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.

I love Tupperware. I still look out for it in charity shops.

I knew someone would say that! I am, I admit, not much of a cook. Cooking for me mainly involves heating things up.
On the subject of seasonal unavailability, in the past I remember jacket potatoes not being in the shops in summer. Thank goodness they are now although you have to select carefully as some look a bit manky.

in the past I remember jacket potatoes not being in the shops in summer.

Weird as now I think of them as a BBQ staple ...

Good old bejam! I'm embarrassed to say I wouldn't remember the price of what I bought from the supermarket

Family friends had a chest freezer circa 69/70. I thought it was absolutely marvellous, frozen sweetcorn, burgers, ice-cream etc & the wonders of Bejam. I used to volunteer to help the mum get things out from the garage where the freezer was stored & delight at all the stuff in it. The Dad was a gamekeeper & there was some slightly disturbing things in there too. My mum used to randomly chuck anything next to anything so cakes, ice cream, celeriac, mince, chops, Mivvies, runner beans etc were all in a huge jumble like Mary Berry's freezer only worse. My friend lives in Penn & Mary sends out food packages to the elderly folk around Harvest festival, Christmas etc so I think she's probably got a redeeming kind heart despite using kitchen implements on her kids in the past. I've still got my circa 88 upright Aussie freezer!

Definitely. Possibly in the style of Beef from House of Fools.

I think back in the day, wooden spoons and so on were popular child walloping tools. I was a child in the 70s and many of us were admonished at some point with a wooden spoon, ruler, slipper etc. It was just how it was back then, rather than anything unusual or out of the ordinary.

Ah, but you using your barbecue properly?

Here's Mary and Judith showing you how:

A bit longer than the last vid at about 12mins but if you want the absolute surreal highlight of the piece, fast forward to 2.20.

I won't spoil it.

That’s still a good method. Anything that beats trying to randomly find a bag of peas when there’s four drawers packed to the rim. I just put stuff where I can fit it, like a Tetris game, so making a drawer by drawer itemised list really helps me.

Because some members of my household swear they can never find anything, I labelled. Apparently having a system and telling them wasn’t sufficient.

We didn't have a freezer i think we were too poor for a freezer.

I do. The zip lock ones anyway unless they've been used for raw meat.

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!!! She is absolutely correct.

On the subject of boil in the bag. When I was pregnant with terrible morning sickness I used to buy boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce (before people had microwaves). If I didn't have to smell it cooking I stood a chance of keeping it down.

Though BBQs weren’t really a thing, either. Only hippies did that stuff.

I should have finished, my mum is really suspicious of freezing things, she can't get her head around the things we freeze, I also use different pots and bags.

My mother in law didn't trust freezers. She was always complaining she liked sausages but couldn't eat a whole pack. I suggested she freeze them in twos but she thought it would kill her. I do it all the time, ditto bacon rashers etc., because my husband doesn't eat meat.

My mum will buy frozen food well chips a few ready meals and ice cream, she would never freeze sausage and bacon and doesn't understand us doing a monthly shop! We didn't get a freezer till the mid 80s but it had the chips etc in it.

Growing up we just had an ice box in the fridge that could only fit an ice cube tray and, at a push, a packet of fish fingers. This was before freezer food became a thing though.

Mary and Judith went a bit hippy chick in their BBQ video that I posted above.

Mary made a fire in the bottom of a wheelbarrow to cook sausages, burgers and baked beans whilst Judith demonstrated how to turn a Silver Cross pram chassis into an outdoor hostess trolley.

Love the BBQ video. It all looks a bit shit, just like things used to look before everything had to be manicured and like a show home.

I don't think I'd really heard of barbeques being a thing until well into the 1980s though. The closest I think I got was outdoor cooking at barn dances, which were all on makeshift bits of brick and concrete too. I remember everything used to taste burnt and of coal dust and those briquette lighter things.

I remember the first bbq I ever went to was on a trip to Australia back in the early 90s. I was really excited as I imagined a bbq to be a special kind of experience. To say I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. It was very much a ‘is this it” moment. I’ve never cared much for them since.

?

Early 70s and a family friends wedding had one of the grooms brothers happily BBQing over two halves of an oil drum they'd put on some bricks and filled with coal (I think). Something they'd picked up on their National Service, I believe.

Crumpets only being in the winter! I wonder what they used to take like.

Also I can’t stand the reusing of plastic containers. I used to keep everything. The takeaway containers, big jars all under in the cupboard. Then I found they were taking up so much space. Now I can’t stand them.

Not to mention the micro plastics that must come off a reused boil in the bag bag. It didn’t seem to affect Mary though as she has made it to old age.

Well, Mary's mum lived to be 105, apparently, so some of it might be down to genetics.

Really, these videos do repay watching a few times just to pick up the small details. Right at the end, Judith suggests that you can wash up paper plates to use again and of course, from the freezer tutorial we have already learned that picnic beakers can be called into action for 'moulding' chicken stock or holding windfall apple purée.

Also, use a candlewick bedspread as a stylish table cloth. "It'll be back on William's bed tonight!"

Ah, candlewick bedspread.

It was definitely more commonplace and 'accepted' to punish children in the 70s with a wooden spoon or a slipper. The wooden spoon was never used in our house, but there was always the threat if my brother and I didn't stop being naughty, the wooden spoon would be used! I can remember my Mum chasing after my brother in the house with a wooden spoon in her hand but she didn't use it.

The slipper was a threat at at the Convent primary school I went to. Used very, very rarely by the nuns. The punishment I had for stuffing a crayon up my nose was a slap on my thigh and I immediately wet myself. Stopped me doing it again though!