Why was a glass of orange juice a starter?

[NutellaEllaElla]

I learned this recently. Is it true? What don't I know that might help me understand this?

Nonsense. I was born in 1955 and there was no evidence of any shortages in my childhood.

I thought that bread and butter with some meals was just standard. I had no idea it was served to bulk the meal out.

This is still served some places .

@WinterLobelia, , mine too. I do love stodge, as my waistline and dodgy joints can attest. I've never been obese, though, just overweight. <clutches straw>

There were varying attitudes to food in the 1970s. As many of us on this thread remember, lots of enthusiasm for convenience foods, but also a rearguard movement from the likes of Elizabeth David who wanted people to be able to cook real food from minimally processed ingredients and to replicate dishes they'd eaten on their increasingly common foreign holidays.

Delia Smith started her cookery course on the BBC in the late 1970s out of concern that many people (mostly women, of course) were not learning to cook from their mothers and other family members, and weren't learning it at school either.

There was a growing interest in vegetarian food too, as witnessed by the success of the Cranks chain and recipe books. Various reasons - health, environment, animal welfare, wanting to save money.

Cheesecloth shirt with that?

With waist ties. Ribbed polo neck jumpers in winter. Denim skirt, platforms and then wedges.

Definitely a thing.

80s: fruit juice, prawn cocktail, half a grapefruit with glacé cherry on top, half of one of those melons with the orangey flesh with port poured into the hole in the centre.

90s: melon and Parma ham, fanned melon with some form of fruit coulis, garlic mushrooms (creamy ones or breaded ones with garlic mayo for dipping).

Does anyone else remember the ubiquitous Death By Chocolate on every dessert menu in the late 80s and 90s? It sort of replaced Black Forest gateau. It was a chocolate sponge cake with a chocolate mousse filling, thick chocolate icing and chocolate shavings, always bought in by the restaurant from one of those dessert catering places. Haven’t seen it on a menu since the very early 2000s.

My mum is nearly 70, and if she buys a carton of juice, you know she's feeling REALLY fancy!
To her, even the ambient, from concentrate stuff is a real treat, and only for special occasions.

Death by Chocolate! Yes I remember it. Did it grow up to become Chocolate Fudge Cake?

@FormerlySpeckledyHen , you were born after rationing ended. My parents and my friends' parents remember rationing.
In my childhood, meals were smaller, less varied, locally produced and home cooked.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g , that sounds like a lot of food!

School dinners were awful. I was allowed to leave the mashed potatoes but was to eat everything else. I would eat what I could tolerate, then rearrange the large scoop of mash so that it covered the mound of food.
We usually had a pudding. Usually something like apple pie/crumble and custard . We didn't have a snack mid-morning. We had the rather warm milk.
We had names for most of the dishes we were served at school. I remember liking the ice cream, but we didn't have it often. If I never ate school dinner food again, it would be too soon.
I would make the effort to get away with eating as little of it as possible, which was helped by me being a slow eater anyway.

After school, we usually had a sandwich, usually thinly sliced bread with jam, and a small piece of cake.

I'm not much of a fruit eater and don't eat much food that is wheat-based (bread, pasta, cakes, biscuits) - I just don't see the point of it. (I had a mac'n'cheese pie recently and it was revolting. It had a yellow sticker on it and I thought I'd try it. If you haven't, don't)

Another difference I have thought of is the addition of butter and jam/marmalade to bread or toast. I was talking to a friend a few days ago and apparently people add butter to the toast before the peanut butter.

I often had a boiled egg for breakfast; we had chickens. If we had cereal, it was weetabix or shredded wheat. Regular milk and no sugar unless I wanted it (I didn't).

I actually gave my DH a glass of orange juice at our Christmas Eve dinner this year, because we were all having 'tiny mini meals' (as a PP said) for starters, and he can't manage three courses nowadays. He sat there sipping it very contentedly as we all ate our prawns, etc. It worked much better than him sitting there with nothing to do!

My husband is OLD though, and thinks of OJ as a perfectly normal starter, which it was in the days he remembers.

Oh my, Kelloggs Rise and Shine. My darling mum was obsessed with it. It tasted so foul. I’ve never felt right about orange juice ever since and have to force myself to drink it because it’s ’good for me’ (vit C). I bought orange juice in cartons for my kids growing up but couldn’t bring myself to let them have more than half a small wine glass at a time as it seemed so extravagant.

I remember going on family holidays- two weeks in a hotel in Scarborough/Torquay/Wales/Scotland in the 1980s and starters were things like: Fruit juice , melon wedge, half a grapefruit, prawn cocktail, soup, a green salad. They were small dishes, not mini-meals. The soup was probably one ladle, the prawn cocktail came in a wine glass type dish and was mainly lettuce, the green salad was basically lettuce, cucumber, spring onion and cress. Nothing came with mounds of bread. There was nothing really fatty.
Main courses were plain meat or fish - grilled, fried, roasted- with boiled potatoes and a selection of boiled British vegetables and possibly a Yorkshire pudding. There might be an occasional pie, or chips or roast potatoes.
Puddings were trifle, Black Forest Gateau, ice cream, crumbles, tarts - not large portions.
I don't remember anything exotic but I suppose if you were catering for the English on holiday at home it wasn't exotic. Certainly nothing spicy, no pasta, rice, curry, pizza.
When I think of it and think if the mounds of food people eat now it's no wonder people are so much fatter.
I found a dress that was my mam's from 'St Michel' which was the M and S label- it has a 34 inch bust, a 24 inch waist and 34 inch hips. It is tiny. Dress sizes have definitely increased.

If we had cereal, it was weetabix or shredded wheat. Regular milk and no sugar unless I wanted it (I didn't).

The point of weetabix was to fill the spaces between them with sugar and then mine it out before it dissolved into the milk too much.

If anyone fancies orange juice as a starter, there is a certain prom side hotel in Llandudno where it's still on the menu. To start: orange juice or soup

The lunch option also includes salad: beef, ham or cheese, which really tickles me!!

I was reading Delia Smith's Frugal Food a day or two ago as I'm trying to cull my cookbook stash. A lot of what she says makes sense and her recipes are usually reliable. I'll probably keep a couple of her books, but not that one. Some nice recipes but should I ever get round to needing it, there's Delia Online.

I found a dress... St Michael .... It is tiny. Dress sizes have definitely increased.
They have.
If you are planning on dressmaking, read the sizes on the pattern carefully even if the pattern is a new one.

Anyone remember, concrete shortcake needed to bash it with a fork to split it, gypsy tart, and school cake with pink custard. School pudding was mostly good bar the frogspawn

@TopicalNameChange , which one is it? Giz a hint.

@justasking111 , did you have 'Chunky' and 'Sick' at your school?
I should have namechanged!

Oh my god my parents had these glasses, and the matching dessert dishes!!

We used to get a box of crystallised fruit from a great uncle in South Africa.

I often think the same. We were living in the Abu Dhabi desert (dh was building a new airport) when bottled water started to be a Thing in the U.K. When we were back in the U.K. for summer holidays we were startled to see people actually paying for something that came out of the tap clean and cold.

At the time in AD our water came in a bowser - it was hot and brown and needed to be a) filtered, b) boiled, and c) kept in the fridge.

I still think bottled water has been the biggest con ever, perpetrated largely by the French. To be fair, in the not so distant past it was a necessity for them - a lot of tap water was not ‘potable’ - as we were warned on my first school trip to France at 14.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER , I live in an urban area in the South East. On nearly every trip to my local supermarket I will see people with a trolley full of bottled water.

Why do they buy it and why so much?

Apparently Sunny Delight was available until the late 90s.

Sunny Delight wasn’t available in the UK until the late 90s. It wasn’t produced here in the ‘70s.

It's not good for the teeth to drink large amounts of orange juice regularly because your teeth have to cope simultaneously with sugar and acid and it erodes the enamel. It's also quite calorific.