typical weekly menus in 1960

Lillibet_2

Not a child of the60's myself & my Mum is horrified that I have a "pattern" to my menu planning but this is my modern take on the idea & I find having a loose plan with flexability within the general idea works best for us (it's worth noting that I work between 4-8pm on Mon/Tues/Thurs) :

Mon : Slow cooker meal : chicken chasseur/sausage casserol/Morroccan lamb/lamb casserol/Lanacishe hotpot/beef burgenion (sp?)/chilli/rustic game in season etc with rice, pasta or cous-cous.
Tues : Plated up microwaved leftovers from Monday evening:o.
Weds : "Cheap" night : beans on toast/ egg & chips/ cheese, biscuits & chutney/jacket spud & tuna/cheese/coleslaw etc followed by HM rice pudding & tinned fruit or similar.
Thurs : Pie night or stuffed veggie night (e.g marrow/peppers etc), usually made from frozen leftover roast etc or a fish pie, with instructions to hubby on when to turn the oven on so it's ready when I get home from work. I put lots of veg in the pies so that it's a "one pot meal" & hubby doesn't have to worry about anything more complicated than turning the oven to the right tempreature at the right time.
Fri : Pasta night followed by a shop bought pudding & accompanied by a couple of glasses of wine!
Sat "Home made takeaway" night : Pizza/Mexican/curry/Chinese etc. And whatever's left in the bottle of wine.
Sun : Either fish or a roast.

On non-specified pudding nights there's always HM yogurt or fruit if we want it.

Lunches tend to be either sandwiches, quiche or rice/pasta salad made up of leftovers & extra salad or veggies.

Breakfast for hubby is porridge with a portion of sultanas & a HM smoothie for me (one heaped ramakin dish of frozen blueberries & blackberries, one small banana, one ramakin dish of musli, one ramakin dish of HM yogurt, one ramakin dish of apple juice). Sometimes a cooked breakfast on a weekend btu not every weekend.

Snacks tend to be fruit & we both tend to have a chocolate bar every day:o but we are happy with this as we eat healthily the rest of the time, get our 3 portions of fiber & 5 of fruit & veg, and after all, everything in moderation!:D

HTH;)

nearlyrich

Someone mentioned a parafin heater, we had them about the house too, strange but comforting smell and you had to learn to be careful as they could be knocked over easily.

It's a wonder we survived LOL.

oldMcDonald

I loved the swmell of the parafin heater, we used to have one in the outside loo in winter to stop the pan and the cistern from freexing solid (it was the only loo we had and it was a disaster if it froze!) - this was in the 70's when all my friends had indoor loos, I was so envious of them!

I remember that Sunday was always roast, followed by trifle or a crumble. Monday would be bubble and squeek, Friday fish and chips. I still do a roast potato meal on Sundays now, but no meat as we are veggies:)

JayJay14

My Dad used to leep a tiny parafin lamp on the floor near the loo to stop the water from freezing in the u-bend in winter!!!

I remember that he wouldn't eat rice or pasta 'worms' so during the school hols my mum and me would share a Vesta beef curry or risotto - the hight of sophistication.

We lived in Cumbria, there were no chip shops anywhere near but the village shops were very good - my mum prided herself that she didn't run an account at any of them so we didn't live on 'tick'.

She used to eat tripe cold filling up all the holes with vinegar - I have never tasted it - just couldn't bring myself to ever try. She always made pudding even on weeknights and most meals were meat and two veg, she used 2 presure cookers quite often at the same time!! Dad grew lots of fruit and veg.

I do have fond memories of sitting on the back doorstep with the Xmas turkey hanging on the door knob plucking the feathers out - I must have been about 7 then. The turkey was a big as me as mum used to ask the farmer to pick her a 25lb one:rotfl: We had no freezer but always lots of visitors so it got eaten.

Some of the memories on this thread have got me thinking though of some of the things I haven't eaten for ages - I'll have to try some of them again.

safesound

Does anyone remember soup cubes? Kinda like stock cubes only they made an instant soup? My DH (a child of the 70's) insists he remembers them but being a child of the 80's I dont. I've emailed Knorr but they say it wasnt them.

Olliebeak

I remember the Chef soups in a box! smaller than a box of matches! Think they started around the mid to late 60's

Tibbie's_mum

withabix wrote: »

This thread is great.

I'm only 38, but I was a 'late only child' - my mum had me when she was nearly 40 in 1969 - not a recommended age to have a child at back then!!

Our family has therefore virtually 'missed' a generation, so the old fashioned way of doing things has carried on further than it may have in some families.

Some of my memories (as mentioned in thread above):

Slices of ice cream - oh yes, I remember those long cardboard boxes it came in. Cream of Cornish was bought for celebrations, made entirely from additives and no milk or cream (or vanilla!) I seem to recall!! Although around the Fylde, Bonds of Elswick was the normal fare - proper ice cream.

Tripe - my dad still has this when he can find it. I would never ever eat the stuff!

Liver (done in flour and fried), kidneys (yuk), cow's tongue (can't remember what that was like), heart etc...

Yellow fish (finnan haddock to be more precise).....yumm! Manx kippers were popular as well.

Bacon and egg are officially allowed at tea time by the way, along with our other national dishes such as fish n chips, Sunday leftovers and errr....curry! I still have roast leftovers for at least Monday and sometimes as sarnies. There's nothing like cold roast beef, pork or chicken....mmmmmmm! Cold meat and chips!

Vesta boxes - I remember frying those crispy bits that came inside the box - what were they supposed to be??? Crispy noodles?

As for people saying chicken was rare and expensive - I'm assuming you are children of the '50s?? Post-war, chickens were for laying eggs, not eating. You only ate a chicken when it got old, injured or stopped laying (or errr...died)! Male chickens were the normal fare otherwise (as they are now). My mother and her parents had bantams in the back yard at Lytham.

Meatloaf - nobody has mentioned that!! I guess that was homemade Spam?

Fritters - little rounds of fried pancake batter.

Fried bread - normally accompanying the bacon and eggs at tea time. Slices always cut diagonally from square bread!

Beef dripping from the butchers - came in a paper carton. Can you still get that?

Nobody has mentioned rabbit stew....I remember the butchers in Lytham having a row of rabbits hung up on hooks outside the window even in the 70s and 80s, along with pheasants, mallards and other similar stuff, complete and fully recognisable of course...

Snap, I was born in 1970 to a forty year old Mum and my elderly grandmother also lived with us. My family seemed so behind the times. I remember all the things you've mentioned, and I lived on bacon and egg for years as I was a fussy eater and that was the one thing I would eat, but even so, I was stick thin, I think it was the fact that we went everywhere on our bikes in those days.........gawd, I'm sounding old!!!!!!

Burlesque_Babe

I was born in 1970 and whilst I don't think we had a set menu each week, there was a definite repetitive-ness.

I remember it was often fish and chips on a Friday lunch when I was little - dear me, the day chips went to 20p a bag - the consternation in the household over the price!!! Dinner (or tea as I was still up north then!) would have been beef stew with onion, carrots, thinly sliced potatoes and dumplings - usually on a Saturday, mince pie made on a plate, fishfingers, 'yellow fish' ( we got it free as my Dad's uncle worked at the docks).

I also remember sardines in tomato sauce on toast or sandwiches (bleurgh), potted beef sandwiches (bleurrrrgh), beef dripping sandwiches, Arctic roll, luncheon meat sandwiches, Vesta curry (how posh was that?!) and my Mum being very ahead of her time by doing spaghetti bolognaise. She went to night class to learn cookery in the late 70s and for ages it seemed that we had custard slices for pudding - they were amazing!! Chips, lumpy mash, liver and onions, not much chicken for some reason, rarely any kind of joint. We never had tripe, although I used to see it regularly in the butcher's and it used to freak me out a bit - the honeycomb stuff just looked so weird. We used to have the boxes of icecream - usually Neapolitan or maybe raspberry ripple. We seemed to have baked apples filled with mincemeat quite regularly ( I think that was Delia's influence!). I never liked mince stuffed marrow, but that seemed to be served occasionally (when marrow is in season I guess).

My parents lived (and still live) close to 2 butchers and I used to feel so posh when I got to 13 or so and I was allowed to go and ask for a pork chop, but not over 75 pence please! That was for me, not sure why I got such luxuries really as i'm the eldest of 4!

Bacon grill..........just remembered Bacon Grill........shudder......can you still get it? It used to give me headaches for some weird reason.

withabix

Bacon Grill - that was a Plumrose thing, now owned by Tulip in Europe (SPAM, Plumrose, Danepak, Stagg, Tulip, Celebrity) but I don't think Bacon Grill is a current product. Was it just SPAM in another tin?

Arctic Roll. Bleurghh - made of carwash sponges and dayglo non-dairy ice cream style product! A staple of Iceland still I think!

Talking of Spam, what a versatile product...

Burlesque_Babe

No, it was different to Spam. It had a weird smoky taste to it, but there was something in it that made my head hurt so much!!

We had luncheon meat fritters and also corned beef fritters at school and when we went on holiday (always a holiday cottage, somewhere wet in Scotland or near Whitby, but lovely) corned beef hash was the holiday 'treat'. It was yum. Oooh, I could eat a big dish of that right now.

Arctic roll was so posh in the early 80s - the predecessor of Vienetta I guess in the 'poshness' stakes!!