What was day to day food in your childhood?

Teacher2

My mother was an Irish woman, one of eight who was brought up on a very poor farm and never learned to cook properly. We were not well off either and packets and tins often eked out our daily fare.

We always had a roast on Sunday with chicken alternating with half a lamb shoulder. Mum’s roast potatoes were bullet hard and never parboiled. We had tinned mandarins and evaporated milk or Lyon’s boxed coffee cake or Jaffa cakes for pud.

On Saturdays we had a Vesta curry, one box between four but made to go further with some tinned meat. It seemed very exotic at the time and was a real treat.

During the week we children had a cooked school meal and Mum, who was out working all day, cooked us an evening meal too. Some of the things we had were:-toad in the hole, Irish stew, fried mackerel, sausages and beans, fish fingers, beans and fried egg ( a packet of ten between four of us, three for the adults and two for the children), frozen pies and veg (dad worked for Findus for a while), chops, liver
and the one I couldn’t force down - boiled bacon, cabbage and butter
beans. Mum served mash with nearly everything. When dad drove the Findus lorry we also had Granny’s Homemade cakes and other treats.

My great food revelations came when I mixed with the middle classes. When young I went to tea with someone from school and had salad, bread and butter and a wrapped chocolate biscuit. My other half introduced me in one heady week to beef Bourguignon, gin and tonic
and proper ground coffee and a teacher who asked me to dinner had Ratatouille, rare beef and lemon sorbet served in frozen lemons from a delicatessen as well as real chocolate mousse from the same place.

I was very lucky to have a terrifyingly strict Scottish domestic science teacher, who, as well as terrorising the girls, taught us the basics of cooking: sauces, breads, cakes, puddings, preserves, the lot. In a small country school I learned how to cook what, with adaptation, has become a real range of foods. I make my own cakes, preserves, and bread and am experimental as she gave me knowledge and confidence. Last week I had a go at curing and made Gravadlax which turned out really well. I bless that woman’s memory.

Food has moved on very far and fast since the sixties and we live today like emperors lived in the past with the range and quality of what is in the shops.

A last thought. I remember watching ‘Tomorrow’s World’ on the TV in the sixties where they showed us food from the future:- a couple of pills on a plate. How I laugh when I think of that in Waitrose or M and S Simply Food!

khris210

I was born in 1942, and for the first 3 years of my life my Mum and I lived in a little village in the country with my "Aunt" Ev( elyn) while the men were at war. There were only a few children in the village and I suspect we were spoilt rotten with no shortage of food, but after the war things were different. My abiding memories are of baked potatoes and cheese on toast, but not at the same meal. Also sugar sandwiches (nothing wrong with my teeth, still got 27) my mother was not very domesticated and not a good cook. I think we had a roast most Sundays, I remember once my father dropped the ham joint in the washing up water. Quick rinse and nobody noticed! There was never much food in the house. We had a meat safe out in the yard - a box with a zinc mesh for a door. I remember my mother often saying "I'm not hungry" when mealtimes came around. Now my wife doesn't really understand when I clean my plate down to the pattern! I don't remember actually being hungry though. At 16 I joined the RAF and got three or four big meals a day, but have never weighed more than 11 stone. Lucky metabolism, I guess.

lynnedownunder

We had set meals on set days of the week which included sausages and mash, mince and potatoes or shepherds pie,, braising steak and potatoes, bacon, potatoes and turnip, fish and chips (from the freezer on food shopping night), always a roast on Sunday and fish and chips from the chippy on a Saturday as mum refused to cook!

stoozie1

It's amazing to me how many posters had a sunday roast whilst being relatively impoverished foodwise the rest of the week.

We are far from being in food poverty but I don't choose to afford a roast meal except at Christmas.

Nargleblast

Sundays years ago were more special, a proper roast dinner was the rule of the day. It wasn’t that expensive when you realise the leftovers formed the basis of a couple more days’ meals. You could have cold meat and pickles Monday, curry or pie Tuesday and make soup out of what was left.

[Deleted User]

Sundays in childhood were a day of rest, the shops open were little corner shops and that wasn't for all day either but everything else closed at 5.30 on Saturday afternoon and didn't re-open until Monday morning. Many people went to church on Sunday mornings and the roast for lunch was put in a slow oven as they went and ready enough so that only the veg had to be cooked when you got home again. Sunday afternoons were usually a walk and then a proper 'Sunday Tea' of cold meat, salad, bread and butter, tinned fruit and tinned cream and some kind of cake with a cup of tea followed that. Many people worked at manual and I think were glad to be able to take a rest on one day of the week.

Nargleblast

I remember shops being closed on Good Friday. The main meal was always served at lunchtime and it was always fish in some form or other. Hot cross buns were usually home made and only eaten on that day.

Primrose

Yes, Sundays were a special day for the family before the law changed and shops were allowed to open, so they merited a special roast dinner and I can recall my dad who had a senior office job still having to work Saturday mornings so Sunday was definitely a day for recharging of batteries or catching up with grandparents.

I sometimes think that in today’s frenzied times we would benefit from one weekend per month when shops were forced to close on Sundays so that working parents could have a little more “downtime” together. I suspect many more Sunday meals are taken on the hoof these days with snacks or takeaways.

oystercatcher

My experiences seem to be a bit different. I was born in the early 60's , my parents went vegetarian in the late sixties so my childhood memories of food center around cheese, lentils and that awful TVP (textured vegetable protein , made from soya) which was even more tasteless then than it is now.

Jacket potato with cheese and a helping of peas. macaroni cheese, lentil roast, pasta with tinned tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled on. Nut roast for christmas dinner and special occaisions. Cheese and mushroom rissoto was my very favourite meal. Pizza with a homemade base and masses of grated carrot and courgette under the cheese which went rather soggy and nasty .

Mum made all our bread , it was wholemeal and very solid, and all our jam and chutney for the year and wine which was given away as she didn't like my Dad drinking (as far as I know he wasn't excessive) !!

Mum also liked to find scavenged food so we had nettle soup which we hated, salad made from dandelion leaves, that was vile too. Homemade quince marmalade made from neighbours trees. I also remember experiments with making horseradish sauce from roots dug up 'over the fields' and collecting comfrey leaves , blackberries, elderberries, wild raspberries . I'm sure there were many other things I have forgotten too.

cuddlymarm

Hi guys
I was born in the early sixties and depending on the size of the lamb joint or chicken, this meant Sunday roast and then meals most of the week. Mum didn’t drive so we’d start with fresh veg and spuds at the beginning of the week to tinned towards the end. So it would be something like meat and chips on Monday, rissoles on Tuesday, soup made from the bones on Wednesday or even Thursday some weeks. Then fishfingers or egg and chips Friday. Liver and onions occasionally showed up, also meat or meat and potato pie or cottage pie. We always had tinned fruit, tinned rice pud and evaporated milk in because dad worked next door to the Libby’s factory.
Toast made on the fire was a treat and by the time I was late juniors at school I knew how to manage a pressure cooker. We didn’t have a freezer and the shops closed at 12 on Saturday and didn’t reopen till Monday so you made do with what there was. It fascinates me how people panic about the shops being closed for Xmas day. If Xmas fell wrong then the shops could be closed for 4 days and we were fine.
I also loved school dinners ( apart from Fridays if it was yellow fish day) I went to a small village school where we all ate the same, mainly a diet of cottage pie, pie and veg, sausage and mash, stew and dumplings etc and gorgeous pudding, really bright pink blamonge (not sure whether I spelt that right) semolina pud, Manchester tart, various sponges with custard and milky coffee and biscuits. I think we got the milky puds when there was a glut of milk that needed using.
We rarely had fish and chips from the chippy because it was too far away and I don’t remember any waste. Veg peels went on the compost heap only if it wasn’t able to be made into soup.
I don’t remember strawberries or salad in winter. Meals depended on what we had and it was an unspoken rule that you cleared your plate.
There just wasn’t the choice in the village shop that we expect today and what you didn’t have you didn’t miss.