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 find it really funny that, growing up, my family was regarded as really foodie (well, before that term existed) with weird or posh eating habits. My dad had lived in places throughout Europe and the Middle East and both parents were massively adventurous when it came to cooking so hummus, taramasalata, pitta bread, feta, halloumi, olives and proper pasta (at a time when all my friends only know spaghetti from a tin) were all commonplace in our house. The thing is that my parents are still stuck in a rut of “adventurous in the 80s” so, for example, despite my mum being a great cook, she cannot get her head around fresh parmesan and when staying with us, always insists on buying one of those cardboard tubs of grated cheese which taste and smell off. To her, though, this is the “proper stuff” because that’s what we ate at a time when no-one else we knew was eating Italian food at all. Also, although they attempted to recreate lovely Mediterranean dishes, they were mainly cooked in sunflower oil as olive oil was definitely only used for medicinal purposes.

I remember my mum making garlic bread as part of a buffet in the mid-80s. It really was like that Peter Kay sketch. People were daring each other to try the tines amount.

A lot of food was still alien or too posh for us though. Mainly fruit – we had apples, grapes and bananas at home. Kiwis, mangos, pineapples etc were for very special occasions. Spinach, for some reason, was seen as too posh for us. My dad regularly remarks with awe on how I use spinach in almost everything and always wants to know where I bought it, as if it is some exotic delicacy. We had sweet potatoes occasionally and loved them but they were so hard to find in shops. They started to become more readily available in the late 90s and I hosted a dinner party in my very first flat where I served roast chicken with mashed sweet potato – hardly anyone touched the mash, just pushed it around the plate eyeing it suspiciously. Chinese and Indian food were seen as hugely exotic and something we aspired to eat. Curries would be made for special occasions but always using a jar of sauce with other bits added to it. My parents now, can’t get their heads around eh fact that I make curry from scratch with spices etc.

Despite being quite well versed in Italian food, I remember mum bringing home pesto for the first time. We had heard of it and knew it was popular in Italy but had no idea what to do with it. The label suggested using it as a baked potato topping(???!) so we used a whole jar each, just dolloped on our spuds. We all found it disgusting and vowed never to try pesto again. About 10 years later, I went to a friend’s house and was served pasta pesto, finally realising that less is more! It’s now a staple ingredient in our house, to my mum’s dismay.

Oh, yes pizza was another one of mum's failings. Another example of her belief that she was such an expert in Italian food and, too be fair, a lot of what she attempted really was more adventurous than what my friends were eating. She would buy pizza bases which looked and tasted like cardboard and then smother these with tomato puree and grated cheddar. For years, I thought this was what all pizzas tasted like.

When my mum started doing spag bol and chilli (I think this reached our rural area in 1990) my dad insisted on having boiled potatoes with it every time. Even lasagne.

In fact even though we recently went to a Thai restaurant with them (unthinkable 5 years ago!) I noted that although he had rice he also ordered a sneaky side of chips. It's not a meal without spuds!
He's not even old old.

I'm really laughing at the Taramasalata and pitta comment. This was exactly my experience at university early 90s. Sooo tasty! Not even sure I like it now though it's been ages since I had some.

@Epanoui
Gosh sounds like my childhood we also used to go to Harlesden to buy huge Christmas ham plus yam and sweetpotatoes😊😊

Growing up in a Scandinavian country in the 80s we oddly enough had things like kiwi, starfruit, persimmon, Sharon fruit and other exotic fruit as an occasional treat.

Pasta, pizza, lasagna and rice were stable fare though. Avacodos with prawns was a special occasion or long weekend treat as we're tinned asparagus (I seem to remember).

I don't think I had hommus until my 20s but tzatziki was quite a popular treat in my teens, we even made our own! I would have thought the two sort of went together! O still remember trying cous cous at my mum's more sophisticated friends house when I was about 10, so late 80s in other words.

Oh and garlic bread! I don't think I had it until I moved to the UK late 90s, very posh indeed! Using a real parmesan wedge for grating on pasta was oh so posh, we used to have the powered stuff in a pouch when I grew up. Oh and black pepper (particularly in an actual grinder) we only ever had white growing up.

Yogurt
Mangoes
Pasta other than macaroni

But not asparagus - we lived in one of the asparagus growing areas and ate it several times a week during season. My mother couldn't believe that my father had never had it before he met her.

I can remember before garlic bread was invented! A minor claim to fame of mine is that the first piece I ever had was made by Des Swayne- now a particularly repellent Tory MP.

Was born overseas and lived in an international community there so my friends and their families were American, Canadian, French and Italian. We shared meals and recipes as a community.

Came back to the UK late 70s and everybody thought we were very strange because of the food my mum cooked. Friends either were desperate to visit to try new stuff or desperate not to be invited because the food was so weird.

Thing is, I'm talking about pizza, pastas, gnocchi, burgers and salads. Some of it was even cooked outside on the bbq!

I am a child of the 70's and remember so many of these things.
My mother was not a great cook, she just wasn't interested at all.
We had really plain food all the time and i hated pretty much all of it. I thought I was in heaven when boil in the bag curry arrived in the shops!

My mum made dessert pretty much every night, which was great for me as I didn't usually eat much of the dinner and it was usually things like stewed apples and custard, stewed rhubarb and custard, semolina with a blob of jam, rice pudding with jam, swiss roll slices topped with custard (I loved this one), tinned fruit cocktail with custard (there is a theme emerging....!) sliced up banana with....yup...custard! On special occasions she bought a horrible rubbery, dry 'sponge 'flan' case and whipped cream and topped with tinned fruit - this was exotic!
We had trifle only at christmas

Curry, my mum was quite an adventurous cook for the 80s and used to make a basic mild curry with powder and sultanas in it. I now love curry and experiment with loads of recipes.

Any cheese except mild cheddar and primula tubes.

Some things have reversed though. Chicken was a very rare treat, now we eat it all the time and almost never have a beef joint as it is too expensive. Lamb was a regular meal but never buy it now.

I don't know anyone who would have chops for a meal now, and when I see massive pork chops I'm always shocked because the ones we had were always tiny dried out things.

Pre packed sandwiches. I remember seeing the first one when I was about 14 in a petrol station and couldn't believe people would be so lazy as to buy one.

When me and DH first got together he thought things like Pesto, pasata, capers and courgettes were “tricks” when I would ask him to pick them up at the shop. The best has to be when he put kale on his sandwich for his dinner at work
Perhaps it’s not just a 21st C thing?

My family background is Italian. My grandmother cooked Italian food but I only realised much later that key ingredients were missing as you didn't see them in the shops.

Mid 90s a girl at uni rocked up to halls with a tub of creme fraiche to stir through pasta. People looked at her like she was from another planet. When she bought some supermarket sushi and stuck it in the fridge, you could probably hear the cries of “raw fish?????” 30 miles away!

Anyone else remember clotted cream arriving by post in a polystyrene carton? Sent by friends and relations from West Country holidays - you couldn't buy it in the supermarket then.

Vol au vents were seen as extremely sophisticated, as was mandarin cheesecake, for some reason.

We didn't eat anything out of season unless it was something out of the garden that had been stored - great dustbins of sand filled with carrots and potatoes.

I had a Raymond Blanc cookbook in the 90s- I was trying to get the ingredients for one recipe when I was living overseas: "Don't be ridiculous!" the greengrocer said, "They're not in season at the same time!"

We never had carbs plus carbs growing up, as some people mentioned: that might be a 90s thing? And my mother's lurid yellow curry, complete with sultanas, mandarins and banana slices tossed in dessicated coconut. 40 years later I can still taste it when the wind is in the wrong direction

My elderly parents still buy parmesan in the tube. They prefer it

Big soft American cookies with chocolate chunks, etc, in them.

We went to Canada when I was 10 and I couldn't believe people were allowed to eat enormous cookies with a portion size of "slightly bigger than your face".

A far cry from a custard cream.

My mum used to make a scone based pizza in the 1980s, it gave my dad awful indigestion but she persisted in feeding it to him I remember first going to Pizza Hut and having pineapple (pineapple!!!) on a pizza with a lovely doughy base

Avocado was only served at dinner parties, with prawns piled on top. I remember first having mozzarella, in hard blocks rather than lumps in bags of water

Off topic, but the McDonald’s near us used to sell pizza and Burger King used to sell lemon meringue pie, which was lovely (probably wasn’t lovely)

Smoked salmon
Blue cheese
Chicken
Best butter
Grapes
Prawns

My Sunday evening meal always used to be tinned fruit and something...I think condensed milk? I might have some this weekend for nostalgia's sake, actually.
I was born in the mid 80s and Sunday evening was tinned fruit and condensed milk for tea, antiques roadshow and heartbeat on the TV for my parents and my older siblings and I listening to the top 40 on the radio and trying to time pressing the buttons on the cassette just right so you didnt get the DJ speaking on it.

Its been said but Viennetta and after eight mints.
Viennetta was strictly a Christmas treat in the early 80s and we knew the grandparents were coming for dinner when the after eight mints made an appearance!

Chicken! In the 50's only had it at Christmas as a real treat.

Chocolate bars ie Mars etc in various sizes from fun size to massive size! Oh and these flavoured diet cokes 💜 ultimate yum

I well remember being brave enough to try an exotic foreign lasagne for the first time.

I also had my first cappuccino in Italy. We'd never seen anything like it.

80s kid. Remember when the only wine available was Hock, Liebfraumilch, the rosé in the round bottle and 'red'. I remember when Lambrusco Blanco appeared in the supermarket and we had it with Sunday dinner for a treat.

Also mangoes. Family friends from London would visit and bring a mango from Chapel market.

Posh ice cream. Used to be only Walls vanilla/Neapolitan. Then Vienetta and Gino Ginelli appeared and were the thing to take to someone else's house for dinner - well impressive. Haagen Daaz (?sp?) was a revolution.

Early 90s, Thai friends would make a special trip to Birmingham (about 60 miles away) so their mum could buy cooking ingredients that you can now get in most supermarkets