Mary Berry and Judith Chalmers tell you how to stock your freezer! 1976.

[Redheadedstepchild]

Just thought I would let you all know:

(Run time 6m39s)

So many useful tips!

You just have to watch it. I can't explain.

🤣🤣🤣

womansplaining

DM was a disciple to "Home and Freezer Digest".

Even though we didn't have a freezer.

now I want a 70s vibe Matt Berry how to stock your freezer video. Velvet flares and lots of Vesta curries,

I do loads of the things that Mary suggests with my freezer, the only thing I don't have in there is a pigs' trotter!

I remember the advent of big freezers in the 1970s when there were ‘freezer centres’ on every high street. We only had a tiny icebox in ours until about then.
Plus no microwaves for easy defrosting.
And twin tub washing machines. So much changed for my DM between 1970 and 1980 in terms of housework. DF never did anything of course.

Frozen mousse, arctic roll, Findus crispy pancakes.

Ah that makes sense. But clearly she did something to help address it later in life.

The strangest thing about this clip is that it must have been Mary's real freezer. From her house.

What would the logistics of that be? Send somebody round with a van to unplug it and take it from Penn, Buckinghamshire where Mary lived at the time to Thames' Teddington Studios?

For six minutes of telly?

Then they had, presumably, to take it back again. I hope it didn't all go mushy and all the diligent work of crumpet hoarding, trotter procurement and suchlike went to waste.

There’s at least a year's work in that appliance.

Crumpets, though in our house they are called pikelets, are everyday year round fodder.
Dh brings me a toasted one every morning to eat in bed with butter and marmite.
Just to disgust a lot of MNers, the cat joins me in bed and her treat is to lick the buttery marmitey plate when I have eaten the pikelet.

Thanks for that, fascinating! I love seeing the old 70s containers and those flowery casserole dishes.

I've just got round to watching the video. It reminds me of my Home Economics A level which I did in 1973. I still do quite a lot of those things but I was a bit surprised by the blue bag of random unwrapped things. Also I don't know how she ever found anything with it all rammed in like that.

we had a double freezer in 1976 growing up

i had it in my own house and it didn’t ever stop working but I replaced it with a newer model in 2010

They used to film a lot of things in her house. When her son died she couldn’t face leaving the house which is when she made the salad dressings. Then they started filming her tv shows there, I believe.

The raw burgers right next to the scones got me.

My first taste of pizza and of peppers was in the late 70s when my uncle bought some of those Ross frozen pizzas. They were a revelation to my 10 year old veg hating self!

Of course, we cooked them under an eye level grill like cheese on toast but by the mid 80s I'd progressed to microwaving them and having them with a microwaved jacket potato and maybe some baked beans!

Can't buy crumpets in the summer has blown my mind 😂

Crumpets were winter comfort food, though, so lots of shops wouldn’t stock them in the summer. Things really were different - you would still have difficulty finding olive oil outside a chemist, and for most people green and red peppers were pretty exotic. They were certainly too expensive for every day. (I was 23 in 1976, but happily living abroad, where you could buy nice food. It was so dispiriting to return to the UK.)

Can’t buy roast potatoes in Aldi in the summer. At least in my local branch which is big-ish. I was told this by a member of staff last summer when I was looking in vain for them. Looked again today and none. About eight different varies of chips, plus wedges, alphabet letters/smiley faces, but no bloody roasties. Or frozen parsnips for that matter. They did have frozen yorkies though.

All year round crumpet eating would strain your Playtex 18 hour girdle!

I had that. I've still got copies of Baking From the Freezer, and Cooking for Christmas. I use the Christmas pudding and freezer mincemeat recipes every year.

Beef burgers, (for the children)

Please may I borrow your husband? 😋

You can buy actual potatoes all the year round though and cook them how you want.

I thought Judith was talking to Michelle Dotrice, aka Betty Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em.

That freezer was definitely full - not a spare inch of space 😂

In 1976, you could only buy new potatoes in the summer which we were told you couldn't roast because they weren't starchy enough. You had to wait for the old potatoes to come back in the autumn have roasties on a Sunday again . And the baby potatoes disappeared until the next summer.

And I definitely remember crumpets only being around in the winter.

I have a load of Tupperware like the little square “better quality” one she showed, that belonged to my mum , and I still use them
daily over 55 years later!