Back to 1950s cuisine to cope with COL

I do think one way to keep it down especially with kids is to limit the amount of just grabbable snacks you have in - if going back to even late 60sand 70s snacks in our house were restricted to crumpets, soreen malt loaf, a ginger cake bar, cereal, toast ( with jam, honey, mashed banana) and a set amount of fruit - once it was gone it was gone. We simply didn’t have cupboards full of grab able stuff - I think a lot of parents in particular think they need to have a never ending supply of this kind of thing - people have got used to having masses of variety for ‘what they fancy’ - everything else in our 60s/70s house was meal planned and shopping lists written . A bit tedious I know , but it does work .
i do buy a really big organic chicken from the farm shop every other week ( about 2.3kg) - as they are really meaty - costs me about £17 - but then it does Sunday lunch for 3, 2 ramens for 2 the next day and spare chicken leg for lunch the day after - I also use the simply cook kits as I like buying fresh and easy for me to do so , but means I don’t buy spices/herbs that often that sit around after being used twice. I’ve

Until the 1970s/early 80s chicken was a treat but lamb was relatively cheap. Lamb is far more expensive now.

Possibly. Although there would have been oranges and lemons, spices etc available in Cairo. I was born in North Africa in the mid 50s and my parents were amazed at the abundant produce on sale as opposed to post war Liverpool.

I buy the biggest chicken, as the carcass is the same size for small medium or large - so you get a lot more meat ratio

we had an extra large chicken for xmas and it fed 3 people, then another 4 portions form the left over meat

Best ratio of meat is chicken thighs, I got a packet this week and they cost £2.99 for 1 kilo of meat - extract 6 small thigh bones and most of the packet is meat flesh. Id expect to get enough flesh of the small bone to make two chicken dishes to feed 4 people

Real British food is absolutely amazing. It's what I crave the most.

I have a copy of The Austerity Cookbook by Bridget Ardley, published in 1975. It seems hard times come and go. It contains recipes for such delights as Sulimans Pilaff and Turkey Cigars!

I understand the basic gist of not buying specialist ingredients for a single recipe, but food prices have changed so much. Chicken is now relatively much cheaper (due to huge changes in breeding and reading) and red meat more expensive.

really the key is planning and not wasting. I never regard using leftover chicken for sandwiches instead of a second dinner as wasteful. I don’t get enough leftovers to make a second meal and I’d still need a sandwich filling.

similarly if you do buy herbs, spices, etc, you need to be using them all and not wasting half packets of things.

With prices today I would judge that fewer meat based meals would work out more cheaply. What’s saving money for the OP is less “1950s” and more the repetition and control.

If you don’t want to use fingers, a rough going over with a pastry blender is good for crumble.

They’re both my favourites too, and you’re right, most definitely no longer cheap !

I don't use the mixer for crumble (just my fingers) and freeze the uncooked topping - one recipe does seem to make too much for us 4.

I do a deconstructed crumble, ie I cook the crumble separately in the air fryer and as I make a lot, what's the point of dirtying the mixer for one person, it goes in a bag into the freezer for next time I crave something with custard.

I agree, eat seasonally . Out of season, imported fruit and veg is horrendously expensive, and usually tasteless to boot.

When we were kids we didn’t usually have a “cooked” evening meal in the week , unless it was something very basic like sausage and mash. Quite often it would be a something on toast ( say cheese or scrambled egg), or macaroni cheese. Meat meals like chicken or chops with veg etc were really only weekend meals. Must have saved a fortune on fuel costs too.

Anyway, can I add liver to your list? That's pretty economical I think and can be tasty if you cook it nicely.

Ambrosial as you say, cooked properly, if it's grey and solid enough to resole your shoes then it's only fit for the bin, or the cat, as it's way over-cooked, a la school dinners! I had liver and onions a couple of nights ago, a sure sign that Christmas season in over

I know !! I am also someone who makes stock from the bones for soup . I’m not sure I’ve ever left the 1950’s sometimes!

I’m with you OP. I’m desperately missing asparagus, but we just have to be patient and wait for it to be back in season.

One of my late Father's peculiarities was that after a Sunday roast he didn't want to eat the roast on Monday in any form and my Mother was an amazing cook. Naturally my brother and I made sure we 'dropped in' after work on Monday, the earliest one was told 'take the rest of that home or it will be wasted'! He wasn't difficult about food in any other way and none of us every found out why so odd about this one thing!

Oh god it was so obviously a joke

She was almost captured by the Germans in Greece and spent the rest of the war in Cairo so I think your dramatisation might have been a little romanticised.

I agree with this. Our herbs were chives, mint, parsley, rosemary and thyme. And spices were black pepper, ground ginger, pickling spice like mustard seed, plus allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Her books were very interesting but I saw a dramatisation of her life once and, apparently, she saw WW2 out in the comparative luxury of somewhere Mediterranean then came back to England and criticised the poor food. It would have been more useful, like Marguerite Patten, to help people use what they had. Maybe people bought the books as escapism. They were still seen as exotic in the 1970s.

I have those Elizabeth David books too and they are full of little footnotes giving details of the shops in London you'd have to go to to get exotic ingredients like salami or tahini.