What was day to day food in your childhood?

GwylimT

We ate a lot of spam, normally with chips or smash and gravy. We had a lot of vesta meals as well, mainly the chow mein. On a Saturday and Sunday our lunch was a cup of gravy (from granules), with bread or mash. My parents used to make cheese and potato pie quite often but they would add baked beans as well. Tinned sardines on toast was our friday dinner, always the ones in tomato sauce.

My favourite meal though was potted mead sandwiches dipped in tinned chicken soup.

We had angel delight every single day for pudding.

We used to have milk a lot (grew up on a dairy farm).

When I was diagnosed with coeliacs disease I geuinely ate nothing but cheese and potato pie for about six months! School used to give me a plate of boiled potatoes and something claiming to be beef.

GwylimT

Pollycat wrote: »

Slightly off-topic but.......did anyone else have to ask to leave the table after eating?

No, my parents were farmers so there was never time for family meals as there were animals to tend to. It was always a fight to get to the oven first to get the biggest portion!

figrat

So cold here today, and found myself hankering after a meal my mother used to make.
Tomato soup, with added butterbeans. Topped with bits of fried bacon, served with slabs of buttered white bread.
So I raided google and my larder, cooked butterbeans, made soup (both in pressure cooker) and fried up bacon lurking in the fridge.
My, was it good!

ripplyuk

This thread has fascinated me

My memories are of the 80's/90's. With both my parents working full time, there wasn't much time or interest in cooking. I could count on one hand the amount of times we had something properly home-made, in my entire childhood. Everything was convenience food, pre-packaged. We mainly ate chips, for both lunch and dinner. Chips with sausages and beans at one meal, chicken nuggets the next, burgers the next etc. Always deep fat fried chips too since oven chips aren't as nice. There was also things like spaghetti bolognese and pasta bakes (all from a jar) occasionally.

Breakfast was Coco pops, sugar puffs, lucky charms etc. We could help ourselves to biscuits, sweets, buns, crisps, endless diluting juice, fizzy drinks etc. We bought plenty more sweets every day in the shop after school.

My mum did cook some sort of roast dinner occasionally for my dad but us kids weren't expected to eat that, thank goodness. I did try the roast chicken and mash once but hated it, and the beef was like chewing on leather. She would let us eat whatever we liked instead.

I have no complaints about the food when I was growing up. I loved it. Though I never had real butter until 2003 when I met my partner. It's far nicer than those fake spreads we had!

NMu

My childhood food consisted of the usual cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch (usually with the leftovers from the previous night's dinner for a filling) during the week. Evening meals were home cooked, usually sausage, mash and veg; cottage pie with veg; pork chop with potato and veg - basic, home cooked food, really. On Saturday mornings we sometimes had a special breakfast of poached smoked haddock or else fresh fruit before our toast or cereal. Sometimes on Saturdays we had a bowl of homemade soup with a bread roll. On Sundays we had a roast for lunch, with roast potatoes, veg and gravy. The usual money-saving seemed to come from buying food that was a bit cheaper, especially on offer or from cheaper stores, and then spending more time and care (and finding recipes that worked) to make the meals tastier. Also, obviously, never wasting anything and using up all leftovers in meals the following day (cold roast meat from Sunday makes good sandwiches on Monday). We never bought food or drinks when we were out, except occasionally, when it was a special treat, and then usually only a toasted sandwich from a reasonably priced cafe on a Saturday lunchtime during a shopping trip out. We ate out at a restaurant for our evening meal once a month (or less often), but that was a real treat and we occasionally had take-away (once a month or less often). We didn't snack much between meals, but ate larger portion sizes during meals to make up for it (we were and are still all slim). It seems to me one of the money-saving ways to eat well is to be careful of the expensive extras (coffee when out, shop-bought lunches during the week and snacks) and to cook from scratch using healthy wholesome foods where possible. It's also a good idea to treat yourself on a regular, if infrequent basis, so you don't feel like you're missing out - so, for example, a good chocolate once a week, rather than every day. Same for treats like ice cream, not every day. Rather than seeing that as depriving yourself, regard the treat as that much extra special because it's not had that often, so you don't get so used to it. Fill up on healthy, nutritious food at meal times, especially wholegrains and healthy protein (include protein in every meal to avoid hunger pangs or cravings for snacks between meals) and limit your snacking to nutritious foods like nuts and seeds. That will help your health and wellbeing and take you away from sugar craving and expensive, nutritionally-poor snacks. Trust this helps. Good luck with your meal planning.

shanks77

I remember the findus pancakes, we had gammon and pineapple, mince and tatties, roast chicken with skirlie, stews, chops, stuffed marrow (hated with a passion), herring (used to love with loads of vinegar but the thought of the bones makes me gag) homemade soup, homemade meatloaf with a spicy tomato sauce and a birthday treat was pork and beans (belly pork cut into cubes fried with an onion then put in a casserole dish with baked beans and topped with mash still a favourite today. Puddings were yogurts, fresh fruit, angel delight, rice pudding, fruit with custard, artic roll, or what we called jelly fluff which was a jelly with a tin of carnation milk whisked and left to set. We did not get pudding every night and always had to ask to be excused from the table.

[Deleted User]

Friday tea was always beef stew.

Sunday was always chicken dinner day, with the leftover chicken, served with vegetables, for Monday tea.