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

I’m 49. My sisters and I ate beejams freezer shit every day around 5ish and then my mum and step dad ate their meal around 7 pm together - stews, casseroles, salmon and new pots and veg, spag Bol, pies etc. I would have loved all that but my fussy sisters would have hated it.

In my teens I went veggie and my mum would buy two lean cuisine meals and a pack of veggie sausages for me a week.
Consequently I lived on chips, jacket pots with beans and cheese, and crap at school or from the bakery on way home.

One thing we did do tho was have a roast every Sunday with a Vientetta or a flan made with tinned strawberries.

Staying with my nan was lovely as she was a lovely cook who felt that kids eating well was important. She even cooked me some veggie food which went against every fibre of her rural, working class being.

My mum cooks lovely meals when we visit now but we ate shit as kids and I ended up very overweight.

Packed lunch was always a white bread sandwich with cheese or marmite,
A bag of crisps, a penguin and a bruised apple.

Forgot to say that my parents grew veg and their beautiful new potatoes were like nothing I've ever had since (even the ones I've grown myself). They had tomatoes in a small home-made greenhouse and Mum was especially fond of dwarf French beans so she grew those too. They used to grow incredibly quickly - in my memory you'd go out in the morning and check; there wouldn’t be any ready to pick but by the evening there’d be enough for a meal for all four of us.

1980s food in our house.
Sunday was usually a roast chicken with vegetables.

Mid week

Meat pie
Cottage pie
Findus crispy pancakes
Beef stew
Samosas ( homemade)
Egg and homemade chips
Cheesy jackets and tomato
Liver and onions 🤢
Lamb chops and veggies
Curries
Chicken salad
Corned beef salad

No takeaways

School dinners

Meat and veg
Fish and chips

Packed Lunches

Marmite , cream cheese or fish paste sandwiches
Piece of fruit
maybe ready salted crisps
carton of juice

70s - Boring food and made worse by the fact my mum hated cooking and worked full time. I ate a lot of toast, tinned spaghetti, cream crackers and jam. Did get fruit though, she worked in a greengrocers so got 'fades' ( bruised goods. Probably a healthier diet than a lot of kids. Still eat a lot of apples.

The same meal on the same day each week. Sunday roast, Monday leftover roast, Tuesday sausages, Wednesday fish, Thursday cottage pie, Friday bacon, Saturday the famous picky tea. Horrible things like Frey bentos and spam were considered a treat and you couldn't just "not like them". Mixed up a bit in the summer when we had the most basic salad (basically a side salad now). Bread with every meal, why? Never had pasta, curry or a takeaway until I left home. No fruit, maybe the odd satsuma at Christmas time. No constant supply of snacks. And sugar sandwiches were definitely a (grim) thing.

As an aside, the old 'cheap cuts' are really expensive now!

I bought 5 lambs’ kidneys in our local butchers. It TEN POUNDS!

I don’t think I could afford to go back and eat like the old days.

Oh and fresh fruit salad with a lovely rosewater syrup; it was gorgeous. Lots of tinned fruit with evaporated milk. Steamed puddings, Angel delight and instant whip for “ afters”

I was born in the early 80’s we didn’t eat meat which was considered really strange at the time. We ate fish that my dad caught. we had fizzy drinks at Xmas as my dad knew a guy.

now I love a bacon sandwich but my kid is a veggie by choice, and Im addicted to Diet Coke.

Born just after the War. Not a lot of food around. The Greengrocers had potatoes, carrots, cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower, swede, onions - most of we boiled. Occasional chips fried in fat in chip pan. Meal at home was a chicken (rarely); stew with potatoes, carrots, onions; a small lamb chop with mashed potatoes; fried fish (plaice or rarely hake) with chips. Often tea was something on toast - egg, beans, cheese, tomato. (Made cheese by straining milk through a net.) No afters usually but sometimes rice pudding or a slice of cake. Always buttered bread on the side to fill you up. Occasionally bought fish and chips with a tiny wholemeal loaf (that cost a farthing I think). Aways toast and cocoa for supper before going to bed. No fridge, no heating except fire in kitchen for toasting bread on a fork. No washer/dishwasher. I often did the shopping.

There were no packed lunches at school. Food was either cooked on the premises or brought from a nearby school that had a kitchen. They were usually some sort of stewed meat or mince except fish pie on Fridays with mashed potatoes and boiled swede, carrots or cabbage. Then suet pudding, rice pudding, semolina. School meals only for children who had no one at home as numbers were far too big to fit all the children into the canteen even with 2 sittings. Dinner times were 1 1/2 hours to allow children to get the bus home etc. so we didn't finish school till 4.15pm. (Classes were huge as there was a shortage of teachers and the bulge had begun so my class eg had 53 pupils. Small by the size in some towns eg 90 in the class my cousin taught! Hence they brought in emergency 6 month teacher training and tried to persuade the women they had sacked when they married to return.)

Never remember going out for meals until the late 50s when I very rarely went out to the Kardomah Cafe with my mother for a snack.

On the question of potatoes, always have preferred old to new to this day, even if it means some from abroad for part of the year.

Meat was always chicken or beef growing up, never pork and it was not until I was an adult that I found out about my jewish ancestors and why it was never on the menu. Not sure either of my parents ever cooked pork.

The cuisine at home was very northern, very British and often burnt, as cooking was certainly not my mother's speciality! You knew that dinner was ready when the smoke alarm went off. Even now, she refuses to make anything with more than five ingredients. The usuals included cottage pie, shepherd's pie (cue protests of: "Not mince!" because we ate so much of it), corned beef hash, lamb chops and vegetables. Obviously, being from the North, everything was slathered in gravy! Snacks and takeaways did not feature, and you only got puddings on Sundays.

Needless to say, I ate at my grandparents' house a lot. They branched out enough to eat fish, my grandmother made puddings every day, and they had an endless supply of Kit-Kats and cake.

Haha, yeah our custard was horrendous! The pink one was the worst. It smelt like medicine?!

The treacle sponge and chocolate sponge were nice though!

God I loved paste sandwiches.

Our meals were quite boring and repetitive but I don't think my mother was a great cook anyway.
The only vegetables we ever had were tinned peas and carrots. I remember going to Butlins in the early 70s and asking what some vegetables were and getting an elbow in the ribs for showing her up.

I loved Thursday nights as she went out and dad would make us chips but we were sworn to secrecy.
I'm sure she must have realised why the pan was full of warm oil when she came back.

Likewise mince, chicken cooked to death.
Findus pancakes I hated them with a passion 70s kid.

My mother cooked a few things well. Her range was very much meat and two veg. We never had pasta or rice. She made excellent pastry for sweet or savoury pies and her cakes were really good.

I remember the long blue packets of spaghetti. Mum used to boil it furiously until it emerged in a solid glutinous mass and then serve a wedge with tomatoey mince.

Mince also appeared on our plates with raisins and apples in and called curry. It had a mere whiff of curry powder, usually out of date.

Mum also embraced the pressure cooker- many grey stews were made (and sneakily slipped back in when she wasn't looking.)

We had Findus crispy pancakes once or twice but they weren't very nice, even compared to Mum's usual fare.

I did, however, have really excellent school meals which I loved. Roast dinners, cottage pie, chicken pie, jam tart, sponge puddings- all made in the onsite kitchens. Plenty of veg and potatoes which you could have seconds of if you wanted. Occasionally, if the dinner ladies liked you, toffee apples were handed out at the back door of the kitchen.

Oh and porridge. Served on a plate surrounded by cold milk. Like the spaghetti, you could cut a wedge of it.

Mum was an atrocious cook.

Late seventies to late eighties .
I remember traditional things alike mince and potatoes.
Scotch pie and beans
Lots of homemade soups
Things like potato waffles... Crispy pancakes. Turkey drummers etc.

Meat, potatoes and veg pretty much every meal. Sunday roast every week, then leftover meat with chips and peas, or salad and new potatoes (season dependant) on a Monday. Tuesday was usually sausage and mash, Wednesday pork chops and potatoes, or mince and potatoes, Thursday either stew or meat and potato pie, Friday always fish of some sort - usually smoked haddock or cod, or occasionally fish fingers, Saturday gammon or sometimes an all day breakfast.

Breakfasts were cereals or toast. Lunches a sandwich and sometimes a bag of crisps. Pudding was an apple, or sometimes strawberries or an orange.

I remember introducing my mum to pasta when I was about 17 and she was surprised she liked it. Dad never got on board with “foreign” food, although he did decide he liked pepperoni pizza when he was about 70, and was partial to a McDonald’s cheeseburger every now and then!

Mum was a decent cook, but the food choices varied according to budget. Might be lamb chops, might be potato soup. Actually, we loved the soup. We got to try new fangled things like frozen cod in butter sauce from time to time, but they weren't regulars like fish fingers etc. We did have Vesta curries and chow mein a number of times though: one pack between five of us. No wonder my dad insisted on having chips as well. I think it was the mid 80s before he accepted that it wasn't necessary to have some form of potato with every main course.

Oh yes cod in parsley or butter sauce.

Omg I love toast toppers!! Was very sad when they stopped.
I didn’t drink much milk so we had likes of milk puddings - semolina, rice pursuit, custard, tapioca - and I still love them all.
I was introduced to Fray Bentos pies at uni by my friend. My mum was horrified that you could get pie in a tin.

Just about everything cooked from scratch, meat, cheese, eggs, fish. No ready meals - TBH they weren’t available then (in the Dark Ages). Fish and chips a treat maybe once a year. Baked beans and tinned peas were the only ‘convenience’ foods in pre fridge days - until I was about 11. In winter very filling mostly root veg soups with e.g.pearl barley were a ‘thing’, esp. when money was tight.

My DM was a pretty good cook, though. We did have the occasional curry (DF had become a fan during WW2) and spag Bol. DM used to make a brilliant cheese pudding - I occasionally try to replicate it - dd1 is a big fan!

Plenty of homemade cakes and puddings - we never had ‘shop’ cakes. And biscuits were something we usually had only at other people’s houses. Most of that was down to DPs being almost invariably skint until most of us 4 kids had left home.