What did you have for tea in the 60s & 70s?

[bbcessex]

I’m a 70s child with a very poor memory!!

looking at the housework thread made me wonder what a typical meal plan looked like in the 60s & 70s?

I can remember a lot of pies & stews, and chips with omelette.. what did you have ?!

Paragraph fail aaagh sorry

Oh my goodness yes, Bernard Matthews turkey roasts!

And milk jellies

Is anyone else making notes for meal plans? No? Just me then 

My DC would love most of the meals on this thread

Boiled bacon once a week, leftovers for sandwiches. Served with butter beans - why? Horrible - or mash and cabbage, delicious. And, horribly, at some point the sliced white wonderloaf manifested itself. Everywhere.

Saturdays was a Sunday roast, pork or beef, because Sundays was the weekly wash day which took all day with the twin tub washer and spin dryer and all beds stripped, so no time for cooking. We had a late morning cooked breakfast fry up, then leftover roast and salad for tea.
Mondays - leftover roast, pickles and chips. If there was no meat left, tinned chopped pork
Tuesdays - egg or beans on toast
Wednesdays- pork chop or lamb steak with mash and veg
Thursdays- boil in the bag 'chinese'
Fridays- something frozen like battered sausage, crispy pancakes etc.
Same every week.

MrsKoala - you're right you can be well off without being posh but you yourself admit it wasn't what most people were eating.

I remember orange juice - and grapefruit juice and even halved grapefruit as starters. Often my mums choice as "less fattening" I always had prawn cocktail - one of the few things I miss as a now veggie, I was never a big bacon fan.

Dad always had whitebait 😷

Main would be scampi and chips with a squeeze of lemon and (probably) frozen peas. (And no we didn't see the irony of basically starter and main being same thing)

Dad would have a steak so rare it was practically mooing!

But the best thing was dessert - Black Forest gateau!

Yes it wasn’t what most people were eating but it still was very of it’s time, which was what I thought this thread was about. Of course we ate things like shepherds pie and spag bol, but I didn’t think that was relevant as that transcends fashions and we still eat it now. I thought this was about food specific to the 70s.

My parents hated puddings so we never had angel delight or arctic roll. They took on almost mythical symbolism to me and I wanted to eat them so much. When I tasted angel delight I was so disappointed as it was just chemical texture. Arctic roll tho was amazing!

I alway wanted to try find us crispy pancakes and when I was about 18 I did and I felt disgusted at how rancid it tasted. All those years coveting them wasted

(Not 1970s but apparently the recipe originated then) my mum used to make a scone based pizza, with tinned tomatoes and cheese on top. It always gave my dad the worst indigestion, but she persisted in feeding it to him

Mum used to make scotch pancakes a lot and doughnuts too. Was very happy when she got a magicmix and was constantly baking scones and cakes.

I used to make all the sweets coconut mountains (green dye), coconut ice (red dye), peppermint creams (green dye). Basically if you wanted goodies, you'd better make them.

Mince and tatties. It was cheap so we had it a couple of times a week. I hated it and have not eaten it in about 35 years. I can barely eat anything with mince and if I make chili/stuffed peppers/cottage pie/etc for the family I have a sandwich.

Stew and tatties.

Bacon and egg pie. Hate eggs too...

Scotch broth.

Tattie soup

Sausages and mash

Occasional pork chop

Roast chicken or beef.

Boiled beef.

Stovies

Ham and salad in summer, with those tinned "salads"

Dessert was rare and likely to be angels delight of those boxed trifles.

Absolutely no pasta, rice, spices, my dad liked plain food so that all we had.

I don’t remember ever, ever, drinking a glass of water. Always squash, milk or tea with a million sugars!!!

And if you were really ill.... soluble gritty aspirin in the special glass 🤮🤮🤮

Yes about the water. We had a glass of milk with our dinner and then tea with other meals but coffee at breakfast (for some of us). Not sure how we all stayed hydrated as we never had water bottles in school etc.

Same here, Pallisers

I still have vague memories of the summer term of 1976, huge queues of us pupils being timed to ‘5’ at the School water fountain by the teachers as we gulped it down...

I still put sultanas in my curries... hmmm.. perhaps I’m a throwback!

I don't remember drinking water either. At school there were water fountains but nobody used them (they were quite manky and right next to the boys stinky toilets!)

And if you were really ill.... soluble gritty aspirin in the special glass

We were always given Beechams powders.

We were given jugs of water at the table. We were informed it was delicious, otherwise we'd never have realised.

Roasts on Sunday.
Leftovers on Monday

Pork or lamb chops with veg and potatoes
Breaded fish (because certain people me refused to eat fish unless it was breaded and drowned in vinegar)
Stews
Soups
Spaghetti bolognaise - I think you could only buy spaghetti and macaroni and we never called them pasta.
Macaroni cheese
Cauliflower cheese
Egg and bacon flan in the summer (this was never called quiche in our house).
Cheese and onion flan
Cold ham in the summer with salad. The dressing for salad was to drown the lettuce in vinegar which we all liked.
Chilli con Carne which I hated because I thought the beans were spicy. My mum was reduced to making me a separate portion without the chilli in it but even then I had to be actively encouraged to try the kidney beans because I was so convinced that they were the spicy part.
Egg and chips
Homemade pizza
Curry - with all the little side dishes with cucumber, banana slices, Pan Yan pickle, and poppadoms which I remember helping to cook.
Tomato soup - powdered packet soup which I loved.

My mum made her own bread and also own yoghurt. Of course we preferred Ski yoghurts because they had more sugar in them.

Fruit crumbles
Arctic Roll
These frozen mousses from Bejams with a swirl in them. So mint and chocolate flavour - the mint was a swirl in the chocolate
Frozen orange juice
Grapefruit halves for breakfast

Fizzy drinks were an treat only had on holiday or at Christmas. I remember Lilt being marketed and how exciting that seemed. We drank plenty of squash.

In the 80s we reached the exotic heights of turkey steaks, breaded turkey, lasagne, chicken kiev and oven chips.

You know what, when you think of all the vinegar on food does anyone else wonder if it contributed to everyone being slim and not much obesity.

Does anyone remember getting little glass bottles of orange concentrate from the clinic?- you had to dilute to drink it.
Loved that - it was much nicer than squash.

We too had a special glass for the children's 'soluble' aspirin. It was a little green shot glass! Aspirin was NOT soluble!!

We had lovely orange flavoured soluble aspirin for children.I really liked it.
Also rosehip syrup with the aspirin crushed into it.
My brother was given big spoonfuls of malt for some reason.

Or maybe you just ate the orange aspirin, Im not sure.

Cough medicine was much nicer in the 70,s my grandma always had a packet of tunes in her handbag and we would get one as a treat does anyone remember getting the pink sugar cube at the DRs i think it was polio vaccine?

I remember the sugar cube and also some kind of cod liver oil and malt extract, a spoonful each morning in the winter. Loved that!

Maybe it was castor oil 🤔

Oh yes, spoonfuls of cod liver oil and malt from huge jars, to protect against colds in the winter, it was like something from Dotheboys Hall!