I came here to mention the really, really long spaghetti in blue paper but see it has already been mentioned. We used to have competitions around the table to try to suck in a full strand as quickly as possible with lots of funny faces going on. I remember having spag bol at a friend’s house where her mother diligently cut up all the cooked spaghetti into lengths of less than an inch (around the same as they would be in tins). She firmly believed that spaghetti was a choking hazard for children (we were in our teens at this point anyway).
My parents had travelled a lot and so were considered quite foodie for the 80s but it seems quite funny to look back on it now. We always had pasta on a Wednesday for some reason and I remember visitors finding it quite exotic. What is funny now though is that my mum is still stuck in that bubble. Recently when she was staying with us, she regarded the chunk of fresh parmesan with great suspicion before going out to buy me one of those cardboard cylinders of ready grated “Italian cheese” as that was “proper parmesan”. I think we had a weird mix of exotic and very typical food for the time. Mum would regularly give me a wee pot of tzatziki (home-made) in my packed lunch box and I remember a teacher throwing it in the bin because it didn't seem right to her. I also had pitta bread most days (also home-made until the supermarkets started selling them – tasted like cardboard but a lot less faff for mum) but would have them stuffed with things like sliced pepperami or tuna soaked in vinegar (no mayonnaise for us!). Other lunches would consist of billy bear ham on white bread which had been spread with margarine and a thick layer of ketchup, or, I would forgo sandwiches completely and take a flask of soup – always chicken noodle, always made from a packet.
Other than the odd nods to the exotic (melon of any sort and feta cheese are the other things that I recall had playdates running for the hills), our food was much the same as described on the thread; very seasonal, which is not a bad thing, and very meat based. We had a roast with full-on trimmings every Sunday but they had to be the correct trimmings. Yorkies with beef only. My mum still gets agitated at the sight of yorkies with chicken or lamb. We would normally have lamb, beef or pork. Chicken was for summer only and was often served with an array of salad trimmings including dishes of sliced hard boiled eggs, pickled beetroot from a jar etc. We never had salad dressing – I remember the first time I tried a dressed salad and it was a revelation to me. Vegetables was boiled for about 4 hours until they were mushy. Also, like a PP, my parents both still get upset if I serve them any veg with the merest hint of resistance to the teeth. Sunday dinner was really important in our house, I was never allowed to stay at a friend’s for tea on a Sunday – it was the one day when it was law that all the family would get around the table together. The only thing we were allowed to eat during the day on a Sunday was a crisp sandwich – anything more than that would spoil our appetites. Monday would always be about using the leftovers from the Sunday roast (pies, curries, stovies..), until my older siblings got their own flats and then they would leave with all the leftovers boxed up, which was really disappointing for me. Fridays were always fish – usually haddock in breadcrumbs but often poached in milk which I hated or, more frequently than I would like to recall, I would be told we had a real treat for dinner and I knew it would be cod roe. I hated cod roe but my parents turned a blind eye to that. Other than pasta on a Wednesday, our dinners would be things like chops with boiled potatoes or mince and tatties. We never ever had rice as dad didn’t like the idea of it(???) . Curries were served with a baked potato in our house. We never ever had takeaways but I do remember my mum going through a make-your-own-pizza stage - shop bought carboardy bases which we spread with tomato puree and topped with grated cheddar. She couldn't understand why they didn't taste like the did in Italian restaurants.
Mum had a love-hate relationship with convenience food. Chicken kievs turned up a lot, as did potato waffles and obviously the packet chicken noodle soup mix but I had to go to friends’ houses to taste findus crispy pancakes and the like. Strangely, though, it seemed ok to have convenience food for lunch in the school holidays – pasta’n’sauce, micro-chips, pizza-rollas and tins of beans and sausages were all on the menu then but I guess this was an economic decision putting principles out of the window. She would always draw the line at pot noodle though and at 40 years old, I’ve still never tasted a fray bentos pie!
Once a month my mum would have two of her friends round for a “girls' night” and the highlight for me was making a garlic dip from a packet of powder, which was mixed with milk until thick and creamy. I would be allowed to siphon off a wee pot of that to have in my bedroom with a packet of crisps to keep me happy and out of the way.
So, going back to the original question about differences between food now and then, I would say that more than anything, it was the rules and regulations in those days about what was eaten, and how, on certain days.