What was your childhood diet?

VJsmum

I was born at the end of 1963, the youngest of 3 children from a fairly poor household, before I was 10 I had become the oldest of 4 children still from a poor household (long story involving divorce, remarriage, 3 more children and 2 older children leaving).

My mum was not interested in food at all, or cooking, but did wonders with the limited budget we had. We would eat roast every single sunday, with stews made from the leftovers on Monday, she would do fish fingers, shepherds pie, bacon suet puds, mince just cooked in the oven (I loved that - so greasy, I think I couldn't eat it now but at the time - yum), chips from the chippy were a treat on a wednesday, meat pies came from a pie shop in town.
Mostly we had a school dinner (liver, roast, shepherds pie, fave puds were eve's pudding, manchester tart, and gypsy tart - which I think is a Kentish thing). Sunday tea was jelly, sandwiches, cake.

monnagran

Born in 1939 so early memories are of the strict rationing and lack of any treats. Fortunately we kept chickens so eggs were not a problem, and before he went off to war Dad started a good vegetable and fruit garden that Mum managed to keep going. Fruit was bottled throughout the summer so we were never short of fruit for puddings and pies - if we had enough sugar and fat of course.
Meat was pretty horrible, goodness knows what a lot of it was, and sausages were tasteless and gristly. This goes someway to explain why I had a problem with meat until I was quite grown-up. I will still opt for cheese in preference to meat.
Mum was a good cook and did her best but with my aversion to meat my favourite meal was tea. We always had jam (homemade), paste and some sort of cake and in the summer loads of salad, with cheese, eggs, tinned fish or spam if any of that was available.
My father used to reminisce about the food my grandmother fed him and his 5 brothers in the first years of the 20th century. "Pig's trotters, pig's head, salt fish...." he would recite dreamily, while I shuddered.

I do remember the rare appearance of sweets. Even if you had the points there were seldom sweets to be found. When I was at junior school and had a penny or two to spend there was nothing to spend it on. My friends and I used to buy Oxo cubes to suck (yes, really,) and they occasionally resorted to buying sticks of wax to chew but I only did that once! The most treasured find was Ovaltine tablets. I can still remember what I thought ice cream would taste like. My mother had described it to me but when it finally returned in the late 40's I was astonished to find that it was wet. Somehow I had imagined it as a sweet, dry, compacted powder.

People go on about how healthy the wartime diet was. Maybe, but it was quite horrible at times and for people who didn't have the luxury of gardens and the fruit and veg we produced, it must have been extremely boring.

From being a very finnicky child I grew up to eat almost anything. Preferably between two slices of bread.

Dilly

Born 1955
My Grandmother moved in with us when I was 4. She was supposed to have been a cook!!
Well meals, mainly cooked by Nana were very plain. My Dad is a very plain eater and would not tolerate anything he did not like. Spagetti Bolognase is the height of adventure to him, so we all suffered. My Dad likes bread and cheese, chips, roast and that's about it.!!
My parents always liked their veg over done and as a child the cabbage water had more goodness in it than the dollope of green mush on my plate
You had to sit there till you cleared your plate. Food could not be wasted. Many a time I've forced cold revolting food into my mouth and sat for hours doing so
We hardly ever had bought food, maybe fish fingers but lots of pies and shepherds pie made from left over roast beef. Even today I never make shepherds pie from mince Its just not the same. Manchester tart was another favourite. Pastry case , a layer of jam and then filled with custard. A sprinkle of desiccated coconut on the top. Very thrifty
Its also interesting that I can't make some of my Nanas recipes like she made them. She did fantastic bread pudding, I have her recipe and it never tastes right.
Do you remember licking out the saucepan when the custard had been made. There is a distinctive taste for the custard left in the pan
Well we all survived and it was only when I left home and could eat what I wanted that I became interested in food. We eat almost everything and anything. My only food which I'm not keen on is beans, and especially baked beans. Also I don't like fat, not even on ham or surprise, surprise cabbage and again that is from being made to eat these things when young

Sequeena

I was born in 1989.

There was a lot of chips from what I remember. Sunday dinner, the occasional fried breakfast. Spaghetti bolognese, sandwiches and the like.

Not a lot of fruit and veg really.

freespirit66

I was born in 66 to a young single mum who lived at home, so until i was 6 i was virtually brought up by my nan, the only thing i remember was being given sugar sandwiches before bed :eek: then when my mum married we had mince and boiled potatoes, chops, shepherds pie, fish fingers mash and peas, minced beef pie and chips, puddings were butterscotch angel delight or tinned peaches or pears and evaporated milk, once a month friday night dinner would be chinese, sundays were always a roast with a pudding and then tea would be home made cake. I remember when my mum bought a microwave when they just came out and all my mates used to come round with potatoes so we could bake potatoes in 10 mins instead of an hour in the oven :rotfl:

BitterAndTwisted

I was born in 1954, the year rationing finally ended. My mother was a housewife who only only went out to work for a couple of months before Christmas for obvious reasons. That was when my German grandmother came to stay. She went into domestic service at 13 and worked her way up to become a housekeeper to a wealthy family in Berlin. I expect this was where she learned to cook, she was very accomplished and taught my mother everything she needed to know.

My mother cooked everything from scratch and baked every week. Not luxury goods by any means but biscuits and the odd cake there were. She kept a kitchen garden, often starting one from scratch in every house we lived in. Not for pleasure but from sheer necessity. Dad was in the army so we moved every three years or so and the sheer necessity was because he was a drinker.

Meals were probably unusual for the time as they were most definitely of a German bent, so we had things like celeriac and kohlrabi from the garden when they were unknown in the shops. We had LOTS of fresh veg but the meat was served in tiny amounts. Like two thin slices each if it was a roast. We ate a lot of pork especially belly-pork and a fair amount of offal and tripe. And brawn (shudder).

I'd never eaten spam until I went to school and didn't taste marmite or fancy stuff like broccoli or fresh orange juice until after I left home.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Umm. Born in 1973.

I remember mashed potato with green/blue bits in, made with Stork margarine. Just for Sundays, it was Smash from a tin any other time. Mother's Pride loaves where you had to pick the blue bits off to eat it. Readybrek for breakfast.

Tiny chicken wings in a homepride sauce for Sunday dinner, along with a tin of marrowfats and a tin of carrots between five people with an Oxo cube gravy.

Findus crispy pancakes and little pots of mousse. Boil in the bag fish with parsley sauce and peas.

A plate of Vesta crispy noodles and some soy sauce whilst the rest of the meal was eaten by the older ones.

Little steak and kidney puddings that were boiled in a saucepan. And given to the older ones, leaving me with something else, but I can't remember what (but I knew I liked suet pastry, so who knows what I was given instead).

Egg and salad cream sandwiches on special occasions, but no cress, as that was too luxurious for a child.

A salad in midsummer: one boiled egg, half a tomato, two rolls of wet ham with salad cream in them and some lettuce and cucumber.

I also remember Echo margarine in pastry, the smell of three month old chip oil, boiled chicken carcasse in the pressure cooker with no seasonings but yet another tin of carrots.

Plus toast. Lots and lots of toast. But no butter, only margarine. Plus the amazement when I came back from a party to ask for something really weird like Marmite or peanut butter (both still favourites today). Gefiltefisch was never repeated, though.

Occasional tubs of pickled cockles with pepper and picking out winkles with a pin.


Plus Cresta pop, R Whites lemonade, pickled onion Monster Munch, penny sweets and gooey blocks of ice cream that were in meltdown by the time they made it home.

Then there were the evils of school dinners. Grey cabbage, thick gravy, solid blue igloos of potato, unidentifiable mince under a pastry concrete, seven pieces of ravioli, semolina, rice pudding and lemon meringue pie with 'cream'.

And the soda stream, which had Irn Bru and Tizer concentrates that worked out cheaper than drinking milk. So were encouraged, as drinking milk was outrageous, it was for cups of tea, not drinking.




No wonder I was underweight and always ill. And how I overcompensated once I left home and started trying to cook for myself.

Tosca2

Born in 62.

Spag Bol, Curry, Chilli, Scouse, Hotpot or Meat, pots and two veg. Pud was normally tinned peaches or pears with tinned cream.

Until I was 11 Saturday night was always a Chinese. Never had a full Sunday roast till I met my husbands family when I was 17, my Mum never got the hang of making lots of things at once.

Sagz_2

I was a late 60's / 70's kid with a working mum & dad, we had a roast every sunday (chicken, beef, pork, lamb) with at least 4 veg. Week nights we had meat, spuds and 2 veg. Sometimes soup before but more often pudding after (custard, rice pudding semolina, artic roll!).
I remember our meals as simple, not 'messed about': the meat was roasted and the veg steamed in the pressure cooker. Stews or casseroles were few and far between, occasionally a shepherds pie.

Spam fritters were a real treat! As were fish and chips or a chinese takeaway.

I didn't eat pasta until well into my 20's and curry even later.

I've not eaten meat for 20+ years now - I think I overdosed on it in childhood.

daisiegg

What an interesting thread

I'm an eighties baby and my mum didn't work until I was a teenager. However, she had to deal with me having severe allergies to eggs, dairy and nuts (back in a time when allergies were less common/less understood and it was much more difficult to buy 'special' foods - I used to have soya milk on prescription as you couldn't buy it in shops) and a sister who is the fussiest eater in the world. My dad is also allergic to fish and seafood so we never had much of that growing up.

Breakfast was always cereal, toast on a Saturday as a treat (why was toast a treat? No idea!). Packed lunch for school would be sandwiches, fruit, maybe soya yogurt when I was older and it was available, maybe crisps now and then, cut up carrots etc.

Sunday was a roast every week come rain or shine. Monday was leftovers from the roast - rissoles if it was pork or beef, served with baked beans and broccoli. A pie if it was chicken (I presume to stretch the chicken leftovers). Wednesdays was always jacket potato, tinned tuna (this being the only fish my dad can eat) and sweetcorn, which we were allowed to eat while watching Blue Peter - the only day in the week when we ate in the living room. Other days would be things like pasta, chilli, casseroles, shepherd's pie, sausages, etc. Don't remember having chips or similar very often. I remember my mum's 'tuna pasta' - which for all I know she may still make - pasta mixed with tinned tuna, margarine, a bit of tomato pur!e and some tomato ketchup! If she was feeling fancy it might have sweetcorn in it and a sprinkle of herbs.

I didn't have curry until I was 16 but my mum used to cook elaborate curry banquets from scratch for her on my dad for Saturday nights, when we would have a simple dinner and be sent to bed early my dad also used to make bolognaise some Saturdays, and it was the first thing I learned how to cook.

Looking back a generation, my mum was born in the sixties and meals were strictly meat, potatoes and veg. She didn't taste pasta or rice until she went away to university at 18.

My dad grew up in Scotland and I suspect his diet involved a lot of mince! H used to walk to his granny's house from school at lunchtime for sugar sandwiches for lunch (despite this, he is 50 and has never had a filling in his life, and has never been overweight!) He did grow up with pasta and rice as his father had lived and studied in Rome as a young man (he almost became a priest - until he met a woman, my grandmother - I suppose I never would have existed if he hadn't met her!). It was my dad who first introduced my mum to pasta when they met.