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?

^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.^

This is essentially what my MiL eats/doesn't eat now, although spaghetti , in fact any pasta, is daringly foreign and best from a tin. Pizzas are treated with suspicion, but they might get them unit we are visiting to be. 2 between 6, and bizarrely, never, ever anything else offered with pizza - no salad, no sides, no pudding. 1/3 of a pizza doesn't go a long way as a main meal.

Parents had 2 allotments , yet their were only 3 of us so I remember lots of veg !
They would also go to the farm and buy 1/2 lamb and some pork and it would go in the freezer . We were traditionally meat , potatoes , vegetables . However my dad would also go out on deep sea fishing trips and bring back fish so we'd have fish as well . They also kept chickens and rabbits which we would eat plus fresh eggs as well

Reading reading this back makes it sound like we lived very rurally , but we actually lived in a industrial town in a semi , so probably quite unconventional , but it was my norm at the time.

I've been vegetarian for most of my adult life !

Early 50s.

meat and two veg.
went to a Chinese restaurant once a year for a treat

I am 29 so predominatly 2000s/early 2010s but it was never that exoctic as dad did a lot of the cooking (given his shift work) and he was a man who liked simple things. I remember chops (pork/lamb) and sausages with mashed potatos/veg being a staple in our house, there was always a weekly chicken dish (kebab/breasts/roast etc) and we ate a lot of fish as we lived near seaside.

There was one takeout a week, and mum would often make a lasagne/spag bol/nachos in the weekend.

Also a lot of toasted sandwiches, pies and soup for weekend lunches.

Breakfast was cereal (musli or cornflakes) in the week and toast at weekends. On occasion mum would make pancakes.

Lots of traditional meat and two veg stuff when I was very young and looked after by relatives. Later, a little bit more variation when my dad would cook on sundays and he'd do a roast, a lasagne, or something that was prepared with a degree of care and attention. Mum was a terrible cook and would throw down a plate of whatever came to hand on weeknights. Eggs were a constant, often "fried" but with the white still transparent, or "scrambled" and floating in a gunk of milky raw egg. Main reason the thought of eggs and dairy churns my stomach and I haven't touched either in years. Moving out at 17 wasn't just about getting away from her, it was about getting away from some of the ridiculous ideas she had about food, including standing ranting and raving if you hinted that you were hungry and might like a sandwich, or were "discovered" in the kitchen between meals for any reason.

I'm 50. Til I was 7 or so I remember a lot of plain, frugal, 'English' cooking; a chicken for Sunday lunch was a treat, and eked out for a cold tea that night and then stew/soup for the next couple of days.
My dad looked after the kitchen garden of a neighbour who could no longer do it herself, and I mostly remember a lot of runner beans from there, although I'm sure they grew more of a variety than that!
Hotpot with a lot of onion and potato and scraps of lamb.
Home-made apple and blackberry pie.
Home-made rice pudding with blackcurrant jam.
Banana and custard.

It changed when I got a bit older and my mum started working more; we had a lot of cheap frozen/convenience food; frozen stir-fry mixes, those thin steaks you grilled (I think) and they came out like shoe soles , frozen peas and chips, baked beans.
My mum started making spag bol at some point, which was met with great excitement, as was chile con carne.
We'd occasionally have gammon with frozen peas, boiled new potatoes and parsley sauce. And a pineapple ring on top
For pudding we had Mr Kipling mini pies, or those huge cheap tubs of Walls ice cream or boxes of choc ices (for a while my mum worked in a frozen food factory), with Ice Magic.
We had orange squash and lemon barley water, and lots of fizzy drinks.
My friends and I would go to the corner shop for five- or ten-p mixes and crisps. Anyone remember Piglets?

We were a family of plain eaters too, mum worked part time on and off, dad worked long hours and the most exotic he got food wise was chicken omelette and chips from the local Chinese takeaway.

Meals were things like:
Chicken drumsticks/thighs or spare ribs roasted and served with corn on the cob and coleslaw in the summer or chips and beans when it was colder,
Bolognaise
Homemade pizza and garlic bread
Roast with trimmings
Leftover roast pie
Casserole always braising steak and cooked for a good 8 hrs till it fell apart
Shepherds pie
Pork Chops with veg

We also had a lot of home baked puddings
Apple and Blackberry pie, cobbler or crumble
Pineapple upside down cake
Syrup sponge and custard

Anything fried or out of a tin. Very few fresh vegetables, and lots of sweets, cakes and frozen puddings. Lots of fizzy drinks.

edited to say I am a child of the 60s/70s

I was incredibly “fussy” as a child, I had a lot of sensory dislikes to food. So I ate a lot of mashed potatoes instead of pasta, chicken instead of mince and various swaps.

but food was typically made from scratch, roast on a Sunday and made into leftovers on Monday (lamb fried with diced potatoes, onions, carrots and then topped with a fried egg and Worcestershire sauce was a favourite!).

we went through times of being very poor and at those times it was very vegetable heavy, farmers potato and bacon pie was common (mashed potato with some cooked bacon, onion and grated cheese mixed in and baked).

there were no takeaways, no curries or spices until my mid teens at least.

my mum used to cook fish cakes with tinned tomatoes and cheese slices on. It was actually quite nice!

boiled ham and parsley sauce was a favourite, too.

there were snacks, bunny crisps from the market, iced gems and cheddars were common in my house!

I wonder what my kids will say, this week they’ve had roast chicken, chicken and chorizo risotto, tonight pad Thai, tomorrow shawarma and flatbread, Thursday is pasta night and Friday is fajitas. I don’t think we are massively adventurous, but we certainly eat a lot more cuisines.

60s.

I remember Tea at a farming friend’s house. A huge spread at about 5pm with a massive pot of tea, milk from the house cow, bread and butter (white sliced bread for a treat but mostly a white cob; Mrs F buttered the cut end then sliced it off, standing up!), something like a hot potato pie or home made Cornish pasties or bacon roly poly, home made jam, honey from the house, scones, cream (clotted also from the house cow), and a big bowl of junket with nutmeg grated on top (always served with clotted cream). No veg with that meal.

At home it was home cooked and a bit Mediterranean (mum’s background) so lots of casseroles with tinned tomatoes, which were considered pretty exotic. Epic roasts with huge slabs of beef. Kale from the sheep’s fodder field.

And everything very very very generously salted.

Born in the late 1960’s and grew up on mince, cabbage, boiled potatoes and leg of lamb 😂We obviously ate quite a lot of other foods too, but these featured heavily. Lovely vegetables from the garden, and fruit from our plum and apple trees, plus rhubarb and blackberries.

After he retired my lovely Dad used to cook me a hot breakfast every day before school, he got up early to do it and he hated early starts.

By the 1980’s we were eating pasta, moussaka, curries and a much wider variety of foods although processed food was a rare thing in our house. Both parents worked full time and never stopped, weekends spent gardening etc.

Grew up with just my Irish DM , who was taught to cook by her grannie, and my DS. DS loved more "exotic" foods, so DM cooked goulash for her, chilli and other things. We ate homemade dumpling stews, mashed potatoes, casseroles, roasts, pies, gratin, shepherd's pie. I can still see DM trimming the pastry edges. Boiled egg or egg in a cup with soldiers. Homemade chips on Fridays, probably with a fried egg, but I can't remember. For some reason, we always had sardines on toast Sunday evenings, after our bath and hair wash.

I became vegetarian at 13, so things changed a little and DM would buy quiches, some sort of bakes from the BHS deli counter, back when they sold food. She used to make omelettes for me and try to disguise the bacon she added. I always found it. I cried and she, reluctantly, accepted me being vegetarian.

Aww, we ate really well.

58
Meat and 2 veg everyday apart from fish on Friday. Chops, homemade pies and pasties, roasts.
Later DM would make a chicken casserole and this felt very fancy.

Home made pudding every day with custard or carnation with tinned fruit on Sunday. Treacle pudding, apple pies, lemon meringue.

Never any fizzy drinks or fruit juice other than Christmas.

Chocolate - once a week bought by grandparents. Sweets once a week on Sunday night.

Never ever had crisps or chocs or biscuits in the house - snacks were cheese and crackers or fruit

Breakfast was eggs on toast or bacon and egg. In teens had baked beans sometimes.

DF had a rule though that DM didn't cook on a Saturday which meant that we had steak and chips or all day breakfast which didn't count as cooking. Sometimes he drove us to the motorway services for an all day breakfast.

I was so envious of my friends who had fish fingers or similar.

Never saw a bulb or garlic until I was at university.