What did your granny teach you?

monnagran

"Look after the corners and the middles will look after themselves."

Good advice for life as well as housework.

One day I'll live up to it, but being in my 70s already I'd better get a move on.

x

This_Year

My Nanny would have slapped the back of my leg if I called her Granny.

She taught me how to knit, sew, dab out some bits (handwashing laundry), how to make a proper cup of tea.

She said if you haven't anything nice to say, say nothing.

meritaten

nan taught me basics of cooking, how to darn socks, how to keep a clean house, (but she was a bit OCD on that one - Houseproud was a 'good' thing in those days), how to be thrifty, how to make meals from leftovers and many other useful things.

Grancher taught me how to 'go behind nans back', how to laugh at her houseproud ways and how to see the world with humour.

sillysid

not to expect longevity...both sets dead before I was born!

Guesthouse

How to suck eggs

lollipopsarah

what a lovely topic thankyou OP
I don't remember any grandparents, sadly, but now that I am one I can't wait to show our little man things.
(how not to cook/etc - hehe but we will have fun and lots of cuddles)
xx

Lilyplonk

My Nan taught me -

• to live within my means
• 'waste not, want not' - be grateful for what you've got, while you've got it
• 'a stitch in time saves nine' - do a job before it becomes desperate to be done
• hand-washing and how to wring out properly by hand
• how to iron with a 'flat iron' and to test the heat by spitting on it first
• cooking from scratch
• how to sew on a button, 'turn a collar' and let down/hem
• how to use a pressure cooker
• how to light a coal fire
• how to make a bed AND turn the paliasse :rotfl:

suki1964

My nan taught me

How to tell the time
How to tie shoelaces
How to lay the table
How to set the tea tray
How to make the tea using leaf tea and a pot
How to make a whole days entertainment with a box of buttons and the cut out paper dolls from The Bunty comic
How to make a bed with hospital corners
How to iron
How to lay a fire

Granddad taught me
How to eat Jelly babies ( have to bite the heads off first)
How to roast chestnuts on a shovel
How to make paper boats and planes

Me and my sister had a little reunion at the weekend and we were talking about nanny and grandad. We loved them dearly. Nanny was a high functioning downs and died very young from heart failure, She was tiny and near blind and could barely read or write and never read anything more taxing then The Bunty or Mandy comics. But she loved us and looked after us as children when mum worked. And fed us delightful meals with things like spotted !!!!!! and jam roly poly on the menu

Ilona

My Granny taught me not to smoke. She always had a fag hanging out of her mouth, even when cooking, and her coughing was awful. I still pinched a lemon curd tart from the pantry though, but she has saved me thousands of pounds in never smoking. Thank you Granny.
Ilona

liney

My nan lived through the depression and WW2, so was very thrifty. She always had various odd looking things on the draining board: pigs head, trotters, hearts etc.

She taught me:
Always make cake mixture in a glass bowl with a metal spoon.
Cheese sauce covers a multitude of sins.
How to make a stew.
How to knit, crochet, and sew on buttons.
How to make jam. Also marmalade using tins of something from the supermarket (?)
To save cooking fat for the birds in winter.

I wish she had taught me:
How to skin a rabbit.
How to prepare a phesant.
I wish I had measured her ingrediates for bread pudding before she mixed it - she never used scales, but mine is never quite right.
Dress making.