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 was born in late 60s and this thread has brought back so many memories.

My mom was (and is Though she’s a bit frail now) a great cook. Money was tight but we always ate well.

I remember mom baking all the time. Pastry from scratch - her Eccles cakes were legendary. She also made things like scotch eggs and cheese straws if we were having a party buffet (as well as the ubiquitous cheese and pineapple on sticks!)

roast every Sunday - does anyone else remember gravy browning? Monday was “wash day dinner” - usually egg and chips Meat and two veg most nights. Like many I didn’t have “foreign” food until I went to uni.

mom make great steamed puddings and when We got a microwave on the early 80s she made even more. With treacle or raisins or golden syrup.

I loved school dinners (even the liver!) and mom Was a dinner lady and sometimes we’d have leftovers. I remember a particularly tasty mince beef pie cooked in a HUGE square very battered tin.

Very happy memories. Not much junk food, rarely any snacks, seasonal fruit and veg. Not much processed food at all.

@BitOutOfPractice I still use gravy browning 😀

Oh don't

My mother (now 88) was telling people at my daughter's wedding 2 years ago how famous she is for her pastry. 🤮
In the 60/70s we ate what was put in front of us and didn't leave the table until our plates were cleared.
At least 3 times a week she would make pie with home made pastry and tinned meat filling ( think of cheap dog food type meat). The pie was cooked on a large dinner plate and was never properly cooked underneath. I always had horrendous stomach trouble (and still do), I'm sure it's due to being brought up on half cooked pie. I love (properly cooked) pies now but I get horrendous heart burn lol.

Sunday roast dinner was over cooked
Meat was in the oven for hours and veggies were so soft and tasteless.
And that disgusting tinned fruit with evaporated milk, just disgusting

As I teenager I soon learned to cook and still love cooking, although never make pies lol.

Oh I’m so pleased you do. It was a staple in the 70s but I’ve not seen it for years!

My mother always used gravy browning but it was called gravy salt. She claimed it made "proper" gravy as that Bisto stuff was for cheats 😁

Tinned fruit and evaporated milk is just fine. I used to stir stewed fruit (not tinned) and evap milk into abstract designs in the dish before I ate it and ask Mum if she'd like curtains with that pattern on them.

Pies can be wonderful. Can't you make decent pastry?

Born at the back end of the 50’s and grew up in a working class home with both parents working. It meant that there was enough money for my mum to budget enough be able to feed us very well. But mind you, this was in the days of only getting toys for Christmas and on your birthday. And it was also the days of clothes twice a year, we called it being rigged out, and people had nice clothes for the weekend only, clothes for after school as well as a couple of outfits for the odd time after school when you’d go somewhere. Oh and we always had Clark’s shoes, and a new summer and winter hat to wear to Mass on Sunday.

Foodwise

Breakfast - cereal, toast, eggs, jam etc. Cooked breakfasts at the weekend and plenty of it.

Lunch - school dinners until secondary school when we would go to my granny who lived across from our school for a homemade meal. It was always stews, soups, fish, with potato and vegetables followed by a pudding. And at weekends it would be a Sunday lunch then on Saturdays probably a sandwiches and a cake at home.

Teatime - at home and another nice home cooked meal my mum may even have started the night before. So a stew in the oven when she’d be watching tv. Or a steak/lamb chops because it was quick but always with some kind of potato and vegetables.

Saturday at tea time meant a trip to a restaurant for a Chinese or Indian meal, in fact it could have been from anywhere in the world because my mum and dad just loved opening up our lives to all sorts of different experiences and to this day I’m grateful to them for it. We’d even go to neighbouring towns for it and if we were eating at home on a Saturday it would be fish and chips.

We always had plenty of fruit and if there was something exotic in the supermarket my mum would get it for us to try. We also a good sized biscuit/cake tin but more importantly - we always had nice food available and were never hungry because there wasn’t enough food to go round. We really were blessed in that respect but my home life was very turbulent in other ways 🙈

Oh and we were only given fizzy drinks at Christmas and New Year, and for some reason we weren’t allowed beef burgers, it had to be steaklets 🤣

Simple food in the fifties and sixties:
lamb stew made using ‘ scrag end’
Pilchards, lettuce and tomato for Sunday tea
Faggots
Mince
Beef stew and dumplings
Liver and bacon
Tarts with pastry using lard
Scones, Welsh cakes, jam tarts
Vegetables from the garden

When I was young milk came out of a cow. It was carried up the field in a bucket, still warm, and strained through muslin into big white jugs, to get the specs of muck and chaff out of it. Coffee was always made completely with milk - whole milk. Nowadays I order a cafe latte in eateries but I make a complete-milk coffee at home now and again.

I think all that half cooked pastry puts me off lol

Maybe now I'm retired I'll give it a go

I grew up on a farm so milk always came from the cooler where it was stored before it was collected. I remember my dad dipping a big metal cup with a long arm in and filling our mugs. Everything we ate was home cooked, potatoes with everything because dad had fields of them, chicken, rabbit, liver, stews, mince cooked various ways, pork and lamb chops, liver or various pies and we always had 2 veg at mealtimes. Pudding was normally tapioca, semolina or baked rice pudding. Like others we never left the table until our plates were clean. Breakfast was toast and eggs or porridge for us but the workers got a full breakfast. Lunch was either homemade soup of some description or sandwiches. We never had many sweets or snacks and didn't eat between meals. I never tried food from other countries until I left home and went to Uni. My mother was an amazing baker and on the odd occasions where she made sweet treats these were very limited.

Deep fat fryer sausages and chips, mince and chips, crispy pancakes and chips. I can still smell the fryer now 😂

boiled potatoes or new potatoes hated them nothing was ever added to the dinner no garlic spices marinades etc just salt in the veg as it was cooking
we did however have various sauces on the table lea and perrin and mint sauce mustard English and French horseradish sauce etc but never mayonaise as it was too expensive!!
A favourite desert of my mums was pastry made into a jam tart with a strip of pastry across the top or bread pudding suspect because both were cheap or meat pie made with minced up left over meat a yone remember the silver metal minces you screwed on the side of the worktop to mince up left over meat!! child of the 70s