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.

If anyone's interested, there are some entertaining articles online about food trends through the years and decades. I don't know how accurate they all are but I like articles with nostalgia pictures/information and found them interesting. This one tells you what was supposed to have been the main food craze the year you were born: www.delish.com/food/g3477/most-popular-cocktails-food-every-decade/

I live in Italy and we only eat fruit and veg in season, just like when I was young. I think it makes them more enjoyable.

Yorksha, thd porridge drawer was one of those things nearly everyone had when I was growing up though it seemed to die out in the late 60’s in my family at least.

And my dads mum cooked everything in the pressure cooked because she worked all day in the jute mill and it was the only way she could put food on the table before she dropped with exhaustion. I was terrified of it and every dent in her kitchen ceiling had a good laugh behind it - but not as far as I was concerned. 😱

Porridge Drawer is a thing? It's something I've never heard of before - love it.

DH and I have just spent a happy hour comparing our childhood food memories.
He's just said can you remember the first time we went out for a 'proper' meal?
It was to the local Berni Inn where we had prawn cocktail, steak, chips & peas (with half a tomato) and to finish Black Forest gateau.

Living the early 70s dream - he claims I wore a needle cord flower patterned maxi dress from Laura Ashley

He's wrong, it wasn't me!!!
I never owned anything from Laura Ashley and we didn't meet until early 80s 😂😂😂😂

We used to have what my Mum called Tatie hash which was the bones and what was left of a lamb joint slow cooked with potatoes and veg. I hated it, but my sisters and Dad in particular loved it. My Dad always had a slice of bread and butter with it and Worcestershire sauce in it.

My Grandpa often had bread and dripping for breakfast. Occasionally at my Grandparents we did toast on the fire with the toasting fork. They had to have to fire lit in the kitchen all year round as it heated the water.

Im an early 80s baby so did my growing up late 80s and 90s. Food was rubbish and alot of convenience frozen stuff which was crackers cos my mum's mum was a school cook in the days that they did cook.

On the occasions we had meat it was cooked to an inch of its life. I still can't eat pork chops now cos they were always tough as old boots.

Teas were often 'something' and chips or that dried shaped (usually farm or space shaped) pasta in three colours. Sausages, fish fingers, crispy pancakes, pizzas were always frozen baguette pizzas, turkey twizlers, dalesteaks (🤢). Afters was something out the biscuit tin or nothing. How the frig we didn't get rickets is a mystery. Sunday's we had creamola and fight for the skin 🤣 in the later 90s when we progressed to spag bols, chilli and curries that was from a jar

Every meal for a long time had bread and butter at the table, drink was verrrry weak vimto (how I longed for ribena like my friends). Still don't like vimto now.

Always had a big Sunday tea where siblings would arrive with their offspring. Loads of sandwiches/rolls, sausage rolls, cold meat from lunch, cheese cake, gateaux, vienetta, everyone brought a homemade cake. It was a buffet like you would expect to see at a party but this happened every Sunday!

Always had a roast on a Sunday and Wednesday. Curry once a week, a fry-up, cheese and potato pie, ham hock and mash. Fridays were fish n chips or a Chinese takeaway. Saturday evening was steak, chips and mushroom in front of the TV.

I'm loving this trip down 'cuisine' (tongue in cheek) memory lane.

to all the 'porridge drawer' references.

Packed lunch was two slices of bread with a thin layer of either pink or brown paste, a bag of quiksave crisps and a biscuit.

That sounds like mine! Often it was a mint Viscount biscuit. And the crisps might be Smiths Square Crisps (I loved them).

My mum was a brilliant British cook. Anything of British origin was worth eating in our house. We ate well, only British, but good food.

But I remember her trying the new 'pizza' from Bejams out on us in the 1970's. Designed to be a quick tea as she had started working.
Cooked to a crisp (black) and always served with plum tomatoes out of a tin to soften it up .
Single slice with tomatoes.

It wasn't until I'd left home and had a bite of my boyfriends pizza in a restaurant that I realised it wasn't meant to be slightly burnt and soaked in tomato juice.

Another exotic ingredient was kidney beans. Also the humble chilli pepper. I recall tasting chilli con carne for the first time at my boyfriends house in the mid 1980s and thinking it was very exotic.

My mother would only light the oven once a week for Sunday roast. She'd bake everything she could for the week. Towards Friday she would cover the cakes with syrup and hot custard to disguise the staleness.

Never any snacks between meals. We walked everywhere. We were all so skinny back then.

I remember at primary school I often had Penguin biscuits in my pack up. They had foil covers and I used to save them. Still got them somewhere! We used to have crisps shaped like pigs too.