To ask what did your granny eat?

I think of this every time someone says only eat what your grandparents would recognise.

White bread and dripping, tea with copious amounts of sugar, main vegetable potato, any other vegetable boiled to death.

With, of course, two packs of cigarettes a day and multiple pints of beer after a 12 hour shift down the pit.

The good old days.

I eat better than any generation of my working class family ever ever has.

My dad’s mum was an absolutely shit cook. I was about 10 when I realised the grey meat she served us for Sunday lunch was actually beef! Vegetables were just mush. I remember tongue sandwiches, boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce with new potatoes. She died aged 78.
I mentioned my mum’s mum above… she drank a lot of gin and her house was the first time I had sushi, when I was about 10. She also loved Thai food. She died aged 92 last year.

My granny loved pasta with milk and sugar cooked in the microwave!

Sugar sandwiches

Both my grandfathers (one was a widower) worked shifts and I remember a lot of cooked breakfasts being served!
My paternal Grandma cooked traditional stuff which included tripe, rabbit and lots of offal. Occasionally there'd be a bucket of mussels in the kitchen - lord knows where they came from!
There were casseroles in the colder months and meat and potato pie, hot pot etc. In the summer there was salad with ham and egg and Jersey royals (plus cucumber and onion in vinegar). Sunday dinner was always a roast with lots of vegetables: new potatoes with mint and freshly shelled peas in summer, mash and root veg or a roasted onion in winter. Delicious baked apples for pudding when it was cold, jelly or tinned fruit when it was warmer. We had a very big garden and a good section of it (around .25 of an acre) was vegetables and cane fruits so there was lots of produce and all meals had plenty of veg. We shared the garden with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle's family - we all lived practically next door to each other!
We also had chickens so omelettes, scrambled egg etc were plentiful.
There'd be bread and dripping, or bread and jam for tea. We rarely had cakes and biscuits, they drank a lot of tea but liked a tipple or two. My paternal grandparents ate pretty healthily really but they did smoke, and they both died in their early 60s. I was devastated to lose them.
My maternal grandfather fried just about everything he consumed but he ate small amounts and was physically fit and lived to 93.

Meat, potatoes, veg and gravy… one of the very reasons I can’t eat mash properly anymore. When we lived with her we had it like 4 times a week. Not because we were poor or anything, just because she loved it.
my other nan is Anglo Indian so ate a lot of Indian food which was fantastic. Used to pop by her house (lived on the same estate as me for my first 8 years on this earth) just to get some tandoori chicken

Mine used to eat a Greggs sausage roll or pasty between two slices of bread, to protect her from the massive crumbs.

Maybe my granny was a lot older, she died in 1979 and I'm now in my 60's

Granny lived through the war and rationing so it was always scrimp and save, no waste

But even though the meats were cheaper, ( a hell of a lot of offal ) , meals were a small portion of meat, at least 3 veg ( boiled to death I grant you ) and either spuds or bread, even both

Granny made brilliant suet puddings - from steak and kidney to spotted dick :)

I do cook like granny, small meat portions , loads of veg - and a bowl of salad - and a simple carb - boiled spuds, jacket, or rice

In my granny's time, when she cared for us nippers, she had an open fire and gas lighting - I can remember the council coming to put the leccy in - and the iron got plugged into the light fitting as there was only one plug socket per a room put in :)

Granny;s way pf cooking, the cooking I did in my young days, was simple and plain. There was always a pudding - a suet or a crumble/pie or triffle - was to fill you

Ive worked as a professional cook for a lot of my life ( Im no chef ) and our mantra is we are here to feed not fatten, and I think that's what granny did

I do think the advice of cooking like granny means going back to basics, dont rely on processed foods, fill the plate with veg and have a dessert - stops the snacking

Ive watched/read somewhere, maybe the Glucose Queen??? , that eating a dessert straight after dinner is ok. Waiting till later, when boredom sets in, you get the sugar rush ( that the veg from the dinner stops ) and then the munchies and bad habits kick straight back in

Alpen for breakfast
sandwich for lunch
meat of some sort and boiled potatoes and veg for dinner

All I remember mine eating was boiled eggs and grapefruit for breakfast dinners were mainly curries with the odd roast chicken

So many of the posts here sound glorious, but more like grandparents who learned to cook pre-war, or people who were either middle class or lived in the country. It’s more golden-tinged nostalgia than the actual diet of most of Britain between 1950-1990, when the country was absolutely famous worldwide for terrible, terrible food. It really was a food desert in the 50s- early 80s, unless you were farmers or lived rurally, were well off, or unusually good at cooking.

I honestly am thinking back to the late 70s and 80s, and simply can’t reconcile the lovely memories of home cooked food in most posts above, with the reality of British working-class food of the time (or indeed, British postwar food culture more widely). Think of restaurant and pub food in the 70s, when a glass of rehydrated orange juice was a starter; gammon and pineapple was unbearably exotic; and the only lunches pubs did (if you were lucky), was a Ploughman with a chunk of greasy Red Leicester, a giant pickled onion, some limp lettuce, two slices of processed bread and a pack of Golden Wonder! Soup was a packet of Florida Spring Vegetable in a powder; or a can of thick greasy Oxtail. A block of processed ice cream made of hydrogenated animal fats with two wafers stuck either side was considered a gourmet dessert.

Both adults and children were constantly eating cheap biscuits, sugary squash, fizzy pop, crisps, chocolate bars and sweets. Even in my primary school, you brought a 2p piece every day for a fig roll and a rich tea biscuit to have with your warm school milk carton. Vegetables were tinned (or in the 80s and 90s, frozen). Primary school hot dinners in the 1980s were boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, mystery meat, and squashed fly pie (currant tart) with lumpy custard with skin on. Secondary school lunches were fried pizzas and chips with Angel Delight as a pudding. There was no veg at all, but plenty of Mars bars and cola cans in the vending machine. Everything was made out of animal fats or artificial fats, with food colourings to literally make your hair stand on end. Nobody had as much heard of a cappuccino in my Northern town until about 1995.

I’d love to think of the past as home cooked chops with fresh garden produce and apple pies with cream, like an Enid Blyton book; but the reality where I grew up was completely, utterly different. Less Elizabeth David or Mary Berry; more Coronation Street.

My Nana grew up in a farm in Ireland.
Breakfast was usually porridge. But they did make black pudding and have bacon for fries.
Lunch homemade soda bread and butter with some leftover meat from dinner day before. Jam would be a treat and homemade. Also kept chickens so had eggs
Dinner Potatoes, veg and bacon five days a week. On Sunday would have chicken or turkey. Friday was fish.
Milk was the usual drink with meals.

Now we say bacon is unhealthy but back then they cured it themselves. No carcinogens were used to cure the bacon. The neighbours would take turns slaughtering the pigs and divide out meat to the other families.
Very repetitive but she still likes those foods somehow.

Paste sandwiches - fine
Tripe - Yuck

Shepherds pie, sausage and mash, steak and kidney pie, braising steak, chips and peas, with bread and butter, always a Sunday roast, puddings such as spotted dick, rice pudding, apple pie. Tinned salmon and cucumber sandwiches on Sunday with tinned peaches after. Always white bread. No pasta or rice.

One of my grandmothers was French so we had a very varied diet of French food - Ratatouille, Soupe au Pistou, salade Nicoise and gratin dauphinoise are very much still staples of my diet. She introduced me to good food, many vegetables that couldn't be bought in England in the 70s/80s, good wine, patisserie and Pastis. Plus an array of ice cream, fruit and vegetables that weren't readily available in the UK then. She remains the greatest influence on my life in so many ways.

The other was from an English middle class family with a strong heritage of fishing and baking. She made the best fish and chips I have ever tasted and delicious rock cakes. She passed on her baking skills to my mother and in turn, they have been passed onto me.

Absolute crap!
My Grandmother couldn't cook for peanuts.
To name a few of her firm favourites:
Rolls with butter and jam
Tinned salmon on bread with butter
Tomatoes, ham, and butter on bread plus lots of salt on the tomatoes (Note, at least half an inch thick spread of butter).
Countless cups of tea with sugar
Ice cream
Beef pies from the fridge in Tesco
Lots of stories of her and Grandfather living off fish and chips in their younger years
Before anyone asks, lots of offers to cook and cooked meals brought and served up to her.. always refused.
If I ate like her, well, I wouldn't be doing too good😂

Porridge. Fried breakfasts with egg, bacon and black pudding cooked in lard. Loads of bread and butter, tons of butter in fact. Cup after cup of tea with lots of sugar. Meals consisted of meat, potatoes and veg. Boiled ham with boiled potatoes and cabbage seemed to be a popular choice.

One of my grans was a country girl. Lots of meat and 2 veg, meat and potato pies, whatever my grandad poached.

my other one was well travelled as an army wife so we had Greek and German dishes like moussaka and sauerkraut etc.

Both baked a lot.

I learned to cook at my country grans knee. My own mother doesn’t cook lol.

My gran grew everything. Only bought bought what she couldn't grow. Used to make herself an egg custard and my grandad always had a jam sandwich and a bit of cake for his tea

My maternal grandmother and her husband died long before I was born.d My paternal grandmother lived in India and I never met her, only had one conversation with her on the phone where she just kept saying my name and crying. So I have no idea what they ate.

I never knew any of my grandparents. It is strange how you can feel the lack and loss of something you never had.

I can’t remember food per se, but my Great Aunt used to drink hot water. I found it very odd because I hadn’t heard of anyone else doing this.

Cakes. M&S ready meals. Scones with alarming amounts of cream and jam. Those little marbley sea shell chocolates. Fancy coffees.

My granny, though English herself, was taught to cook by her Italian MIL (my great grandmother) so she cooked all Italian food!

Her Mum had gone off when she was very little and her Dad was a touring actor and sent her to boarding school - so she never learnt any cooking from her own parents (this would be massively outing if any of my family are on here 😂)

All home cooked, generally meat with vegetables from the allotment and fish on a Friday. We loved Grandma's tripe and onions. Puddings - apple pie, rice pudding, jam tart, egg custard etc. My grandma shopped most days at local shops - greengrocer, butcher, baker. Grandad went to the market once a week and bought eggs from a local farmer. They didn't have a fridge or freezer and made toast over the coal fire (which was the only heating in the whole house). There was a pump in the kitchen to bring up water from the well outside.

USA, born 1890, 'homemaker' from 1910 - 1970-ish.

Lots of fresh fruit and veg, mostly home grown. Fresh eggs, butter, and dairy. Very little 'processed foods'. Sweets made from scratch.

BUT lots of fried foods, things cooked in or with lard or drippings. Lots of 'starch'; fresh bread, potatoes, etc to make a meal 'stretch'. Preserved fruits she 'put up' herself in syrup. And she was a prolific baker.

I think one thing that differentiates then and now, even for people who eat 'fresh' is that housework back then was WORK. Wringer washers & hanging out laundry instead of machine wash and dry, carpet sweepers instead of hoovers, scrubbing floors then waxing them, etc. Even cooking from scratch was harder work, everything done by hand instead of food processors, insta-pots and the like. Tending the veg garden, the chickens, etc. Life for the everyday housewife back then was so much more labour intensive than it is today. Thank God!

My grandparents were also Irish and my grandpa used to eat potato raw, he also loved cabbage !