What was day to day food in your childhood?

Pooky

I was born in 73 - I know now that Mum and Dad were seriously hard up but had no inkling at the time....the way it should be I suppose.

Sunday was always roast potatoes, if it was a flush week then beef or chicken if it was a tight one then “posh sausages”as they were called....which just meant sausages roasted in the oven. Sometimes it was toad in the hole. If it was beef then there’d be a suet pudding steaming away too to fill tummies.

Monday night was always egg chips and beans with bread and marg. proper chips from the chip pan, one egg and a tiny tin of beans between 4 of us.

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday was a mix of maybe a lamb stew and dumplings (on a tight week this was all 3 days just padded out with extra veg), jacket potatoes with cheese and a bowl of soup, corned beef with mash and salad, liver and bacon with mash and cabbage, sausagemeat patties with chips and peas.

Friday night was always chippie night - Some weeks it was just chips and bread and marg, some times we could have a sausage or a fish cake, depending on finances.

We had packed lunches at school so a sandwich and biscuit and maybe a pack of crisps once a week.

Fruit was whatever was grown in the garden, salad bits too. I definitely didn’t get 5 a day.

Our finances are really tight at the moment so we’ve shifted back to simpler foods but we’re happy to go without meat most of the week which helps. Not something Mum would have done.

Typical meals now include veg chilli, roasted veg risotto, jacket spuds with various toppings, pasta bakes (cheese and cauliflower or mince based). All things that can be padded out to make them stretch.

Since our DDs left home it’s been far easier to just have a cheese and biscuits or egg on toast night too as I don’t feel the need to create a big meal to fill them up.

Hard_Up_Hester

Queengoth that should say mars bar, not marshal, bloody predictive text.

LameWolf

Frith wrote: »

Made to eat everything on the plate whether we liked it or not.

Or if we were actually full - oh gods, yes I remember that. I was always in trouble because I was a slow eater. If time ran out (ie there was something else needed doing and time was a factor) anything left on the plate at that point was given back to me for my next meal.

Pollycat

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

LameWolf

Pollycat wrote: »

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

Yes, absolutely! Wasn't allowed to speak til I'd finished eating, either. And as you'll guess from my earlier post, I would still be trying to plough my way through my food when my parents had long finished.

I'm sure it's why I don't enjoy eating, to this day!

Izadora

Pollycat wrote: »

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

Yes, we would have to say "Thank you for my dinner, may I get down now please" before we could leave. My mum once made me stay in my highchair all day because I refused to say thank you for a meal

I was lucky that my mum was a good cook and took the time to teach my brother and me. We grew up with a fairly good mix of traditional 'meat and veg' dinners and slightly more exotic stuff and pretty much everything was made from scratch, even curries. I didn't realise at the time that it was because there wasn't the money to be able to buy convenience food but I still much prefer home-made things now.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I grew up in the 80s. My main memories are:

-white bread and margarine. My parents remain suspicious of decent, seeded bread and proper butter to this day.
-"salad" meant limp iceberg lettuce, tomato and cucumber. No dressing.
-lunchbox chocolate bars meant Penguins, Trios, 54321s, Clubs or Fives. They didn't do multipacks of "grown up" bars like Crunchie, Flake etc like they do now, not sure why.
-my mum used cling film or plastic bags to wrap sandwiches in, never foil which was more cool. Honestly, kids are ridiculous!
-things that were advertised on telly that looked really cool, inevitably tasted rank (to me anyway) eg plastic DairyLea triangles, flavoured milk, Pepperami, Sunpat peanut butter.

I became a vegetarian aged 11, having disliked meat and meat-flavoured things all my life. My main hatred was mince, which featured a lot as it was cheap. The way it greyed, shrivelled and went wrinkly in the pan, the smell, the dreary fatty taste; feel sick just thinking about it.

My mum was a pretty heavy-handed cook. It wasn't until I left home that I realised fruit crumble was supposed to be "crumbly"; it was always a solid concrete slab when my mum made it.

LameWolf

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

I became a vegetarian aged 11, having disliked meat and meat-flavoured things all my life.

Oh you are so lucky; I had to wait til I was 16 and was buying my own food. I was desperately underweight as a child, because I was always sick after eating meat.

purpleybat

i'm a 70s kid.
I don't remember ever having a set day for a particular meal, apart from sunday roast, but remember the following meals:-
steak and kidney stew.... always LOADS of kidney and not much steak and always LOADS of butter beans, day 3 or 4 of stew would have baked beans in it to stretch it.
sausages, mash and whatever veg was in stock.
potato and onion pie... sometimes with a bit of cheese but usually not, served with mash oddly (spud overdose!!)
bubble and squeeeeeek with eggs and ketchup
liver and onion casserole
endless soups
bacon and onion steamed suet pud crisped up in the oven to finish off
macaroni cheese with various veg in (still make mine like this today)
occasional boney pork chop
leftover roast chicken sausages (I still make these too, like a Glamorgan sausage but with chicken instead of cheese)
rabbit stew or pie.
toad in the hole.
various mince meals... cottage pies, burgers, meatloaf. tho I don't remembermy mother making anything like a spag bol my sister made them after she'd died and had taken over cooking.
with the advent of a freezer came brains faggots, the dreaded frozen sprouts, and a seemingly endless pea supply.
bread and butter was always on the table.
puddings were fruit, rice pudding, semolina (with a blob of jam), fruit salad with evaporated milk or angel delight. I usually had a jam butty if space after dinner, school milk (warm, rancid, unshaken) put me off milk for life.

trailingspouse

This is jogging so many memories.

No, I didn't have to ask to be excused after eating. And we were allowed to talk during meals - I remember staying overnight at a friend's house and eating the evening meal I was shocked that they (and I!!) weren't allowed to talk at all. And I remember being shocked by the behaviour of my friend and her brother - opening their mouths to show their food, kicking each other under the table. Maybe if their parents had chatted to them, they wouldn't have needed to behave like that!!