What was your childhood diet?

[Deleted User]

monnagran wrote: »

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.

I was born during the war and can remember that we ate what ever our Mum managed to put in front of us including the disgusting stuff call Snoek and even worse was tripe,and the smell lingers with me to this dayit was awful and rather like eating a damp wet floor cloth.Woolton Pie was another revolting meal but beggers can't be choosers so we ate it up and kept quiet or you would go to bed hungry.I can remember the Ovaltine tablets and the lack of sweeties as well.We also had liquorice wood and tiger nuts which tasted nothing like liquorice or nuts it was like chewing a piece of bark or stick but if your told its a sweet then you eat it in hope :)

Not only were sweets rationed even if you had the points there were few in the shops anyway. Sugar was like gold dust to my Mum and we never seemed to ever have enough of it.It was served in the shop in a dark blue cone like a paper cornet and god help you if you dropped it :)I will also eat almost anything and have eaten furry jam (scrape it off) and ancient cheese (just cut the mouldy bit off) food was far to precious to turn your nose up at and although we too had chickens and fruit and veg in the garden we wern't allowed to make a fuss of the chickens as we knew they would end up in the pot.The only thing I really can't face now is rabbit as I ate so much of it when I was little where my Mum got it from I haven't a clue it would turn up in the kitchen and she would skin it without blinking,horrible job .

Meat from the butchers was not too closely inspected as it was meat and its provinance it could have been almost anything:):) I swear the sausages were the sweepings off the floor of the butchers at times.but covered in gravy and mash you just ate up and hoped it didn't kill you:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:I survived it all though and Bless her how my old Mum managed I'll never know She never sat at the table with us apart from Sundays ,she was always flitting around and I have a feeling that Dad and the kids got the best of the food and she made do with what she could.She never weighed more that 7 stone in her life and was a tiny feisty little lady who was always there with a cuddle if you were poorly, her bark was worse than her bite, and she never made a fuss or let her children make a fuss about anything:D

mumps

I was born in early 50s. We had a roast on Sunday, one day we would always have boiled bacon and cabbage, fish and parsley sauce on a friday, sausage and mash, a home made meat pie with left over from roast, home made soup with chicken lots of veg and lentils, maybe a stew. I usually had Shredded Wheat for breakfast and school dinners in the week. Looking back we seem to eat alot but all quite plain and home made.

floss2

VJsmum wrote: »

Ooh Ready Brek - I'd forgotten about that. I wonder if you can still get it?

My mum would cook porridge in an aluminium pan - I am guessing that isn't great. It certainly had a taste that I remember well but have never been able to replicate, I wonder if that was the pan?

Yes you can, in any large supermarket!

Cottage_Economy

Born in 1973

A week's food always revolved around a roast dinner on Sunday, usually lamb which my mother said was cheaper in those days. Pudding afterwards was something like a homemade apple pie, rice pudding, packet caramel pudding (my favourite), blancmange or bread pudding and custard.

Because of this I can always remember what the meals we at the beginning of the week.

Monday was usually cold meat and bubble and squeak.
Tuesday was often curry or risotto using the last of the leftover meat.

The rest of the week could be toad in hole, cottage pie, a stew cooked in a pressure cooker, sometimes something like ratatouille although I can't remember the meat that would be in it, eggs and chips or spam and chips, corned beef and mash (favourite)

As my family history is Italian, pasta always figured in the week, often Saturday night. It would be spaghetti with tomato puree and lots of cheese. No meat.

As we moved into the late 80s and 90s chicken starting appearing more and more.

Breakfasts were always porridge or Ready Brek.

School lunch was liver pate and tomato sandwiches and an orange. I was obsessed with liver pate for many years and still am ( in fact my lunch today was ryvita and pate...)


My mother's gran was a very plain cook - met and two veg. Every day. Usually followed by a sponge pudding of some sort with custard. She lived in Wales and they had animals and a veg garden, so that's probably where it came from.

My father's gran was a good varied cook and took in wide number of influences around where she lived in the South London tenements. She had a strange habit of feeding children golden syrup sandwiches and Guinness.

thriftychick

My dad used to make a lot of stews as he worked full time and we didn't get home until late. They were kept on the rayburn for most of the day and he used to put various spices in to make them seem more edible!

marisco_2

I was born in 73 and my mum always cooked from scratch. Breakfast was toast, cereal, or crumpets and as I got older croissants. I always had a packed lunch for school as the dinners they served up were foul. These consisted of sandwiches, pack of crisps, biscuit and a drink. Ocassionally I would have a yoghurt or piece of fruit instead of the crisps and biscuit.

Dinner was a whole range of meals. Meat with 2 veg featured quite alot, shepherds pie, cottage pie, chilli, spag bol, toad in the hole, casseroles and stews, meatloaf, omelettes, cauliflower or maccoroni cheese. Occasionally fish fingers, non horse burgers with chips and beans/peas, eggy bread, beans on toast. Sunday was always a roast. Sunday tea time would be cheesy crumpets, hmmm yum.

In the summer we ate alot of fresh salad, rice salad and pasta salad. Also alot of fresh fish.

On the whole it was a healthy diet and there is very little I will not eat or try now. The only thing I wont touch is oysters or some kinds of shellfish. Cant bare it.

Some things I only ever saw at Xmas like chocolate orange. I was also told that people only ever went to McDonalds for their birthdays. As a child I would dawdle past when out shopping with my mum and think, oh all those lucky people celebrating their birthdays and be wishing it was me. How gullible was I, it didn't occur to me till my mid teens that this had been made up. Oddly enough now I cant bare fast food places and wouldn't go near one.

blackandwhitebunny

I grew up in the 70's and 80's in Cape Town and I realise now that we were fairly affluent. My mum was Afrikaans (Dutch) and my dad was British so my mum cooked what she thought English food was.
We had a roast once a week but usually lamb, pork or chicken - I don't remember ever having beef. We had meals like lamb or pork chops, sausages and occasionally stews, my mum would sometimes add curry powder to these and my older brother always called them yellow stew as they didn't taste very different. My mum baked everything, I don't think we ever had any bought cakes etc, just the odd biscuit. We never had takeaways and I didn't taste a burger till I was in Secondary school.
She would make fish and chips and our favourite was snoek, there's a huge difference between fresh snoek and the tinned stuff. If we travelled anywhere and stopped for a meal it was always pies, chips and peas. A KFC opened in the town when I was about 12 and we had it once or twice a year as a treat. McDonalds only opened in SA in the 1990's so we never had that.
Fruit was bought by the box full, trays of peaches and grapes and we never had to ask if we wanted it, we just helped ourselves.
On Sundays we were allowed to choose a litre of fizzy drink which was shared between the three of us and once a month or so we would get a packet of crisps. We never thought we were deprived as everyone else was the same.
Interestingly, everyone drank and we were offered wine and beer shandy at an early age but I never saw an adult the worse for alcohol until I started going to pubs when I was at university.

Lagoon

Born in 87, here. We grew up in poverty - Value soda to drink, and a diet that consisted solely of stale sandwiches for lunch and cheap chicken nuggets, burgers and fish fingers for evening meals. I never ate fruit or vegetables, and I didn't have breakfast as we couldn't afford it. In secondary school I would use my free school meal at the start of the day, eat in secret during class (I believed it was secret - I always got noticed), and skip lunch. It was easier to do that than to cope without food from 5pm one day until lunch time the next. I was scrawny and malnourished. We couldn't afford to eat out typically, but my birthday treat was always a McDonald's Happy Meal.

When I moved out I knew no better, so I kept eating the same foods but had enough money to have three meals a day and some meals out. Then, the diet caught up with me and I became obese. Over the past couple of years, I've learnt about nutrition and now eat healthily and consume sensible portions, as well as exercising regularly. I'm not a good cook by any means - I can't mix flavours and I don't use herbs, spices and exotic ingredients but I serve real meat, fish or poultry as well as vegetables and potatoes for most evening meals, with occasional homemade burgers, wraps, spaghetti bolognese etc.

I have fruit smoothies for breakfast, and turkey with vegetables and potatoes for lunch as well. I don't know any generations beyond my own, though I do remember that my grandma served casseroles/hot pots, and so did my great grandmother, though both died when I was four or five.

thriftwizard

Lagoon, that's brilliant that you have broken out of the mould & eat so much better now! Taking my hat off to you in respect.

glitterkitty

I was born in 84, my parents were both in their 40's when they had me.
I always used to have Ready Brek for breakfast with a teaspoon of golden syrup, but as a treat at weekends my mum would throw a handful of chocolate chips in instead... mmmm!
I did have a lot of processed food, but a lot of home cooked meals too. Sunday was always the day for sit down dinner together - either a full roast, or sausage casserole and mash (I loved my mum's sausage casserole!) My dad would occasionally make a huge pot of curry, and that would last a few days.
Friday night was chinese takeaway night which was a huge treat!
I used to go to my gran's house once a week for tea after school, and that was usually mince pie, or mince and dumplings with mash and marrowfat peas. (now I have my own house with my BF, when I make sunday dinner, I always have mash and marrowfat peas!)
I used to love tinned beans and sausages with smash (i still have this now!)
My mum used to make me a snack of sliced apple, cheddar cheese, ready salted crisps and sultanas, with a glass of milk. Again this is something I still make for myself now.
I'd also have cod in butter sauce a lot, which I love!
Right up until I left school at 16 I had the same packed lunch every day - tuna and cucumber sandwich on milk roll bread, cheese and onion crisps, chocolate mousse, rice crispy square and an apple for breaktime with a flask of pear and blackcurrant squash.
To be honest my eating habits haven't changed much. I don't know if its because none of my grandparents or my dad are alive now, and my mum is disabled and unable to cook any more, I find myself craving a lot of the meals I had when I was a child - maybe is a comfort thing?

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?!