What did you eat as a child?

[JudithOnHolidayAgain]

I've just been watching some of those shows looking back at food and shopping in the 70s and 80s and it made me think of the foods I ate as a child.
I'm late 50s and grew up in a home with my mum, dad and younger brother. Dad worked full time out of the home and mum ran a business attached to our home. My maternal grandparents lived with us too, although my grandfather died when I was 10.
My mum and gran both cooked, mum liked to try new recipes but my gran liked plain traditional food.....no garlic or chilli for her!!
I grew up eating pies, roast dinners, stews, ham and parsley sauce, egg and chips, fish pie. spaghetti bolognes, curry. Thick soups in winter and salads and cold meat in the summer. Pizza was homemade, my mum taught me how to make the dough.

Almost everything was homemade and snacking wasn't really a thing. We didn't have "kids food", we all ate pretty much the same.

I did pretty much the same with my kids, now 20 and 18 but they did have the occasional mcdonalds, chicken nugget and pizza. Generally we all ate the same.

What did you eat growing up and how old are you?

@Girasoliyour childhood sounds very similar to mine. I’m from an Italian family too there was lots of Italian food and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was young and loved making food with my Nonna. Fried courgette flowers and friend cauliflower still my favourites!

I’m 38, and my stand out food memories are the double chocolate gateau from Sara Lee and boil in the bag cod in a parsley sauce. Mwah!

I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Food was more European for sure than now. Ate spaghetti bolognaise, spaghetti with bacon and tomato, spaghetti carbonara, corned beef hash with rice, chicken chasseur, baked potato, tuna and salad, beef casserole and mashed potatoes, minced beef and potatoes, 'fried rice' which was with bits of veg, egg and Worcester sauce. Curry was mild and contained raisins. Fish and chips. Roast dinner every Sunday. On a special occasions parents would cook ossobuco. Dad once made Thai food but used imported shrimp paste which was too much for us and he never cooked it again. When we lived in Belgium we ate lots of endive salad which I loved. Parents are way more adventurous cooking dishes from other cultures now - I think they were just restricted by what ingredients were readily available at an affordable price. The whole 'celebrity chef' culture has also changed the way people cook I think.

I'm 38. Meals were all home cooked, a mixture of Finnish and British cuisine mixed in with new recipes from cookbooks and magazines. Stews, casseroles, curries, roast on a Sunday, fish but not too often as dad moaned about the bones. Always vegetables or a salad. Friday nights me and my brother were often given money to get chips from the chippy down the road. Pudding was only on Sundays. We always had an after school snack (couple of biscuits, or fruit, or ice lolly, that kind of thing) and a snack for supper but otherwise no other snacks.

We had to eat everything on our plate. If we didn't, we weren't allowed supper. I was a very fussy child and really struggled with some foods - I'd scrape the sauce off the meat in curries and casseroles then swallow the dry meat down with water. Some foods I stuck on my cheek like a hamster and spat into the toilet. My mum turned a blind eye to this, I guess she saw that I struggled but didn't want to relax the rules for me as then my brothers would complain so just pretended not to see. There were some meals when I'd be sat there long after everyone else had finished, trying to finish those last bits of food with the wrong texture. I'm completely fine with all those foods now though, except mushrooms which are inedible, so I guess it didn't cause lasting issues for me.

Child of the seventies. DM was/is a terrible cook and is not very interested in food, so a lot of boiled potatoes and gammon with tinned peas, baked beans or tinned spaghetti, and 'packet' puddings like Angel Delight or Green's cheesecake. We were always hungry and there were no snacks except white sliced bread and cheap margarine, with jam if we were lucky. Not an era I miss!

Child of the '80s I think DM did well on a budget. Lasange, fish pie, shepards pie, kerbabs (made with neck of lamb), spag bol, stir fry with noodles, sausage and mash, chilli con carne, tuna pasta minestrone soup or jacket potatoes in the winter, corn on the cob or home made quiche ( either quiche lorriane or salmon (tinned) and brocoli in the summer. Always a fruit bowl with apples, oranges and pears in. Soft fruit was a treat and DM wouldn't buy South African produce. Cherries and strawberries were a seasonal treat. After school snacks were crumpets ,tea cakes or malt loaf.

One thing I remember is that we went out for ice cream. I was fascinated when friends had ice cream at home in the freezer. For us, it was an occasional treat to go for an ice cream cone. 🤷‍♀️
My mum would buy the odd large bag of potato chips, always just salted/plain, and would eat a few here and there and they must've lasted a week or more. No one else ate them, they weren't off limits, just no interest.
My school lunch was a bagged lunch, we didn't have school dinners, and I remember simple sandwiches of a slice of deli meat between buttered white bread, an apple and drink box. Sometime a Thermos of soup (from a can, like Campbell's) and sometimes a hard boiled egg. Often two cookies, usually Fudge-o's. Looking back, it sounds like we were poor. No, but my mum wasn't very interested or creative with food. And everything would be wrapped in Saran Wrap and thrown away once used.

37
My dad was the cook in our house, he grew up on over boiled veg so he tried (sometimes unsuccessfully) to be more adventurous. We had risotto, meatless meatloaf (weird vegie loaf), roast every Sunday, toad in the hole, pasta dishes, lots of made from scratch curries, chilli and for convenience we'd have the odd oven pizza or garlic Kiev, chips and beans. He also did a cracking beans on toast, he'd grill it with the cheese on and put Worcestershire sauce on - still make it that way myself. Puddings were pretty regular and classic - apple pie, crumble, summer pudding, and if he hadn't made something there'd be the "fruit, yoghurt or framage frais" shout to which we would groan and declare this wasn't really pudding.
The one thing I hated was we were a "finish your plateful" family, and I blame that now for my weight struggles. I find it hard to tell if I'm hungry or full, I just eat whatever is in front of me. I cook similar food for my children, but allow them to judge when they're done.

Breakfast was always toast with marmite
Lunch was always a sandwich, packet if crisps, fruit and yoghurt
Dinner was findus crispy pancakes, hamwiches, cottage pie, mince and tatties, ham egg and chips, cheese on toast, omelette, roast or faggots and mash

We always had ice cream from the ice cream van, we didn’t have a fridge until the early 80s as we had a pantry where butter etc was kept and mum shopped daily

I'm 57 and spent the first 17 years of my life in Ireland. Lots of fish, meat and veg. All organic (because it just was!). Salads and veggies from our garden (half the back garden). Sunday roasts always (the favourite) and liver with bacon on a Thursday (the hated one.. dog under the table very well fed!). My Mam had spent a number of years in the UK prior to marrying and returning home so we had the odd curry (with sultanas) and sweet and sour pork - both of which she executed beautifully tbf! We also made a lot of our own bread and buns, cakes etc... Happy days!!

I grew up in the 90's/2000's.

First breakfast was cereal.

Second breakfast (at breakfast club) consisted of the shockingly exotic CHOCOLATE SPREAD on toast! My mother was appalled.

Lunch was the dreaded school dinners, especially after Jamie Oliver ruined them.

Dinner was meat and veg of some description, and a lot of beef mince (to the point that my sibling and I still go, "Not mince!" in mock-horror if she buys it). We still had rag puddings (Lancs/West Yorkshire thing), corned beef hash and red cabbage. We were pitied for our "old fashioned" diet by friends! The most exotic that we got was spaghetti bolognaise ("Not more mince!") and occasionally pizza.

Needless to say, I was deeply shocked when my mother finally branched out to curries in my very late teens/early 20's!

As my mother wasn't a huge fan of cooking, I ate with my grandparents quite regularly. There, breakfast was bacon sandwiches, lunched varied (depending on who made it, because if it was my grandfather, then it was salmon sandwiches, which were the limit of his culinary skills), dinner was a huge affair and always followed by homemade puddings!

I ate really badly.

When I was small, our dinners were mostly home cooked. Things like Irish stew, tripe, coddle, lamb cutlets with mashed potatoes etc. Potatoes were served for dinner most days. Salads made a rare appearance on hot summer days. We'd have a roast dinner on Sundays - mostly a roast chicken or bacon and cabbage. 'Veg.' was mostly processed peas or baked beans, except on Sundays when we'd have boiled to mush carrots and onions or cabbage. We always had fish on Fridays. Rice was only ever served at 21st birthday buffets. It was called savoury rice. The rice was dyed yellow (turmeric?) and came with sultanas or raisins or something.

All fried food was cooked with beef lard from the butcher's. My Nana (lived with us) was partial to sugar sandwiches, but they were a step too far even for my sweet tooth.

My Mam wasn't a great cook and when processed foods appeared, she embraced them with a passion. So we'd have things like fish fingers, Findus crispy pancakes, those French bread style frozen pizzas, Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies, boil in the bag cod with parsley sauce etc.

We never had Italian foods (pizzas or pasta dishes) or Chinese food. I discovered pasta when I was in my late teens or early '20s on a night out with college friends. I discovered Chinese food at my friend's house. Her Mam was partial to a Chinese take away. She'd order a bit extra and she'd give us a small portion.

Breakfast was mostly Weetabix and a fry up on Sunday mornings. For tea we had sandwiches made with Easy Singles cheese or salmon paste with crunchy bones.

We only ever had dessert on Sundays and it was mostly home made apple tart or a Victoria sponge cake with ice cream or cream on the side. At some stage Viennetta made an appearance - that was ever so posh. And we'd make Coke or orange floats by pouring said Coke or Club Orange over ice cream - very exciting.

When Dad did the weekly shopping, he'd buy two packets of custard creams. They didn't go far amongst eight people and have left me with a lifelong hatred of custard creams. Sometimes he'd get strawberry or orange creams just to liven things up.

My Mam's close friend worked in a chocolate factory and would bring over a bag of 'rejects' every week. She was a lovely lady anyway, but we remember her very fondly for her chocolate. Mam would try to find a good hiding place, but we five kids were pretty wily when it came to sniffing out chocolate.

MN always laughs at the idea of sultanas in curry 😉but both M&S and Tesco do a 'Fruity Chicken Curry' which contain sultanas.

"Cooked Long Grain Rice (38%) (Water · Long Grain Rice) · Chicken Breast (19%) · Water · Single Cream (Milk) (7%) · Onions · Tomato Paste · Rapeseed Oil · Sultanas · Coconut Milk (Coconut Extract · Water) · Apricot Purée ·" (and many other things)

I really like it, it reminds me of the curries my Nan used to make (in the 1970s). She was a very good cook and I loved her chicken curry, which did contain sultanas and always began with grating down a cooking apple to give the sweetness (I see apricot puree is the M&S equivalent).

Born mid sixties.
We had a Sunday roast and then on Mondays we would often have cottage or shepherd's pie with the leftover meat, or cold meat with fried potatoes and salad. Lovely casseroles, macaroni or cauliflower cheese, sausage and mash, liver and bacon. My family were considered quite exotic by my friends because we ate spag bol, or chicken curry (with a side serving of chopped apple, sultanas, raw onion, chopped tomato/cucumber). Mum also made what she called risotto, but was more like a pilaf, made with long grain rice, lots of peppers, onions, garlic and lambs liver (was very tasty actually!). She also made fantastic quiches. And spam fritters with tinned spaghetti! If I was ill, I always got fish steamed in milk and serve with mash.
Mum also baked cakes, bread and biscuits, and made crumbles for pudding. Apart from that, pudding was generally tinned fruit with tinned Nestle cream or the occasional steamed sponge pud.
Pretty much everything was cooked from scratch, so we ate pretty well I guess, and biscuits etc were strictly rationed.

Im 49. When I was a kid we’d have a roast twice a week….Sundays was bigger. My mother was a Bernard Mathews fan so at least one was one of his joints. She cooked cottage pie regularly but would boil and soak the mince to allow the fat to rise to the top of the pan to scrape it off! She’d cook it at least twice!

Other meals included: fish finger with either chips and beans or mash and peas, chicken kievs (Good old Bernard! 😂), crispy pancakes, sausage and chips…..thinking about it she rarely cooked from scratch!

Boil in the bag curries, used to love those. We never ate fast food though, and never ate out. Pie, mash and gravy with peas and carrots. Sausage and mash….spaghetti hoops, potato waffles….

We ate fish fingers a lot. Boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce. Spag bol. Sausages. Frozen pizza. Veg was mashed potato, carrots, peas and sometimes sweetcorn. When I was a teenager, we sometimes had chicken tonight or homepride type things, chicken thighs cooked with sauce in the oven.

Puddings were usually sponge puddings from a tin with custard. Or chocolate mousse. We had pudding every night. Also were allowed to snack whenever we wanted and the options were not healthy 😬

We had packed lunches at school which were white bread sandwiches (usually tuna mayo), Walkers crisps, a carton of juice and a chocolate bar (Club, penguin, single finger Twix etc).

I have fed my kids totally differently. I cook from scratch, they don't have UPF, they don't have puddings or chocolate or crisps very often.

I’m late 50s and more or less the same as the OP stews , roasts , home made pie basically meat and veg or meat and salad depending on the weather

I’m late 30s and grew up in the 90s. My mum was an ok cook but not amazing. We had dinners like spaghetti bolognese, chicken with savory rice, sausage and mash, casserole, roast dinners, filled pasta with salad, jacket potatoes. Occasionally a takeaway like fish and chips or Chinese. We ate out at restaurants occasionally mainly for special occasions like birthdays.

my kids eat similarly, they’re 1 and 4 and we tend to eat all together with home cooked meals. They will sometimes have nuggets and chips but not often. I don’t want to fall into feeding them different meals so I make sure we usually have the same thing.

Pretty much the same as you OP

I'm 44

And the pizza was awful!

I’m looking down a lot of these lists and thinking I eat most of that now! I don’t know if that means I’m old-fashioned, unhealthy or both. 😂
My grandmother taught me to cook and it’s stuck with me, I eat quite similarly to how I did as a child in the 80s.

Cornflakes or toast for breakfast. Boiled new potatoes with salmon and salad
Tinned red salmon sandwiches, beans on toast.
Stews, fish and chips form the chippy once a week on a Thursday, two roast dinners a week,
faggots and peas, liver and onion with mash, sausage and mash. Bacon, eggs, beans, mashed potato. Burger and chips. Pies.
Dessert once a week- trifle, or cake.
Rarely crisps, choc, sweets or fruit.

Never pasta or curry.

@JudithOnHolidayAgain that sounds lovely. It’s made me a little envious and very hungry.

DM was a reluctant and not very good cook (she will happily admit to this), but somehow she kept 4 children alive and well (apart from the one time she made carbonara with off eggs).

Liver and onions
Shepherds pie
Cottage pie
Lentil hotpot
Liver hotpot
Chilli l
Roasts
Things on toast
Sausages and anything, but not mash, the masher broke (in all of London, replacing it was never even a consideration). Ditto fish fingers.

I remember one of my DBs finishing some exams and she made salmon fillets and new potatoes with strawberries to celebrate. So simple, but memorable that it was so nice.

Oven chips, Findus crispy pancakes and frozen lasagna were a revelation in the 1980s.

Occasionally a bucket of KFC on a Friday night. Then an Italian deli opened near DMs work and she sometimes bought fresh pasta as a pay day treat.

To be fair to DM, she had 4 dc to look after (2 and 2 resident steps), she qualified as a barrister whilst we were little from just having some A levels as background, and DDad became extremely unwell when we were 9-20. At the point where he needed full time nursing, she had to go to work full time to support as all. (No, he didn't have any appropriate insurance). So cooking was never her thing, still isn't.

Actually, dad had lived in Jamaica for a long time, and sometimes we'd go to Brixton market and buy patties and plantain and okra and he'd cook. Or rice &peas. If DM went out and left him in charge of feeding up he'd make triple decker sandwiches with absurd filling combos - sardine and banana anyone?