What did people used to eat for breakfast.

[forevercooking]

Years ago. When people all sat around the table for breakfast before one or both parents went off to work and the kids went to school. What was being cooked/prepared/eaten? I can't imagine men were off down a pit on a diet of cornflakes but maybe I'm wrong.

Well upholstered!! Brilliant description!

I am chuckling at the PPs who think my family were posh for having occasional Ski yogurts as a breakfast treat! They were the only brand our milkman delivered.
My parents grew up in Tyneside slums without even a flush toilet, just a bucket in a midden outside, emptied once a week. They had moved to a tiny damp cold house down south before I was born, but we didn’t even have a phone until I was twenty. Posh we certainly weren’t!

I'm at work at the moment so will do bulk of replies a bit later. Reason I thought of this is I don't usually eat breakfast per se. The children sit at the table for theirs I usually have a cuppa whilst getting ready then get them ready. Then we all leave for school/work and I grab something mid morning. I'm not a great sleeper and therefore exhausted in the mornings. I had an early night and a great sleep and was up much earlier than usual and therefore had time to sit down at the table this morning and eat with the children. It made me think about all the tv programs you used to see of people having breakfast together (I appreciate this isn't always reflective of real life) especially programmes from the 60's/70's/80's and possibly 90's. Made me curious as to what everyone else was eating round these tables 😂

We never had proper breakfasts growing up unless it was a special occasion. Mum made us cups of tea and there was a biscuit tin full of cheap custard creams and rich tea etc. I used to envy my schoolfriends who had fresh orange juice (we only had that at christmas) and toast and cereal.

Bread was the norm in most households for speed as much as anything, butter, dripping etc if you could afford it. People worked really long days

Porridge or other grain based gruel was common too especially making for larger numbers or farming families where they did work prior to breakfast.

before wfh became a thing we never ate breakfast together. The Dcs would eat in the car on the way to school and I would eat breakfast when i got to work.

Now we don't have to leave until 7,.30 as I mostly wfh so we all sit together and eat at the table. I really like it, especially as we are a bit hit or miss at eating together at night.

Me too!
Dad had a full English breakfast cooked by mum, she had toast. We children had cornflakes or Rice Krispies, bread, butter and jam (marmalade was for grown ups!), occasionally toast (made under the grill, no taster).
Later mum would have grapefruit, later she had cornflakes, dad porridge once he retired (and until he died aged 97)
I never had breakfast by the time I was a teenager, just a cup of tea or coffee, still don’t!
Very occasionally we’d have watery poached eggs on toast (ugh, soggy toast), but generally that or scrambled eggs were a tea thing.

Cooked breakfast (any of bacon eggs tomatoes mushrooms sausage )porridge, toast, fruit.

I cooked the whole lot for my ravening wolves teen sons every school day right through High School. They faced a 45 minute journey on the school bus (and a cold wait at the gate in winter).

These days I do cooked breakfast for me and DH as a Sunday treat maybe once or twice a month. Skip the porridge but add freshly squeezed orange juice, and coffee. Then skip lunch.

One thing I remember from my gran (growing up in the early C20th) is that they only ever had butter or jam on bread, never both as that was considered decadent. For my mum in the '50s it was bread and dripping. Toast wasn't really a thing. In the '70s when I was growing up it would be cereal on school days, with a cooked school dinner, then half a tin of something on toast for tea. Kippers or porridge as a weekend treat.

I'm not being holier than though because I eat awful breakfast food, but pure carb breakfasts we eat like porridge and cereal are so unhealthy as they cause huge blood sugar spikes even in non diabetics and leave us feeling crappy and hungry. Even bread and dripping would have been significantly better as it is high fat and adds protein which slows down the carb load. I wish the culture of breakfast foods wasn't a thing and we just are normal food like lunch and dinner as they do in many other countries.

Don't be ridiculous, my mother was born in 1914 and loved grapefruit for breakfast, if she couldn't get fresh ones she would by them tinned, Trout Hall springs to mind, I think that hotel breakfast buffets still use a similar thing.

Mud.

My grandfather (born 1912) did manual work and his weekday breakfast was always porridge. At weekends he'd have eggs and bacon, followed by toast and marmalade.

But during the week there was no 'sitting down with the family for breakfast' - he prepared breakfast on his own and had left the house by 6am. The rest of us would have toast, but that wasn't a sit down thing either, we usually ate while rushing around to get out of the house in time to catch our train.

Farming family here.

My Granny/Mum would be up at 5 am to do porridge for my Grandfather/Dad and the farm workers.

There would be a full English about 9 after milking (again for everyone)

Lunch would be meat and 2 veg (again for everyone) and something like a crumble.

Dinner was about 4.30 (again after milking) - soup, sandwiches and also a cake that would have been made that day.

We once had a fire in a hay barn. My Mum just increased the amounts and fed all the firefighters as well and also constant tea, coffee and cake. They said they were happy to come out again any time!

I still have, and use, the grapefruit spoons from my parents' house, they're not serrated but are quite pointed, the grandchildren like them because they get into the corners of yoghurts etc..

I'm retired and I don't really remember us having breakfast together apart from Sundays as Dad worked on a Saturday morning until I was I my teens. Sunday was bacon and egg. Weekdays we'd have cereal or toast.

I was born in 1964, as a child/teen we had cereal. I stopped eating breakfast mid teens (and even now don’t eat anything before about 10am). My parents had coffee and toast, usually on the go as they both worked full time.
The only time we had bacon and egg was Christmas Day.

That’s literally a full time job prepping meal after meal. Sounds lovely in a way.

Well my dad certainly never ate breakfast round the table with us, he was off by 4.30 am. Which was also too early for breakfast. He’s take a huge stack of sandwiches, beef dripping, cheese spread or potted meat spread, and on Mondays as a special treat , the left over meat from Sunday dinner. Us kids had ready brek, central heating for kids, and my mum, grandma and great Gran all had toast. In winter we got ours in bed cos it was too cold to sit at the table. Then we’d get up and race downstairs to get dressed in front of the fire. Gran went to work as a book keeper, mum took us to school then went and did a couple of hours at the working men’s club behind the bar, leaving Great Gran, well into her 80s to do the house work.

Sorry, that’s turned into a of ramble, but it’s just made me realise how bloody old I am, and what a different world it was. God!

Days cereals or porridge or toast and jam , weekend full English with fried bread

Exactly. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day , and shared meals round the table is equally important for other reasons.

Ask any teacher; the children who got a nourishing breakfast are easily identifiable by their behaviour, alertness and learning capacity. As are the kids who didn't.

Grapefruit is a very 70s breakfast. When people talk about the past a lot depends on how old they are.

From 1956 to 1963 (when I left home) my impoverished widowed working mother occasionally served half a fresh grapefruit (each) , or a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, at breakfast time.

This sounds like my dh’s family, farmers too. FiL had porridge with the cream scooped off the milk in the dairy, heaps of sugar on it and in his tea, full fried breakfast then toast and marmalade. Mid morning was cake and coffee, lunch meat, veg, puddings, tea more cake, sandwiches etc then a cooked supper as well! 😳
I have never seen so much food and basically MiL spent all day cooking and clearing up - I flatly refused to do it when we were first married so she’d ask DH over for breakfast etc 🤬when I was working. She thought I was neglectful 😄

I had porridge or bread and milk. Or toast. Or boiled eggs.
I visited a Workhouse museum last week. The inmates breakfasts consisted of bread, dripping, gruel and a mug of either tea or a drink of a type of cocoa. That was for the vagrants.
The other inmates had similar but had milk in their tea.

It is why there was a such high rate of heart attacks amongst traditional family farmers.