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.

When I started school in the mid-seventies the two dishes I remember most vividly were sardines in tomato sauce & fish roe fritters (pink roe shaped into a fishcake and covered in orange breadcrumbs!!)

I changed to packed lunches as soon as they were introduced - but that meant a rotation of ox-tongue, liver sausage, haslet, salmon & shrimp paste sandwiches and most exotically the occasional triangle of camembert cheese!!

My mum was a very good baker, cakes, scones, biscuits, pastry etc all from scratch. But as my dad wouldn't (and still won't) eat anything with rice, pasta, pulses etc, dinners were very meat & two veg. He still thinks hummous is a strange foreign abomination! Mum's Sunday roasts were still the best I've ever had though.

Only yesterday I gave them their very first fresh mango to try. A friend who lives in India was visiting me and we went to see them as they knew her from childhood. My friend talked about how mangos grow in the garden there and Mum mentioned she wouldn't even know what they looked like... so she has one ripening to try!

Our diet was a funny mixture of healthy fresh food cooked from scratch and 70s processed frozen stuff. I now do my parent's food shopping online for them as they are very elderly - so my saved online shopping lists range from our varied tastes to a vast array of Mr Kipling cakes & little pots of dressed crab!!

Puddings like Jam Roly Poly and Spotted Dick with custard are what I miss. That sponge square with the think layer of pink icing on the top covered with custard you had a school - Yum!

I don't miss the liver they made us eat in Primary school Disgusting and bitter. Only had a small scoop of mash in an ice cream scoop on the plate, never enough. Not sure what they did to the baked beans but they were nothing like the tinned version.

I saw a post here today about toasting bread by the fire and having it with butter. We used to have real block butter and it was lovely and salty. My Grandmother used to pop the butter she anted to use in a saucer on the corner of the Aga to melt a but before she used it.

My grandad giving me bowls of porridge with banana and he made it in a 'special' way I'd only eat it if he made it.

Along with where my love of traditional dinners came from, my childminders stew and shepherds pie my mouth waters thinking about to this day, I can never get the recipe to taste exactly the same, although close

What a lovely memory Bimgy!

My grandmother was my food hero. Sent to the countryside during WW2 from London and ended up living on a farm until she was in her late teens, in her 40s after having her children she retrained as a 'cook' at college and then went on to be a head cook in local school and then in a hotel.

She taught me to cook. Simple white sauce and how to boil an egg and how to time a roast etc as a young teen.

As a child I spent all my holidays with her and I loved it, she really opened up the foodie thing. She moved to a cottage in the arse end of no where when I was latter teens and kinda reverted back to victorian times ... open fires and an aga. Toasted thickly buttered sliced farmhouse loaf with a china cup of tea from proper leaves ...

Memories

Salad was lettuce, tomato, cucumber, a hard boiled egg and a slice of ham. Then the horror that was that tinned veg in some kind of creamy sauce. I can still remember the taste of it. shudder

I didn’t know there were different varieties of lettuce till I was about 18.

No herbs or spices in the food. Our kitchen had salt and white pepper.

Nothing foreign. No pasta, no rice.

Plain, plain food...mince and tattles, stew (beef, carrots, turnip, maybe an onion), bacon and egg pie, scotch broth, tattie soup, chops, an occasional roast chicken, or roast beef. Rarely desserts. Few snacks.

Breakfast was porridge or toast. My brother couldn’t stomach the porridge but was made to eat it up until the day he vomited it straight back into the bowl.

Lunch was a cup of tea and a sandwich. Those awful sandwich spreads.

Tea, milk, water, and sometimes squash. No juices. Lucozade was only for my father when he was sick. And we never had a drink with our main meal, only after.

I eat very few things now that I grew up eating.

Raised in the seventies, single mum, very little money.

Breakfast was always cereal with loads of sugar. Or Farley’s rusks with warm milk.

Dinner was often boiled eggs or ketchup sandwiches, I’m sad to say. Sometimes fried bread with beans or sausages and chips. My mum rarely ate with me; I had meals on a tray in front of the TV. Pudding was jelly and evap or rice pudding. Sometimes super mousse!

Minced beef and roast potatoes on Sunday. I was never given veg because I had always refused it.

My children have a very different life; all
Home cooked, things like chicken chasseur and beef stroganoff. Of course they’d prefer sausages and chips, but....!

I had fantastic food in the 80s and 90s. One half of my family is from India, so I was growing up on vegetable curry, pork vindaloo, fish curry, dry fry, complete with vegetable drumsticks and all sorts of exotic things from Brick Lane that I can't spell.

However, my favourite meal as young child... Rice, peas and tinned sausages .

We also ate chicken and ham pies, crispy pancakes etc so it wasn't all unappreciated Indian food.

I'm sure it's been said but chips cooked in beef dripping. So tasty.
Nowadays the bought ones are so cardboardy and from the fish and chip shop are pretty soggy.

I think it was easier in the past because there was less choice so less shopping which I hate now.

At some point in the 1970s, all dishes started appearing on the table with a single sprig of curly leafed parsley in the centre, as decoration .

I still buy sardines in tomato sauce - lovely on a slice of warm brown toast.

Our local chip shop does cod roe fritters as well.

The '70s and '80s featured a lot of processed meat. Those weird oblong burgers that somehow didn't taste like a proper burger - what were they? My dad is a terrible eater so we had a lot of dull, meaty fare until I was a teenager. Both my brother and I were considered awful fussy eaters until we started trying stronger-flavoured things like curries and chilli. Mum has also found that she loves spicy food and strong flavours now.

Were they 'burgers' in a tin? Wrestlers Hamburgers in gravy? I used to love these, tried them a few years back ( yup, still available!! ) ... fecking minging!

Fish & chips on Fridays
Corned beef, hated it
Vegetables boiled to a pulp
All biscuits and cakes were home baked
Chicken chow mein

TheSmallClangerWhistlesAgain - were they steaklets/Salisbury steak type things?

Who remembers sweet 'pot noodles'? No noodles, but a powdery dehydrated fruit mix that you added boiling water to, then sprinkled the sachet of topping over, in the pot. The topping was like a crumble/toffee mix that melted with the heat of the gloopy mix underneath. That were they called?

I saw burgers in a tin in Asda today!

@IdahoJones - don't be tempted, they have a 3 yr shelf life - ain't normal is it?

If my mum hadn’t done any pudding , she’d offer fruit, but referred to as “ fresh fruit”. The rest of the time it was just called fruit. I have no idea why.

Thesmall where they Dalesteaks?

Mum has also found that she loves spicy food and strong flavours now.

I wonder if that's an age thing ? I wasn't really into hot foods as a kid - even in my 20s. But now, nothing seems hot enough ...

Who remembers sweet 'pot noodles'? No noodles, but a powdery dehydrated fruit mix that you added boiling water to, then sprinkled the sachet of topping over, in the pot. The topping was like a crumble/toffee mix that melted with the heat of the gloopy mix underneath. That were they called?

I have never, EVER heard of this. Are you sure you didn't dream it?!

Those weird oblong burgers that somehow didn't taste like a proper burger - what were they?

King Ribs? You bought them frozen. They still do them in the chippy locally, they dip them in batter and deep fry them. iirc you got different flavours (Chinese or bbq?)

The oblong burgers were known as Steaklets in the late 60’s. My mum used to buy them because they were more upmarket than Birds Eye Beefburgers. Bless her. 😂

Born 1980. Recognise SO much on this thread! Actually recognise a lot still because we were brought up with a real mix of 1950s-60s food from mum with a bit of Findus Crispy Pancake-ness thrown in.

I still eat things like corned beef in a tin (especially good for fritters!), sardine and tomato paste, etc.

Angel delight is definitely still a thing in our house.

Those weird oblong burgers that somehow didn't taste like a proper burger - what were they?

Not burgers, but we had gristly bacon flavoured oblongs called breakfast slices, I think. Meat was horrid then, apart from roast chicken on Sundays and occasional herby sausages from the butcher's (as opposed to the more usual rusk and gristle sausages from the supermarket).

Peach melba yogurt, as well as the even nicer black cherry flavour, is still available in Carrefour. It's in the big white label value yogurt packs, which taste exactly as I remember Ski yogurts in the 80s.

I had some kale the other day and it was sweet and butter-soft. I'd been avoiding it for years because I thought it was the same as the tough, bitter 'greens' of my childhood. Perhaps the old bitter veg were healthier though.

Fondant Fancies were huge in the 80s, both in size and popularity. I bought some recently and they were tiny but tasted much more natural. The old ones had nice icing but I think the sponge was quite tasteless.

Weetabix in warm milk for breakfast, eww. I had to eat enough that you could see the Bunnikins pictures at the bottom of the bowl, then I was allowed to leave the last few spoonfuls. We had this really cool round white moulded plastic table with a central pedestal and matching white chairs with brown velvet seats - I wish my parents had kept it!

"Please may I get down now, I've had some fissions" is what I would always say at the end of the meal. One time I garbled this even more and said "... one of the fissions" and my DM still finds this hilarious 40 years later.

I was born in the 1950's and remember the black kitchen range and open fire where we toasted bread on a toasting fork.

Butter was bought at Redmans where they used wooden paddles to pat it into a rectangle shape and wrapped in wax paper and brown paper bag.
No fridge initially. No hot running water. All had to be boiled in big cast iron kettle. Cast Iron frying pan...too heavy to lift. I used to drag it across the floor as a kid. My mother kept me busy with that job!
Potatoes were a staple diet...mashed, boiled, homemade chips(they were the best). Eggs...boiled, scrambled, poached, fried, omelette with cheese or onion.
Favourite meal(and still is) fried egg, homemade chips and beans.
I've also made this for my grandsons since they were little and it's still their favourite now they are teenagers!!!
Cheese on toast.
Corned Beef Hash. Broth made with neck end of Lamb. Black Pudding!
Tripe and onions or with vinegar was eaten by parents and grandparents but I could not eat it!!
Home made sausages were just fantastic. Sausage and Mash and onion gravy...still love it!
Shepherds Pie. Cottage Pie. Fish Pie on fridays!
Bread was all homemade and the smell...gorgeous!
Homemade rice pudding with the skin on!
Oh heck I'm hungry now!