Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Honeysucklelou2

My grandmother made the best cottage pie with minced beef. I've never tasted anything like it...not sure what her secret was but all carefully homemade. Regarding the fussy eating, I wouldn't have time to do a separate meal for each child :eek:. There are 2 choices in our house...take it or leave it:rotfl:

Toni'sfriend

When I was small we didn't have a choice. Eat what was put in front of you or starve.

My mother made great soup but everything else, regardless of what it was, was cooked at the same temperature (high) for the same length of time (as long as possible). She made liver that you could sole your shoes with. Luckily I spent a lot of time at my Grandparents.

Dottles1

Oh how this brings back memories. My mother was a terrible cook too. She has this thing she made by melting cheese and milk together. The cheese was so strong it would catch the back of my throat and we had to eat it fast as once it cooled it became a solid rubbery lump. Yuck!! :rotfl:
Foxgloves regarding the Borlotti beans - I plan to eat some and dry some for over the winter. That's the plan but it does however, depend on how many are produced.

foxgloves

Some interesting memories here about childhood food. Yes, liver. My Mum had two ways of doing liver. One was to put it in a casserole dish, pour over a tin of beef & vegetable soup & cook it. It was quite tasty if we had it with proper potatoes which we did sometimes have, despite my sister refusing to eat any potato other than the sort which the aliens watched us 'peel with our little knives' (cultural reference probably lost on anyone under 50!) The other method was coating it in flour & frying it which was actually quite tasty, but oh my days, it was tough. You could have used it in hammer throwing contests.
I agree with you WTMA that those shopping on a budget TV programmes are eye-opening. Of course despite always having had the knowledge & skill to cook economically, due to excellent home economics lessons at school, I didn't choose this path during the Spendy Years, so while I am routinely horrified by the amount of money the families featured are spending, I am trying not to do it in too judgemental a way, because I've had years in the past of going along to W*itrose with no shopping list, just putting exactly what we fancy in the trolley, then of course, there'd be extra top-up shops in the week, because this is the inevitable result of having no shopping list or the faintest clue as to a meal plan for the week ahead. A recent family featured from London.....nice family, seemed quite affluent.....gosh, I couldn't believe what they were spending, & it always amazes me that even now when taste test after taste test shows that the most expensive rarely seems to correlate with the top taste score, so many people seem utterly hooked on brands. But as we've kind of been discussing on here, the biggest shock is how many families clearly don't share the same meal. I can recall seeing one a long time ago where there were 4 children & they ALL had something different. I think you'd have to be on quite a decent income to be able to afford that on a daily basis. As a non-parent, I do try not to judge people who are parents, but at the same time, I can't help wondering how on earth this situation has developed. How can children have arrived at pre-teens/early teens and not eat a single vegetable that isn't chips? I know there are people with food allergies......peanuts is the big one, isn't it, milk, gluten, etc, & sometimes quite random things......for instance mr f can't eat raw peppers. he has to dissect restaurant salads quite carefully to make sure he doesn't eat a piece by mistake, as even the smallest piece causes instant violent retching, despite the fact that he actually LIKES peppers.....so there are genuinely things kids need to avoid. I can't help wondering if it's mostly a case of parents wanting an easier life though.......I mean being prepared to cook from a range of frozen beige food options & allowing complete opt-out of fruit & vegetables. Am I being unfair because I'm not a parent? I always think it must be so much more time-consuming too, having to make multiple different meals. Having said that, my Mum was quite a freaky eater. In her last year, it was quite difficult food shopping with her, as she'd say she'd 'gone off' lots of her usual meal choices (all ready meals) but if you suggested different things, she didn't like the sound of them. I put it down to her living through the war years/rationing & also being in a household where the wage was very small & so she always had to eat whatever was put on her plate.
Anyway, I'd better stop chatting about food & think about preparing some......I need to pop down the garden & cut some salad before the rain starts again, although we haven't had all the thunder & lightning we were promised.....I feel quite short-changed. I like a good storm to clear the muggy air.
Must get cracking,
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

The multiple meals things gets to me too. I couldn't imagine.

I guess it starts with genuinely not liking one thing and then pushing the boundaries further and further and you don't realise it's happened until one day you are cooking 6 meals to feed 4 people...

Onebrokelady

I have never cooked multiple meals for my girls when they were little but do understand why some parents end up going down that path, you are sometimes out under so much pressure by health professionals about how much your children should be eating that you just feed them whatever they want in desperation

I was once called at home by my GP after my eldest daughters school contacted him to say they were worried she was malnourished because they had done a health check ( without my consent I might add ) and she was registering as very small for her age

My GP had to call us in and check out both my daughters to make sure they were growing properly, luckily for me my GP knew us very well so he knew that my eldest daughter was 9 weeks premature and only weighed 3lbs 7 ozs when she was born add in a mother who weighed 7st and was 5ft tall plus a dad who was the right weight but only 5ft 8 and you end up with a child who is very small for her age

I was mortified and very angry and the upshot was i lost confidence in my self as a parent even though my GP had reassured me that I was doing everything I should be doing,I used to dish up huge adult size meals for my girls and make them sit at the table until the food was gone because I was worried someone would accuse me of starving them

Once they started school they both decided that veg was the enemy despite eating it previously,I once sat them both down with just a plate of peas each because I lost my temper with them both

I also used to make this fish pie that they both hated,it turned out to be a blessing in disguise though because I could get them to eat almost anything after that by threatening them with fish pie for tea if they didn't eat what I had served up:rotfl:

takingcontrolatlast

My mum was a poor cook! I remember the staple of mince, carrot and onion with a dollop of mash ... with cabbage... hated it as a child but love cabbage now. We weren't allowed down from the table until it was eaten. Other staples similar to already posted was watery stew and an occasional pork chop and boiled potatoes and peas...(actually love that now)!

With regard to packet alien eating mashed potatoes.. I used to watch great Aunty make potato cakes with it. She added in currants and we ate them for supper covered in butter .. I used to love them. And when she introduced crinkle cut chips to me with brown sauce.. I thought she was amazing!

Saturday at her house consisted of a slice of ham, lettuce and a tomato with a slice of bread and butter.

I remember laughing when I had a meal in front of her as an adult ... she said I ate like a man :rotfl:

We never had puddings as a child but we did have the occasional rice pudding (courtesy of Aunty) and the occasional vanilla ice cream ... memories

foxgloves

It's been interesting reminiscing about childhood food memories.
Dottles - I think it was you who mentioned being given cheese cooked in milk.....Mr f was also fed this concoction as a child, though it sometimes seems to have had an egg in it too. He made it once not long after he first moved in with me & despite being a very unpicky eater myself - there are very few things I won't eat - the sight of it made my insides wobble a bit. I think they were given it when they were ill. I don't think it would have worked for me, except possibly as an emetic!

WTMA - I think you are probably right that that kids not liking one or two things grows gradually into full control of what they are prepared to eat & suddenly parents are cooking multiple meals most nights. I'm not saying I wouldn't accommodate genuine food dislikes. I've said before that when my nephews were small (in fact I still do it) & due to come & stay at out house, I'd always ask them in advance to think about the three foods they would least like to see on their plates. They were each allowed to choose 3 different ones & I promised not to serve those foods to them as long as they ate everything else without moaning & pushing food around their plates pretending they are eating it. They really used to engage with this & then the older one would text me to let me know their three satanic foods.

OBL - I think you have a real point there when you said that once they were at school, your girls decided vegetables were the enemies. I think it is largely a learned behaviour. Partly because if you are in reception class & your teacher says the word 'cabbage' & everyone goes '"Uuuuuuurrrrgggghh!!!" then the kids who always ate cabbage & similar quite happily before then now decide it's much cooler not to like it. I've witnessed this myself when I was working with children. Then once fruit & vegetables are rarely eaten, or in many cases not at all, they taste very bland compared to ready meals, junk microwaved options like all the varieties of crispy beige nuggetty things, etc, so 'salt', 'sugar' & 'cripsy' become the familiar comfort zone. My oldest nephew liked all his parents' home cooked food until he started eating at friends' houses occasionally after school & then the bought-in crispy beige stuff started being seen as more attractive....which I guess is why manufacturers stuff these things with so much salt & sugar. Interesting too (I can't remember where I read this) that school staff are apparently seeing growing numbers of children who have no idea how to use a knife & fork, which was attributed to 'ping' meals being finger food stuff.
Well, it's actually not raining today, so I'm going to go & get one load of washing pegged out & another one on the go. I've normally done all the week's laundry by Wednesday, but I waited for a dry day rather than have to pay to use the heated airer.
No sunshine here yet.....just a vast expanse of grey. Cat hasn't even stuck his nose outside the door yet.
Cheers all,
F x

maryb

I used to tell my girls they were not allowed to be fussy about 'everyday' foods but if it was something less common and expensive that grownups liked, they didn't have to eat it. One of them hates avocado so I never made her eat it but they accepted having to eat just about everything else. They are a bit pickier now they are adults tbh with one of them not eating tomatoes and the other one flatly refusing ever to eat rhubarb again as long as she lives.

But I drummed into them that if they went to someone else's house they had to eat whatever was put in front of them otherwise their friend's mother would really not like them. Yeah, yeah, they said until one day at a friend's house another girl went urghh! at something the mother had cooked. Next day they learned from their friend that her mother thought this girl was really badly brought up. After that they thought their mum wasn't such an old fusspot after all

foxgloves

I think that's a good point about manners, Maryb. I remember my sis telling me about an occasion when a picky eater came to tea. She'd heard he was fussy so had provided lots of choices, buffet style. He sat down, pointed to each food in turn saying 'I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that' to everything. I can't remember what she gave him in the end, but subsequent visits from this child has meant her having to buy in beige foods. I think I might have mentioned it to his parents & just said something like "It was lovely to have him over & the boys really enjoyed it" & then suggested he brings a pack-up next time, as he seems to eat such a limited number of foods. He's a lot older now & still apparently eats like this.