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!

I was just about to say the same. It's been a standard thing in catholic parts of Southern Germany (not sure about Northern parts) and also Austria on no-meat Fridays to have a "Mehlspeise" which translates to "flour meal" (doesn't have to be made with flour). In my family it was always preceded by a soup (vegetable, or lentils or similar) and then the sweet main. Some Fridays there was fish but fish was expensive and not easily available before modern supermarkets. It was also a good way to use up leftover bread items and make use of the seasonal fruit gluts.

I sometimes do this if we have something that straddles our normal mealtime; parents' evening or a trip to the cinema for example. I'll make a pudding or a crumble and leave it in the switched-off oven when we go out. It finishes cooking and is usually still slightly warm. DH and DS love it and see it as a treat.

In the late 60s my Yorkshire student landlady used to serve Yorkshire pudding as a first course, with gravy. It had sultanas in! I found it weird at first but quite liked it.

We used to have puddings quite a lot. To be honest, I don’t really have a sweet tooth although I enjoy the occasional pudding these days.

I wouldn’t say a signature pudding is filling. Maybe if it has a lot of milk or cream but still not for long.

No, only as a treat on Shrove Tuesday. I am sorry you went through that.

It makes a lot of sense to me though. Tea used to be bread and butter with cake, and the cake wasn't an extra treat at the end, it was a major constituent of the meal. "Everyday" cake wasn't that glamorous either. School dinners traditionally were quite big on pudding because it was cheap calories.

When money was tight, mum would make soup and then we would have pudding usually in the form of rice. Meat was an expensive commodity in the 60s. Often the soup had ham in it ie lentil soup or broth. Sometimes we would have scrambled eggs. We never connected those meals with cost.

No, but we did often have very small savory courses followed by a milk based pudding. Like a sort of savoury snack and the pudding to fill you up.

I lived with my grandparents and the savoury course could be a single sausage, a potato split between everyone and a single broccoli floret, but followed by rice pudding, bread and butter pudding or macaroni pudding (strange. And no one else my age has ever eaten it!). It was filling, but was commented on by any friend who ever came for dinner with confusion.

Deleted as accidental double post.

We would sometimes have soup and pudding - homemade veg soup using veg from the allotment and fruit bought cheaply and custard made with powder. Meat was more expensive back in the late 60s, early 70s and our small village shop was limited in what it sold. There was one bus every 2 hours and dad had the car at work, we didn't have a big fridge freezer or chest freezer, and so there was a limit what we could store. We got a big lunch at school and dad had a free canteen at work, so we didn't need lots at dinner.

Child of 80s. Limited money. Pudding felt like a treat. Cheap meal was sandwiches with bread from bakery and rice Pudding. Sunday roast could be heart-!!!!, cheap cut of pork, but rarely chicken. Puddings felt posh to me. Love a Pudding now. Don't remember ever having fresh fish.

OK, it was back in the Dark Ages, but my DM almost always provided some sort of pudding after a main meal - apple pie, crumble, some sort of suet roly poly, chocolate blancmange, etc.

It’s as well to remember that before cars were common and most people walked a lot more, never mind so often no central heating, the extra calories were probably needed.

It’s a few decades ago now, but when we were on a visit to Prague, a fellow tourist (American) remarked on how slim the people were, despite the diet apparently consisting largely of meat, potatoes and a lot of dumplings - hardly any veg or salad.

But there were few cars and hardly any fast food outlets to be seen.

Every day at primary school until the last year when they permitted pack lunches for non medical reasons?!
I couldn't eat the dinners except the treacle, jam or chocolate sponge. Never the scary custard! Also a tart thing that seemed to just have caramel inside with sprinkles. All delicious. But yeah I've now got a life long sugar addiction!

At least they didn't force us to take and eat food we didn't want. It wasn't even like a feeling of not wanting it, it literally looked and smelt inedible. It felt like it would be physically impossible to consume.

I think we had macaroni pudding at school and as a kind of porridge when I was on my student placement in the Soviet Union - can't recall for certain whether that was the hostel in Moscow or Leningrad.

Only thing we had like that was pancakes sometimes for dinner (loaded with lemon and sugar)

No. Mum would’ve served a giant Yorkshire pudding with Quick pickle and gravy if we were incredibly poor. Or something like beans on toast.

No, except for Christmas Day when I myself would refuse an evening meal but take some Christmas pudding.
Now as an adult I sometimes eat like this, but wouldn't feed a child like that if I had one to feed. It seems to break some food rules.

I'm trying to remember...There was some kind of rib that was cooked until it was soft and the expectation was that you'd eat the marrow because it was 'good for you'. I don't think I'm making this up - I think we were expected to chew and eat the soft bones too?

I also recall being given a chop to eat and mildly scolded for not wanting to eat the fat - 'It's the sweetest part' - so yes, I had to eat it.

As a child you didn't join the dots and associate it with cost. I certainly never starved - I was overweight at various points - Dad was a shift worker and would put a small amount of his food on a side plate for me when I was little. As I said above, it was the pudding or the jam sandwiches that would be used to fill you up.

Dad had starved during the war, so I think he had a determination to make sure that that never happened to me.

Also, as a Boomer I got the NHS cod liver oil and orange juice.

I usually went home for dinners, but when I did get school dinners, it would be a meat course followed by a pudding 4 days a week. We used to groan on the one day that it was soup followed by a main.

I remember that we'd be offered seconds once everyone had been fed. I recall being surprised that some of the boys would put up their hands for seconds for the main course. I only ever got seconds for the dessert.

I don’t know if times were hard but I distinctly remember being given jelly and cream before school one morning, i must have been about 6 at the time .

No, we have a savoury main and a pudding (usually a fruit pie or similar) AND cake. I don't know how we weren't all the size of a house.

But I guess we walked everywhere - my dm had no car - so 2 to 5 miles every day, usually in a hurry, was normal.

I'm guessing if there wasn't much food in the cupboards, years ago most people would have staples like flour, butter and sugar in and if you could get some windfall apples from somewhere then yeah crumble would be very cheap to make.

No. I would have loved that!

Ours was mashed potato and some variation of meat, or brown bread sandwiches
I can't stand mashed potato or brown bread.

Only time was pancake day, and even them dm would use wholemeal flour and we had orange juice on it.

Wasn't oxtail stew was it? I loved sucking on the bones for that.

When Dd was little and money was tight I used to do soup and pudding nights once a week, also roast dinners with cheap frozen sausages, or no meat at all, just the veg, roasties and yorkshire puddings.