What family dinners did you grow up with?

[ValkyrieAssassin]

Both my parents were excellent cooks. And I and my sister relished food in a very big way so I expect it was quite satisfying to cook for us. For context i was born in 1973 and Dsis in 1976. I am not from the UK which makes a difference I think because meat was cheap when I was growing up. Not particularly well off- thoroughly middle class as both parents were teachers (DM part time from when I was born).

Our fairly regular family meals

• french onion soup
• pumpkin soup
• chicken noodle soup
• minestrone with homemade meatballs
• spanakopita
• beef wellington (every single birthday)
• chicken schnitzel with apple sauce, mash and peas
• beef filet on mustard crouton with brandy cream sauce
• semolina gnocchi with spicy tomato basil sauce
• pumpkin gnocchi (homemade) with sage cream sauce
• rissoles with mushroom gravy
• sausages and mash
• seafood pancakes
• chicken and veg pancakes
• bacon and sweetcorn chowder
• homemade asparagus soup (my mother was a Delia Smith devotee)

Most of this I would never cook in a regular week. It's mainly pasta, tacos, pasta and easy because I have children with a range of SEN that makes eating generally difficult for them.

I am feeling nostalgic this afternoon and am curious what sorts of dishes you had while growing up, and if you make them now for your own family or not.

Mum had one of those 100 ways with mince books and we had mince 100 ways.

Non mince based meals included stew in a Yorkshire pudding
Roast dinner
Rolled lamb belly stuffed with cabbage
Scotch eggs

But until mum went out to work when I was 11, it was a lot of mince.

Everything with chips! My DB was a picky eater and used to gag if he tried eating potatoes and so my mum just cooked what he wanted. Fish fingers, sausages, findus pancakes Also v poor so chips were cheap and bread and butter with everything. Then when visiting my Nan lots of offal, elvers by the pan load! And a fray bentos pie on a Sunday. Cucumber sandwiches and a slice of cake for Sunday tea.

Scouse
Cornedbeef hash
Egg an chips
Chicken curry
Findus pancakes
Shepherds pie
Jelly with evaporated milk (my favourite then and still is)
Cake and custard
Vienna
Fruit cocktail

Most of the meals my mum cooked had no resemblance to the real thing. Like her “shepherd pie” was mince in gravy on top of a pile of mash (sometimes only smash). Her “roast potatoes” were deep fried in the chip pan. We rarely had veg as my dad wouldn’t eat any apart from frozen peas. She made some fish cakes that were ok - she called them rissoles. She also made an ok corned beef hash. I think we ate a lot of sausages - it’s hard to remember now.

How did you mum make corned beef hash?
Ours was mashed potato with the corned beef stirred through, the top was roughed up with a fork, brushed with egg and baked till it was crispy. Everyone else I've ever asked and the recipes online all use cubes of potato and onion with cubes of corned beef.

Boiled bacon ribs with boiled onions. Jacket potatoes and cabbage
Liver bacon and onions
Pot roast in Guiness with carrot leeks celery and onions
A lot of fish fried in breadcrumbs or poached
Kippers
Cold roast chicken with salad and chips. She made the best chips and lots of them
Didn't like the stewed sausages
Irish stew which I have never been able to replicate
Pork chops with sweet and sour
Beef stroganoff it was delicious but my dad who was a plain eater didn't like it so it never appeared again 😓
Her rice pudding was absolutely delicious
Her stuffing at Christmas was also delicious. She always stuffed both ends of the bird which I know is frowned upon now. You could actually slice the stuffing and I used to sneak some from the pantry though it used to give me terrible wind but it was worth it.
Talking of stuffing I also loved it when she did stuffed steak. That wonderful stuffing again.
Saute potatoes to use up any left-over boiled potatoes. Nearly nicer than chips.
Plus nothing like homemade pancakes straight of the griddle with butter and lemon

@TomPinch @H34th not Cyprus- Australia. But we were lucky to live in a community that had alot of Greek and Italian migrants and my mum's best friend was Greek so she taught my mother to make spanakopita. I did not like it much but really love it now. Spinach anything is my weakness! (Although sometimes she would make it using silverbeet which i hardly ever see in the UK).

Haven't seen these family meals since I left home in the Dark Ages. Anything made with suet. Suet Pudding, a pud made of suet and flour with a couple of tablespoons of golden syrup and a knob of butter at the bottom of the basin then steamed or boiled for about an hour. Eat with custard. Suet dumplings, as before, minus the butter and syrup. Blobs dropped onto top of stew and cooked for half hour or so. Suet pastry, for savoury pies baked in an oven. Rolled and stuffed Pork Belly; a piece of belly with a packet of Paxo made up then spread on the meat, rolled and tied then boiled for an hour or so. Left to cool, slices made a meal with vegetables and gravy or a useful thinly sliced sandwich filling. All of the above was quite tasty. Not so the assorted offal, liver, heart, pigs trotters, etc. The amount of fat and sugar we ate in our daily diet would make today's nutritionists reach for a detox immediately.

Growing up I was a very very fussy child and hated anything vaguely adventurous that my mum cooked.

My favourite dinners were things like fish fingers, chips and beans.

Once my mum discovered pasta (in the late 80s I think) that became a staple as I'd eat that.

I did love my puddings though, angel delight, sponge puddings, apple crumble, various cakes.

Child of the 70s, with a mother who hated cooking and a father who was suspicious of any food that wasn't fried. I remember:

• shepherds pie made with grey mince, tinned veg and instant mash powder
• grey watery casserole with kidneys bobbing about in it
• chips cooked in a chip pan whose fat had turned black from overuse
• sausages cooked in a frying pan with equally black fat. It was kept sitting on top of the cooker and I remember watching flies buzzing around it and landing on it in the Summer.
• spaghetti from a tin - I didn't know that 'real' pasta existed until I was 16
• fried fish fingers/crispy pancakes and the like.
• Fresh bread from the bakers up the road, along with cream cakes daily
• lots of chocolate and biscuits (which I loved)
• Only cheddar cheese. I didn't know there were other cheeses til my teens
• bricks of frozen spinach (eeww) whereas fresh spinach is lovely, not that I had any til I left home
• hearts (I refused to eat these) and other offal
• tinned puddings

Roast chicken every Sunday
Stir fry with the leftover chicken on Mondays, or cashew nuts otherwise
Curry with leftover chicken and the inevitable raisins
Fishfingers, jacket potato and beans
Vegetable soup
Fish in parsley sauce
Various other kinds of fish baked until dry and leathery
Tuna pasta bake
Pasta with a sauce made from onions, tinned tomatoes and bacon
Shepherd's pie/cottage pie
'Risotto' but made with long grain rice because my mum didn't know about risotto rice
Fajitas or tacos when we were teenagers and the Old El Paso brand launched
Jacket potato with various toppings
Pork or chicken casserole
Grilled sausages with boiled potatoes and veg
Occasionally frozen pizza

We used to heat up what we had for lunch. My grandmother was the most prolific cook of them all.

My mother isn’t a great cook. Meat and 2 veg meals were her speciality so I grew up on roast dinners. She is the queen of Yorkshire puddings though. If it wasn’t a roast dinner or some sort of meat, veg and potato it was
spag bol (mince with dolmio)
cheese soup
mince and dumplings
corned beef stew
somerset pork casserole (I think this seasoning came in a packet, I hated it).
mixed grill
bacon and egg sandwiches
corned beef and tomato pie with chips
corned beef cakes and beans / egg

I had a steak and kidney suet pudding in a pub recently and it was bloody lush! I wish I could recreate them, but honestly it seems like so much faff. My mum used to buy them I think, I can still see the little stack of empty plastic pots in the cupboard kept as they’ll “come in handy” 😂

Scottish child of the 1980s.

Food was very brown, as I recall - we weren't 'allowed' processed food, apart from the odd fish finger or savoury pancake on high days or holidays, and my mother wasn't a particularly enthusiastic cook, so there was a lot of mince and soup.

In the same way hippies bred punks, though, I am a keen and very competent cook and really enjoy experimenting and learning about new techniques and cuisines.

I also like instant mash, which was absolutely verboten growing up. The Idaho brand one with cheese is the best. 😁

fish pie
shepherds pie
spag bol
giant sausage roll
roast
lentils once i was veggie

we also had a lot of mince, i only know because i had to go to the butchers because she was offended when he asked her if she wanted half a pound of mince <<as usual>>

I made a suet pudding last weekend <drool>

With home-made custard <virtuous>

I have to get my suet from the butcher now and order it weeks in advance as the supermarkets no longer stock it round my way.

1966, Scottish

Summer was salad almost every day. A couple of leaves from the lettuce from the garden, a couple of slices of tomato and onion, either boiled potatoes with butter and greentails (from the garden is ready or Ayrshires from Goldie's van) or chips. This would be accompanied by either a slice of cold meat, a boiled egg or some grated cheese with a pineapple ring. Always salad cream and if we were lucky a spoonful of Heinz vegetable salad or coleslaw from a tin.

Other times of year
Stovies
Mince and tatties
Lentil, potato, chicken and rice or minestrone soup with sandwiches
Macaroni cheese
Steak pie
Stew and potatoes
Fish fingers, chips and peas
Scotch pie and chips with beans in the dookit
Poached egg on toast with chips, peas and cheese sauce
Pork chop, potatoes, veg like mashed neeps, apple sauce
Gammon steak, chips, peas, pineapple ring
Cauliflower cheese and chips

When I was a bit older, probably about 15, more "exotic" veg like broccoli and peppers started being available locally along with things like tinned kidney beans, so my mum branched out a bit and started making things like spag bol, lasagne and chilli. And she served steamed broccoli tossed with butter and flaked almonds.

I grew up in a fairly poor semi rural village on the west coast so food shopping was quite limited. The post office was also a grocers and the ladies who ran it still sold butter that they patted into a block and tied in greaseproof paper! When I went to uni on Edinburgh, when I was 18, I couldn't believe the kind of food that was in the shops🤣

I did not grow up in the UK so my regular meals from a 60s/70s childhood might be slightly different to most here:

When quite young, lots of tv dinners sadly.
corn chowder
scalloped potatoes, often served with ham
hamburgers (shop bought and home made)
delicious stir fries
home made cinnamon buns as after school snack
pierogies and sour cream, saurkraut and cabbage rolls
devilled eggs
spag bol
chicken stew with suet dumplings
jell-o (!)
Bird's custard
dim sum restaurants on special Sunday mornings
and if my DD is reading this is a give-away... Grandma's Oatmeal Stuffing!!

DF was a hunter, tried to make me eat moose but just NO

We did continue with many of the same dishes for our children. What my (now grown) children might remember from their childhood:
chicken enchiladas
corn chowder
garlic chilli chicken
lemony chickeny rice
pork and onions served with endive salad with garlicky dressing
pork belly
lamb and lentils
lasagna and moussaka
scalloped potatoes
pierogies
stilton and tomato tart
Caesar salad
fried chicken, also roast chicken with oatmeal stuffing
Smoked brisket
home made pork pies
home made pot stickers (Chinese dumplings)
green onion cake with hot sauce dip
tabouleh made with cauliflower instead of bulgar wheat
lamb curry
curry goat
eggs Benedict
gumbo with cornbread

DH always cooks from scratch. My DD once looked in the fridge in despair, "there's nothing to eat!" Her Dad said "but the fridge is full, what do you mean?" Her reply was "it isn't food, it's ingredients!!" She is now an excellent cook btw.

Rissoles (homemade)
Fishcakes (ditto)
Mince and potato
Shepherds pie
Steak and kidney stew, potatoes and veg
Fish, mash, parsley sauce
Baked potato with butter / cheese
Lamb chops

No pasta, curries, stir fries - they hadn't been invented!

Chicken curry (usually korma or balti)

Chilli

Tagliatele with bolognese sauce and garlic bread

Cottage pie

Tuna napolina pasta

Chicken soup

Spiced lentil soup

Beef stroganoff with rice

'salad tea' which consisted of small cubes of strong cheddar, a boiled egg or two, cherry tomatoes, coleslaw, sweetcorn, sometimes a bit of potato salad, olives and occasionally artichoke hearts

Chopped salad which was more like a proper salad, - cherry tomatoes, sweetcorn, Feta, olives, peppers, lots of crunchy leaves, capers, garlic cloves cooked and stored in oil from a jar, all dressed in fresh lemon juice and good olive oil and lots of herbs like basil and oregano . This was my absolute favourite in summer and I still eat it about once a week. It tastes even better the next day with a bit of toasted focaccia to soak up all the juices

Canelini bean 'cassoulet' (it was called cassoulet but bore little resemblance to an actual cassoulet, but was very tasty and filling in winter)

Fajitas and enchiladas

The occasional roast dinner

Irish stew with home made soda bread

Bacon and cabbage

Fisherman's pie and veg

Beef bourginon with lots of heavily buttered crusty bread.

And my mum wonders why I love food

I grew up disliking many foods just because of the relentless monotony of our family meal. Every weekday was the same - something "brown" with boiled potatoes, tinned peas and carrots followed by a milk pudding.

I avoid boiled potatoes like the plague, also mince and gravy, liver etc and all milk puddings.

It was mainly because my dad wouldn't try anything different - always dismissed as "foreign muck" (pizzas, meatballs etc) yet I was called fussy because I didn't like broth - still don't.

I never knew what rice or pasta was 😣

Stuffed marrow (🤮🤮🤮)
Pork chop and boiled potatoes
Savoury mince and boiled potatoes
Roast.
Cottage pie.
Casserole. Loads of casserole.
Chippy on a Wednesday.
Frozen pizza on a Saturday.

I'm a late 70s baby. My mum is not a very proficient cook. And the apple has not fallen far from the tree!

getting some really good dinner ideas from this thread!

incidentally what are findus crispy pancakes?