What was day to day food in your childhood?

LameWolf

My mother wouldn't have allowed a microwave anywhere near her kitchen; it was only in the 1990s when she had two lodgers that she agreed to have a washing machine; up to then, she insisted on doing all the washing by hand, with the "whites" being boiled up in an old fashioned copper.

I have a horrible memory when I was little - I must've been about four, it was before I started school - she used to empty the copper using a two-gallon bucket - there was a sort of tap near the bottom, she would put the bucket under the tap, and when it was full, lift it up and tip the water down the sink. Anyways, this one day, the two gallons of near-boiling water ended up getting tipped all over me!! :eek:

We never had anything like pizza - my father wouldn't eat "foreign food" - and in fact the only form of pasta we ever had was tinned spaghetti rings in tomato sauce.

kboss2010

Goodness! I hope you had no lasting damage from that incident, Lamewolf.

Eenymeeny

I remember that chips were a once a week treat, always home-made from the chip pan. They were usually served with fried egg which is still a favourite now! Beans were added sometimes, maybe when Mum was feeling flush! A lot of things were deep fried then, like sausages and scotch eggs. No worries about cholesterol as we didn't know that it existed.
I do remember fritters though, slices of potatoes dipped in batter and deep fried. I suppose that they were a cheap filler and we all loved them. The thing was, they were served as part of a meal. We were very rarely given crisps, they were reserved for picnics.

nmlc

Morning everyone

This thread has really brought back some childhood memories, I was born in 1970. Luckily my mum was a very good plain cook, as was my nan, her mum. I remember coming home from school on a Friday and she would be in the kitchen with her Kenwood chef mixer going, and there would be cooling racks on the worktop full of cakes, jam tarts, mince pies, possibly a fruit pie, apple and blackberry or raspberry - we live in a rural area and it's the norm for most people to have gardens and grow their own veg/fruit. I remember also having a hot meal in the evening - a proper dinner, on a Saturday we'd very often have fish and chips from the chip shop or I remember myself and my dad having pan cooked kippers and bread and butter. Also because we lived rurally, mum didn't drive and dad was self employed so worked very long hours, we used to have the Co-op deliver milk and then the baker came in his van, he had this huge basket that he would come to the door with and as a treat on a Saturday we could pick a cake, (fresh cream doughnuts, or I remember a doughnut type cake with a blob of jam and then cream on it).

We used to always have to sit at the table for meals, and we had to ask to leave, "thank you for my dinner, please may I leave the table".

Keep safe and well x

nmlc x

camelot1001

Eenymeeny wrote: »

I do remember fritters though, slices of potatoes dipped in batter and deep fried. I suppose that they were a cheap filler and we all loved them. The thing was, they were served as part of a meal.

The chip shops round here sell them and I treat myself every now and again - best eaten immediately out of the paper with lashings of salt and vinegar!

Eenymeeny

camelot1001 wrote: »

The chip shops round here sell them and I treat myself every now and again - best eaten immediately out of the paper with lashings of salt and vinegar!

Haven't been to the chip shop for years but that would make a trip to the chip shop well worth while! (Thanks, I'll look out for that next time we are 'over the border':) )

Pollycat

Eenymeeny wrote: »

Haven't been to the chip shop for years but that would make a trip to the chip shop well worth while! (Thanks, I'll look out for that next time we are 'over the border':) )

We're much further South but our chippies sell them.

YorksLass

Eenymeeny wrote: »

I remember that chips were a once a week treat, always home-made from the chip pan. They were usually served with fried egg which is still a favourite now!

Most definitely. We have this sometimes when there's more week left than cash and it always makes an appearance somewhere between Christmas and NY!

I do remember fritters though, slices of potatoes dipped in batter and deep fried.

We called them potato scollops (not scallops as in fish) and guess what? I made some a couple of weeks ago and yes, I have a chip pan filled with beef dripping.

Loving this thread, so many memories. Born in 1949, some food was still on ration but Mum was a good plain cook and I don't ever remember going hungry.

Sunday dinner was always a roast - usually cheap cuts of beef, lamb or pork - with plenty of veg, potatoes, gravy. Yorkshire puds were served before the meal with lashings of onion gravy. Any leftover meat was minced up to make pie filling or a stew with yet more veggies and pulses added, served with dumplings. Liver & onions, pork chops with the kidney still in them, steak & kidney pie. I think chicken must have been expensive as it was reserved for Christmas and sometimes Easter. At Christmas the Yorkshire puds were replaced by an oatmeal stuffing mix that was well seasoned with sage & thyme.

Mum baked her own bread in the oven next to the coal fire as well as oven cakes that were set to cool on the back doorstep. We were always warned not to eat them while they were still warm in case they gave you indigestion - not sure how true this was though, it may well have been a ploy to make them last longer! She made wonderful fruit pies - usually rhubarb, apple, gooseberry, blackberry or bilberry. Custard tart, rice pudding with skin on it, other milk puddings like semolina, scones, fruit buns were favourites too.

Breakfasts were usually porridge, shredded wheat, sometimes a boiled egg, bacon & tomato sandwich or sausage that had to come from the Co-op butchers.

We didn't have a lot of tinned food other than fruit salad (usually with evaporated milk), Spam (fritters again), and garden peas when fresh ones were out of season. Veggies were grown in the back garden and traded with the next door neighbour who would have different crops. He also had hens and when they were laying well he'd give us eggs. We had strawberries in abundance during the summer thanks to Dad's garden and I still prefer English strawberries to this day.

Sunday tea was usually a salad of sorts (lettuce, tomato, cucumber) with best ham carved off the bone, followed by a piece of whatever cake had been baked. Weekday meals didn't always finish with a pudding, it was quite often a piece of bread with jam or lemon curd. Oh, and malt & cod liver oil on bread.

Milk was delivered by the milkman to the doorstep and I remember he also sold glass bottles of wonderful fresh orange juice, a now and again treat. As was ice cream on a Sunday that was dispensed into a bowl or jug.

Other memories: toast or crumpets stuck on a toasting fork in front of the fire, chestnuts on the fire grate, Horlicks, Oxo drinks with crackers, pie & peas. And Camp coffee, a coffee substitute made from chicory, that tasted nothing like coffee at all! Around Bonfire night we always had parkin, cinder toffee, toffee apples and spuds cooked in the bonfire.

Friday tea was usually fish & chips from the chippie but not if a Saturday trip to the cinema was in the offing as we'd have them on our way home, eaten from the paper with our fingers.

Dad was a bit picky sometimes and wouldn't have corned beef (a hangover from his Navy days), rabbit (mixamatosis) or any kind of shellfish (an episode of food poisoning). We never had anything like spaghetti or curry either as it was deemed to be "foreign muck". But he would have tripe, pigs cheek etc. Yuk.

suki1964

Sunday was roast beef or pork, veggies from the garden

Monday was cold meat and bubble

Tuesday was the last remains of the meat, in a pie plate

Wednesday was scotch egg or egg, ham and tomato pie with mash and tinned spaghetti ( yuck)


Thursday was sausages and mash

Friday was fish and chips from bejam

Saturday was either a something meaty cooked in the pressure cooker or an old fashioned English curry with saltanas and served with rice and slice banana and salted crisps

thriftwizard

We kind of had two separate lives; before Dad died & afterwards. He was a country Rector so we were generally financially penniless but had a huge & productive garden, complete with orchard, veg patch & chickens as well as the big lawn for having fetes and parish picnics on. The usual Sunday lunch was a huge chicken (there were 7 of us in the family) complete with roast spuds & lashings of fresh veg, followed by a traditional pudding of some sort. Some weeks a chook or two would have been exchanged with my "uncle" the churchwarden, who was a beef & dairy farmer, or the sheep farmer whose land surrounded the Rectory, and my grandfather raised pigs in his vicarage garden 10 miles away in the next county, so beef, mutton & ham also featured. But most of the rest of the week's menus would feature eggs, bacon, ham, sausages, possibly mince, or fish that Dad had caught at the local reservoir. The occasional pheasant came our way from the gentry, too, all prepared by my "aunt" who had been "in service" as a cook until the late 50s and just attached herself to our family by default.

When Dad died, Mum was left with just £11 in the bank, two dependent children & no visible means of support, having not been in paid employment since she married. We had to move upcountry for her to find a job & a roof over our heads, & Aunt Ethel was left behind in the pretty little Devon cottage that she actually owned. Mum really hated cooking, but she did her level best on her very limited budget, and luckily it was the early 70s and just about everyone else was broke too, so we never really noticed that meals often consisted of just a fried egg or baked beans on toast, or cauliflower cheese, and a Ski yogurt or a Golden Delicious apple, though we were quite often hungry by bedtime. She did once have a go at growing some veg, but succeeded in killing the lot by applying neat fertiliser.

Bless her, she still hates cooking & is very happy to survive on elderly frozen "ping-cuisine" meals but both my younger brother & I have turned into grow-your-own fanatics and adventurous cooks, preservers & fermenters now!