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 ?!

Born 72 - Sunday, roast. Monday, jacket potato and left over cold meat. Tuesday, Curry or sweet and sour made with left over meat. Wednesday, rissoles/ shepherds pie made with last of meat. Thursday, something like chops. Friday, Stew. Saturday was DIY day.

Mum cooked everything from scratch after a day teaching and couldn't face thinking about what to cook. She shopped on a Friday night and never topped up in the week , but grew all their own veg, had goats for milk, and produced their own meat

In the summer we had salad every day. Lettuce, tomatoes, greenbacks, radishes and either cooked meat, boiled egg or grated cheese with a pineapple ring served with either chips or boiled Ayrshire potatoes.

In the winter it was stovies, mince and tatties, braising steak with onions and chips, macaroni cheese with peas, homemade soup and sandwiches, egg chips and beans, sometimes fish fingers chips and beans, corned beef, boiled potatoes and beans. What my mother used to call stick to your rises food.

Occasionally, we would get something made from chicken drumsticks in a sauce or bolognaise, but not very often until I was a good bit older.

I was watching Old People's Home for 4yo's a couple of weeks ago. The adults and children were putting on a party, one of the old ladies made condensed milk sandwiches. I've never had one but my gran used to make them. We used to have banana sandwiches, DH says MIL used to put brown sugar on their banana sandwiches.

Mince and tatties
Curried mince 🤢
Fish fingers on a Friday
Stew and dumplings
Tinned meatballs and tinned new potatoes
Sat night was a cold tea (in front of The Pink Panther on TV), luncheon meat, jarred beetroot, bread and butter and those little half tins of Heinz vegetable salad
Sunday was a roast
I also remember something called Breakfast slices which I loved which were a bit like Turkey rashers (with beans and chips)
Bernard Matthews turkey burgers appeared late 70s in our house once we got a chest freezer (and Findus pancakes).
I also remember eating tinned Ravioli.

DM used to make stew and dumplings, it used to sit there simmering all day. Iirc the cooker used to be on most of the day either simmering or steaming something

Casserole with turnips, potatoes and lentils. A lamb chop with mash, sprouts and gravy. For an exotic meal we had spaghetti bolognese. Angel delight, mashed potato, fried eggs. Never any frozen food because that 'was beyond the pale' and 'not for people like us'

How come we weren't all as fat as pigs? It wasn't just all the chips and spam fritters. We also had a weekly delivery from the Corona man. A crate full of full fat cola, dandelion and burdock, cherryade, cream soda etc. Then there were the sweets. Cola cubes, sherbet pips, loose sherbet, aniseed balls, those silver ball thingies, sherbet dips, sherbet lemons, everton mints, all the time we had sweets.

70s child here

My mum was not very adventurous in regards to international cuisine so lots of English foods...

"Cowboys tea" which was sausages, mash and beans
Potato pie. Which was stewing steak cut up in a gravy with carrots and onions done in the oven in a deep filled pie dish with a thick crust on top
Meat and two veg with boiled potatoes. The meat was mostly chops.
Chicken casserole
Soup and dumplings
Mixed grill
Gammon and chips
Baby's yed chips and mushy peas..(baby's yed is a North West England saying for steak pudding because the steak pudding looks like a baby's head!)

I don't think I I ever had rice or anything remotely spicy until I left home!

And fish fingers
Toad in the hole
Casserole
And as I'm from Northern Ireland champ, Irish stew and Ulster fry's featured a lot.

Fray bentos pies
Burgers in a tin with gray with mash and tinned peas
Shepherds pie
Chips and ham with egg

Forgot to add Lancashire Hotpot to the list!

Whenever we were ill, she used to make a boiled egg chopped up in a cup (why cup?) with lots of butter.

Or "Pobs" which were chunks of bread added to a bowl of steaming hot sugary milk!

Roast on a Sunday...fish fingers and chips on a Saturday...findus crispy pancakes...pork chops...we seemed to have chips a lot! Don't remember having anything with pasta or rice until well into the 80's!

Oh blimey I'd forgotten the Goblin burgers in a tin! They tasted like what I imagine dog food tastes like arctic roll for dessert was a massive treat. Tinned fruit cocktail with carnation milk was quite pleasant, and tinned rice pudding with jam. Now I think about it the puds were definitely the best.

Could murder tinned burgers now

We had the Goblin burgers and Campbell’s meatballs, you can still buy the meatballs now, they are horrible but I’m sure they tasted better in the 70s

I still eat Campbell's meatballs. They are still delicious.

I think we weren't all fat because our portions were much smaller and we moved a lot more. My mum fed 4 of us with a fray bentos pie. And chips obviously.

Agree with this This thread is making me so nostalgic and I miss the days where there didn't seem to be all this angst around food

I feel nostalgic for the days when carbs were our friends.

Carbs still are my friends, maybe my only friends 😀

Mains - Coq au vin, chicken chasseur, veal in vermouth with glacé cherries, beouf bourgignon, duck a l’orange. Prawn cocktail, pate and dry cold hard toast or half a melon filled with port for starters.

All announced like Bev from Abigails party.

Oh and mousaka. I remember that a lot! And peppered steak or steak Diane. We rarely had roasts as —it wasn’t pretentious enough— my dad wasn’t keen.

WhyDidIEatThat

Regarding not being fat, as well as smaller portions and greater mobility pps have mentioned, I think there was generally less snacking back then and you couldn't order takeaways to be delivered to your house. There weren't 'drive through' restaurants either.

We weren’t fat because my mum dieted obsessively and was super thin, although our plates were always piled high the message (through her behaviour more than anything she said) was very clear. (I have six siblings and most of us have had some kind of eating disorder.)

Love this thread! I was born in the 80's but it seems our household didn't evolve