Back to 1950s cuisine to cope with COL

If one good thing comes out of the COL crisis, it will be the return of “1950’s-style cuisine” in terms of making healthier, unprocessed food more common!
And less waste…
I’ve been following my DM’s example for years now (she grew up during WWII and rationing). I “process” all my veg as soon as I buy it to prevent waste, meal-plan and bulk cook, too.
A (reduced price - I seek out and purchase beef, pork and lamb when it’s on offer and freeze it) Sunday roast does us for three meals if I carve and portion it out effectively, potatoes are parboiled and any more than we need for the roast are then frozen for roasting next time, cabbage and leeks are braised and portions frozen and carrots are prepared for the freezer. Yorkshire puddings are made from scratch and in a quantity that allows 2 per person only.
I also make a lot more soup and we often have this with bread as a main meal (vegetarian, too!)
Portion control also plays its part. I also process chicken breasts so that a portion weighs 4oz (the bits I cut off go into a container for casseroles, risotto Etc.) and a 500g pack of minced beef makes us 9 portions of dinner (cottage pie and pasta sauce normally).
If everyone is able to do this, imagine the skill set being learned and the savings made?

When I buy a whole chicken I buy an extra large. We strip the bird completely and divide out the meat before we serve it to ensure it goes between multiple meals. Very easy just to cook and serve and then it’s gone. Same with any joint. I make clear that the meat served is the meat portion and there’s lots of veg and usually a pudding.

Christmas dinner is a bit different, I buy a really big gammon and turkey and make loads of pigs in blankets and it’s eat as much as you like.

Of course silly me. I'll try harder.

The size of chickens vary, do they not? Also it depends on how many are being fed, and, and how much chicken is served per person. Some chicken shredded and bulked out with vegetables, and topped with pastry, or made into a curry with potatoes, vegetables, served with rice. It is not difficult to see how this could be achieved.

Ha. Easily half a punnet per day just for me, plus six to eight tinned tomatoes a month. Not counting jars of sun dried tomatoes. I basically eat cherry tomatoes as a treat the way people may eat chocolate.

If I make a meal with mince - bolognaise, cottage pie or whatever, I always add lentils in to bulk out the meat, it kind of melts into the sauce, (as do the mushrooms that D H ‘hates’ but eats when he doesn’t notice they are there!!)

I’m afraid I can’t stand the brown meat either!

Even on the chicken fillets if I see even a tiny bit of brown I cut it off, even my cat won’t look at it. To be fair, he doesn’t even like the white bits.

I do not see how this is a problem

I'm not sure how people get 2 or three meals out of a chicken. I paid £9 for a Lidl free range chicken for roast today for four of us but there won't be enough left for another meal except some soup.

It's around 1973 in my kitchen and I'm not very keen on cooking. So that's a challenge. Unfortunately I'm lacking some real 1973 favourites, particularly Ice Breaker chocolate bars. On a less frivolous note though cooking like my mum is cheaper.

I make a roast for 5 adults for around £10, veggies and potatoes are so cheap.

Oh, for goodness sake. You know what she meant. It was very clear.

Yet, you apparently took the time to go on Ocado and the Tesco website to ‘prove her wrong’. If that’s not MN at its finest, I don’t know what is.

I have tried making Tudor gingerbread - it’s essentially breadcrumbs, honey, ginger and black pepper. A lot of black pepper. It’s probably an acquired taste.

Cinnamon, cloves, saffron, mace, nutmeg etc were all used in savoury dishes back then.

Robert May’s Accomplisht Cook from the 1660s is a great source of weird and wonderful recipes.

Yeah, along the same lines you could fly to Italy and buy the tomatoes there, vs Iceland frozen beef. So yes, there are many ways we can make aubergine cost more than beef. My mistake obviously

OP your food is perfectly normal; nothing 1950s about it. Unless you’re adding rissoles to the menu.

I can appreciate this. We have definitely changed our meat consumption. I tend to buy whatever I can yellow stickered and make do.

I recently got 2 boxes of beef for £4, made a steak pie plus veg for about £6 for 4.
Using much more sausage meat than mince now in ragus and if you like mince you can do half pork half beef which is much cheaper.
If we have a chicken curry the kids actually prefer the sauce and rice and naan etc so I tend to only need 2 large fillets to feed us all and make.more of the accompaniments.

MN is hilarious for the amount of lifestyle points scoring that goes on. TBH I'm amazed by all these meal plans - that's way more formal than anything I do. I guess I enjoy improvising.

FYI if you’re anaemic the thighs (which I prefer) have more iron in them than the breast

We literally started wars over spices centuries before the 1950s and millions died in the process of that (and of producing sugar).

Don't forego flavour in the pursuit of authenticity. It's not.

I am unreasonably excited about getting a kitchen scraps recycling collection in the next few weeks (we had it for years where we lived previously). It’s the only thing we can’t currently recycle.

I love pulses but DS2 isn’t a fan. He will eat a chicken and chickpea korma, or bolognaise with red lentils. Any other ideas how I can get him to like them more as he is a real little meat head

Your question was how would it ever be cheaper.

I think that’s how a lot of us eat anyway. Almost no food gets thrown away in this house, and it’s rare that I buy a ready made meal. Horrible things.

But to make it make sense you'd need to either price the cheapest ratatouille ingredients vs the cheapest stew ingredients, or the most expensive version of each. Otherwise the comparison doesn't work (I feel this is a very obvious point!)