What was day to day food in your childhood?

[Deleted User]

Hi, I'm aware of price rises across the board whenever I shop and also those welcome YS bargains are very thin on the ground these days too. I'm trying to remember the meals we had as 'everyday' meals way back when to see if I can give us tasty meals from simpler ingredients and also cut back on some of the outlay on the weekly shop. I'm sure main meals weren't as exotic as is the norm now. I've made a start on the list for me but I'm aware there will be regional differences and wonder what was nicest to eat for supper from childhood memories in other areas in the hope of new ideas that use simple ingredients that won't break the budget every week.

We had stews with dumplings, sausage and mash, hot pot, pie, mash and peas etc. care to share childhood favourites?

[purplesignup][/purplesignup]

Nargleblast

I vaguely remember the Sunday roast dinner, probably because often Mum and Dad went to the pub and I was left to make sure the potatoes went in the oven on time! I think in the week we had things like stews, tinned meat pies (Mum worked in a food canning factory) chops, that sort of thing. Main meal was always lunchtime so I had school dinners.

JIL

We always had a roast dinner on a Sunday, one chicken between 5 of us, mum and dad would have a leg each and three children had some breast meat. We had yorkshire pudding as a starter, with thick gravy and then the chicken, roast potatoes and veg would go on the same plate. For some reason one veg was always mushy peas, that would need an overnight soak with a bicarbonate tablet. I have memories of many Saturday night of being woken up as my mum went back downstairs in the middle of the night as she had forgotten to soak the peas before coming to bed.
Sunday evening we would get toast.
Monday we would have the remains of Sunday dinner with a sausage and a fried egg.
Tues would be either pasties made with the last of the Sunday veg mashed up with some mince or we would have a stew made of mince and potatoes and carrots. I hated the mince it seemed to have white bits of sinew in it.
Wed we would have either sausages or braising steak with chips.
Thursday would be liver, with potato and tinned veg.
Friday would be fish, either fish fingers, fishcakes of battered fish balls with chips.
Saturday would be bacon egg and tinned tomatoes at lunchtime, at teatime we would have buttered bread, crisps, luncheon meat and a bit of salad.
It would then repeat the following week.
My mother always said, and still does as long as you have one good meal a day you can have bread and jam the rest of the day.

Nargleblast

Of course, silly me, no wonder I find it hard to remember the meals, I was at school for most of them! I think we had the odd egg and chips meal at times, and the traditional roast turkey blowout at Christmas.

Spendless

Agree, Sunday dinner was always a feature and the most expensive meat of the week on that day. Always with yorkshire puddings, potatoes (roast or mash) and veg.

The rest of the week I'm struggling with, a 'fry-up', cottage pie, liver and onions. Pie and mash. Chops. Nothing that came out of a freezer as they didn't own one until the late 70s. Bread and butter was often served with any meal in order to fill you.

Fortnightly my Grandparents visited from 30 miles away. We always had steak and chips that day (I suspect Nan paid).

Owain_Moneysaver

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I'm sure main meals weren't as exotic as is the norm now.

No they weren't; they were horrible. The only thing that wasn't overcooked into submission was the Angel Delight for pudding.

caronc

Our week went sort of like this
Sunday: Roast dinner
Monday : LO roast made into hash or cottage type pie with beans or chicken/ham fried rice
Tuesday: usually mince & tatties or stovies
Wednesday: sausages either stewed or fried with chips
Thursday: Something cheap as my Dad got paid on Friday usually macaroni cheese or cheese pudding or cheesy eggs. Eggs and/or cheese seemed to feature
Friday: fish or a chippy
Saturday: If my Dad was working tended to be baked spuds and something. If he was off he liked to cook and made curry or spag bol (which was quite exotic for the time!

Janey3

Sundays we usually had a roast dinner. On leaner Sundays Mum would make a meat pie followed by a rhubarb or apple pie. Mondays was always a busy washing day so she clamped the mincer on the table and minced the left over meat from Sunday and we had cottage pie.

We had stews, egg and chips, fish fingers or a salad in the week which consisted of a lettuce leaf, whole tomato and cheese and a plate of bread and butter. Sometimes we just had cheese, bread and butter or jam. Toasted cheese cooked on a tin plate under the grill was another favourite.

Saturday was treat day when we might have fish and chips or savoury pies from the bakers.

If we were hungry we were told to get an apple or a slice of bread and butter.

Home made fruitcake which dad would eat with an apple.

We had lovely home made soups with a chunk of bread.

THIRZAH

We always had a roast on Sundays but only had yorkshire puddings with beef. My Mother loved a roast dinner so would sometimes do a roast half shoulder of lamb midweek. She worked from 3 to 5 one afternoon so would put the meat in the oven before she went out and set the timer.

Other days we had stews, sausages, grilled belly pork, liver , mince, steak pie or neck of lamb which I hated. There was no fishmonger in the village so the only time we had fish was if my Mother went into town on Market day-then it was smoked haddock or fried cod.

All our veg were home grown and we always had a pudding-pie or crumble or some kind of milk pudding. In the summer we would have strawberries or raspberries with evaporated milk or tinned cream.

Sunday tea was ham salad with bread and butter followed by tinned or fresh fruit then cake.

No crisps or snacks except a piece of cake when we got home from school. Tea, coffee or squash to drink. We had three old pence pocket money on Tuesdays and Fridays to spend on sweets.

cliffsgirl

Always a roast on Sunday. During the week it was spaghetti bolognese, lasagna, gammon, shepherds pie, steak and Kidney pudding, sausages, mince pie, mince and potatoes, casserole, soup, Irish stew.

Hard_Up_Hester

I'm struggling to keep within my budget for food, everything is going up in price and I have very limited fridge and freezer space.
The meals I ate as a child were strange, my mum had little interest in the domestic side of things.
She would cook skate in black butter and stewing steak, apart from those two meals I would sometimes have half a thinly sliced marshal or half a tin of condensed milk as a meal.
Our meal plan for next week includes liver and bacon, smoked haddock and beef casserole.