What was food like when you were a child?

[Yourinmyspot]

I was cooking our tea the other day and did boiled potatoes I said to DD they were old potatoes as we both prefer them to new potatoes. She said something about old and new potatoes to her friends at school and they didn’t have a clue what she meant.

I was born in the early 70’s and we had old potatoes either boiled or mashed in the winter months and new potatoes (the small ones) in the summer months but couldn’t have them mashed. I always remember it was good when we could have mash again in the winter!

Fruit was seasonal too, we were allowed one portion a day as it would have been to expensive for us as a big family to have more than that. You only got strawberries for a short window in the summer there was no way we had then at any other time. We had oranges in winter usually around Christmas time. My Mum would buy a crate from the local greengrocer and keep it in the porch, they were great oranges.

I remember the first time we had lasagne it was so exotic! Never had pasta growing up. We always had a roast dinner on Sundays and had the leftover meat with chips on Mondays.

We often had mince and mash (or new potatoes) with tapioca for pudding as it cooked at the same time.

I loved it when we had bacon chops as we could dip our potatoes in the bacon fat so tasty had to fight my Dad for it!

At one point my Mum used to heat up a bag of ready salted crisps to go with a roast chicken dinner not sure why. It stopped as she got fed up of us arguing over who had the most.

For pudding we had things like blamange in a rabbit mould or a sponge that was hollow in the middle that my Mum put jelly mixed with fruit in.

Happy memories

Ooh yes I’d forgotten the frozen mouse tubs loved those. Vienetta was a treat we loved it. it’s a famous story in our family that my youngest two siblings had some vienetta at my Aunt and Uncles and they couldn’t believe how much they were given! As we shared it between loads of us at home you didn’t get much.

We would have fish and chips occasionally that was the only take away we ever had,

I remember food in the 70’s being fairly bland, but every so often mum would cook an ‘exotic meal’. This was usually based around a recipe she had seen in a woman’s magazine. Her beef ‘curry’ was memorable 😉

Recipe:
Brown beef mince and onion. Add stock ( from a cube) and a teaspoon of curry powder. Add peas and sultanas (🤮). Serve on top of white boil in the bag rice and top with sliced banana and desiccated coconut. A classic!

edited to say peas.

70s - my Mum loved the new convenience foods. Vesta curry, Beanfeast, Faggots, Findus Crispy Pancakes, supermarket pizza (we pronounced it pit zah and we got a quarter apiece). Everything was served with the same potato offer as OP’s and tinned veg - peas, carrots, mixed veg (disgusting!) Deserts were Instant Whip, Angel Delight and sugary yogurts like Ski. Mum could cook five dishes from scratch that were lovely - macaroni cheese, chicken supreme, spag Bol and two beans/lentil dishes she learned from Jamaican student nurse friends when they all lived in the Nurses Home and curry- she couldn’t usually be bothered to cook them though.

Wwe ate so much in the 70s. We had a meat and 2 veg meal with a milk pudding at lunchtime then a cooked tea like macaroni and cheese or bacon, sausage and beans.
I struggle to think of one meal per day.

We had boiled potatoes a lot. And findus crispy pancakes.

@fussychica i thought vesta meals were sooo exotic!! 🤣

Born 1950, rural, parents farmed chicken, plenty of eggs. Later late DF got a boat, mostly deep sea fishing, occasionally fresh water. Bloke next door,hunted and shot, rabbits, pigeon, parents grew fruit and veg. Meals home cooked.. homemade ginger beer and lemonade. Sunday was roast, Monday left overs mince, Tuesday cold cuts.. Sunday was the only day for pudding. Rice pudding,suet rollypolly, with jam, golden syrup or mixed fruit.

My mum was a basic but good cook. Liver and onions, meat and potatoes. Poached smoked haddock 🤢🤢 was a special treat
Used to get chips or a potato scallop after my swimming lesson if I was lucky. My dad worked away a lot and he used to make a liver casserole on a Monday and it would last all week....🤢🤣

Boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, jacket potato, roast on Sunday and chips fried in lard in a chip pan. Meals were roast meat (usually chicken), pork chops, lamb chops, fried egg (and chips), pies, mince, and vegetables with everything (peas, carrots and cabbage featured heavily). Or baked beans/spaghetti hoops with chips and something.

There was also a big plate of bread and ‘butter’ (margarine) in the middle of the table every meal.

Lunch was a sandwich, soup, or something on toast (usually sardines or beans/spaghetti). We rarely ate between meals but if we were hungry we had toast.

Supper was toast or a crumpet.

Oh and packed lunch was a sandwich (cheese/ham/tuna/egg) on white bread, an apple, a penguin biscuit and a bag of crisps. Every single day for my entire school life. No child had peperami or dairylea triangle envy as bad as I did!

We had boiled potatoes every single deal.
I hate them now.

My sister did cookery at school and brought home such exotic things as Swedish meatballs and pizzas (which were called pizza pies). My dad refused to eat any of that foreign stuff.

Very much the sort of thing mentioned already in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I remember thinking those really highly processed ‘fake’ shop bought cakes like the pink, white and yellow angel cake and Battenberg were the business and taking my mum’s amazing Victoria sponges and scones for granted.

Arctic Roll and Venetia were also very popular with us kids as was Ice Magic!

Mostly pretty healthy - My Mum liked the Cranks recipe book - and quite progressive for the time. We were early adopters of the avocado pear. There were plenty of convenience foods too though, especially when my Mum started working longer hours. We had finds crispy pancakes, mini kievs, toast toppers. Also had pudding after dinner every night.

I absolutely hated boiled potatoes and got them all the time. I also hated stew. Not much money around so understand but eww

A vesta curry in our house was the height of luxury and a rare treat
i used to love the Lean Cuisine Zucchini Lasagne and wish I could recreate it

my mother cooked a lot of boil in the bag fish (in parsley sauce or butter sauce) with mash & peas
we did have spaghetti bolognese
roast with veg
sometimes crispy pancakes
beef casserole

another luxury was ice cream with iced magic on top or
butterscotch angel delight

@lavenderlou omg I had forgotten mini Kievs I bloody loved those

We live by the sea so had quite a lot of fish. I hated herrings in oatmeal as they were full of bones and cod roe which looked like a brain.
Got lots of soup fod days on end - tattie soup, cabbage soup, broth and the disgusting mince soup.

I grew up in the 90s and I lived on processed and packaged food for the majority of the time. My favourite meal was chicken Kiev, pasta n sauce and broccoli but it would be spaghetti on toast, ready meals, lunchables, pot noodles, McDonald’s or a Chinese. We weren’t well off and my mum tried her best. I eat mainly non UPF now but I can’t get too hung up about it as I grew up perfectly fine.

Yes!

Basic, usually home made, lots of suet puddings, both sweet and savoury for the main meal, steamer seemed to be going all day. Vegetables from the garden as much as possible, very occasionally we had bird eye frozen peas. Liver once a week as it was good for you, hardly any snacks, sweets on Friday night that dad bought on the way home from work. Sandwich for lunch, if I went out playing all day I took jam sandwiches. I was born in the late 50s

Breakfast would be cereal usually cornflakes or rice krispies occasionally frosties. For lunch a ham or jam sandwich and a bag of crisps and For evening meal mashed tates or chips with everything usually something out the freezer with tinned spaghetti and then for pudding it was either angel delight or them little chocolate or raspberry ripple moose pots or a choc ice. Never really had fruit in the house and lf we did it was apples or oranges, we didn't have yoghurts and only usually had veg on a Sunday dinner. And to drink it was orange squash or blackcurrant squash. Very rarely had takeaway maybe twice a year and it would be 2 bags of chips between 6 of us and my mum would butter bread to go with it

@lavenderlou toast toppers!!!!🤤🤤 Didn't discover those till I left home 🤣

Does anyone remember the box of four cakes with chocolate flavour shells and a pink, orange or yellow middle with jelly fruits on them? I think they were called ‘Carnival’ or something?

We was like that, some Yorkshire Puddin (that's just flour and water and spash o'milk put in t'very hot oven, I knows now) with watery gravy made from pan of pigs trottors.

And, AND, if we was still hungry like, we got to suck the coal dust outa Dada's clog.
If we was lucky, mind.

Shepherds pie, lasagne, curry, chilli, spaghetti Bolognese, roast, meat and two veg, stew.

Squash on a Sunday, home made fish and chips on a Friday. No snacks.

I can also remember having kippers, and having to eat them with a slice of bread because of the bones, we also had a plate of bread and butter to eat with our tinned peaches, in fact we had a lot of bread and butter, Wonderloaf, I think it was and always butter not margarine