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.

As a teen, I loved M&S ready meal pasta dishes. I thought them perfect!

My kids have more sense and would completely turn up their noses.

Sushi! Womack and Womack were booked into my workplace c1985 and their rider included sushi. Lots of sushi. think we got it from the Hilton eventually.

I mentioned rice earlier but also pasta (apart from Heinz spaghetti), pizza (I'd never heard of it when I was a child), peppers, sweet potato, muesli, cheesecake, salsa or any dip type stuff. Loads of things. Our diets were pretty samey. Chips with everything.

I'm surprised at cheesecake being exotic. My mum used to make it with digestives (and probably a pre-made mix) in the 80s.

Lasagna, garlic bread, pasta, croissants, bread of loaf variety. Chickpeas, olive oil, hoummus, al dente vegetables, chorizo, smoked salmon, cheeses other than cheddar, olives
Basically anything other than meat and veg with potatoes.

Yes, that would be my list too.

Add tinned tuna fish, sunflower oil, wholemeal bread any cheese except cheddar and dairylea, garlic, ginger,sweetcorn, noodles, black pepper, all herbs except parsley- and that was only for decoration.
Fresh pineapple, All exotic fruits, yogurt,. Any Indian food, any Chinese food., any Italian food.

I was 18 before I tasted any of that.

Parsnips, for some reason. We never had them when I was a kid; I first encountered roast parsnips in the student union dining hall and thought they were awesome. I think I must have mentioned it to my mum, because they did get added to the range of veg she would dish up with a roast.

DaveCoaches, we actually weren't allowed Tizer but lots of the chldren in our street were so we would sometimes get to have a little of theirs!

My mum was bornand bred in France and whenIwas born (and for years after) we lived in Milan, so mum was very frustrated by the scarcity of good ingredients in our London suburb. I know our local Safeways started stocking quite a few things which they'd got in as a diirect result of her asking for them.

They also had a few of our kittens over the years for their warehouse.

Before I went to university I had never had pizza, pasta (except tinned spaghetti), curry or Chinese food!

BarbarianMum I REALLY miss the Swiss Centre. It had a Movenpick style buffet, I loved it. It must have influenced me as I've been teaching German for 25 years now. The little sign for it is still in London.

Well done OP, this is one of my fave Mumsnet threads ever.

I remember one of the shop assistants in the supermarket years ago picking up a kiwi fruit in bewilderment and asking “What the hell is this?!!”

My mum was pleased to tell him - she’d seen it on ‘Neighbours’

ski yoghurts were just coming in when i was 5 or 6 years old they werent like now a wide range of flavours and just a fridge staple but a special treat

Mcdonalds for me! I was about 13 when we got one in our smallish town and it was so exciting to go there with my friends. The polystyrene boxes were so exotic 😂

Whenever we went shopping instead of going to Mr Wimpy/Burger King/McD we would go to M&S and get a sandwich I used to always have smoked ham and mustard mayo. I was a bit jealous about never having a burger though. My H never ate any curry until he was 21. My Parents were quite experimental Mum bought Maddha Jaffrey cookbook and we had various curries and pilau rice.
Melon and OJ were always starters in restaurants and if we were really lucky we would share a a prawn Cocktail or some pate

Croissants and pains au chocolat.

Which was perhaps odd as one of my grandfathers was a Swiss-French Pâtissier who set up a business in the West Country. He'd taught my mum and aunts to make super cakes and pastry. I can only guess he didn't do yeast cookery.

DF had served in Italy and we had blue-wrapped Spag from the earliest years (Bog is a meat-based sauce, and not, as Mr Heinz thinks, a tomato one) though until we went back on an extended family holiday DM didn't really understand Italian cookery.

Olive oil. When I was a child you could only buy it in small quantities from the chemist. Also aubergines, courgettes, red peppers, red onions, olives, asparagus, artichokes in fact any vegetable grown outside the UK.

Heading back there on 29 March.

garlic.

ooooohbetty

I was 16 when I first had pizza. I kid you not.

@bedunkalilt

Yes, we also are not Jewish but loved the bread.
Recently my brothers were looking at a very photo of my dad with me as a small girl. my dad had a big brown bag under his arm. My brothers were wondering what was in the bag - but it was obvious to me - a dozen beigels!

Not a luxury as such but I miss Bejams boil in the bag curry. I think the brand was "Top Hat"... really liked that.

Bloody PESTO! Mum saw it on Food and Drink and suddenly every meal had to be soapy, slimy and slightly antiseptic as she slopped that green mush on everything... I've come to appreciate it in smaller doses since.

Born in 1960

Sunday tea at Nans was tinned salmon sandwiches with vinegar mixed in the salmon, tinned fruit with evaporated milk and bread & butter to dip in the juice. Cucumber slices & sliced onions in vinegar.

My 2 most favourite dinners now are still tinned pink salmon, new potatoes or mash and peas, either with loads of butter or with parsley sauce or chicken thighs with a tin of Campbell's condensed mushroom or celery soup poured over and cooked in the oven for an hour

I never ate real curry until I was 23. I tried a friends madras and thought I was going to die !! Can you still buy vesta beef curry ?

Mum & Dad never tried takeaway Chinese until the mid 90s when I took home sweet & sour chicken balls.

We used to have spagBol from the early 80s

Most meals were meat & veg, liver & onions, fish & chips cooked at home, stew & mash

Sunday treat was a block of Walls ice cream from the ice cream van with wafers

Corona pop lorry or Alpine.

Frothy Horlicks after swimming

@Atalune

My friend is from Estonia, and she can remember when her mum brought an orange home from a trip to Russia and they shared it out, eating the skin too! This was only around 30years ago! So the early 90s

I first went to Estonia in '92 and the food was so restrictive . I drove over about a month later I went back out for an extended visit and packed my car with food from the UK and it was the first time people had ever tasted quite ordinary things - even for the uk at that time. Oranges were one of the things I took. On the flip side I was introduced to some truly amazing foods.

I was a bit older at this point but M and W used to serve a just add boiling water noodle pack that was really exotic. It came in a polystyrene box that you added the water to and had a plastic fork. It came with a range of spices and stock along with dried shrimp... really taste of the future stuff... but then M and W vanished and so did this futuristic superfood.

Indian meals were for birthdays only.

You didn't get popcorn at the cinema, only posh people did.

Mum was vegetarian so we tried all the new veg but I'm sure now she didn't know how to cook it.

McDonald's was a treat that required a train ride to try.

grapes when i was little you had a miniscule bunch when you were ill making everyone envy you for being ill along with a bottle lucozade. now we have huge amounts of grapes every week lucozade comes in many types our car has loads of empty bottles of it! but sadly not the glass bottle huge size with rustly yellow cellophane did it ever actually make you better our chemist sold it so you got your pills and it was natural to buy a bottle

Rustly Lucozade! I had Lucozade in adulthood once and I felt quite sick, I think I deleloped a sickness association with it.

Our chemists sold fruit lollies too, they were 4p each and I liked the raspberry flavour.

As an aside, polenta is a middle class cliche but is known across the southern states of America as grits, and considered really basic.