Are Raisins Still A Thing?

[TheLeadbetterLife]

When I was a kid, raisins were everywhere. My parents were very into the 70s / 80s wholefood, grow-your-own thing, so we never had sweets or chocolate (except cooking chocolate) in the house. We had raisins (Nanna had sweets though...).

Breakfast was bran flakes or weetabix with raisins (plus extra wheatgerm). We had those little red boxes of raisins in our lunchboxes. Baking usually had raisins in it - chocolate was for birthday cakes. Puddings were almost always fruit based as well (e.g. stewed damsons with custard).

To this day I love dried fruit, especially the extravaganza of it at Christmas.

Are raisins still big? I suppose there's anxiety about the sugar content now, but they have loads of fibre, which possibly compensates.

It is ridiculous, early years providers in September were told to ban all sweet things and previously raisins have been named on DFE guidance unfortunately. I have to give plain crackers/rice cakes instead of the odd malted milk biscuit with fruit at snack time now. Only Greek or natural yogurt. Absolutely no flavoured yogurts etc. I wouldn’t mind but if they are going to introduce this stuff, they should put it across whole school not just early years. As soon as they go to school they get puddings!

Raisins counts more as sweets than actual fruit, like fruit winders or fruit snacks. They're almost the same sugar content as Skittles.

Never been a big fan and as an adult I prefer prunes in porridge, biscuits etc.
We had some florentines in which had raisins as well as other dried fruit (cranberries, sultanas) and on his second day with us the foster dog snaffled the last one (plus the cardboard box). I tried to work out how many raisins were likely to be in each one but it’s impossible to tell due to other fruit looking identical in a biscuit setting. Cue a quick trip to emergency vet and wallet £650 lighter. So raisins are no longer a thing in this house.

I stopped buying the little packets after I thought my dog had eaten the whole thing and apparently they are poisonous!!

Are raisins still big?

No they're quite small, sultanas are bigger..

When my DC (now all in their 20s) were toddlers, you could but tubs of giant raisins. They were 4xish bigger than your average raisin. Can't get them anymore.

You can still get regular raisins in the home cooking section, or I've also seen them in the snacking nuts section.

I do love raisins, especially when covered in a deep, crumb coating. Ok, cake, I love them in cake.

This is why I love mumsnet, women are hilarious 🖤

I have raisins on my porridge every day. Sometimes I make a big Yorkshire pudding type thing with raisins in for after dinner. Bloody lovely.

Whoa, recipe please! Or something a bit more precise than so far... sounds mega delish!

My kids eat them very occasionally, but they are terrible for getting stuck in teeth like crisps. I also don’t buy fruit juice and if I do I only allow one small glass a day. I’m a total bore 🤣

@TemporarilyCantDoMyself I'll post the recipe when I get in

I mix my own museli and always include raisins and sultanas. DH sometimes makes peanut butter and raisin sandwiches if he is going on a long walk or mountain hike.

I'm intrigued by the raisins in Yorkshire puddings.
As I said upthread my mum used to throw a handful into pancake mixture just before it starting cooking. She did this because my dad liked them and his mum (my granny) used to do it.
I've never met anyone else who did it but vaguely remember reading it was a Welsh thing (granny was Welsh).
Is raisins in Yorkshire pudding a Welsh thing 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 ?

They were this morning when I had breakfast, but haven't checked since.

Hang around any toddlers and you will see raisins are still in lol

I was saying to a few friends recently that raisins are top tier toddler snack but adults never think to eat them

Yes, sadly they were the staple food of the dodo as well!

Aldi still do the little boxes for kids.

My kid loves them, but I can only find the “organic” version now 🤣

I love them too, because it takes ages for him to finish the the tiny box with his little fingers. Perfect little parent break.

Oh I'm another one who has raisins or sultanas in my porridge every day, apart from the occasional days when I have weetabix or shredded wheat and then of course the raisins or sultanas go on the cereal instead.

I absolutely love dried fruit and sometimes make up a wee snacking bowl of raisins and sultanas and dried cranberries and a few redskin peanuts.

My elderly student landlady in Yorkshire many moons ago used to serve Yorkshire pudding with sultanas in, as a first course with gravy, before the roast. I did find it odd at first but it was very nice.

Now and then I buy a bag of mixed dried fruit and make a Barm Brack - fruit soaked overnight in tea and the sugar (it says cold in the recipe but I make hot tea specially), mix next day with flour and just one egg - makes a really yummy loaf to slice and have with (or without) butter.

Oh my God, I LOVE raisins and eat them every day in porridge

This really reminds me of something from a children's book I used to love, but I can't remember which one.

I'm sure it's a bunch of kids all eating a big slab of batter for dinner, with sugar and raisins on it. But they didn't like it for some reason.

Going to have to go through my books now and find this reference.

I’ve got a bag of crepe mixture and add all kinds of stuff to it whilst frying. Any concoction.

I've remembered it! It's from What Katy Did At School:

Mrs. Nipson was now in sole charge of the establishment. She had never tried school-keeping before, and had various pet plans and theories of her own, which she had only been waiting Mrs. Florence's departure to put into practice.
One of these was that the school was to dine three times a week on pudding and bread and butter. Mrs. Nipson had a theory,—very convenient and economical for herself, but highly distasteful to her scholars,—that it was injurious for young people to eat meat every day in hot weather.
The puddings were made of batter, with a sprinkling of blackberries or raisins. Now, rising at six, and studying four hours and a half on a light breakfast, has a wonderful effect on the appetite, as all who have tried it will testify. The poor girls would go down to dinner as hungry as wolves, and eye the large, pale slices on their plates with a wrath and dismay which I cannot pretend to describe. Very thick the slices were, and there was plenty of thin, sugared sauce to eat with them, and plenty of bread and butter; but, somehow, the whole was unsatisfying, and the hungry girls would go upstairs almost as ravenous as when they came down.

I prefer sultanas to raisins when eating by the handful (or added to alpen) but perhaps they aren't as common now due to the explosion of dogs everywhere. They are highly toxic.