What was your childhood diet?

Muppet81

p00 wrote: »

I was born in the early 50s and shopping was so different then. No giant supermarkets. The milkman brought most of your daily needs on his float like eggs and bread. potatoes were always bought by the sack. Meals cooked from fresh products.

I had school dinners and they were always a proper dinner and a pudding. I could just eat some sponge and mint custard.

Friday nights was fish and chips night some weeks from the chip shop

Other evenings we had tea we had something with chips made in a proper chip pan orsomething on toast.

We had a treat on a Saturday of a huge crusty steak and kidney pie for lunch fresh from the bakers. Followed by sponge and custard.

Sundays we had chicken or beef roast dinners and a pudding made at home.

We never ate out at a pub (don't think you could ten) or ever went to a restaurant or caf! or coffee shop as a family.

None of us was overweight although it seems now that we ate a lot more 'food' then. Perhaps because we did a lot more walking in those days. And as children we had our chores to do daily and we rarely watched tv, we were always out playing or on our bikes.

Its sad days today that children tend to eat convenience foods, do nothing and are overweight- and dont learn to cook even.

What will the future bring

Further to my earlier post, when I described my "offal diet" (I am a Lancashire lass) I am loving this thread. It is a real indicator of change in lifestyles over recent years.

Poo - as a fellow product of the 50s, your comment that about not eating out really rang home to me. Nowadays families, even those struggling for money, seem to eat out and fairly regularly and think nothing of it.

During my childhood I can only recall VERY rare times when we did eat out, usually in a cafe. Never recall a pub or proper restaurant.

When I was 13 I went to stay with a French pen friend for 6 weeks. What an education that was! Each Friday evening (at abut 7pm not the 5pm usual tea time for me) the whole family would meet up in a proper restaurant and eat a fabulous meal with 3 courses plus a cheese course and wine. I remember being agog at the range of cheeses and the waiters humouring the funny little English girl and giving me lots of tiny bits so i could try them all. I loved it! Tried all sorts ... mussels, fabulous fish dishes, roast tongue, horse meat (nothing unusual there now of course :rotfl:). We were given a baguette with a stick of chocolate inside it to take to school for our lunch.

I have to say that that 6 weeks made a lasting impression on me and I think it altered my views on food (for the better) for the rest of my life.

MrsCautious

My diet was atrocious, chocolate for breakfast some days -- Curly Wurly or a Fudge!

Far too many takeaways, Indian, Chinese, KFC and fish and chips.

Home cooked food when I was little was sausage and mash (often with cheese grated in the potatoes to try and get me to eat it, still don't like cheese ) boil in the bag fish, French bread pizza, Birds Eye shepherds pie, hm shepherds pie, hardly any veg, loads of biscuits and puddings. Egg and chips and stews with Knorr soup with little noodles in, my mum still does that, I offer to cook instead.

But gorgeous roast dinners on a Sunday, the only down side being having to eat the rest if it for tea (for some reason seeing The Muppets still makes me think of this )

I can remember lots of jelly, trifle, blancmange, tinned fruit salad, carnation milk, best was mandarin oranges in a flan.

This was the 70s of course. Very very happy to say my children eat a whole lot healthier. All of my side of the family, me included are overweight, yo yo dieters with Type 2 diabetes. Feel happy to have bucked the trend to see my children eat a lot lot less sugar, fat, salt and processed food.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Bean smash. Toast, ripped in bowl with baked beans. Sometimes there were sausages.

Sunday. Roast, pud. Sunday tea was Jack's tea at grabs. She laid a big spread salad.

Monday. Cold meat and salad.

Tuesday. Salad, eggs and cheese. Jelly.

Wednesday. Fish fingers and beans.

Thursday. Jack's of the left over fridge.

Friday. Fish, baked or from the chipshop.

Saturday. Corned beef salad.

In them days, main meal was School Dinner.

lanavdt

I was born in 85. The chip pan was a constant on our hob and we had chips a few nights a week. There's lots of foods I can't stand now after being told eat it or be hungry including paste of any form, liver, hm battered polony, tinned ham or tinned corned beef, chicken roll and kidney. Ugh!
However, when my mum had the time her mince and tatties, stovies and roast dinners made it worth it. They still do

Worst meal I remember has to be when we visited my dad one weekend and he served us a tin of beans mixed with tuna. I've not managed to eat tuna since...

troll35

I was born in 1967. My mum is and was a good cook but my dad was fussy in terms of what meats he would eat. Like many others this meant that there was little variety in what my mum cooked and you could tell what day of the week it was by what was served up though it was all cooked from scratch and we ate very healthily.

Sun (lunch)- Roast beef, yorkshire pud, boiled potatoes, vegetables plus a pudding.
Mon - bacon, potatoes and veg
Tues - stew and dumplings made with leftover beef
Wed - mince (shepherds pie or just mince and onions)
Thurs- pork chops, potatoes, veg
Fri - Fish and chips
Sat - sausages and mash and vegetables

Breakfasts were cereals, toast, crumpets, porridge, readibrek or cooked breakfast on a weekend.
Lunches at home tended to be sandwiches or things like tinned spaghetti on toast or cheese on toast.
Sunday evening we would have a salad in the summer and in the winter we would have bacon butties or toasted crumpets or muffins.

I learnt to cook when I was 13 because I got bored with the repetitive menu lol.

Vimby

Have just lost two long post so this is my test post, if it works I will do a proper one.

Vimby

Born in 1963, both parents worked full time from when I was 6 but even so there was not a lot of money around. Food was made to go as far as possible eg one Fray Bentos pie or one tin of baked beans between 5 of us.

Sunday-the big day - a roast or pot-roast real potatoes; pressure-cooked veg and real, proper gravy.

Monday - yesterday's leftovers, cold meat, bubble and squeek, gravy.

Tuesday to Friday - quite varied but it had to be quick - corned beef hash; Fray Bentos pie; fried rice with enything and everything in it, never the same twice; sausages; bacon chops; pork chops; a nameless boiled egg/sweetcorn/cheese sauce concoction; a tinned pilchard/mashed potato/grated cheese dish; lots of things on toast.

Most of the above were served with Smash potato (never real potato during the week) and tinned veg almost all of which I hated, especially Macedoine of Veg!!

Saturday - tea was in front of Dr Who and was as much toast as you wanted with Marmite or jam. Loved it!

Puddings, if we had them, were Instant Whip; tinned fruit; swiss roll; bread and butter pudding or rhubarb crumble (huge rhubarb plant in garden). Semolina, including a chocolate version called Elephant's pud because of what it looked like.

Margarine never butter.
Evaporated cream never fresh cream.
Tinned fruit not fresh except at Christmas (and rhubarb)
No takeaways
Fizzy drinks -one large bottle between three of us, fortnightly, from a van that delivered.

Mum did well feeding 5 of us on limited money, we were only occasionally hungry, but you learned to eat what you were given, there was nothing else. I learned to cook quite young, about 11 as I recall probably to have some influence over what I ate. I still use some of mum's recipe ideas but I haven't eaten tinned veg since I left home!

Chris25

Sundays - either roast chicken, pork or lamb, depending on what was in season; we hardly ever had beef. In winter we always had roast & mashed potatoes & the mash always had finely diced onions in it. In Summer, new pots. Plus, always a green veggie & always another root one too.

The rest of the week we'd have things like gammon & parsley sauce, some sort of pie from the Sunday roast leftovers, pork chops with the kidney attached, smoked haddock, fish & chips, M&S Cornish pasty ( the only thing we had baked beans with), cottage/shepherds pie, Irish stew, lancashire hotpot, omelettes & liver & bacon. Lots & lots of salads in the summer. All basic, plain fare, mostly HM. Oh, we had a fry-up every Saturday morning. We had lots of eggs & lots of milk.

We had loads of veggies as we grew potatoes through the year, carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cabbage, different types of onion, salads & masses of different tomatoes.

We used a lot of parsley, mint & thyme - I don't think there were many meals where either of these didn't feature . And I think we had Sweet Cicely, but not entirely sure - it was some sort of sweet herb - maybe that or angelica?

We also had apples, pears, plums, rhubarb & raspberries & latterly, tayberries.

Puddings tended to be yoghurt, fruit on it's own or as a pie or crumble with custard. Or, rice pudding or semolina. We had trifle on Sundays or for high tea. As a treat, we had trinned cream, rather than fresh cream

Cakes were mostly boiled fruit cake, scones or lemon sandwich. We didn't have a lot of bread but it was either Vit-Be, Hovis, Scofa or soda bread. There were always cream crackers - with a bit of golden syrup if we liked, or Marmite. Sometimes we had M&S teacakes (the chocolate ones).

If we had biscuits they were garibaldi, fig rolls or rich tea. And my mum had a thing for those lemon wafer sandwich things - don't know if you can still get them?

At Christmas, Cadbury's little bars & Dutch Droste chocolate pastilles - I think that's what they were called.

Occasionaly we had squash & if anyone was poorly we had lucozade or barley water. Very rarely had fizzy stuff. Water & milk were in abundance

We had Milo, hot milk (or hot milk with an egg yolk in if you were ill - just remembered that) at night and the best Winter's treat of all was a mug of Milo with a hot buttered crumpet, toasted on the fire

I think I was about 12 before I'd tasted a prawn or a mushroom - we didn't have those 'exotic' foods! And about 15 before i had my first spag bol!

pigpen

glitterkitty wrote: »

I do remember this one pudding my mum used to get me, but no-one can remember it! It came in a box, and there was this powder that you mixed with hot water and it was lemon. It made a sort of thick lemon custard. Then there was a crumble to sprinkle on the top. It was really lovely, but I can't remember what it was called! Does anyone know what I'm talking about?!

http://www.childofthe1980s.com/2008/11/28/birds-instant-hot-crunch-puddings/

They did banana (which was my favourite) butterscotch, lemon and chocolate.

Buttonmoons

I was born in 87' - food was dire, but that is more down to my mums lazyness and not being bothered.

Breakfasts were toast, a microwave scotch pie (I kid you not) or sugarpuffs - no other cereal as she liked sugar puffs and nothing else.

Used to have school dinners which I loved, I ate anything - was really unfussy. I remember a treat being they had a hotdog on the menu once a fortnight I think and if you took that, you got a glass of milk with it (not if you took anything else though, then it was just water)

There used to be fizzy pop because we'd get from the bon accord juice van that would come round, and had all different flavours in the glass bottles, like pineapple, ice cream soda etc.

Everything my mum cooked was done in the frying pan or the fat fryer, pretty much. Everything was served with chips. I think the most "adventurous" thing she did was spaghetti bolognaise but it was with bow tie pastas (always) and a jar of dolmio......served with chips.

Only fresh fruit and veg I remember seeing is onions, tomatoes and mushrooms - and the tomatoes and mushrooms were for the sunday fry up. Carrots and peas came in a can - no other vegetables featured except at Xmas.

I remember being forced to eat macaroni cheese as a child and hated it - I still have a memory of my mum looming over me shouting at me to eat this horrible macaroni cheese or I wasnt allowed to go to a Halloween party later, I remember vomiting it up inside my pumpkin and she said I did it on purpose (really didn't, it was vile) Used to always be pie's served, frozen ones usually, as my stepdad would only eat meat and potatoes pretty much.

Sausage and chips
Mince and tatties with boiled cabbage (Hated boiled potatoes)
Pies pies and more pies
Burgers
Pizza
Sausage rolls
Macaroni cheese
Roast dinner but it was usually always pork and she cooked it hours beforehand and served it cold and the fat was all congealed and it was chewy - Don't even touch that these days, food of nightmares.

I do remember having chopped pork sandwiches with brown sauce and they were nice.

My diet was atrocious, I remember when I met my ex, his mum is from Singapore, and I went to their house for tea (I was about 17) and she served me fajitas - I hadn't a clue what on earth I was eating - spicy chicken?!! Peppers :eek: errrr whats this wrap thing? and whats that green stuff (avacado) - - Was an eye opener!!

Needless to say, I don't eat any of that stuff now - and I cook mostly from scratch, not adverse to using a jar of sauce, but my daugher is a little bit fussy and I admit I do pander to her because I think of my horrible experiences of being force fed something that made me vomit. But in comparison her diet is full of fresh things such as broccoli, sweetcorn, cherries, blueberries, pineapple and meals she eats are so wildly different - she has chilli, curries of all kinds, falafels, simple things like a chicken breast in spices with rice/veg.

She wont eat things like pizza, chips, beans, burgers etc. Suits me fine, I hate them all too :rotfl:

On the upside, my mum now varies her meals a bit more - she makes fajitas and chilli etc - usually still served with a side of fried chips....