How do you remember food being ‘different’ when you were young?

[Geekster1963]

I remember that between October to March time we had mashed potatoes and April until September it was always boiled new potatoes we never had mash in summer or new in winter.

My Mum used to buy a big crate of oranges around December time and keep them in the porch, they were the nicest oranges ever. We never had them in the spring/ summer.

I remember the first time we had lasagne when I was about 18 we felt very exotic.

I never had anything like curry until I left home at 21 in the early 90’s.

I read somewhere that the rice / tapioca / semolina puddings were encouraged after the war as a cheap way to fatten up children who had been on rationed food for years.

Egg and home made chips was and is my favourite food, but I don't have a chip pan now so it is only occasionally made.

Loving this thread - i was a 70/80s child and god it was grim!!

Tinned minced beef and mashed potatoes anyone? Or worse blain boiled potatoes - old ones!!! Tinned peas and carrots not envy. Frozen peas with butter was the food of the gods.

Cheese and potato pie was nice though - basically cheesy mash with melted cheese on top.

Salad -boak

She made nice roasts thoigh. Mashed potatoes AND roast. Shame it was always served with a side of screaming as she always stressed in the kitchen. Every time i hear the university challenge theme tune i can smell roast potatoes

Oh and ready brek - i would be sobbing and my mother would stand over me making me eat it . Fucking vile

I was an 80s/90s child. I don't think food's changed that much really other than maybe there are a lot more takeaways. And I remember chocolate tasting a lot nicer when I was a kid.

90's child here. I remember the standard "kid dinner" , turkey twizzlers or crispy pancakes, with smiley face and beans, a curly straw in your drink, and an ice pop for after in the summer. Also trifle, my mum made 2 a week. Other than that we still had pretty normal dinners, cottage pie, roast etc. Packed lunches though we're interesting, dairylea lunchables, billy bear sandwiches, space invaders, a muffin, Capri sun.Super unhealthy but we all loved it. Also sunny d everyone drank loads of. It doesn't taste the same now.

We used to get 20p each on a Saturday to buy sweets. We went to the post office and used to get 2 ounces of sweets from a jar usually and spent the rest on penny sweets. If we got Yorkshire mixture or sherbet pips we would have around 8p left if we were flush we would get blackcurrent and liquorice but they were 2p!

We only usual had chocolate on birthdays and at Christmas. Later we used to be allowed half a mars bar each on a Sunday to keep us going as we didn’t have Sunday dinner until around 2pm. We always measured the half carefully.

Geekster, my siblings were born a decade before you and I heard the same story except that it was a sixpence (I think).

I love the way bad food is ascribed to the decade rather than the skills of the cook!
I was a fifties child - roasts, shepherd's pies, stews, various fish dishes. Puddings were pies, crumbles, fruit salads, trifles. Teas were a variety of sandwiches, home-made cakes, meringues and cream, fruit jellies. It was all freshly cooked from ingredients bought daily. My grandmother did most of it as my mother worked full-time.
In the seventies our kids got lots of different dishes including bolognese, lasagne, home-made curries, roasts and fish pies. We cooked with aubergines, courgettes, peppers and lots of whole-food stuff because we were a bit hippy. 😊

Child of the 70s/80s here. I remember New Potatoes having a completely different flavour to normal potatoes - they don't taste anywhere near as different to me these days. I remember it well as I hated new potatoes with a passion. Whenever we had potatoes I'd ask, 'Are these New Potatoes?'. My Dad would sarcastically answer, 'No, they;ve been in the garage a fortnight since we bought them', so I'd refuse to eat them as I wasn't sure what his answer meant

Roomba- new potatoes were always Jersey potatoes in the 70s. They used to taste really earthy to me. I don't think they taste the same these days- my mum always says 'Jerseys don't taste like they used to' as well.

Is it because they are no longer grown on the cliffs in seaweed?

I remember the smell of rabbit stew every Thursday when I came home from school. That was in the Fifties and before myxomatosis.
The 'Rabbit Man' called every Thursday with freshly- killed skinned rabbits.
The height of sophistication was Lyons Swiss Roll for pudding.

We are an awful lot of frozen food - pizza, crispy pancakes, fishfingers, godawful has been chips or fray bentos pies
My mum couldn't cook and could barely heat stuff up when she was home and when we were little we had a 19yo nanny who wasn't much better. My dad could cook if he had the time but he owned the village shop and worked all hours so was rarely around to do it.
I started cooking from the age of 10 and expanded our menu to pasta, omelettes & vegetable curry. Usually stuff that was going out of date from dads shop. We didn't eat well.

I now try to cook from scratch with fresh ingredients and am teaching my kids to cook.

I was talking about this to the children this morning.
They asked why grapes are labelled as "Seedless grapes".

I told them that when I was little you never got red seedless grapes (or I never saw them) and most grapes were large and had seeds in, the small (and nicer ones) were seedless.
Now they've evolved them all to be seedless, they've taken all the things I didn't like (barring the seeds) from the grapes with seeds in, and you can't get the lovely little seedless grapes. Strawberry grapes are the nearest I've found.

I''m not the only one who remembers it!

Semolina with jam 😋😋

Pot Sweet!

We only had semolina once it was like wallpaper paste! My Mum stuck to tapioca (frog spawn), after that we had jam with it but I didn’t like it.

Yes, very much like wallpaper paste, but I went to a school in the countryside, no sweets/biscs/ice lollies/canned drinks available so a sweet pudding was a treat! (even lumpy semolina)

I remember that Quality Street tins were huge in the 70's. You could fit a big homemade cake inside them. Wish I had kept some of those tins

Yes I remember those tins too OliviaS my Mum always used to keep them as they were really useful. I’ve got some old Rose’s tins in the shed with odds and ends in. We used to get them at Christmas and loved them as we so rarely had chocolate.

Alpen (or even nicer Country Store)
Used to be delicious.
Now it resembles something you'd sweep from inside a rabbits cage

Then the horror that was that tinned veg in some kind of creamy sauce. I can still remember the taste of it.

That was Heinz Russian Salad I think. 😄

@Fresta apparently they're not allowed to put seaweed on them now (while they're growing, obvs) and it's affected the flavour.

My mum used to cook us porridge served with a lump of marge on top