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'd never tasted a red pepper until I went to catered halls at university. I have no idea what my mother did to broccoli but they were always green mush. She doesn't do it now!

Munch bunch yogurts were always in my lunch box. As well as Space invaders crisps. Primula cheese spread was a treat 😂 we’d also have sweet corn as a pudding, in a bowl with salt on.

Mawkish Twaddle - I still like the salmon paste though Bloater was my old favourite but I don't see it now.

Similar to everyone else in the 60s/70s although my mum was quite an adventurous cook & we had spag bol/"curries"/chilli, we also had Homepride sauces (sweet & sour or white wine were my favourite). Tiny lamb chops. All children drank tea from a young age, I can remember the neighbour making tea for all the children when we were playing. She was amazed I didn't take sugar (I must have been somewhere around 5 at the time). There was no thought of making up a jug of squash, we all had tea!

Does anyone remember the tiny cans of pop you could buy? Pepsi/Fanta. We would be allowed one every Saturday when the lottery was on (early 90's) do they still sell them??

Yes to the tray of satsumas at Christmas!

Satsumas sometimes came wrapped in blue paper, too. I loved it and used to save it (not sure what for).

Frozen orange juice concentrate ?

Those frozen pyramidal drinks - Calypso ?

I'm so glad you remember it Glaciferous!

Typically a sixties diet of three square meals.
Cornflakes with sugar with a glass of milk
White bread ham sandwich with butter or marg, glass of milk. Or squash.
Homemade meat pie, frozen peas, boiled potatoes.
Puddings everyday including rice pudding, custard, homemade apple pie or crumble.

Sweets and chocolates bought when passing the newsagents.
Slice of cake or biscuits in the evening.

One fat kid in the school

My parents were Good-Lifers as well. We ate really well as both of my parents were good, adventurous cooks with year-round, home grown food.

Obviously, I didn't appreciate any of it and pleaded with them for Angel Delight, crispy pancakes and anything that came in a packet.

We were also never ill as our diet was so bloody good, which was another issue I had with it as it meant no random days off school

I remember in the 60s spaghetti used to be really, really long. Like, about 2 feet long. And came in blue paper. Does anybody else remember that?

Yes! I keep meaning to track it down in the UK. Apparently you can still buy it! That reminds me of my father being really perturbed that you could only buy 'parmesan cheese' in tubs here, which was awful, dusty stuff.

My Mum cooked if we had pie it was always home made. I remember she hated (and still does), making Yorkshire puddings as they made a mess of her oven! She only made them if my grandparents came for Sunday dinner. If we went to my Granny’s for Sunday dinner we always had Yorkshire puddings before the rest of our dinner. I think it was to fill us up so we didn’t eat as much meat.

My Granny also made the best chips ever she used to cut them crinkled and did them in beef dripping they were the best chips ever.

Like lots on this thread, I had a typical 70s/80s working-class diet of frozen and convenience stuff. My mum worked for a while in a branch of Iceland and got a staff discount.

We'd have those bagged stir-fries, if anyone remembers those. I loved them and thought they were thrillingly exotic. Also stuff like crispy pancakes, fish fingers and cheap burgers, with frozen chips or potato croquettes. Frozen peas or tinned baked beans and spaghetti. Not much in the way of fresh veg or fruit. Angel delight or cheap Wall's ice cream for pudding, with Ice Magic. Luncheon meat or cheap pâté for sandwiches. And I LOVED sandwich spread still do but DP takes the piss if I buy it

I remember a roast chicken being really quite a big deal – we'd have it on a Sunday but by no means often. And the leftovers would go into a chicken stew for Monday night and maybe some soup the next night. Nowadays I buy chicken pretty casually and think of it as fairly ordinary. And I tend to buy free-range, too, so it must be many times more expensive than the ones we eked out when I was a child.

We had Viennetta at Christmas only. Again, it was a MASSIVE treat and looked forward to with much excitement. As were the dates, Brazil nuts, monkey nuts (in their shells) and Twiglets.

And who remembers those chocolate cigars that came individually wrapped in blue paper with some kind of print on it (probably the brand name)? I don't think you get cigar/cigarette sweets any more

It was all very plain - nothing 'foreign' or exotic. Meat and boiled veg in various combinations nearly every day. Glorious lentil and vegetable soup in the winter, which I have tried and failed to replicate.

I remember my mum buying me tinned curry from Marks and Spencer, arranging it with rice round the outside, like the picture on the tin, and then taking it next door to show my auntie before I could eat it. To her enormous credit, though, when I went vegetarian in the early '80s she went out and bought several veggie recipe books and learned to cook in a completely new way.

Processed vegetarian food was so different back then - for a long time, about all we could get was powdered Sosmix from Holland and Barret, that you could use to make sausages or burgers. Quorn was a revelation.

I was born in1977 and I remember snacks and drinks being much less common. You pretty much had a drink with a meal and occasionally between if it was hot. Mealtimes were much more regimented in terms of time, table manners etc. Far less sweet things, cake was a treat for Sunday tea or special occasions. Sweets were seldom bought and a pack of biscuits lasted ages. Lots more tea to drink and no fizzy pop. Being sent to school with a tablet bottle of ribena to make up at lunch time because ready to drink cartons were too expensive. Meat was horrible and I stopped eating it as soon as I left home, that option wasn't available until then as you ate what you were given. There wasn't the choice in the shops and I remember supermarkets being smaller in my early childhood. But I also remember lots of pasta, curry, Chinese etc (always home made though, never a takeaway). My parents had very cosmopolitan taste and couldn't understand brits whinging about garlic, salad dressing, spices etc. My dad was a local sensation when he enrolled for a Chinese cookery course at adult ed in the early 80's. He was the only man!

In her later years my mum grew her own potatoes. The chips she made were scrumptious.

Her roast beef dinners melted in the mouth. I've never been able to recreate them. Even Dh speaks about this.

Her soups were to die for. Again, she never divulged what she did!

Her chocolate blamange, again, indescribable . We never had an ounce of excess weight on any of us. I don't get it?

I remember chocolate blamange yoksha we always used to have it in a rabbit mold none of us ever wanted the bum end!

My Mum sometimes used to make a blamange type chocolate pudding with chopped bananas in and whipped cream on top. I loved that.

My Granny made milk jellies which was normal jelly but made with milk instead of water.

We eat less meat (I'm now vegetarian), more pasta and snacks. I remember having Billy bear "ham" sandwiches and coke floats. Also tinned ravioli was one of my favourites which I would probably find disgusting now.

I grew up in the 90s but I didn't have a mango until I was in my late teens, likewise pesto, homous, chilli. All those things my DC's eat regularly.

Grew up in the 90s, so not that long ago, but a lot has still changed.

Sweet satsumas and Clementines around Hallowe'en, which always arrived alongside a bag of nuts. I remember chasing the hazelnuts around the kitchen floor with my mum, who had a small hammer and was determined to open them.

Mince and boiled potatoes. This seemed to be what we ate almost every night. The mince was boiled to within an inch of its life.

Overcooked chicken in curry sauce from a jar. The chicken was so tough, you could have played rounders with it.

The absolute joy of the arrival of the Christmas season, and with it, a bumper box of Tunnock's Tea Cakes.

Going to granny's house and being amazed to discover she had a stock of crispy pancakes. We aren't allowed those at home.

The absolute devastation of discovering that those weren't chips on your plate - they were roasted parsnips.

Visiting a friend's house, and discovering that they had pizza and skinny chips every Friday night! Being fuming at the injustice, and refusing to eat your stew the following weekend.

There was rarely sweet stuff or crisps in the house, they were for Christmas, birthdays or bought to add to picnics during summer holidays to have alongside your sand filled sandwich on the beach

Potatoes with almost every meal, be it mashed, boiled, roasted or chipped.

To drink we had water from the tap or Milk, fizzy drinks were never bought save for the occasions previously mentioned.

My mum was (is) a good cook, and we used to live in the US, so lots of food we took for granted as normal all of a sudden became very exotic on not really obtainable when we moved to the UK (mid-80s). I remember my mum's despair at the British definition of a salad - no dressing, some limp lettuce - having largely lived on them in the US. We often had salad in a bowl as an accompaniment to our meal, and they were always filled with all sorts of lovely things. My salads now are still very varied.

Lots more bread products than we eat now.

Casseroles made using Campbells Condensed soup tins. They were quite nice actually.

Oh goodness, pizza - the pizzas in the UK were AWFUL wherever you tried to get one, whether it be frozen or in a restaurant. That was very sad. I don't think it would have ever occurred to my mother to try and make one from scratch (I don't remember her ever making any pastry or dough - although to be fair, I don't really either - not enough time).

Cakes - my mother was used to being able to just use box mixes, and wouldn't dream of making a cake from scratch - we used to bring cake mixes back if we visited the US, or ask friends to bring them if they were coming over (I too have done this as an adult, although not for a few years, especially now Betty Crocker is so widely available. The cakes are absolutely foolproof, but I do tend to make my own from scratch nowadays - well DD13 does most of the baking now).

Look! Spaghetti in blue paper!

www.ocado.com/webshop/product/Garofalo-Traditional-Long-Spaghetti/50584011

Does anyone else remember Apeel 'orange juice' from a packet? The ingredients had far more in common with a chemistry set than fresh oranges I'm sure. Man I loved that stuff as an 80s child fed on tartrazine and other E numbers...

I remember the packet orange juice MrsBob, it was bloody addictive - it had a twang that I've never tasted since!

Geekster1963 Tue 25-Sep-18 07:56:44
Rebeca we always used to have roast dinners on Sunday and the left over meat on Monday but we had it with chips and left over veg and gravy. There was never much gravy left so we had to fight my Dad for it! We used to have pickles onions with it too. It was one of my favourite dinners unless it was lamb which I hated. We also had sausages In gravy too which I loved especially in mashed potato season.

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Yummy geekster! I grew up in the 1950s and 60s. Until I went to 'big' school at eleven, 1961, I went home for lunch. I'd have liked your mum's food as much as my own. It was a nightmare for me when I had to have revolting school dinners - think everything brown with lumps in mash, minced beef looking like.....you know what, runny.

Unlike you, I always loved lamb, including lamb stew and chops, didn't like or eat roast beef until I was well into adulthood. When roast beef was on the menu for Sunday lunch my mum cooked me a chicken portion.