGHURT!! Sorry for shouting - I was born in the mid 50s and didn't even see a yoghurt until I was married! I bought one because it seemed quite grown up and chic - as you do when you're 21 - it was gross. It was years before I bought another one.

I did buy a a massive glass pasta jar from Habitat when I got married - spaghetti used to be about 3ft long and come in blue wrappers - the first pack lasted me for years - I had no idea what to do with it - I'd only ever had macaroni cheese.

Those were the days......not!

Goldiegirl

Ours was certainly a 'meat and two veg' type of house.

It was only when I met my husband that I was introduced to things like Chinese food and pasta.

The first time we went as a couple to my husband's best friends house, we were served with chilli con carne and rice. I'd never eaten anything 'mucked about with', as I used to think of it, and I had to force it down so as not to appear rude.

How times change, chill con carne is now one of my favourite dishes.

luxor4t

!!!!!! wrote: »

As a child of the 60s we used to have rabbit stew quite regularly......... I used to hate the fish on a Friday and even now I am not a great fish lover.

Sundays was always a roast, be it beef, pork or lamb

Our roast was frequently a 4 legged chicken -= a rabbit

My mother would make curried eggs for my father, and we ate spaghetti bolognese (loved the long blue packets) every so often - grandparents were horrified at the "foreign muck" :rotfl:

I first ate yoghurt in 1971 in Germany on a school exchange. I was allowed one evey so often on return - mother and sister would sit there watching, saying things like "Yuk! how can you eat sour milk?"
Needless to say, they both eat it regularly these days.

oldhaggis

I was at school from the late 50s to early 70s and had school dinner every day. The meals were cooked at a central kitchen in the local town and delivered in large aluminium canisters to several outlying village schools as well as most of the schools in the town. There was no choice, we all got given the same meal. We were never served rice (except as rice pudding), pasta, chips or sausages. There was always some sort of meat and we had fish on a Friday. We never had chicken for school dinner apart from once a year when it was Christmas dinner day. Chicken was a luxury item and considered quite special

School dinners consisted of stews, roast pork, roast beef, roast lamb, all thinly sliced and very fatty, bacon and egg tart or cheese and onion tart (it wasn’t called quiche in those days), meat and potato pie, steak and kidney pie, cottage pie, rock solid liver and gruesome mince in gravy. Occasionally in the summer we were unfortunate enough to be given “salad” which consisted of one large limp lettuce leaf, one slice of cucumber and one slice of tomato, it was served with the ubiquitous lumpy mash potato and the protein element was a slice of either ham, corned beef, luncheon meat (bright pink with a strange texture) or (horror of horrors) half a boiled egg face downwards in a pool of salad cream. I still feel queasy at the though of that one.

Our meals were served with mash or congealed roast potatoes, cabbage boiled to the point that it was grey, carrots, swede, parsnips, over boiled cauliflower, mushy peas or strange bright green peas which were originally dried and had a very odd taste. Very occasionally we had small watered down baked beans.

Most people had a cooked evening meal when they got home from school. which would have a meat, fish or egg element. We ate chops, escalopes, frying steak, sausages, omelettes, egg and chips, stew, boiled beef and carrots, pigs trotters, tripe, kidneys, liver, brains, rissoles. There was roast meat on a Sunday. Chicken was considered the poshest Sunday roast. Cod and haddock were the poor man’s source of protein, as they were cheap in those days. Fresh salmon was a great luxury and I remember people would serve tinned salmon sandwiches for Sunday tea if they had guests.

We ate very well and far more healthily than a lot of people do today. The meat definitely had far more fat on it. We didn’t eat much cheese. It was mainly cheddar, Edam or Dairylea triangles. Mum grew most of our veg. We occasionally had spaghetti (the 3ft long sort in the blue wrappers that ash mentioned) with fresh homemade tomato and herb sauce and mum also made vegetable soups from her home grown produce.

[Deleted User]

cat_smith wrote: »

Ooooh Jackie. Where did you live? Which school? I was born and brought up in Blackheath.

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