To ask what did your granny eat?

Fresh fruit and porridge for breakfast. Cooked breakfast on a Sunday. Fish & chips from the chippy every Friday. The rest of the time it was home cooked meat and two veg. Very little alcohol, perhaps a sherry for Granny now and again. There were always biscuits in the tin but no other snacks at all.

Rice pudding, crumble.
I make plenty of crumbles in the winter but rarely rice pud. I’m craving it now, might make some in the winter.

As an adult she ate the kind of food described above - home cooked, often home grown, traditionally British, plain fare. Very healthy, totally unprocessed.

But growing up (1920s/1930s) she was malnourished - her mum was widowed young, got left with debts and she was one of 5 kids. She got put on castor oil at school. Her mum did her best but had no money. And then in the war and afterwards there was rationing. Not so healthy. She ended up with dreadful osteoporosis which I’m sure was linked to the malnutrition.

Much smaller portions, no snacks, home cooked everything, manual work for the men and lots of housework and walking daily to the shops for the women.

I can still remember being trailed round lots of shops by my Nan (born 1901) because she reckoned she could get her potatoes cheaper somewhere else. We generally ended up back at the first shop.

Fryups and Toffypops. Those weird cupcakes with a solid layer of chocolate icing on top. Haslet sandwiches.

Yes, all of this. And for tea, lovely white bread with butter, tomatoes from Grandad’s garden, and Shippams paste. And if you ate at least two slices of bread, you could have cake (Grandma’s homemade cakes or in the latter years, Viscount biscuits too.)

Paternal grandmother- home cooked basics.

Maternal a brilliant cook, however she only died in the early 90s and was very happy with all the modern food as well - frozen waffles, canned soup, microwave popcorn. She could have made it all but worked from choice until she died in her early 70s.
Id probably need to go generation before that to get to eating basic food without convenience foods.

Home cooked meals. Roast on Sundays. Leftovers made into rissoles.Then offal, tripe, liver, heart. Rabbit stew.Eggs featured quite heavily too.Chips cooked in dripping. Apple pie, little buns and cakes. Parkin, caraway seed cake, scones and delicious flat bread known as “new cake.”
The tea time treat was tinned salmon sandwiches and bought Battenberg cake.

The other thing I just remembered is that she walked to the shops and back every single day! Except Sunday of course as everything was shut.

Home made mince and onion pie. Roast chicken/pork chops/silverside with potatoes and vegetables. My granny grew her own potatoes and vegetables, so they were really fresh. Chicken casserole. Irish stew. A very particular and recognisable vegetable soup that everyone in NI makes! Lentil soup with a whole ham or gammon boiled in it. Home made scones and tray bakes and sponge cakes. Apple pie. Rhubarb pie. Pudding rice with prunes. My mum made similar in the seventies/eighties, with a few convenience foods thrown in.

My grandmother had been a cook in service to a wealthy family in Knightsbridge, so although she didn't have access to the expensive food she cooked for them, she was a great cook. I still have her handwritten recipe book from back then, and it has surprisingly interesting recipes in.

But yes, at home she made everything from scratch, and home made pies were a thing, as was oxtail and other cheap cuts of meat slow cooked in stews. Oh, dvd dumplings in the stew if course. She also made fruit flans, and I always baked with her as a kid, simple things like rock buns and crumbles and bread and butter puddings.

Sunday, Roast, 2veg, potatoes (usually boiled or new in summer) and gravy
monday, sliced cold meat from the roast, mash and veg in winter, salad in summer
tuesday, stew, with the remains of the roast, lots of root veg and boiled potatoes or sometimes a Shepard’s pie, had her own mincer and would mince the cooked roast meat. Her Shepards pie was lovely with lots of gravy.
wednesday, chops, veg, potato and gravy
thursday, sausages or liver and bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans and bread
friday, usually vegetarian as firmly convinced you shouldn’t eat meat every day. Made a cheese and potato pie , or a cauliflower pie, which also had quite a bit of cheese, served with veg or salad in the summer
saturday, sometimes fish and chips, sometimes a cheese or egg salad and bread

most weeks very similar, lots of veggies, generally boiled. Cooked from scratch and ate her main meal at 12:30pm. Used a traditional (and excellent quality) butcher and baker, good greengrocer too. Had toast for breakfast with slices of butter on top, absolutely loads of butter. Ate tea at about 6pm, bread and jam, plain cake. Tinned salmon sandwiches for Sunday tea regularly. cheese scones were another teatime treat. Tinned fruit (peaches, pears or fruit salad) was another weekend tea time treat.

was a good cook, her food was very tasty, just limited in range

zero snacks, not many puddings, enjoyed fruit seasonally. Zero rice, pasta, spices (apart from in cakes!) Salad was lettuce, cucumber, tomato and spring onions.

drank tea at all mealtimes, for elevenses, mid afternoon and in the evening. Never drank water, and rarely anything but tea. Liked milk stout if out.

Also forgot “a nice bit of finny addick”. Finnan haddock bright yellow dyed from the fishmonger, served on Friday with boiled potatoes, green beans and buttered bread to mop up the delicious toxic yellow juice

A cup of tea every 30mins

My grandma in her 80s and 90s became a fan of a banana sandwich - real butter light sprinkling caster sugar. Not health food

Yes, boiled, eaten on their own, using fingers!

I only knew one of my four grandparents, and she lived quite far. On the few occasions i met her she ate really small portions.

My other gp-s died before or just after I was born. My mum would often say something like they (and she when she was a child) ate ‘brown bread and raw onion’ because there wasn’t anything else… They grew lots of food but I guess, some years there wasn’t enough to go around.

My dad had me later in life so he grew up in rural Ireland in the 1930/40s - my Gran made everything from scratch - they experienced no rationing during the war as they could grow most things - they even grew a version of sugar cane!

I think eggs, gammon, cabbage, potatoes, butter, cheese soda bread , apple tart & pints of tea has it covered

I don’t think my Dad would have had a single preservative until he was 25!

One just appeared to drink wine, the other wine and coffee.

I remember we used to stay at my nans, and she would do us a bowl of cereal for brekkie, followed by a full fry up. Then lunch was always a sandwich, with a bag of crisps and dinner was a traditional meat and two veg meal followed by a solid helping of apple pie and custard etc.

No-one got down until plates were empty.

But then, as she got old she suddenly started to do this thing where she hardly ate. So just enough cereal to cover the bottom of a bowl, one slice of toast with a barely there spread of jam, and a dinner barely big enough to fill a side plate.

Always telling us she wasn't really hungry, but put a big plate of food in front of her and she would scoff it like her life depended on it.

It was like she became a competitive under-eater.

Cabbage pie

My grannies were both born pre-WW1. Very plain eating, stews, casseroles, lots of veg grown in the garden. Both were expert bakers. Breakfast was always porridge or toast - never cereal. Cooked meal at lunchtime, lighter meal early evening. Copious use of butter and lard.

Dripping sandwiches

Full roast dinner two types of meat three different veg and mash potatoes with gravy

Milky tea made with bulls blood milk (sterilised milk)

Marble cake with buttercream icing

When they used to work in the fields they were allowed to eat free food and my grandad would go scrumping for apples occasionally and pick blackberry's

Granny was a big eater and she did eat some processed food. Porridge with treacle for breakfast, or Fruit N Fibre with milk. Sandwiches for lunch. A home cooked dinner of meat, potatoes and veg, followed by homemade pudding with custard or blancmange. She always had a snack before bed as well.