New BBC2 Back in time for dinner

Muddles

Lovely lovely post JackiO, I so enjoy reading your posts. I'd be first in line if you wrote a book. Wonderful memories.

honeythewitch

Muddles wrote: »

Lovely lovely post JackiO, I so enjoy reading your posts. I'd be first in line if you wrote a book. Wonderful memories.

Seconded.

[Deleted User]

Thanks, I would love to, but sadly just don't have the time, as I am so busy with Knitting club,book club,history club, U3A and I am starting to go to a sociolgy club once a month on a Wednesday :) that's apart from looking after my DGS after school and during the holiday and my hobbies of renovating old bits of furniture ,knitting blankets for charity,genealogy baking, and when I get the time actually going to my local swimming pool, as once having learned to swim (and not in a droopy knitted cossy) I found I actually enjoyed it One thing's for sure I am never ever bored :):)
P.S. and posting on here as well :):)

mrsmortenharket

My gran was born in 1922 & had her children in the late 40's early 50's.
She said only the better off people had fridges/tvs and stuff like convenient fish fingers even by the end of the 50's. And also she remembers lots the same as JackieO.

She said food was grey boring & monotonous.

Until the end of her life, she always appreciated bananas! She would only have 1/2 a day, thinly sliced on her breakfast. In this house, we eat them like they're going out of fashion!

My aunties & uncle can remember their 50's childhood. There was still a lot of dreadful poverty around.

I did enjoy the programme, but I knew how to use that tim opener & I'm 40. My grandparents had one.

skintmum2012

Wow jackio what an amazing post so many fantastic memories. I cant help but feel we have lost a bit of the magic in todays society.

Farway

Jackie, so many memories, many matching mine

The horror when going swimming at Uxbridge [outdoors & bloody freezing] pool in knitted swimming cossie which of course did what the always did & fell off

At least there was a cup of Bovril to warm us up after the humiliation

And dripping, lovely, always with salt of course

I am now thinking about a meat joint for Easter, just for the dripping, and if I choose lamb there will be a marrow bone as well

PS on bananas, I only found out years later that my mum had served up mashed parsnips with added banana flavouring, If you have never seen or eaten real banana how would you know?

mrsmortenharket

Remembered a few other things from my gran.

That programme was very middle class. People just didn't suddenly afford all the new appliances.

And HP was viewed with quite a suspicion.

monnagran

I also remember the fifties all too well. I was born before the outbreak of war so lived through rationing in its extreme form. We had a biggish garden which Dad had laid down to fruit and veg (and chickens) and Mum (who was only 24 when Dad went off to be a soldier) nobly took the job on and we never seemed to go short of veg, fruit, salad stuff or eggs. Meat was another matter and I hated it, it always seemed grey and grisly in spite of Mum's efforts with herbs and seasoning. I still prefer cheese to meat.

In the fifties I left home and went off to college and the horrors of institutional food. It was a great relief when I had my first flat (bedsitter with use of bathroom and kitchen) and could organise my own menus.
I was quite amazed to see the wife using a Kenwood mixer. They may well have been around but I certainly never saw one until the sixties. Also the electric oven seemed very modern compared to the one we had in the fifties. Ours was built like a tank and had only solid hotplates that took an age to heat up. We had to have one because Dad worked for the electricity board and he would have deemed it disloyal to have a gas cooker in the house.

Yes, we all went home for a cooked lunch, ours served at 12.30 and Dad's at 1.20, very precise that because it took him 20 minutes to cycle home from the office, 20 minutes to eat his lunch and 20 minutes to cycle back. Then our tea was always bread and butter, homemade jam. salad from the garden and a homemade cake. It wasn't actually butter on the bread until late in the decade. During the war and just after Mum melted the butter and half the margarine ration and mixed it with cornflour and milk - a bit like a very stiff white sauce - and set it in a basin. This delight was called 'extender' and I hated it with a passion. Oh! the pleasure of having REAL butter on my bread.
Jelly was a treat and featured very largely in the VE street parties, Mums had been hording up jelly crystals for the celebrations when peace was declared.
I can still remember what I thought ice cream would taste like when it was available again. Mum had described it to me but I had the idea that it would be very cold but dry and when you bit into it it would be powdery. What a shock when I discovered that it was wet.

My memory is also of being cold. Stone hotwater bottles were anything but cosy and I remember when I was in my bedsit putting the bedroom rug on the bed at night in an effort to keep warm. I also remember a bottle of ink on the windowsill freezing overnight and popping its lid.

Ballymac: I also have my mother's Stork Cookery book. Very battered and stained but she used it all her life and I never use it but I think of her battling with all the shortages but still whipping up great meals in her tiny kitchen.

Have just read this through and can hear the distinct sound of wailing violins in the background.

x

culpepper

I watched it this afternoon. It was excellent and I shall look out for episode 2 next week. I thought the mum did quite well by the end of the week. She only had a few days to get to grips with cooking from scratch and managed to feed the boss and his wife with good results in only 6 days of being the cook. That jelly crown thing was very ambitious for a learner so I wasn't surprised at the result. I thought calling the liver and potatoes 'left overs from dads dinner' was a little odd. I am sure he didn't leave it on his plate, it was just cooked earlier in the day when his meal was made. Did anyone cook their own bread back then or was it too hard to find flour and yeast at that time?

sairy2010

I don't remember the war as I wasn't born until 1946 when my Dad came home. He had been a soldier for 6 years but like so many never talked about it.
I remember rationing as it went on until 1954. In fact my mother always called the food shopping "the rations"
We lived with my Nan and Grandad until we got a council house after 7 years.
My Nan ran a shop from the front room. I loved helping with that.
We had no electricity (only gas downstairs) and no running water, only a tap in the garden for three cottages.
We didn't have much sugar as my granddad had to have it all as he had cancer and they thought he needed the energy.
My Dad used to heat up the flat iron on the range and run upstairs with it to iron my bed sheets and then I would hop into a warm bed.
I don't ever remember being hungry though.
I certainly don't think they were the good old days. I would rather have my life now but glad to have experienced it.