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.

Passion fruit
Avocados
Mango
Asparagus
Tender stem broccoli
Brie, Camembert, etc. Only available in France
Baby bels also french/European only
Krispy Kreme doughnuts (or the kind with icing on that didn't have jam in the middle)
Cheese cake
Ben & Jerry's ice cream

I don't think I knew what "sour dough" was either

Basically all my favourite foods

@torthecatlady

I have mammoth salt cravings due to pregnancy right now and managed to find some powdered cheese the other day

Going to have it on spaghetti with meatballs
Nom nom

May also eat some with a spoon
Pregnancy is weird

@Bumblebee39
Rubs hands
That's it, it's going on the list!

@bedunkalilt

Sunny D was the shiz

Until the Oompa Loompa scare of 2001 where everybody thought it turned them orange

It didn't really make people orange did it?
Maybe it did

@torthecatlady

Glad I could help

@jmh740

Sounds like what my kids eat now

I rather like hummus and quinoa, but they just want gravy flavoured meat and meat flavoured gravy with far too many potatoes

I remember as a child being invited to Dorothy's party when I was 5 or 6. Dorothy's mother was a bit fearsome, and she had laid out this humongous spread, we played games and then washed hands and sat at the table.
We weren't allowed to touch the sweet stuff in the middle, we had to start with the sandwiches, but I couldn't resist the gleam of this golden curled roll of something sticky looking, slightly lacey but very shiny, that really was at my eye level (the table was piled high) . I had never before seen a brandy snap, and eventually curiosity took the better of me and, when no-one was looking, I took one off the plate and took a bite, expecting it to be soft. Oh no it was crunchy! I got told off by Dorothy's mum for starting on the sweet stuff before eating my sandwiches, she could hear me crunch!
I also remember Chinese Gooseberries which later became Kiwi fruit.
And Angel Delight!
Black Forest Gateau became a thing you had instead of trifle.
Most food was seasonal, I used to love popping fresh peas, the variety of apples in autumn especially Worcester and Russets - things have come full circle as the old apple varieties are popular again!
My mother went on an Elizabeth David French cookery course and we tasted garlic, aubergines and olive oil.

@torthecatlady

The problem with vienetta was that it was barely bigger than a choc ice. I reckon I could easily destroy a whole vienetta on my own, no problem. Divided amongst the family, you got a paltry slither.

Salmon.
Steak.

@TheCowboy I once saw a man walking down the street biting into a Vienetta as if it were a sandwich. Total hero.

Hummus!
Avocado
Peppers
Frozen food

Yoghurt, oh yes.

When I was about 14 yrs old I used to go to Cardiff on the train with my boyfriend and we would have natural yoghurt and fresh fruit, including mango and melon, in a sort of ice-cream sundae glass fish.

I would be wearing the latest fashion from Top of the Pops and he had long hair and loons, with little round glasses. We went into Habitat and picked up the latest catalogue and furnished our imaginary future home together. We thought we were the kiddies, I tell you!

I did so love him, sadly I ended it as I was an idiot.
We lost touch, both married with children quite young, but when his mother died I sent a card. We planned to meet up on our next visit home. The letter confirming arrangements arrived just after the news of his death in an accident.
GNU Anthony xx

An early memory of mine (must have been under 10) was travelling to London to meet up with some relatives who were passing through the UK on the way between overseas postings.
We stayed at a smart hotel. My DM took all of us children (6 in total) to the restaurant for a light lunch. We'd all had a good breakfast so she chose something light: it was called 'Swiss surprise'. When it arrived on a big silver tray served by two waiters we were each given a pot of Ski yogurt on a little plate with a silver teaspoon and a special napkin with a chalet embroidered on the corner. My DM barely flinched when it came. Nearly 50 years later I remember it because it was the first time I saw a £10 note. Yogurt was apparently special.

We grew up in a multicultural area with a decent market so lucky enough to get avocados and coconuts and I remember trying lots of fruit and veg.
Dh grew up in rural ireland and had a great upbringing but not the exposure to much outside meat and two veg. He said he mainly got mash potatoes and rashers or sausages or minced meat. Certainly no curry or quiche or anything.

I’m in my early forties and was brought up on houmous, felafels, homemade curries and stir fries, fajitas and refried beans, and so on. My dad in particular was a good and adventurous home cook, and he also made wonderful croissants, scones, bread and cakes. I remember wishing we had findus crispy pancakes and vienettas like my friends though! And I was wildly jealous of the trio bars all my friends got in their packed lunches, while I was munching on carrot sticks.

@Bumblebee39 yes! I think a girl apparently drank too much of it and turned orange, and around the same time they had an advert where the snowman drinks Sunny D and turns orange and I think things basically went downhill after that turns out... wasn’t all that healthy as a drink! (Shocker. No wonder my friends and I loved it!)

@bedunkalilt

My DD is incredulous that we did not have fruit shoots
I'm baffled at a childhood without sunny D

Swings and roundabouts

Chips.

MerchY that is so sad! Bless you and your directional train snacks.

Just thought of another one, similar to Vienetta (which I was first to mention I think you'll find) Mr Whippy. More expensive than normal ice cream from the van and it was a very special day indeed if you got one. Now everyone thinks it's shit and cheap and hankers after the "traditional" ice cream that we kids turned our noses up at in the 70s/80s.

I am 50 and grew up in Ireland. Foods I never had until I was 16 or so include:

Pasta
Rice (other than rice pudding)
Avocados, squash, artichokes, basil, coriander, loads of herbs and veg that don't grow in Ireland
Curry
Actual dairy ice cream (it was HB or vienetta all the way for us - still remember the explosion of taste when I had my first ice cream in Italy)
Any casserole or sauce other than beef stew or Irish stew
Vinagrette dressing (went on an exchange to Germany at age 16 and this taste blew me away - we only had salad cream or mayonaise)

So it was a fairly restrictive diet in some ways. In others, it was a very tasty and sustainable diet based on foods available locally. We ate vegetables and meat in season. We didn't eat much imported food that had travelled long distances. Food sometimes tasted amazing - strawberries grown locally, the first new potatoes, really good meat from a local farm, butchered by someone who knew what he was doing. Lovely cakes and desserts made from recipes that had been tried and tested over generations. My mum wasn't a talented cook (her sisters were - they could have had restaurants) but she made lovely food because the raw ingredients were excellent and she was using tried and tested reciples.

Pp was surprised that prawns were considered a luxury. As she said, there were stalls outside pubs at the weekends and my v ordinary S.E. London family routinely had cockles, whelks, winkles and prawns for Saturday tea with bread and butter and vinegar. Needles and hat-pins were threaded into the table cloth so you could take one and use it to get the winkle out of its shell. I learned from an early age how to shell a prawn.

Celery wasn't a rarity either. There was always a head of it in a vase full of water to have with cheese and cream crackers. Never had it cooked, tho'.

We ate quite a lot of meat, but it was the cheap cuts that are now fashionable - and not so cheap any more. Belly of pork, breast of lamb, liver and bacon, pigs trotters, sweetbreads. Steak (shin of beef) and kidney pudding, with suet crust pastry, tied up in a cloth and boiled for hours in a saucepan on the hob.

Ice cream was a treat. I was sent over the road to the garage to buy a family-sized block of Neapolitan, wrapped in newspaper so it didn't melt on the way back. This was for Sunday lunch. Otherwise, we'd have tinned fruit and evaporated milk or my mother made some sort of thick cream substitute with Ostermilk. During the week, it was stewed apple or rhubarb and custard. Bottled plums or damsons for special occasions or in a pie. Lots of milk puddings - rice, semolina and tapioca, with a spoonful of jam. I was grown up before I realised rice could be a savoury dish. The only takeaway was fish and chips and they certainly didn't deliver.

Grapes and Lucozade were for only for invalids. And grapes had pips, which you were forbidden to swallow in case they gave you appendicitis.

This was in the 50s.

A good old fashioned, thick tiered home made Victoria sponge with jam and cream. Icing sugar shaken over the top to create a fancy pattern.

Only for birthdays or when important visitors were calling.

P. s there was always a doily available to create said pattern

Kiwis. I remember first seeing one.

Everything else was reasonably common.

I live abroad and every time I fly home, I’m always amazed that the M&S food hall is now available in service stations up and down the country. That used to be aspirational shopping at its finest!

Agree with loads of these.

Olives - when I was little they were only bought in for parties to go in martinis. Bro and I would be in trouble if we pinched one (sis didn't like em) Now I always have a jar in.

Pesto sauce - I'd never even heard of this delight until my 30's, dd has grown up having pesto pasta. She's almost 18. When I've had discussions like this with her she was shocked that spag Bol was "fancy" for my generation.

"Vienetta. It was proper posh." So true! Maybe twice a year if we were lucky!

Sushi - didn't have until my late 30's. Regular favourite for dd when she's in our nearest city, or she may occasionally get to Tesco before the few small packs they get in sell out of a lunchtime.

Squash - until my 30's this meant cordial not a vegetable!

"I remember having to go to a health food shop to find quinoa. Now it's in every supermarket" I've been veggie 30+ years. In the beginning I had to go to health food shops to get almost ANY kind of meat substitute. I was SO grateful when linda McCartney and then Quorn products came in! Now it's very easy to be veggie, there's even ready meals, deli "meats" & picnic items ready made! Back then if I wanted sausages I had to make em!

My mum had never seen a banana until she was about 12. She'd no idea what it was or how to eat it so licked the stem and declared she didn't like it. Took it back to my gran and said "no that's yuk" gran says "but you've not even opened it" mum "you have to open it? How?" Gran showed her, mum loves bananas now.

"Ice creams that weren't either from a big plastic tub or cheapy choc ice" do you remember ice cream in cardboard wraps? Mum would "open" it with a bread knife, slicing a block off at a time that we'd put between 2 wafers or if we were REALLY lucky a nougat wafer!

"such things like llentil chickpeas etc" see now as a Scot lentils surprises me because we use them in loads of things and it's very much a peasant food, a cheap filler here (along with pearl barley which I LOVE)

"McDonald's- parents asked for a knife and fork and were horrified they didn't have them. Never heard of eating food without them." Can I imagine the Aibu then?!

"Sorry if this puts a downer on the thread, but is anyone else reading this and thinking that after brexit we'll be moving back to those days, maybe not in terms of absolute availability but as in a lot of these things will be too expensive for many people to buy?" I'm a brexit prepper it's absolutely occurred to me! But now you mention it notice how many of these items became available/affordable in late 70's/early 80'a which would've been when the trade routes and agreements would've been starting to be established? Any no deal brexiters on this thread might consider how they'll feel if we get no deal and its ANOTHER 10/15 years until we can afford/access such food again as we do now?

"I remember one of the burger chains serving food on plates with knifes and forks, but it was probably either BK or Wimpy." More likely wimpy. My gran used to prefer to McDonald's or bk because they used proper crockery and cutlery (and we loved brown derbys!)

Flowerycurtain yes our home diet was much the same - certainly roast on Sunday fish on Friday (Catholics) but my parents were more adventurous eating outside the house which tended to only happen on special occasions. Although I also well remember having 70's restaurant staples of orange juice or prawn cocktail starters, scampi & chips, Black Forest gateau.

My mum still only uses either spaghetti or macaroni of all the pasta that's available & she's highly suspicious of fresh pasta, she doesn't trust anything that can be cooked that quickly to be cooked "properly"

My dd isn't keen on potatoes in any form. I've recently learned this may be due to her disability, it can be an irritant for some sufferers. So I NEVER buy raw potatoes - this BLOWS my mothers mind, she has all her married life bought a sack a month from her local farm shop (she now goes halves with a neighbour as it's just her and dad, but still half a SACK every month!).

We instead prefer to have cous cous (never had until dd was 3, I was an instant convert! So easy), noodles, pasta or sometimes rice (again dd not keen).

Sometimes we may not have a carb at all - if my mother new that she'd have a fit!

"But I'm from the South Wales valleys. Every village had its Italian cafe selling frothy coffee and proper icecream. You can keep your Costas: we've had the real thing for a couple of generations."
I'm a weegie, BIG Italian community there too so again lots of ice cream parlours where good coffee was sold. My dad even in the 70's had a cafetière. Mum only drinks tea. Both granda's used to take us for ice cream to their favourites. Ruined us for that mr whippy crap though!

I was almost 30 when I first had halloumi! Had a Cypriot boss who used to grill it in the toastie maker then have it on seeded rolls with a drizzle of olive oil! When he learned I was veggie and always looking for new idea he got me some - it was still quite expensive though maybe he used a shop that stocked for the Cypriot community - again I was instantly converted loved it!

I also worked with a chef who had quite a temper but was fine with me (but then I tended to give as good as I got and I'm quite sarcastic which amused him) he used to publicly make fun of my veggie-ness - but went out of his way making the most amazing dishes for me, stir frys, pastas, veggie stews with stuff I'd never heard of or seen before (this was 80's again) like baby sweetcorn, bamboo shoots, okra, star fruits, water chestnuts, kale, tamarillo, plantain, papaya... The job was shite but man he could cook!

"cheese that’s not cheddar"
OMG that's reminded me! In 70's even Red Leicester was a treat!

"Lucozade in a big bottle with crinkly paper on it was only for people in hospital." Yep we only had it if we were ill. Will out me but fuck it! When I was doing nurse training we had a diabetic patient who's sugars we COULD NOT get down. They swore blind they weren't eating any sugar and their food diary backed this up...then I saw his mum take a litre bottle of lucozade out & give it to him! He was right he wasn't EATING sugar he was GUZZLING it in liquid form - a litre a day! How the fuck he's not ended up in a coma I don't know! He and his mother were adamant it "couldn't" be the lucozade because it was a "health drink, I even buy it from the health food shop" 😂😂😂 honestly you can't imagine! The dr was like what the fuck! How do these people survive to procreate?!

"I'd also have to say boxes of chocolates. Remember how posh a box of Milk Tray were! Now chocolate is just cheap and not very nice." Yes! Anyone remember "weekend" (see pic)

For those on this thread who haven't seen I highly recommend the "back in time for..." BBC social history series there's a few series where the focus is on food history, but it's touched on in all series it's such an integral part of our lives and culture.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_Time_for...

I need to catch up on the latest series - back in time for school.

Arnoldilllo - totally agree. With me being veggie and dd doesn't like fish or red meat I don't buy things like that, I was with a friend a couple years ago when she was vying steak for her & her dh dinner. 2 steaks were nearly 1/3 my weekly grocery bill!!

Biscuittime - I've lived over in Europe as an army brat/wife and it makes you realise certain things are very peculiarly British. I don't remember when I was younger so much but as an army wife I also had friends who were locals who's married British soldiers. Was fascinating sharing our things with them that we could only get at the naafi (marmite, baked beans, brown sauce, salad cream, British tea) and they helped me navigate the local supermarkets and how to use certain products. I STILL miss SO much food & drink from there (you really can't get it in U.K. Even in Aldi/lidl) things like dickmanns cakes, decent liebkuchen, stroopwaffel, good hot chocolate, garlic & herb mayonnaise, various salad dressings, German ketchup (different spices to ours - completely lush!), good rye bread, various sauces for potato dishes (Germans do 1001 ways with potato), huge variety of cheeses, good asparagus, hell even ANY white asparagus, fresh stollen, sirop de liege, stoemp, mushroom sauces, schoarma spices, loads of different kinds of mushrooms... Mouths watering!

"but I did grow up in rural Scotland, where strangely enough smoked salmon was relatively easy to come by" why would you think that strange? Scottish salmon has long been world famous.

"Now it's like some sad star of the silent era who no one wants to know anymore because it's so old fashioned." I LOVE the creative use of language on mn! 😂

My mum still refuses to buy yogurt! To her mind its merely "spoiled milk" and she thinks it would taint other fridge contents.