What was your childhood diet?

rubyrederin

I was born in 1987 to an Irish mother and a Catalan father, so the food I had at home was a real mix of traditional foods from both cultures, all cooked from scratch. I remember kids used to find it odd that I'd take chorizo slices, or, even better, left over arroz con pollo, into school, Spanish/Catalan food wasn't really as popular as it is now. We used to have to bring pretty much all our sausages/spices/bomba rice etc over from Spain with us whenever we visited, and now you can get all of it in any supermarket, it's mad.

Saying all that, when I was a kid my favourite meal was bacon and cabbage! And Cadbury bars brought over from Ireland...Tiffin, anyone? The Cadbury flavours are so much better in Ireland than here.

I still cook a lot of my parents food, and a lot from other countries as well. Now I'm older I particularly love Carribean food.

twiglet98

Born 1956, my grandfather lived next door and had an allotment though I refused all greens until I started work and had to eat lunch in the staff dining room, too embarrassed to say I didn't like so many dishes. I love all veg now!

Like me, my father disliked most veg, except potatoes, and wouldn't have gravy or any kind of sauce 'camouflaging' his food. My mum's gravy is brilliant, I'd get on with it on its own. Always roast lamb or beef on Sunday and after Mum had stripped the joint I'd sit up at the table with the Spong mincer clamped onto it, making mince for Monday's shepherd's pie. That's still my favourite meal. We had a lot of lamb chops, gammon, and sausages, white fish twice a week, and in the holidays we got takeaway fish and chips usually 'huss'. I liked fried liver and mash but no other offal, and my grandparents used to like brains, sweetbreads, heart, tripe, lights and melts - maybe the latter were for the cats?

Mum said a primary school classmate was forced to sit with his unwanted school dinner in front of him for three hours with a teacher holding a cane next to him, until he finally swallowed and promptly vomited, and was caned anyway. She never made a fuss about me refusing food, or the amount I must have wasted - it went to the dog, the cat and the chickens over the road. I was a tiny and underweight child through nothing but my own fussiness and only got over it when I was older and eating with people outside the family. Not underweight now, certainly

We had 'yellow fish' for lunch after Saturday morning's shopping trip, from a wet fish stall, served with boiled potatoes, peas and marge (I hated butter but loved Stork). Breakfast was porridge with golden syrup, or Weetabix, much the same now, and I had a lot of eggs, with toast, chips or fried mash (yum), or cheese on toast. I have never had a school lunch, always took a pack-up and gave most of it away - sandwiches with fish paste, sandwich spread, occasionally tinned corned beef or Spam, a rock cake or fairy cake, and a drink of squash..

Mum baked cakes on Sundays, they'd last all week. We had rice puddings and semolina, steamed puddings and lots of pastry, pies and tarts and crumbles, with ice cream or Birds custard. She discovered fruit yogurt when I was about 11 but insisted on sprinkling sugar on top, no wonder my teeth are so bad. I had sandwiches with condensed milk and jam, mashed banana, or even crunchy Demerara sugar sandwiches - and three sugars in my tea and Ovaltine. She recalled sugar as a wartime luxury and thought it was good for me! A teatime favourite was a 'dolly face' - a salad cream face with ketchup for hair and features, mopped up with white bread and Stork.

I never had pizza or pasta, rice as a savoury dish, nor Chinese or Indian food until I'd left home, but we always had tins of Mulligatawny soup in the cupboard. Or holidays were in a caravan in Dorset and the one dish I dream of eating again is the jam roly-poly and custard from Dorothy's cafe on Weymouth sea front - bliss in a bowl.

nannyboo1

I was born in 1964

Mum was a basic meat and 2 veg cook but the veg had to be cooked to a pulp and is the reason I grew up hating vegetables. Cabbage and Brussels would stink the house out and everything else was much. A joint on a Sunday was then turned into something else over the next two days and it was usually the same thing each week.

Mum worked around Dad's hours at the local Chip shop and she would often bring home stuff they were going to throw out and reheat them (which explains my hatred of chip shop food if it hasn't been freshly cooked). Mum never cooked anything she called "foreign muck" (so if it wasn't meat and two veg and rice was for making puddings from)

We would have a pudding a couple of times in the week and on a sunday we went to my Grandads where we had salad and tinned salmon (something I cannot bear to eat because of the white bony bits in the cans) and trifle which I loved. in 1976 I started senior school and mum got a proper job and we got a new fridge with a small freezer section to it so that mum could get bits in for when she was at work so Dad could cook for us. Ironically Dad cooked wonderful meals from the fresh stuff in the house and mum gave us more and more meals like vesta curries and the crispy pancakes.

One thing i do remember is baking with my mum she was really good at cakes and I got a love for baking from here. We would spend every Saturday afternoon baking for the week. I hate tinned custard asshe couldn't make this without it having lumps in and I loved Cremola.

Lunar_Eclipse

Grew up in the 70's & 80's and I would say our family diet changed considerably between the decades as family income rose substantially.

In my young years, when money was very tight, I recall homemade fish cakes, sausages, mash, quiche, omelettes and carrots. Oh and fish & chips (when they used to be delicious; hate it now.) I have never been a meat and 2 veg person. Chilli con carne was my favourite meal growing up, as was chicken curry. In my teens I remember the weekly roast, jacket potatoes and risotto. Once a week we had a dinner of our choosing from M&S - usually pizza with a couple of their yummy salads.

All the meals I make regularly are quick and reasonably cheap. 30 mins max. Risotto, veggie lasagne, enchiladas, burritos, a ratatouille concoction with cous cous, curries etc. I usually make enough for 2 meals so we have lots of leftovers in the fridge to be turned into another meal.

For example, tonight we had ratatouille with cous cous (spring onions, sundried tomatoes & lots of feta added with hot stock - took 5 minutes) which was deliberately leftover from a meal on Sunday of ratatouille, fish & rice. I knocked up a cheese based pasta yesterday from sauce made for the cauliflower cheese at the weekend - that kind of thing. Hope that's useful.

Edit: breakfast was and still is bread based. Toast with lashings of melted butter (I didn't like much as a child but love it to excess now!) with either marmite or peanut butter. We also always had jam, but I preferred the savoury toppings. Bagels are the carb of choice here in the mornings, or homemade blueberry muffins with a banana or smoothie by 1 or 2 members of the family. Very occasionally I make eggs and the kids sometimes make pancakes or waffles.

missmoneysave

Really interesting thread, certainly food for thought (if you'll pardon the pun)

I was born in 1987 and it was just me and mum on very little income. We ate a lot of processed foods and she very rarely cooked from scratch, it was all very British and done as cheaply as possible;

Some examples of main meals are;

Soup and a sandwich- a tin of 'big soup' between us and half a sandwich.

A tin of stewing steak or mince with mash potato and carrots. She could get four servings from one tin!

Pork chop, mash and veg.

Jacket potato with cheese.

Half a serves one ready made pie with carrots and mash.

We never had a roast dinner, only if we were invited elsewhere for dinner. I also remember never having chicken or pasta, rice etc.

Lunch was a potted meat sandwich on white bread with more butter than filling, crisps and a chocolate biscuit.

Breakfast was toast and cereal. We only ever drank tea or cordial, never fruit juice or fizzy pop and I was never encouraged to drink water or eat fruit.

My mum still eats the same now despite being financially better off and not working she will still choose a ready made pie over making her own even though she loves making pastry! My nan eats the same way and neither of them have ever drank a glass of water. I am completely different, it took a while but now I will eat any cuisine from any country, I'll try anything and its really liberating, there are so many great foods out there. I cook almost everything from scratch and regularly enjoy some homemade soup full of lovely veggies. The silly thing is that my food budget is significantly lower than my mums. I can eat better and spend less so her approach wasn't really money saving at all, it was just tradition for her.

I think this thread is definately proving that older diets are not necessarily the better ones.

walkers60

In reply to VJsmum, we didn't serve gypsy tart with 1/2 an apple - sounds tasty though. Is that because Kent has so many apple trees? Unfortunately I don't live in Kent. We served ours with Dream Topping. I think the reason we cannot make it at home is that we used to make it to feed 100 or more and used huge mixers for the filling, made our own pastry and used tins which then cut into 20 or 24 portions.

We used to have a machine which peeled the potatoes which were then boiled and mashed. There was an outcry when 'instant' potato was introduced - some children loved it though!

We used to make oat biscuits and shortbread. Made rice puddings and semolina in huge saucepans. Rhubarb or apple crumbles were always favourites together with proper custard. Chips were only allowed to be served once a week.

It was a set menu - so no choices, unlike these days. This was 30 years ago! I'm sure there were no vegetarian options. The only variation I did, which one of the other cooks used to do, was to serve grated cheese and hard-boiled eggs when cheese flan was on the menu for those who didn't want cooked cheese. I used to be the same - my mum didn't make cheese flan and it didn't appeal to me but on my first meal at my new boyfriend's (later husband) home was cheese flan. I didn't like to say that I didn't fancy it so I ate it - and it was delicious.

Great memories.

D&DD

I was born in '66 and I was lucky to have a school dinner lady as a mum I still make caramel tart,cheese flan etc just like my mum made at school they cooked in her kitchen too Walkers

I admit I love spam fritters and a lot of wartime specials as we never had much money growing up *some things never change!* so mum used a lot of wartime recipes as well as thrifty ones to pad things out and stretch a piece of meat.

Peggybabcot

Well all this talk of gypsy tart, and me missing out at school, resulted in me making one today. It's very, very sweet but my son and hubby loved it. Next on the pudding menu is going to be Manchester tart. You're not doing my diet any good guys lol!
Someone mentioned Cadbury's Tiffin which I remember my mum used to buy my hubby every Christmas until they discontinued it. My hubby was gutted. Luckily my friend mentioned they still sell it in Ireland so a quick search on ebay meant I managed to buy him some for Christmas this year and he was absolutely thrilled. I think the memories associated with the food are what makes it even more special x

TakeittotheLimit.

I was born in 1966.
Looking through this thread I find it quite a shock that nobody had kippers for breakfast,admittedly it was mainly my grandad who did this but occasionally I would be offered it,although sifting through all the bones was a pain in the !!!,but mostly it would be them awful Scots Oats the lumpier the better as grandad was a proper old Army solider!
Sometimes I would have a treat of Rice Krispies and to this day I still consider them a treat!

Mum was and still is a fantastic cook,she was always in the kitchen baking up something mainly for my dad and older brothers, like a lot of people I now realise how tough life was for my parents but they always made sure there was food on the table ....but I was a fussy eater and wouldn't touch most of the stuff she made,it's sad to say I lived off chips cooked in a chip pan,when I was 17 and courting(lol) my girlfriends mum had a deep fat fryer...wow how cool was that or so I thought.
Anyhow I'm off to whip up some Angel Delight(butterscotch of course!) with dream topping.YUM.:j

pinkie_pie

Born in the 80s, breakfast was always cereal or readybrek. Lunch was a packed lunch of a sandwich (spam, cheese, marmite), an apple, crisps (walkers, squares, discos) and a penguin. Always! And the same on weekends, that never changed.

Dinner was usually something with vile runny mince (cottage pie, mince and potatoes, spaghetti bolognese made with dolmio). Fridays were always fish and chip shop food, Saturdays were chops, boiled potatoes and butter beans, with half a mars bar for pudding. Sundays were roasts with frozen peas (the only veg we ever had) and boiled potatoes. My mum was a terrible cook and loved the idea of no hassle cooking, even trying to cook a roast in the microwave once. Not a convectional one either! We only ever ate curry as a ready meal, and a very rare treat for a pudding was butterscotch angel delight. Aside from that and the mars bar, we didn't have puddings.