What was day to day food in your childhood?

Eenymeeny

The thing that amazes me now is how far these dishes 'went' amongst 2 adults and 5 children in our family. One tin of tuna was mashed with vinegar and made into sandwiches for Sunday tea. Other weeks it was one tin of corned beef with pickled onions and beetroot added. Sunday was the only day we were allowed scones, jam tarts and other home-baked goodies. I still love a 'cakey tea' as an occasional treat.
Tinned fruit and jelly with 'Carnation milk' and bread and butter to 'fill up' was another treat. I've recently rediscovered ground rice with custard powder added to recreate Rice Creamola. We used to love that with a blob of jam in the middle. Apple/rhubarb/gooseberry crumble and custard always reminds me of cold autumn days when we were served 'something to warm us up'
It might seem like a lot of sweet stuff but when I think about it, one pint of custard would have been divided between al of us, so we mustn't have had very big portions!
My mother always cooked 'from scratch' as I don't think that there were many other options in those days. Even when 'convenience' foods were introduced they were sniffed at and declared not enough to feed a bird! Pasta, rice and curries were considered 'foreign food' and not proper food for a family. I do still maintain that we didn't start to have weight problems until we got used to thick sauces on everything, it was gravy or nothing in our house.
Shirley Goode was a rich source of economical recipes I remember my mother sending in to Pebble Mill for her factsheets and her blog is still available for anyone who is interested. Dorothy Sleightholme's Farmhouse Kitchen was another good source. Sorry Mrs LW I seem to have wandered off the subject but love your original question! Great posts everyone, I'm off to make mince and tatie stew for tea....

fuddle

I was born in 1979 and grew up in the 80's.

I was never breastfed and I know my mam gave me jars of baby food when weaning. She never understood why I would 'faff about' making purees for my girls when they are already made and in the shop. Growing up I had Smash mashed potato, hotdogs, tinned meatballs, burgers, pies and things like frozen pitta bread filled with 'kebab'. My mam had a mean deep fat fryer and anything not processed was cooked in there. I had OXO drinks with cream crackers to dip in as a snack and in my packed lunch every single day I had grated cheese sandwich with salad cream. I can't eat that now as an adult. When my dad came in from work he would give me his left over sandwich with was corned beef with tomato sauce. I loved that sandwich! Dad never ate it and I always did so why the heck I couldn't be given that extra sandwich at school I don't know.

My dad had an allotment before he died and I remember having real veggies as an older child. I couldn't eat them but I could eat my Mam's fryups for supper, the same veg included.

I remember a lot of trips to the chip shop and in my later teens we ate a lot of Chinese takeaways too.

She would make corned beef hash and it was disgusting. To this day I can't eat that. My Mam was a terrible cook but her mam was an amazing OS wife and mam. My theory was that my grandma was quite a control freak in her home and the skills just were never passed down. That and a time when ready made and processed were cheap and in abundance = quite a worrisome start for me really.

I've taught myself thanks solely to the internet and a little TV and even now I'm teaching myself even more in terms of cooking with raw, natural ingredients due to health issues.

We really are what we eat and as a child I was a sad, lonely, lacked confidence and quick to anger. There were sad circumstances but I wonder just how much of my poor mental state were because of such a poor diet?

I'm sorry I couldn't take you all down memory lane! It's been lovely to read

dp1

We had roast dinner on Sundays - beef or lamb - but I remember them both as being fatty and, as an adult, have never eaten meat with fat on. Always lovely homemade Yorkshire puddings and veg like cabbage and carrots from my granda's garden. My dad had mushy peas which my mam steeped overnight with a white tablet - he called them steepy peas. I can remember being sent back to Walter Wilsons because I'd forgotten to pick up the tablet which was next to the bags of peas. We had Sunday tea with cake and scones and sat at the dining table in the living room for this - all other meals were at kitchen table except for Christmas dinner. Sunday supper was half a bag of crisps! and a slice of bread and butter - my twin brother had the other half.
At my grannys on Saturdays it was always a proper tea on the big table with scones, sandwiches and cakes.
Weekday teas were egg and chips, fishfingers, crispy pancakes, stews, sausages. Saturday night sometimes a chippy tea....dad got fish and we shared chips and scratchings - the crispy bits of batter. I can't remember any pasta or rice though I do remember Vesta meals first coming out.
We got 2p on Saturdays to spend at the corner shop on sweeties = I could get a milky way or 6 chews. If we were lucky it was a 2 and a half pence coin. When the icecream man came we sometimes got sent out with a bowl for us all = never a cone unless we were on holiday.
We always sat together at the table, everyone sat still till all were finished then we said 'Please ma leave the table?' - I'm sure we all said this till we were big.
Oh, nearly forgot, we were given sugar sandwiches for supper!

LameWolf

I can't really remember a great deal; I do remember my mother forcing me to eat meat, after which I was invariably sick; "gravy" made by mixing an 0xo cube with half a pint of boiling water; and cabbage boiled to oblivion then put into a colander and squeezed out with the back of a saucer and the resultant yellow slime served up as a vegetable, but that's about it, I'm afraid.

I was so glad when I started work aged 16, and as a result bought and prepared my own food, so I could forego the chunks of dead animal!

The other thing I do recall was my grandmother's skill at slicing bread so thin you could almost read a newspaper through the slices! She used to butter the end of the loaf, then slice it by standing the loaf on it's crust end and slicing across the buttered top. She could slice the cheese to go in the sandwiches just as thin, too!

Pollycat

PasturesNew wrote: »

Sunday was a roast chicken, I have a strong memory of being with my parents in an early supermarket with dad and mum searching through the frozen chickens to find one that weighed exactly 1lb 15oz (0.8Kg).

As a child born early 1950s, IIRC chicken was expensive.
We had beef, lamb or pork for Sunday dinner but poultry was reserved for Xmas.

fuddle wrote: »

My Mam was a terrible cook but her mam was an amazing OS wife and mam. My theory was that my grandma was quite a control freak in her home and the skills just were never passed down. That and a time when ready made and processed were cheap and in abundance = quite a worrisome start for me really.

I've taught myself thanks solely to the internet and a little TV and even now I'm teaching myself even more in terms of cooking with raw, natural ingredients due to health issues.

That's really sad about your Mum but well done on teaching yourself to cook.

LameWolf wrote: »

I can't really remember a great deal; I do remember my mother forcing me to eat meat, after which I was invariably sick; "gravy" made by mixing an 0xo cube with half a pint of boiling water;

Anybody remember Burdall's Gravy Salt?

Primrose

Lots of stews and casseroles of various sorts which could be eked out with tinned butter beans. Tinned vegetables seems to form a greater proportion of our diet than ever they do now. We also had those hydrated dried peas. Lentil and other soups. Sausages and mash. egg and chips. Many meals were just things on toast like tinned beans, spaghetti, pilchards. Etc.
And snacks rarely in evidence apart from an occasional packet of plain Smiths crisps in a damp salty blue packet.
Salads certainly weren’t exotic like they can be today - just a leaf of round butterhead lettuce, a couple of slices of cucumber and a sliced tomato. Sometimes my mum went very exotic and included a small pile of freshly grated carrot !

spinningsheep

Fellow potter then Pollycat?

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and as much as we never had "set meals" depending on the day of the week our menus were quite repetitive.

I took packed lunches to school and this usually consisted of sandwich, pack of crisps, a biscuit like a kitkat or club, and a carton of juice. I seem to recall I had a matching Ghostbusters lunchbox and flask, the sort with a little handle on it. Sandwich fillings were PEK with ketchup, stuffed pork roll, cheese, cheese and pickled beetroot (my favourite to this day) corned beef and ketchup or sometimes cold bacon and cheese, which were always taken on journeys too like holidays to Blackpool.

We always went to my grandads on my mums side for tea once a week and this was steak, crinkle cut chips and peas, followed by victoria sponge with carnation. I still adore carnation to this day. They also had sterilized milk......vile. A throwback to the days when a fridge in the back kitchen was unheard of. I also remember going to my granny's on my dad's side, and she did lovely big Sunday dinners, usually beef, and we'd then have beef dripping on hot toast with a cup of tea for supper later on. Her favourite tea was cheshire cheese and milk grilled on a tin plate. And she ate it with her fingers, must have been asbestos! lol.

I always had bacon, egg, fried bread and oatcakes at grannies if i stayed over, but I always called it a "caravan breakfast" as they always stayed in their caravan at Trentham Gardens, and my absolute favourite tea was Festival brand tinned kidneys with mashed carrot and swede. Loved it.

At home my mums signature was cottage pie with peas, and she always boiled the mince before assembling, was dry, gravy added after. Her nana taught her this way and I won't have it any different now lol. I remeber sausage egg and chips, with the chips done in the chip pan obviously, lobby (stoke version of scouse) with dumplings, Cornish pasty, chips and tinned spaghetti (i hated beans), chicken kiev and chips, both frozen, casserole with baked potato, cauliflower and brocolli cheese with baked potato.

[Deleted User]

Thank you ALL! many memories evoked from all your smashing posts and not all of them with affection! I remember Vesta curries with loathing and the first Birds Eye frozen chicken drumsticks which were minute and Mother was convinced that convenience food was the VERY best thing that had ever happened in her life so we were fed it as often as the money available would allow. I remember Fray Bentos Pies and Goblin steak and kidney puddings in tins too neither of which I liked but I liked very much and still do 'blue peas' of the soak overnight in Bicarbonate of soda and then cook for a very long time the next day variety. I also remember Cremolia which I loathed with a passion and got fed most Sundays as pudding, I much preferred the leftover Yorkshires with golden syrup or jam. One of my favourite all time meals to this day is Bubble and Squeak but I cook mine in the oven now with some chopped cooking bacon on top and if we have it a small amount of cubed cheddar cheese, food of the Gods with brown sauce!

I can see that we mostly ate the same sort of foods with varying abilitied parents to prepare them for us, school meals were mostly very acceptable as I went to a school some 9 miles by bus from home and it was the only option during the week although they would insist onserving up what they called 'braised meat' which was a lump of fat and gristle with tough meat and 'tubes' still in it from veins etc, shudder making even in memory.

With your help I've reached the conclusion that we'd be happier going back to simpler foods and dropping most of the 'exotics' that seem to be the norm, going back to almost a meat and veg based menu plan and certainly not 'pulling' anything or making it 'American', 'Mexican', Middle Eastern' or many other cuisines in flavour except perhaps taking some inspiration from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe where things seem to still be 'old fashioned' and flavours much to our liking. Also trying to make more of vegetable/pulse/cereal based meals which can be extremely tasty to keep the cost down as much as I can of feeding us both. Thank you all so very much, Lyn xxx.

GreyQueen

I swear I have a mild form of PTSD with relation to pressure cookers. Can recall going into the kitchen and watching Mum's warily - having seem one explode scarred me for life, wouldn't give one house room, the mere hissing makes me nervy.

Other memories; dairylea cheese triangles, spread in sarnies or eaten neat from the fridge. Salads were a bit of cos lettuce, a tomato, bit of tuna or cheese and some cucumber. Never heard of salads like posh people ate and was publically humilated in my twenties when fixing a meal with housemates when one (a major's daughter) thrust a bowl of salad at me and ordered me to make a dressing. She was incredulous that anyone didn't know how to combine oil and vinegar but my childhood home had a small and antique bottle of olive oil in the medicine cabinet (earwax, treatment thereof, I think) and no one I knew ever ate the stuff. And vinegar was brown malt in a bottle and you put it on fish, not salad FGS.:rotfl:

Heinz salad cream was what you had on your salad, with homemade beetroots sometimes, and h.m picked onions.

One think Mum refused to transmit from her girlhood to our childhood was the dreaded suet, as it had featured prominently in both savoury and sweet dishes and she'd loathed it. She also had something against lamb, and wouldn't have it in the house. I was well on in adulthood before I tried it and found it OK.:p

Another rellie is nervous about gravy, as her Dad used to shoot birds for the pot and gravy was often booby-trapped with lead pellets, which made dining a bit nerve-wracking.

On reflection, cooking was plain, very much of the meat & two veg style. Fresh fruit was available in unlimited supply, things like cakes and biscuits and crisps and chocolate rather scarce, although I did have my 5p for the sweetie shop once a week (10 times ha'penny sweeties, spending an eon choosing them was half the fun).

We didn't eat takeaways, there was a nearby chippy but money was always tight and home cooking was the order of the day.

TBH, I marvel at the many and various things you can get to eat now, at not-extortionate prices (thank you YS time) and wouldn't particularly want to be transported back into the early 1970s.

Linda32

I remember a few things.

Fish Finger sandwiches way before they were trendy. Sunblest bread in the paper wrapper.

Boil in the bag beef was the closest we got to a Sunday Roast. We had boil in the bag white fish in parsley sauce as well.
Vesta curry was quite exotic I still remember how those crispy bits curled around as they cooked.

My Mum used to make the most horrible scones known to man, put me off for life. She made them most days or so it seemed.

We would have a block of ice cream as a treat, I seem to remember.

Findus crispy pancakes of course. Mum didn't like Frey Bentos pies so we were spared those.

She wouldn't have anything to do with offal either.

I seem to remember something about soaking peas as well with a bicarb tablet.

I was definitely made to drink the water the cabbage was boiled in. Apparently it was good for me.

Just remembered about fresh (from the meat counter) faggots. Totally different from the frozen type.

I'm not sure if this is giving any new ideas but I am certainly enjoying the thread. :T