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 ?!

Mum was actually a brilliant cook and really had to stretch everything when the mortgage suddenly doubled overnight in the early 70s. Food shopping was £30 pcm for 5 of us and a dog.

Mince n tatties with doughboys and cabbage
Scotch broth
Stew and doughboys with kale
Chops tatties and veg
Porridge every day for breakfast
Pudding stewed fruit and custard
Last supper before shopping day was jam sandwiches
Homemade Chinese food
Homemade curry (from scratch vg)
Never roast dinner - that was fancy and too English
No takeaways ever, no chippy tea, no processed food. Used to beg for MCains pizza and Findus Crispy Pancakes.
Homemade crisps
Liver and onions (gag)
Omelette (gag)
Sardines on toast (gag)
Salad from stuff me and Dad grew in the garden with homemade salad cream

Corned beef and boiled potatoes
Beans on toast
Roast on Sundays with fat from last week's roast in gravy
Kippers occassionally
Liver occassionally
Beef burgers from frozen
Cheese on toast
Cottage cheese for those that could stand it
Cheese and pineapple hedgehog at parties - only food I miss
Corned beef butties
Rice pudding
Cornflakes for breakfast with warm milk and sugar

Mum used to make yoghurt and bread in the airing cupboard.

No drinks except for water or tea ever and mum administered the milk. No wilfully drinking it for fun. Tea in baby bottles too.

No snacks and no food out. I had one or two meals out as a child per year and that only changed in my early twenties. We had rare takeaways too. Lots of chips though. We had home made chip pan chips for tea minimum 3 times a week. Rest of time mash or boiled potatoes. Gravy for most meals unless eggs involved. Lots of bacon liver and meat with 'pipes'. I was vegetarian for 15 years after leaving home. Still not great with meat now. I can also confirm that chicken was just not a popular or common meat to have like it is now.
Didn't see rice in a meal until late 80s. No pasta in our house until 90s. No humous. No courgettes aubergine pumpkin or even peppers until 90s.
Veg mainly peas carrots or cauliflower. Swede for Sunday dinner.
Disgusting margarine on white bread
We weren't allowed fizzy pop unless it was Christmas.
Shop bought cake unheard of.
Coffee always instant
Tea drank for all meals even as a 4 year old. 2 sugars in all tea.
Orange squash made into ice lollies
We didn't have fruit juice or yoghurt
Only fruit was apples or bananas. Mostly just apple. Oranges/satsumas only at Christmas.
Strawberries with sugar on in summer only.
We did have a lot of sweets though. Penny pick n mix type.
I don't think it's any surprise that there's obesity. I've been obsessed with good food since I grew up. I thought a lot of stuff was grim even back then. Parents still eat like this 70% of time!

Tuna paste sandwiches

Fish fingers.

My mum has always had the main meal of the day in the evening, except on Sundays.

Usually vegetables with meat, no pies/pastry except quiche, and for a long time no meat on Fridays (macaroni or cauliflower cheese, scrambled eggs, not often fish).

We had a variety of desserts, jelly, sometimes custard, semolina, being three that came to mind. Fruit on its own was rare, as my dad was accused of being messy with oranges in particular.

Sweets were rare, crisps non-existent, pizzas seen as a poor person's meal, and salad was only part of Sunday evening tea. Restaurants seen as for holidays only.

Cheese, ham, salad, followed by Victoria sponge cake. Or as a real treat Viennese Whirls.

I can confirm that jelly made with condensed milk (My most fave pud as a child) now tastes rank and my dc refused to eat it 🤔

A meal out was A.Big.Event...

We all put our best togs on for the annual trip to the Berni Inn 😁😁😁

The one thing that sticks in my memory is luncheon meat sliced and fried in lard  veg with roast on Sunday was stewed for ages and was vile, but I was made to eat it.
Better when my dad cooked because he was a much better cook than my mum.

I still love tinned fruit and evaporated milk

Polony and black pudding.
Criso sandwiches.
Birds eye burgers , crinkle chips and peas.

Saturday : Irish stew with dumplings
Sunday: roast pork with apple sauce (home made) roast potatoes, cabbage
Monday: bubble and squeak
Tuesday: egg and chips
Wednesday: Egg and Cheese bake (grated cheese in an enamel plate with a fresh egg put in the middle and topped up with milk)
Thursday: Liver and Onions
Friday: smoked haddock and mashed potato

Rince and repeat 

My mum also made curried mince, what the flip was that about? It was basically the same mix as a cottage pie but with curry powder 😖.

I remember home made pies, stew, corned beef hash, tinned burgers, smoked haddock, sausage butties, fruit pies, fruit cake (sultanas) and custard, faggots, liver and onions 🤢, tiny lamb chops, belly pork, and lots of veg.

I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until my plate was clear. Mum and dad were both rather large and I was skinny. The portion sizes were huge and I remember feeling like I was stuck there for hours watching food congeal on the plate.

When boil in the bag dinners came out I was obsessed with prawn curry!

Liver. Bleughhhhhhh!

Born in '77

My mother made a horrendous chicken casserole thing which was basically chicken wings boiled to buggery in tomatoes. Chopped, tinned tomatoes. It was basically teeny bits of chicken swimming amongst watery and greasy tomatoes and bones.

She thought she got away with using turkey sometimes but I have always hated the stuff and knew immediately that the taste had gone from 'you can get through this, Bob!' To 'nope!' In a sniff!

Lamb casserole was as above with neck chops, tube included, instead of bird. Very little meat, loads of grease and plenty tubes!

The above were, of course, both served with potatoes. No salt. Just boiled-to-buggery Potatoes.

I remember findus crispy pancakes very fondly, due to my mother's horrendous cooking- minced beef were my favourite.

I became vegetarian aged 10. Mother thought it was a fad. Nope, it was to escape your boney meals.

I am now a chef. She once said "she makes such lovely pate because she learned from the best" yeah, learned what not to do! Thanks!

Tripe and onions. Liver and onions. Potato pie. Cow heel stew. Fish simmered in milk with an egg.

Yellow fish simmered in milk under the grill

Boak

Yes, egg-in-a-cup was believed to have medicinal and restorative properties! You knew that you were no longer at death's door once the egg-in-a-cup made an appearance.

I’ve just remembered my mums inedible lasagne. It was tinned mince and gravy mixed with tomato purée, layered with lasagne sheets and white sauce made with milk and cornflour and half a tub of that dried Parmesan. What makes it inexplicable is she’d lived in Italy for years and knew how to make good pasta dishes.

I don’t remember having set meals on particular days other than Friday, fish, and Sunday, roast chicken.

Other than that all I really remember atm is fecking awful spaghetti bolognaise made with a tin of supermarket minced beef and onion.

Nothing was shop bought other than that and canned tomatoes.

We had things like stews, chops or sausages with mash, mashed potatoes with fried egg on top, mashed potatoes with onion and grated cheese. Canned pilches on toast was a recurring nightmare of a meal.

pilches ? Pilchards.

They've been mentioned on MN before...

Frozen individual 'mousses'. I remember them as a lemon flavour. I wonder when they disappeared. I have no memory of them making it to the 90s. They may have been an 80s food.

@maggienolia a SLICE of rice pudding? How?