What was your childhood diet?

themull1

I was born in 1968, My dad used to make rock buns and madhur jaffrey rice, we had a lot of stuff made from scratch, but had things like fray bentos pies, one between four, my mam used to serve it, then put some boiling water in the tin to swill round and make the gravy!

At birthday parties, we used to have scones, and my mam used to wrap copper coins in greaseproof, and put in the scones!

we had a lot of casseroles/baked potatoes, marmalade sarnies, and only had cornflakes/weetabix - no fancy cereals.

I remember going to my friends and having findus crispy pancakes - mmmm lush!

middlewife

Born in 62. When little everything was homemade, no freezers and any convenience food came in a tin at a price. Mum used to mince up offal to make faggots and stuff them into casings; always fish on fridays, once a month from the chippie when dad had just been paid.
Roast beef or pork on Sundays, leftovers rissoles or risotto on Mondays. Midweek was usually very cheap sausages eeked out as toad in the hole or risotto; faggots or liver or belly pork slices grilled. Shepherds pie made with corned beef was another regular.
Cheese & potato pie made with mash was another fav, along with really cheap beef casseroled & dumplings. My dad was a devoted carnivore. Bacon & eggs occasionally. Everything came with carrots & frozen peas.
Once home freezers came in mum's life got easier, not sure the diet did.
Frozen findus pancakes & pies; roasts on sundays, frozen mince beef pies; fishfingers or frozen fish; one year we dug up jacket spuds when PYO farms started up, so had those regularly.
For some reason dad seemed to think an instant vesta meal was a real treat as were the beanfeast TVP meals.
As you can probably tell although poor mum did all the cooking, shopping & preparing, it was dad who decided what we ate. He hated lamb and chicken, so we tended to eat beef, pork, gammon or offal.
Sunday was feast day, being religious we had a strict routine on sundays. Full English breakfast at 8.30; Off to church at 10. Back for full sunday roast and pie or crumble with cheap ice cream for pud. Afternoon tea at 4.30 scones, cream & cakes before evening service, then back for ploughmans at 9.
It's no wonder I've struggled with my weight all my life, but finally learning to manage my food and not the other way round. 2 stone off, 2 to go.
Feeling hungry now.....

Mrs_Veg_Plot

Born in 67.

Breakfasts were cereal, toast, readybrek and occasionally sausage and bacon.
I remember a spell of school lunches which I liked apart from some baked egg and cheese thing they occasionally served. We mainly had packed lunches, sandwiches were tuna or tinned meat. I loved jam sandwiches which we had when things were tight or if mum had run out of everything else before shopping day on a friday. In the school holidays I remember a lot of tinned soup and later on once mum had a freezer lots of crispy pancakes.
Sunday was always a roast at dinnertime with over boiled and over salted veg. The peas were always tinned marrowfat. Thus was always followed by a fruit pie, crumble or stewed fruit with custard or ice cream or a wonderful milk pudding. Sunday tea was always a salad with bread and marg and a cup of tea followed by tinned fruit and tinned carnation milk. We were never allowed to sit at the table until the tea was poured and we had to have at least 1 slice of bread and marg with it.
Evening meals(always eaten at the tabke with a table cloth on) were a lot of meat and veg meals, pork chops, mince, cottage pies, fry ups. Never rice or pasta. The worst meals were the ones where luncheon meat was battered and served woth mash and green beans. We had to eat what was on our plates even the cabbage and gravy which I hated. I remember dad hitting the edge of my plate with his fork one night shouting at me to eat the cabbage and gravy on my plate that I had put too much pepper on to try to improve the taste. The plate broke in half and I remember watching the gravy run all over the tablecloth.

Our milk was straight from the cow, never pasturised and very creamy. Mum made the best milk puddings in the world.

Most veg was home grown and dad used to go fishing and shooting. Until I was 4 most of the meat on the table was provided by dad in this way.

Mum had periods where she made our bread. Cakes were always home made including some wonderful birthday cakes. Mum also made all of our jam and pickles, her buffets were ans still are legendary.

Shopping happened on a Friday night and we were allowed to pick a yogurt as a treat. I always picked hazelnut until the botulism outbreak. When we were at secondary school I remember having a packet of refreshers each day in my lunchbox.

Faerie

I was born in 1985. Looking back my parents struggled with money but I didn't know how poor we really were. We had a lot of value food and puddings were a big treat.

Breakfast was usually a sugary cereal or Readybrek style porridge. I don't remember having toast even though I'm sure we did!

We only had 1 hot meal a day so dinners were mainly sandwiches, crisps, chocolate biscuit and a piece of fruit. I used to love picnic dinners especially under a den in the living room or garden! We had a lot of lemon curd, jam and meat or cheese paste sandwiches. I loved primula squeezy cheese as a treat. Nanna made me bacon with oatcakes and a hot chocolate or 'dunky' egg with toast soldiers and would bake some lovely puddings, always with custard. Yummy!

Tea would usually involve beef mince. Yuck! I still hate beef even now. It was always gristly and hard to swallow. In winter we would eat alot of beef stew/corned beef hash. I HATED it. My mum wouldn't let you leave the table until you'd eaten most of it and I would heave all the way through :rotfl: My sister wasn't keen on veg and I didn't like meat so we would eat whatever the other left - teamwork so we could leave the table!

We had lots of variations of chips and beans with something, egg or sausage etc. Or tinned beans/spaghetti on toast. I hated fish but my mum would try to hide it in mashed potato or pretend it was chicken. She never won! My mum thinks I was a fussy child, I disagree, it's the food she made me eat!

My dad cooked the sunday roast - always chicken (bought from the deli counter ready cooked) mash, frozen roast potatoes, veg and yorkshire puds. I think he only made the mash himself! Sunday was the only day I remember having pudding, a big Sara Lee chocolate gateau.

If it was a big treat we ate out at the Little Chef or had a chippy tea. I seem to remember only having 1 portion of chips and gravy between the 5 of us though. Bigger portions back then or were we really poor?

jools27_2

I was born in 1966.
Even as a child I didn't really eat breakfast, was not a morning person even then! Lunch would be sandwiches with meat paste, or if home from school tinned macaroni, spaghetti or suchlike with toast- still can't stand tinned macaroni. Dinners could be a bit hit and miss, mum was a terrible cook , potatoes were frequently burned to the bottom of the pan and she left every bit of fat on whatever meat she was cooking, so chewy stews were not uncommon! She was also a school janitor so worked till 6pm, so from about aged 12 I cooked dinner on weeknights, largely so that I could get out with my friends before it was time to come home. Sunday was boiled ham, cabbage and potatoes for about 10 years running, cos dad said he enjoyed it one day, that became a joke amongst mine and DB's friends who refused to visit our house on a Sunday in case mum made them stay for dinner! We ate standard things like mince, stew, chops often, not much in the way of roasts. Christmas dinner was always my favourite, everyone came to us on Christmas day, so piles of turkey, ham, pork, and all the trimmings, and I always made a sherry trifle . Mum always made huge pots of soup, although never as good as her mums! Pudding would be tinned fruit with evaporated milk or instant custard, I remember a favourite being the instant chocolate custard poured over ice cream, sounds odd but was great for us as we rarely got sweets. When things like arctic rolls, crispy pancakes etc became available she bought them, and when pot noodles were first out they became Saturday lunch!
We never went hungry, but were always expected to eat what was on our plates, and the bizarre things that were made into sandwiches to fill our bellies was rank looking back, dads favourite was marg and sugar, brothers was brown sauce:eek:

trigger2

What a fantastic thread ! Brings back happy memories, well not all ! I was born in 73 and grew up with my russian granny who didnt do 'modern' foods like fish fingers, anything spicy or things like pizza. Sunday was always roast lamb, left overs on monday. Tues was usually macaroni cheese, we also had mince & dumplings and a plaited sausage roll of some kind, but we also had different things like beetroot soup, liver with potato rosti's, and alot of things with aubergines for some reason. I remember the pain of being made to eat boiled fish every Friday and hating it. I used to try and spit it into my hand then feed the cat under the table !! We always had homemade puddings which I loved, my favourite was a coconut sponge with a lemon sauce. Very occasionally we would get fish and chips as a treat.

I feel I had a great selection of food growing up and I have tried to bring my children up on normal homemade food. Yes sometimes they will get chicken nuggets or sausage and chips. However neither of them will eat liver or boiled fish !

regards

trigger

trigger2

I forgot the paste sandwiches for my school lunch. It was either sandwich spread or chicken paste. Biscuits were always Jacobs Clubs, although they werent a frequent fixture, and squash was always Sunquick I think it was called - was bright orange !
A bath once a week, on a sunday. Those were the days :-D

trigger

Bananabrain

Born in '66 too.
We were quite poor in relation to our peers. Remember only having a tiny freezer compartment big enough to hold peas.
We had lots of meat and two veg, casserole, shepherds pie, roast chicken, liver, bacon/eggs.
I am a vegetarian now!
I also remember an awful lot of baked beans. So many that I didn't eat them for about 20yrs.
Didn't have have things like curry, garlic, pasta, 'foreign food' anything remotely 'strange' until well into my 20's
I worked as a waitress and realised that not everyone ate pork pies and hard boiled eggs!
My diet nowadays is very, very different. I often wonder what my mother would make of cous-cous, aubergines and feta cheese:rotfl:
Most things were home-made. Can remember mother making home-made battered fish, pies, pastry, tarts. She wouldn't have considered buying these things even if they were available.
My friends and I used to go to youth club in the holidays. I would be given a few pence which bought 'Kojak lollies' and 'football crazy' crisps.
There was also a 'sweet lady' up the road. She had a huge wardrobe in her hall full of sweets and all the local children went to her house to buy sweets! Don't think our parents even knew!
Imagine that happening now?
I don't even know what her name was. She was just the 'sweet lady.'

Peggybabcot

I'm loving this thread and its really got me thinking.
I was born in 1968 and we were a normal working class family. Dad was self employed but we were relatively ok for money. Mum was a stay at home mum until we were about 16.
I remember breakfasts on a school morning were always cornflakes with warm milk and stewed tea made when she got up at 7.30 so by the time I arrived downstairs at 8.15 it was disgusting mush. To this day I can't stomach breakfast and I certainly don't drink tea! Sundays were always a full English but as mum was always on a diet she'd boil the mushrooms for some reason bleurgh! School rotated between school dinners canteen style, so lived on hot dog, chips and onion rings for the first three years of secondary school. I then remember changing over to packed lunches which were either ham, cheese, paste, Heinz sandwich spread or my personal fave Pek chopped ham and pork with Branston fruity brown sauce (had some the other day for the first time in years and still as fab). Sometimes with a packet of crisps and a choccy bar. Were wagon wheels bigger in the late 70s/80s??? Washed down with a Tupperware beaker, whose lid always leaked, full of very dilute Kia Ora orange squash (subsequently discovered I was allergic to tartrazine and that's what was giving me migraines)
Dinner was always meat and five veg (she was obsessed with veg!) fish on Friday and a roast on Sundays. She'd never do "that foreign muck!" like pasta or curry. Mum wasn't very adventurous at mealtimes but boy would she bake. She'd do cakes, biscuits, bread etc (I think when she was hormonal) and then she'd stop and refuse point blank to create these wonderful goodies as she was back on a diet again lol. I remember the Margurita Pattern and Mary Berry books she would cook from bless her. Saturday night was chippy or Chinese on the way back from grandmas and I always had mushrooms and onions from the Chinese or cod, chips & gravy from the chippy.
I don't remember ever having puddings with meals but then again mums portions were huge you'd never have had room.
As someone said in a previous post, McDonald's was a birthday treat, not a weekly thing. I remember mum getting her first upright freezer which lived in the dining room as there was no room in the kitchen. We'd travel 10 miles to the "local" freezer centre and stock up on half a lamb, pig etc and buy frozen goats milk ( my sister had eczema) Even with a freezer it was always a slab of meat and 5 veg lol. Sometimes we'd have crispy pancakes or fish fingers but she viewed them as substandard meals. We'd normally have stews, cottage pie, chicken in Homepride cooking sauce. Her personal fave was sweet and sour chicken with mashed potatoes and, you've guessed it, 5 veg (to this day we don't know how she managed to cook so many veg on a four ring hob?)
Dad would pop to the local corner shop about once a month and stock up on just juice oj, walkers crisps and choccy. Cans of Tab and Fresca for mum. (The pop man bought us kids 6 bottles of fizzy pop a week and when it was gone it was gone.) Dad would arrive back with his big box of goodies that were invariably gone within 48 hours but these were pretty much a treat rather than a regular occurrence. (With the exception of crisps in packed lunches once in a blue moon)
Mum loved to party and any excuse to have a family get together she'd be there with one of her amazing buffets. She made the most amazing trifles and to this day I still follow her recipe. Her other puddings were quite inventive. I remember the time she made key lemon pie because she couldn't get a lime from her local green grocers!
She usually shopped locally at the butchers, green grocers and small co-op until an ASDA was built a couple of miles up the road and they laid on a free bus to take you there (mum couldn't drive) That's when food became more adventurous with the advent of the supermarket.
I have my mum to thank for being the good cook I am today. We don't always have the healthy option at every meal but its always cooked from scratch and my kids pretty much eat everything (therein lies the problem ) x

Elliesmum

Another 1967 girl here

Our diet was similar to Mrs Veg Plot....

Breakfast was either toast, cereal or Ready Brek
Lunch was school dinners or sandwiches at the weekend.
Dinner - we knew what day of the week it was by what we were eating!!!

Sunday - Roast, veg, roast potatoes, gravy
Monday - Cold meat, baked beans and potatoes
Tuesday - Shepherds/Cottage pie
Wednesday - Sausage, mash and veg
Thursday - Chops, veg, mash, gravy
Friday - Fish and Chips - Fish shop bought
Saturday - Stew

We ate loads of veg, I remember Mum cooking at least 3 or 4 kinds for a meal. There were 5 of us and Mum has always complained about the amount of potatoes she had to prepare. We lived in a farming village so all eggs were free range, milk came straight from the cow and fruit and veg was seasonal. We only did 1 supermarket shop a month for tins, loo rolls, toiletries etc the rest was bought from the village shops on a daily, weekly basis.

EM x

PS We had a chest freezer of which Dad would buy half a lamb, or quarter of a cow etc from the butcher and then bung it in there...