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

Our big treat in the late 70s/ early 80s was a meal out at Little Chef! I loved that place.

My mum worked full time. Meals were either something on toast or stews made in the pressure cooker. Sunday was a big roast and pudding, leftovers on Monday. Absolutely no convenience/junk food and no snacks. Life was a lot less food centric. Never had pasta, peppers lots of things until I left home and went to a city. We lived very rurally and there was only one (rubbish) shop. Vegetables were grown in the garden and meat from a butcher who came round in a van. I think the arrival of a supermarket in the 1980s eventually put him out of business.

"Enough is as good as a feast" was my late DM's favourite saying. And since both my parents well remembered wartime food shortages and rationing, nothing ever went to waste. They were very frugal.

We never went without - but we certainly never had extra!

I was born in '60s & grew up abroad so basically nothing like PP, very very different experiences.

When we were little and lived with Grannie it was meat and two veg for lunch and a high tea if it was a special occasion. Later in the seventies Mother used to try some more adventurous recipes and there was a recipe from the BBC for sweet and sour sauce made from scratch and it was excellent. Unfortunately there was also what she liked to call risotto which was boiled white rice with a tin of sweetcorn, chopped up hot dog sausages and some peas. It was dry and horrible. There were also a lot of stews making a cheap cut of meat do a lot of work with turnip and on Sundays there would be a roast which would do two days and turn up with salad on Mondays, the salad including grated turnip and carrot, a delight I never heard of anyone else having to eat. Halfway through the decade a few more new flavours crept in, we had pate, pasta and all the delights the new Safeway supermarket could supply, I distinctly remember having green peppers and yoghurts as new exotic foods. Oddly we also had submarine sandwiches made with crusty bread, cold meats and salad and a sprinkling of vinegar, I do not know how such an American food managed to find its way onto the menu. And yes, the infamous grated turnip was one of the ingredients.

Agree with this. Food was cooked according to who was eating, portioned out onto plates and there was an expectation that plates were cleared. Rarely would there be leftovers or extra with the exception of the Sunday roast leftovers which were already allocated as Monday’s dinner.

Even now my parents dislike food served ‘family style’.

Once a year my grandparents would take us all to the Berni Inn for a fruit juice starter, scampi and chips and a shared ice cream sundae. What a treat that was - talked about for weeks afterwards!

The meal I hated and it happened every Monday was cold meat, pickles, mash or boiled potatoes, occasionally chip pan chips and reheated or fresh veg. I remember it with vengeance. There is nothing more horrid than cold lamb.

When I was a child, my mum fed us a range of convenience food from the freezer, mostly fried stuff. It was things like beef burgers, fish fingers, fish balls called crispy cod fries. We also had grey instant mash. Sometimes she would make a meat casserole with grey kidneys floating on the greasy gravy. We also had fresh cream cakes a lot from the bakery, which I loved, and a range of bird's eye mousse. We also had loads of biscuits, crisps and sweets. We drank lemonade a lot. Amazingly, we were not overweight.

We had old and new potatoes too. We were exotic and sometimes had mince curry with raisins in and dessicated coconut sprinkled over! Lots of meals with chips, cooked in the chip pan. Liver and bacon was a favourite. Mum picked fruit so we had apples all year round. She used to wrap them in newspaper and keep them in the loft. Oranges were a Christmas treat. We hardly ever ate out or got take away. Mum cooked lots of fruit pies. Sometimes we’d have bread and jam after our meal if we were still hungry.

My mother thought she was being very exotic making what she called "Chicken Supreme". It consisted of pieces of plain cooked chicken in a white sauce served with boiled rice.
It was beyond bland and tasteless.

I agree on the lamb part I hated lamb as a child so if we had it on Sunday we had it cold again on the Monday! I still don’t like lamb. Beef on the other hand I love. We have a roast beef dinner occasionally and then we have cold beef, chips and gravy the next day with a pickled onion and it’s one of my favourites.

It was ok

The grey tinged boiled potatoes peeled and with quite geometric ages are a foodstuff I’m quite glad hasn’t made it to my meal repertoire as an adult

Mince and those kind of boiled potatoes was
a regular dish, along with tinned marrowfat peas. Somehow my mum managed to cook it so it all tasted the same

Chips were done from potatoes and cooked in a fryer rather than oven chips

also: casseroles (chicken/sausage/beef)
pork chops
lamb chops
Birds Eye cod in a parsley sauce
roasts
chicken or fish in orange ruskoline bread crumbs
spaghetti bolognese
chicken curry

that sort of thing

Oh and a “ham salad” in summer. Tinned ham, grey tinged boiled eggs. Salad with round lettuce, insipid tomatoes, and a truly awful dressing my dad made from malt vinegar and English mustard

Everything that I would have mentioned has already been covered here (Findus crispy pancakes, Vesta chow mein, Brains faggots etc) but nobody has yet mentioned stuffed hearts or stuffed marrow. On the rare occasion of a party or celebration, cold tongue was always a feature.

If we had a "proper" Sunday lunch I would get sent to the ice cream van with a big bowl from the kitchen for some soft vanilla ice cream to go with dessert.

I was born in the mid 1950's - and had a very rural childhood. (My husband always refers to it as my 'Darling Buds of May' type childhood!) My dad had his own grocery shop so food was plentiful. He loved growing his own veg and also enjoyed fishing and shooting.

We had roasts - pheasant, (I can remember my Dad plucking and gutting them in the kitchen), chicken, lamb, pork with crackling and also beef. Lots of stews with very cheap meat slow cooked, sausages and chips done in the chip pan, quite a lot of fish including trout which he used to catch. Mum used to make delicious homemade stuffing for the roasts - parsley and thyme, and sage and onion - all the herbs from the garden. And amazing homemade gravy made with meat juices, veg water and gravy browning thickened with flour. We had quite a lot of bacon and gammon from the shop. My Dad used to cook all the gammon hams for his shop and the ham on the bone was delicious. My favourite were the first new potatoes - so delicious cooked with fresh mint and rolled in butter. Other fresh veg from the garden was cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, beetroot, onions, leeks, shallots (my dad always pickled them himself), lettuce and radishes. We were in a strawberry growing area, so lots of strawberries in the summer from our commercial strawberry growing neighbours. Plenty of other fresh and tinned fruit but more usually with evaporated milk not cream. Ready Brek for breakfast. Mum was a brilliant baker and we had treacle tart, victoria sponge, ginger cake, apple pie, gooseberry pie, rhubarb crumble and jam turnovers. Custard was made with Birds custard powder. She used to make a lemon meringue pie from a packet as well.

A treat was Tizer to drink and my dad used to get me a box of crisps from the cash and carry. He brought me home an ice cream wrapped in paper every Friday and my eldest brother always bought me a box of Smarties.

We had scampi in the basket at the pub when I was older and chinese curry and fish and chips as occasional treats.

I looked after my Dad in his eighties, after my Mum's death and was told 'you aren't as good a cook as your mother'!!!! True!!!

80/90s

Awful food. It was always just pre made frozen stuff, I don’t think my mother has ever cooked a meal from scratch.

used to take panda pop drinks, sunny d, marmite sandwich’s, crisps and chocolate to school every day. Can’t remember ever eating fruit or veg on a regular basis. it was all upf

Surprised I have never had any health issues or teeth problems or weight. As an adult I have always eaten the opposite.

I almost mentioned hearts but I thought everyone would recoil!

(I loved them…)

Born late 60s. We had a lot of meat and 2 veg. Sunday we'd have roast dinner then leftovers and mash the next day. Ate liver and kidneys which I haven't eaten since leaving home.
Spuds were a sackful kept in the shed and lasted ages. Did eat spag bol occasionally.
We ate a lot from the garden - fruit and veg. Apples were wrapped up and stored and lasted till March 😲
There was a cup of lard on the windowsill in the kitchen.
A posh treat meal at my grandparents would be salad and tinned salmon, beetroot, salad cream.

In the mid 80s when convenience food came in we switched to that. Mum - well neither parent -really liked cooking.

We absolutely never went short of food. However, my parents were partially self sufficient - goats milk/ cream/ butter/ yogurt, lamb/ baby beef/ pork/ goat meat, eggs, and veg/ fruit plus they swapped with other people so local game, soft fruits and stuff was given to them. Mum made her own bread.
Sounds idyllic right? However, mum wasn't the greatest cook, was short on time (ft job plus they grew bedding plants and had all the animals), and I think wasn't that bothered in general. I remember the horrors of things like boiled tongue, stuffed hearts, tripe but also the seemingly endless weeks of eating marrow or kale when it was that season. The predictability of the week was also tedious - roast on Sunday, leftover cold meat on Monday with jacket potato, leftover meat in curry sauce (with sultanas natch) on Tuesday, minced up leftover meat on Wednesday in gravy and so on.
We only got biscuits or crisps if dad went to the cash n carry by himself

70s DM had taken a French cookery course to learn European stuff so lots of home made food. She’s Indian however so also had lots of veg Indian meals. DF lived around so liked everything so introduced to many foods early on. Only thing Dm roasts meats were over cooked as she was essentially veg so not experienced.

no fish - had my first fish and chips at graduation. No seafood.

friends loved coming for tea 😃.

But then the 80’s hit and starting getting ready made foods (not great). thought it was progressive! I remember findus crispy pancakes and microwaveable lasagnes.

Not a dessert eating family and no baking. Always biscuits in the house. Big tea drinkers.

Since reverted back to home cooked food and I’m now in charge of roasts.

Boiled fucking potatoes nearly every day! Why?! As an adult I have never ever had just boiled potatoes: mashed; roast; fried; jacket. All infinitely superior.

I'm Jewish so probably grew up with slightly different menus to most British kids (born late 70s). I always thought my mum was great cook, but she says she only learned later on as growing up behind the Iron Curtain, they just had to eat whatever they could get!

As we got older and mum was working I would stick Findus French Bread Pizzas, fishfingers or Crispy Pancakes in the oven, so that bit probably was like a lot of British kids at the time. I was a very picky eater and didn't eat any cooked veg until I was older but I would have sliced cucumber or pepper alongside things.

Yes, lots of offal and cheap cuts in my childhood — pigs’ feet, sheep’s head, tripe, liver, hearts. I swear it contributed to my adult vegetarianism. Having a sheep’s head wearing its final expression (unimpressed) plonked on your table at regular intervals at a tender age was formative. And not in a good way.

And it took me until my 30s to realise there is no reason why cabbage cannot be delicious.

I considered myself lucky getting this if it came out of a tin because anything else would have been boiled/roasted to death mmmm dry and chewy.

I grew up in the 90’s and everything I ate came out the freezer turkey jetters/chicken nuggets/fish fingers/waffles/chips/crispy pancakes occasionally had some frozen peas on the side! When I stayed at my grans I had mince & tatties or stew or the occasional silverside

couldn’t be more different from my own DC