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.

Our neighbour was a Tupperware party planner and seemed like a high flying business woman to us. My aunt was the local Avon Lady. Oh the glamour!!

😄

The poster I quoted said she couldn't get roast potatoes now. She was talking about frozen ones. I was suggesting buying fresh potatoes and roasting them as now you can buy any kind of potatoes. I used to roast new potatoes anyway they were lovely. I also made chips with them although I knew it was said you couldn't.

And new potatoes came covered in mud and had to be scrubbed and scraped until all the skin was off (not peeled). At least in our house.

I’ve started making a list of what’s in each drawer (amending as I use/add) as I got so sick of scrabbling around every drawer looking for something. Quite pleased with myself 😊

That really shows that being economical was so important then. Not just the keeping single small items before they went off, but the trotter for brawn, the carcasses for stock etc. Nothing went to waste. And it reminded me that my mum would also use those foil trays and then wash and reuse them and all of the freezer bags were definitely washed out and reused. I’m pretty good at not wasting food but I couldn’t honestly say I wash and reuse bags now.

I have some vague recollection of my mother getting crumpets each winter when they "came in", a bit like when strawberries arrived in June! We all loved crumpets, so it was a big treat each years when the first ones arrived in the shops (a bit like strawberries).

My mother still rams her massive chest freezer to the gunnels. She has this notion that it is more efficient when there is no air in it!!! I honestly think she could easily survive for a year just on the contents of her freezer.

I love Mary Berry. She and Delia are my go to for really reliable recipes. They are so practical and no nonsense and have clearly been well tested before they are published.

We've been on a journey from traditional roasties and mash, through the frozen offerings and back to start from scratch.

You don't really save that much more time. Have to pay over the top per gramme. And (crucially) the frozen ones taste shit.

When you realise how far a £2 bag of King Edwards will go (plus a couple of the larger ones make lovely jacket potatoes) there's no going back.

My mum was too, between having my sister and me, she was offered a manager’s job, with car but turned it down!
I have TONNES of her Tupperware 🤣

“This bag of peas works out at 15p a pound. The sprouts I bought this week were 15 1/2p a pound and there’s quite a lot of waste with them.”

Ah, the 70s, when frugal meant very, very skint.

The blue bag of food poisoning mixed horrors has me opening my own labelled freezer and looking at the labelled organised stacks while breathing into a paper bag.

My life may be chaos but my freezer is a sanctuary of orderliness.

She has this notion that it is more efficient when there is no air in it!!!

@MargoLivebetter - your mother is absolutely right! It used to be taught in home economics and some “reduce your carbon footprint” leaflets mentioned it as well.

In a full freezer the items act as a ‘thermal mass’ which keeps the temperature steady. That means opening and closing the freezer makes no appreciable difference to the temperature. It will remain at its temperature with only a tiny amount of energy use.

A mostly empty freezer loses cold air when the door opens, which means using energy to chill the space again. Putting pop bottles with water (part filled to allow for water expansion) in empty freezer shelves works as thermal mass until you have things to put in the freezer and will make it cheaper to run.

That was another staple of the 70s - the Tupperware party. Along with the National Housewives Register, they provided the bulk of our babysitters (till I was old enough 😀)

Food was very much more seasonal. Scones with strawberries and cream in Summer, hot buttered crumpets by the fire in Winter. A simpler but probably nicer way to live.

@MargoLivebetter both fridges and freezers work more efficiently when full. Maybe not rammed though as you’d spend ages with the door open looking for stuff!

@TrickyDpikelets are a different beast to crumpets not just a different name. Same mixture cooked without a ring so they are flat. Just as delicious though…

Open fires! My parents had a Belling electric cooker until about 1990, and a wall mounted gas fire. We never had a freezer bigger than the one at the top of the fridge which you could just about get an ice cube tray in and a box of choc ices. I don't actually have a big freezer (though it's about the size of their fridge) as I don't want to keep food for months and forget about it.

In the late 60s / early 70s we had a small chest freezer. Every year or so one of us would defrost it and the bottom was like Mary’s Blue Bag, although being Country Folk we would find a tub of dried out clotted cream, a bag of kale from the sheep’s fodder field, and an unplucked ungutted mallard that someone shot and nobody cba to deal with. (The cream would go in the next batch of pasties, a spoonful on top of the filling, yummy).

My mum wasn't a housewife though, she was chief cashier in a bank before she had me in the mid 1970s, and always worked once I was at school, in marketing, running her own business and running a shop, among other things. She didn't have any time for programnes arguing about how best to fill a freezer. Perhaps we could all be a little more ambitious outside the home if we stop worrying about whether we can get a leg of mutton in the freezer fifty years on. Most men wouldn't be bothered about such things.

I'm a bit of a Mary Berry superfan (use her recipes every week, read her autobiography) and I think you are wrong there. She talks about Judith as being one of her best friends.

I was never quite sure of the angelic goodness of Mary Berry, and when I read that she kept an implement specifically for hitting her kids it kind of confirmed my feelings. My MIL is of the same generation and is a really good cook herself and absolutely can't stand her.

Thank you for sharing @Redheadedstepchild After viewing this delightful video of Mary & Judith I realised I do all of these things with the exception of the trotter and boil-in-the-bag 😅. I also freeze ginger root, turmeric root, garlic (peeled), chillie, coffee beans, nuts, flours etc as it keeps them very fresh and all can be used from frozen 👍

I never knew that. 😮 Not excusing it but perhaps it was generational; thank heavens it’s changed. I’ve never hit a child (or adult) and never would.

@TheRealHousewife it’s bad for your coffee beans, but I agree with you on everything else.

I make herb oils in summer when the basil (in particular) is over-abundant and pop a cube in sauces during winter - it’s just like having the fresh herb.

mum saved up for an upright freezer and read Home and Freezer Digest like a bible!
I remember all the vegetables had to be blanched beforehand in a kitchen full of steam and then plunged into cold water straight into plastic bags to freeze. It was always with big bits of ice in the bag! It all seemed like a lot of faff to me; people do not seem to do it now.
Best was Mum read somewhere you could freeze roses to bring out at Christmas. The flowers, when they were defrosted, were soggy and brown!

I'm not that good but my freezer drawers from top to bottom.

Drawer 1 - meat
Drawer 2 - veg
Drawer 3 - ready meals, convenience foods and home frozen (there are roast potatoes in it at the moment)
Drawer 4 - Ice cream and puddings

Freezers used to last forever, don't know how modern ones compare. We had one in the mid 70s that was still working when I got a fridge freezer in the early 2000s.

Re pikelets - I was brought up to refer to the delicious things as such, whatever it says on the packet! I have been known to make my own, and they need muffin/crumpet rings to pour the batter into! Never made flat ones.

I remember our first freezer in 1977 - it was a revelation!

I remember going fruit picking then open freezing raspberries as apparently it helped them keep their shape when defrosted. It didn’t work.