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.

Just had a pita bread with my lunch, I remember when I discovered pita bread whilst havng diner at a friends house as a teen, it was a newish trendy thing to have instead of sliced bread 🤣

The only pasta we had was macaroni or spaghetti, none of all this fancy stuff.

I loved Tizer! We only used to get fizzy drinks at Christmas, though -you added them to the milk order and it came in a crate the week before Christmas

I recall in the early '60s being on holiday on the Isle of Wight, we went into a bakery to buy pasties and pies for a picnic lunch. My mother asked if they had cheese and onion pies and the owner was most perplexed, asking her about them. She finished up going into the bakehouse to instruct his staff on how to make them, she worked in a bakery, and we went back a couple of hours later to collect them, on the house.
I recall OH giving me Robert Carrier cookery cards for Christmas when we were students, I'd never heard of most of the ingrediants, the only thing we could afford were lemons stuffed with pilchards.

Jux I used to live Tizer, my Auntie Florrie would but some from the corner shop when we used to go there for our tea. She also used to give us a small glass of sherry

Butter!! ( we had Stork margarine instead)

Schleur sparkling apple juice in a green glass bottle

Orange juice- remember the frozen concentrate?

The range and type of foid people eat has been transfformed in a comparatively short period of time.

I was born in the early 80s and my mother was a very plain cook and my dad was adverse to 'forrin muck' which included pasta, rice garlic or spices so every meal was like eating your way through a tastless marsh somewhere on the spectrum of beige to grey. Cottage pie, fish fingers, savory mince (as opposed to sweet mince?), beans on toast and sausage and mash on endless rotation. I remember the excitement when we had pizza for the first time when i was about 14.

Until the late 90s I'd never eaten a curry, chinese food, pasta not out of a can, olives, Mexican food, peppers, cheese that wasn't supermarket cheddar , let alone exotic foodsruffs my university compatriots introduced me to like humous, pesto or mayonnaise.

When I was a child, we only ate figs at Christmas. Now we eat fresh figs all the time.

Also avocados. They were a treat to be had at restaurants - usually with prawns in the middle. Now we get through several a week.

I don't recall ever eating parma ham as a child or prosciutto.

When I was a child we had to eat dates at Christmas. Thankfully now we never have to eat them at all......

Garlic/chilli/smoked oils.

I always used to think takeaways were really posh.

When I met my now husband in my teens his family used to have a Chinese every Saturday night. I thought they were really fancy 🤣

I remember when kiwi fruit first came in the 80s and we didn't know how to eat it. We used to cut it in half and scoop out the inside a bit like an egg.....

Tropicana
Philadelphia
Smoothies
Baby spinach
Asparagus
Bell peppers
Roasted veg
Butternut squash
Sweet potato
Basil
Sun dried tomatoes
Baked crisps
Crisps in unusual flavours
Nachos
Bagels
Pain au chocolate
Dark chocolate
Mangos
Papaya
Thornton’s chocolates
Profiteroles

Wine was only drunk at Christmas or the occasional dinner party. 1 bottle between 6 adults I think lots of gin and whisky was drunk

Salmon only had tinned on special occasions.Tinned tuna was also a bit exotic to have regularly

"We never had carbs plus carbs growing up, as some people mentioned: that might be a 90s thing?"

Just a British thing I think, but posher people wouldn't have it. Just as I was surprised when I went to France that they thought it was awful to have tea and coffee WITH the meal rather than after it. Turns out posh British people also do it this way.
Got back to the UK 8 years ago and happy to see that in ordinary cafes, the hot drinks are still served the same time as the meal.

I remember the first time I ever had fresh orange and fresh grapefruit juice. It was 1957, served at breakfast on a troop ship on the way to Singapore (I was an Army brat). It was served in tiny shot glasses, ice cold and it was the nectar of the Gods. I have never forgotten that taste, though have drunk gallons of the stuff since.

Lyons chocolate cup cakes, with fabulous fondant icing - the silver cupcake paper would peel off with little 'thunks' as it came off each indentation of the icing. I had one of these cakes a couple of years ago and it was completely changed - absolutely awful.

Tinned cream. Tinned fruit salad.

I don't remember a lot about the actual food we had when I was a child, but I vividly remember one thing - we had MUCH smaller portions than anyone would have today, yet I don't remember feeling hungry. (I can't help thinking of a PP's comment about the size of a Viennetta).

In South Africa in the 1970s Maltesers were a rare, very expensive imported treat that I would save all my pocket money up for and then eat a crumb at a time. I could not believe it when I visited London in 1984 and they were there in every corner shop! (Don't even like them now...they are far too sweet!)

Rumboogie - I also remember the orange and lemon cupcakes - they were wonderful! And McVitie's Mallows - domes of chocolate under which was fluffy mallow and a biscuit base - delicious!

• Big Penguin biscuits in red, blue and green foil wrappers
• Bird's Eye Chicken Pie which was full of chicken then, not just gloopy gravy
• A tin of corned beef for Saturday lunch with mashed potato and peas
• Very occasionally being allowed to eat fish and chips or chicken and chips out of the paper (normally frowned on!)

Broccoli!
I can remember going to a Bernie's Steakhouse in London as a child and having broccoli as a side. The first time i ever had it, thought it was amazing.
It's a daily struggle to get my kids to eat it now

Any fruit out of season, pizza, pasta. Only takeaway food was fish and chips.

My mum was a very conservative cook, lots of meat and potatoes, roasts (70s) - occasionally she'd treat us to a tin of chilli con carne .

I had forgotten Green top milk (Unpasteurised) - don't think you can get this now. Also, now we seem to get only homogenised milk, rather than the Gold and Silver top with cream on top (which the blue tits would drink, having pecked through the lids - we still used it).

Prepared veg.

Washed potatoes - they used to be muddy when bought.

The vast amount and variety of confectionery available everywhere you look.

Fruit was a treat. Not scarce, but you wouldn't just help yourself from the bowl like my kids do.

I remember the rare times we ate out and there was a dessert trolley i'd always go for the fruit salad. Yum.

Oh also sushi of course. I first heard of it in 1986 when it became a very upmarket posh cool thing to eat (or even know about) in Johannesburg. You had to either go to the single expensive Japanese restaurant in a fancy international hotel in town, or to the single expensive shop where they sold the ingredients. I went on a date to said resturant and thought the geen blob on the plate was guacamole so ate it all in one go. It was wasabi, of course. I did not want to admit I had done something stupid so pretended everything was fine as my mouth was on fire and my nose and eyes started streaming.

my family are European so all the exotic foods namechecked here (garlic, basil, pasta, olive oil, polenta) were staples on our table - it was all traditional peasant food

otoh things that others will have taken for granted- canned crap, biscuits etc were things I didn’t taste til my 20s

I remember as a child begging for a frozen ready meal and never being allowed one, the heartbreak ☹️🤣