To ask which foods used to be super fancy but are now totally "normal"

[cheesenpickles]

I was chatting to my 3 year old today about how, when I was little, pizza was quite an exciting thing. It's what they ate on American tv shows and there was no way you could get it delivered to your house. Got me thinking about things that are ordinary groceries now which were the pinnacle of fancy/unthought of in the 80s and 90s (and earlier!)

Avocados are another one. My mum would buy one for her and my dad as a special treat to eat with vinegarette from their special "avocado pear" bowls.

Mexican food as well. Old El Paso kits were the height of fancy pants when I was younger.

Halloumi, gets and hummus were things only my family seemed to know about (parents were stationed in Cyprus) and trying to explain squeaky cheese to my friends when we brought a huge brine-filled jug of the stuff back from holiday was hilarious considering it's totally normal now.

I remember a mate at school getting a summer job in a very artisan posh cafe and educating us all about these funny new Italian sandwiches called Paninis it was 1997.

"I didn’t eat Thai, Indian or Vietnamese food until I was 18 or so!"

I've still never eaten Vietnamese. Is that unusual?
Once was enough with Thai food. I don't need to burn my throat off.

Oh and lychees.....I remember my aunt giving me one- just one as a special treat when I was about 8 as they were quite pricey, this week saw a whole pack for 79p in Aldi, made me think of my poor old aunt lol

Avocado
Kiwi fruit
Pomegranate
Granola
Fresh fruit juices, exotic varieties (not concentrate)

We didn't try spag bol until my eldest brother brought the notion back from university. Then I stayed with a friend whose mum made us lasagne. I was terrified, I thought all lasagne tasted of shit and vomit.
Turns out id only ever had the school dinner version before. The friend's mum version opened up a whole new world of food heaven to me.

Yoghurts

Croissants

Smoked salmon

Also yoghurts...when I was a child you could get normal yoghurt as a treat...now we have a whole aisle in the supermarket!

Tuna. I am convinced that tuna was invented in the early 80s (only the tinned stuff to be had with mayonnaise (also a revelation) of course).
Pesto. First had it at university and thought it was really weird.

We always had very british meat and two veg growing up. Spag bol was the height of “foreign” exoticness! It was anglicised spag bol though, mince, bacon, tin of tomatoes, beef stock cube and a pinch of schwartz italian seasoning. It was more mince in gravy than spag bol.

So things i eat almost daily now that my mum still eyes suspiciously as “foreign”:

Peppers
Bagels
Garlic
Salad dressing-olive oil/vinigrette. Salad cream only as a child.
Pasta that isn’t spaghetti. Pasta sauce that isn’t bolognese.
Any lettuce that isn’t iceberg.

Meal wise:
Fajitas. She askes everytime “for the recipe”. Cannot understand that it’s peppers, onion and meat fried with a packet of el paso.
Chinese/japanese/indian. Really struggles with takeaway.

Bagged salad, any ready prepared veg really. Oh and salad dressing, it was salad cream or nothing when i was a kid.

I was born in the 70s I think we had meat and veg most days I remember things like sausage and mash, burgers, fish pie, loads of things with mince, spag bol cottage pie etc chicken was only for a Sunday roast and then maybe chicken pie on a monday then chicken soup on a Tuesday. I remember my friend sleeping over mid week (must have been the school holidays) mum asked her what she would like to eat and my mum was so shocked when she asked for chicken on a Thursday!

I was completely unaware of most things mentioned here. My mother CBA with anything that looked like effort or was unfamiliar. She was born in the 1920’s, both parents grew up poor so food was simply fuel and didn’t need to be messed about.

I do remember that mushrooms were a rare thing as they were expensive.

In the mid 1960s our class at school took part in French exchange. My friend's exchange student decided to make ratatouille for my friend's family.

Off she went to Streatham high street in search of courgettes, aubergines, and peppers, to the bemusement of the local greengrocers..

I don't know what dish she actually ended up cooking.

I'm surprised at people saying prawns.

The fish stall outside many pubs in the 60s sold winkles, cockles, whelks and prawns by the pint every Saturday and Sunday. Not to mention jellied eels...

So that was often our Sunday tea.

I was born in the 70s I think we had meat and veg most days I remember things like sausage and mash, burgers, fish pie, loads of things with mince, spag bol cottage pie etc chicken was only for a Sunday roast and then maybe chicken pie on a monday then chicken soup on a Tuesday. I remember my friend sleeping over mid week (must have been the school holidays) mum asked her what she would like to eat and my mum was so shocked when she asked for chicken on a Thursday!

Coffee. Until around 20 years ago, coffee in the U.K. almost always meant instant.

You didn't have a Kardomah coffee house anywhere near you then? The smell of fresh coffee was mind-blowing. And the food in the cafe was really nice too. That was in the 70s.

"I’m old enough to remember when fresh orange juice was served as a starter."

Oh yes!

Or melon...

I've only read the op title!
But I want to say humus. And yet it's still trotted out in here on loud parents... JocastA do you want quinoa tonight or houmous.

viennetta

Satsumas. Only at Christmas

Pate was a mysterious exotic substance known of only because there was an elderly French lady who lived on our street in my childhood, the closest thing we had was Sardine & Tomato paste (in a sandwich).
She once invited us round & gave us pate on COLD toasted slices of baguettes.
My mind was blown. I never knew it was a thing to deliberately toast something & then let it go cold. I'd also never seen a baguette before & couldn't figure out how one would fit in the oven so I thought French people must have special extra deep ovens just to cook them in.
I thought it was the height of sophistication.

At home, Christmas & Easter were very special occasions that would be celebrated with prawn cocktails as a starter & as children we were allowed a sip of Mateus Rose.

Out of season fruit that was not in a can was actually so posh it never occurred to me as a child such a thing existed. e.g. Strawberries at Christmas.

We ate 'spaghetti bolognaise' in the 70s, although I got a bit of a shock when I tasted real bolognaise years later. My mums version was a teaspoon of mince with tomato ketchup & a lot of onions on a pile of long spaghetti.

More recently I was bitterly disappointed when I finally tried Twinkies & Oreo cookies.
I grew up reading Stephen King & these seemed to be the staples of his characters childhoods.
They are now available in pretty much every supermarket, but you had to go to the states to get them when I was a child.
I used to long for a Twinkie they sounded so awesome.
Twinkies were so foul even my then 5 year old chose to throw them in the bin after just one bite.
Oreos weren't much better.

There are so many, but one I enjoy remembering is Sunny Delight. When it first came out here my mum thought it was amazing, like proper fresh orange juice, and my friends and I ‘competed’ to show we had Sunny Delight. I don’t know if that was widespread but where I lived we all thought it was fancy It was the Florida oranges or some such!

Today my mum is into organic, local produce, sustainability etc (all nice things, no criticism) but would feign ignorance if I was ever to remind her how amazing she used to think Sunny Delight was.

Born in 1990 here...

I remember my parents taking a thermos of hot water, a small tub of instant coffee and a small plastic beaker of milk EVERYWHERE!

Vienetta was a special treat at Christmas, we even had a special serving plate for it too (which was the perfect size) which I have since inherited and pretty cheesed off that the "extra % free" vienetta doesn't fit on it

I also remember McDonald's opening near us and that was a once every 6 months kind of trip!

I'm my childhood rice was exotic and something you had at a Chinese restaurant. Other than pudding rice 😊

Oh I also remember the dried "Parmesan" cheese in the little cylinder tub.... I use to sneak spoonfuls of it as a child!

Do they still make it? I seem to recall it being really salty!