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 ?!

We certainly had water with meals - I can remember the feel and taste of the metal cups at lunch in infant school vividly! At juniors it was plastic cups, and at home we had glasses.

I loved rosehip syrup in milk, but cough medicine was vile in our house. In the winter dad would get a giant tin of Fishermans Friends lozenges from the cash and carry and I would have a pocket full of them at all times.

At school there was water and (as in or, not mixed together) milk. I desperately wanted to be milk monitor but I was probably too clumsy. Both served from jugs into little glasses, I remember someone’s water turning cloudy when they drank with a mouthful of food 🤢

I remember the sugar cube for the polio vaccine. Fortunately we didn't have cod liver oil inflicted on us. My parents both have tales of the 'special' spoon used for it because it stank for evermore and couldn't be used for anything else.

We had water with meals at school but I don't remember having anything to drink at home with a meal. My parents tended to have a cup of tea after their dinner so maybe they didn't feel the need.

We didn't walk around with bottles of water all the time and no-one thought we were going to die if we didn't have access to water during lesson time at school.

We had water at home and I remember on special occasions being allowed a sort of thimbleful of wine (like a shot glass) and sulking furiously because older siblings had a proper wine glass.

I remembet milk at school they gave it us in the afternoon after it had been in the classroom all day it was vile and smelt of sick when did maggie thatcher snatch ir because i remembet it in the early 80,s or maybe my parents paid for it?

I remember the warm milk too 🤢

DH is older than me and in his primary school they used to defrost the milk in the radiator.

I drizzle rosehip syrup over vanilla ice cream!

That's reminded me... my mum used to drizzle rosehip syrup over tinned rice pudding. Yummy!

Oh! The decadence!

Medicine - we had bechams powders, always with undiluted orange squash, the lovely alka seltzer also with orange squash, kaolin and morphine and buttercup syrup, which I still had an addiction to.

Mum used to leave the medicine bottles in our room and one day my brother decided we should taste test all of the medicines at once.

I can still taste the Angiers Junior Aspirin. They were lovely. I lived in fear of being made to take the unspeakably vile kaolin and morphine. The way it separated malevolently in the bottle. Eurgh.

Christmas Hampers were a big thing in our family.
Because work was unreliable they were a must, we often had three (one paid for out of each earning mans wage) hampers at Christmas and a clothes one at Whit.

The randomness of Dundee cake still haunts me.

We always got a Christmas hamper, though to be honest it wasn’t very exciting once you dug past the shortbread and Christmas pud.

I’ve just remembered my mum forcing this horrible garlic medicine on us when we were ill. It was a brown syrup called Liqufruta and it literally made me gag.

Ye Olde Oak Ham in a tin at Xmas.
I loved cod liver oil and malt from a big brown jar

Ooh cod liver oil and malt, yum

We were also dosed daily with rose hip syrup

My dad made it seem like a big treat....did the whole aeroplane thing with the spoon.
I bought some recently...forgotten how fishy it was
Ditto advocaat....felt all nostalgic for a snowball. Vile.

Aah yes! Findus crispy pancakes! We hated liver as it was rather tubey. I hated the cheap cuts of meat we had which were fatty and gristly (no longer eat meat!). In the end we had 'stew' made with mince! Chicken risotto, chicken plait, sausagemenat, and beans with mash on top, shepherds pit, meat pies (home made), spag bol. Unfortunatley mum and dad liked liked the local Chinese (think very BOG standard sweet and sour stuff). I still hate Chinese though I ate very well in China!

Do you remember the Vista curry stuff? We loved it and thought ourselves well sophisticated when we ate it!

Also Arctic roll, lemon meringue pie (mum's own, lovely and tart) and of course Angel Delight!

We also hat malt flavoured cod liver oil. My little brother was the only one to have rose hip syrup which ruined my brother's teeth and the dentist really told mum off!

I remember our aunt who lived with us for a while used to have parmesan in those drums. We hadn't seen real parmesan so thought that was it (not so sophisticated then, despite the above mentioned curry!). She also had horseradish sauce with beef. I thought it weird but love it now with veggie sausages! She was also the first one to eat avocadoes in the family but has since denied this in her lovely way.

Born and dragged up in Dublin so maybe a few different ones from me - maybe not with the mentions of spuds everywhere in the thread :D

Every fortnight we got a 4 stone bag of potatoes/spuds delivered. We had them roasted, boiled, mashed and chipped. The deep fried homemade chips are to this day my favourite food ever and I only get them once a year cos I wont give in and buy a deep fat fryer.

Regular meals included the following:
Boiled egg and soldiers
Mash with turnip and rashers of bacon ( i still hanker for this one)
Sausage mash and peas from a tin - batchelors were always the best
Mince stew - no idea why not just regular beef stew cos she bought the beef and then minced it herself for some reason
Boiled spuds and savoury mince
Shepards pie
Spag bol
Mince burgers - loved the mince did my mother.
Corned beef, mash, cabbage, parsley sauce
Chicken curry with raisins and APPLE. I still remember the dissapointment of forking apple into my mouth instead of chicken.

Desserts were:
Angel delight (im still gagging at the thought of it)
Tapioca
Jelly on its own or with icecream or custard
Chocolate yoghurt or hazelnut yogurt from dunnes stores. Vile things.

Calvita sandwiches in the grannys for a treat. Its no more made of cheese than I am.
I still buy it.

Cooled boiled 7up when sick. She still tries this one. It does not work!

My mother being the typical Irish mammy would get a sniff that you enjoyed something once and you got it every day for the next 6 months. One of us (my sister ) ONE SUNDAY said how we ALL enjoyed our dessert of custard with broken rich tea biscuits and sliced banana. It became our winter breakfast for months on end.

We did drink loads of water but a sunday treat drink was a dilutable orange juice - not squash but actual orange juice which you got from a tin and diluted with a litre of water. i LOVED it. I wish i could find it now...

Monday Bubble n Squeak
Tuesday Toad in the hole
Wednesday Liver & Bacon
Thursday Homemade Minced Beef Pie
Friday Fish & Chips from chippy
Saturday Cooked Breakfast but for tea.
Sunday Roast Dinner every Sunday except in Summer when we'd have sandwiches and seafood from local shellfish stall.
French Fancies or Vienetta for Desert

We had an awful lot of stuff on toast

Poached eggs on toast - sometimes with a tin of M & S minced beef over the top
Sardines on toast
Baked beans and pork sausages on toast
Tinned ravioli on toast

And mincemeat and cabbage

Never, ever had chips. Or anything deep fried.

"My mother being the typical Irish mammy would get a sniff that you enjoyed something once and you got it every day for the next 6 months" OMG yes! My uncle - everyone thinks he likes cheese scones because he ONCE made polite noises about liking my grans homemade ones - his FOUR sisters still over 40 years later never go to his without at least 2 cheese scones in hand! (They usually end up in the bin 😂😂😂) utterly bonkers behaviour!

On toast - that was a lunch thing never a dinner thing. As my mother didn't consider it a "proper meal" I know she's judged me for "only" giving dd beans or eggs on toast for dinner sometimes. If she knew sometimes we just had cereal she'd be apoplectic!

I forget before about smash. 😱

60's - Sunday tea was tinned fruit and evap milk, bread and butter and cake.

We used to have a cake called Harlequin Gateau which I loved, it was a sponge cake with pink icing and sprinkles on it. We used to have batten burg cake often to.

There was bread and dripping too on a Sunday evening with lots of salt on it.

Oh we had bread and milk which I quite liked but could not eat now.
Bubble and squeak and I still have and like that.
Boiled egg and soldiers was another favourite.