Anyone else have puddings instead of a savoury main meal growing up?

[JaceLancs]

Did anyone else grow up with only a pudding as their main meal and no savoury option?
Not every day but when times were hard we would be given crumble and custard, home made fruit pie, bread and butter pudding, rice pudding as our main meal assuming because it was cheap and filing
When times were really hard it was bread and margarine or a jam sandwich
I got a savoury cooked dinner on a Sunday at my grandparents not always a roast sometimes just mince and potatoes or pie and mash but it was the highlight of the week!

No. Why was that stuff considered cheaper than other foods?

No. I’ve never heard of anyone eating like that before.

Yes, crumble with fruit from the garden and custard. Rice pudding too but sometimes made so that it was stiffer, and cut when cold into pieces and turned in butter.

We definitely had crumble and custard for supper (main evening meal) some days but I don’t think it was due to money though we didn’t have a lot of it. It was homemade and we’d all have got involved making it then mum couldn’t be bothered making anything else as a main. Happy memories. We had porridge as an evening meal too.

No
Do you think it was because there was no meat in it and vegetarian wasn't such a thing?

I remember having things like stew and homemade dumplings when money was tight - cheap and filling.

Pudding was mainly something we had after dinner on a Sunday. We didn't have it for a main.

No, never. It seems odd that a homemade crumble and custard is cheaper than a main, as baking feels expensive now, but I suppose cheap meals like veggie food and pasta were not a thing.

Never heard of this. Surely a jacket potato is cheaper?

If we had extra milk we would get rice pudding for dinner. Our main cheap dinner was veg soup with potatoe in it, didn’t like it then, still don’t like it now!

Only when DM was out siblings were hungry. We had flour margarine and sugar, nothing else. Sent DB scrumping and made a crumble.

I was born in the 60s and meat was very expensive! Chicken was a luxury item - Sunday dinners were things like brisket or rolled shoulder of beef - we ate offal including heart
Fruit could be grown or foraged for - milk and flour were cheaper proportionately

Jacket potato might have been cheaper but without fillings and would cost more in fuel to
cook without a microwave

Never heard of that.

I was a child in the '60s. We did get a savoury main course - often with much cheaper cuts than would be used nowadays - but puddings were used to fill us up for dinner [lunchtime] and bread and jam sandwiches followed the main course - often a boiled egg - at teatime.

We had a decent sized garden and Dad grew vegetables.

Mum made her own jam, often with foraged blackberries.

I agree that chicken was a luxury item in those days. I recall that it would be used as a Christmas dinner instead of turkey.

We did get mince, often served with dough balls. (I now realise that this made it go further.)

I recall my mother telling me that when she was a child they sometimes ate 'saps' when times were hard - bread, hot water and sugar. Her brothers had rickets and my mother and one of her sisters had bad osteoporosis in later life.

It comes up in What Katy Did At School, where, after a new and less popular head takes over, the girls get ‘pudding’ (slices of batter pudding, with a sprinkle of dried fruit and thin, sugared sauce, with bread and butter on the side) three days a week for their main meal of the day. The girls hate it and are still hungry afterwards.

The head’s theory is that it’s not good for girls to eat meat every day in hot weather, but the narrator says it’s ‘economical’, cheap carbs rather than meat.

Wasn’t it traditional too that Yorkshire puddings were originally served as a first course, to fill people so they would be less hungry for the expensive meat course?

My mother and her sister suffer with osteoporosis too, after a childhood of living on bread and potatoes and cheap greens, because the meat was reserved for the working men of the household, and the girls hardly ever got any.

No, though we weren’t living in poverty.

we had desserts on Sundays, often tinned fruit and cream/evaporated or condensed milk, (I’m going back to the 70s) or sometimes crumble. Or we might have a fruit pie or flan if my Nan had been baking and made us one. We’d have those with
cream or milk, or custard or ice cream.

My granny wrapped potatoes in foil and baked them in the fire.

I can see the logic as it could be made from cheap store cupboard ingredients and if you had access to an apple tree, you have food without spending any money. It's not awful as it has fruit and milk in it.

It could also be that low income families received 'milk tokens' so would sometimes have had milk that needed using up which would go in custard.

I occasionally have pudding as a meal if I fancy it as I would be too full to eat it after a meal so just have that instead. Also a tin of rice pudding makes quite a good emergency meal if you CBA to cook.

We sometimes had a pudding for tea but that was when we’d had school dinners. The best thing about my school was the dinners.

That is very German.
Sometime you get a sweet main course at lunch instead of savoury. Usually a big, fluffy dumpling with stewed fruit and custard or a sauce of some description.
Have never come across this in the UK, though.

I’m desperate for a proper pudding now. My favourite is syrup sponge pudding or rhubarb crumble both with custard.

Sounds a bit lazy TBH. Easy and cheap and children will always eat sweet stuff.
We were very hard up when I was growing up in a large family but there would be potatoes and mince or at least cheese on toast.
We had no phone or car and heating was never on and parents never drank or went out and clothes were from jumble sales but they did their best with food. Did your parents spend their money on anything other than food?

Only on pancake day

No, we didn’t, although I was born in 1965 and we were poverty stricken.

If there was no dinner we had tinned soup or bread and butter.

However, I now live alone and sometimes as a mid winter treat I will have apple crumble and custard for dinner.