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.

Cucumber slices & sliced onions in vinegar

That was a Sunday tea staple at my Gran's house too. I've never met anyone else who'd eaten it though.

My Nan did the onion and cucumber in vinegar thing too!

I grew up the in mid West of the US is a Rust Belt city.

Things which were considered fancy/rare growing up were:

• good bread (sourdough loaves)
• good coffee
• Earl Grey tea
• smoked salmon
• fresh orange juice (lots of concentrate around)
• lamb
• French cheese
• pate
• mango
• sushi
• macadamia nuts
• nice chocolate (i.e, European)

Essentially anything forrin.

Gwenhyfr your mum may well have made cheesecake in the 80's but i was brought up in the 60's and I didn't know it existed.

I was trying to explain the chip pan sitting on our hob full of cold dripping to my kids recently.

Yes to soggy cucumber steeped in vinegar.

I still view oven chips with suspicion.

Salmon was tinned.

Fresh (farmed) salmon was a game changer.

Lamb is the opposite though, a regular family meal that has become relatively expensive.

Oven chips are not quite right. I would rather have a potato croquette.

I remember my first taste of butter

Like feeling a snowflake for the first time.

I was about 10 and thought Stalk margarine was all there was.

People in Regency times used to rent a pineapple as a centrepiece. Woe betide anyone who asked for a slice!

My Dad grew up in the North East but moved to London in his early 20s, which would have been mid/late 1960s..... my Uncle always tells the tale about when he went to visit him and they went to aChinese restaurant and he was baffled by the FRIED rice 😂

I could not believe my eyes when I asked for pizza in a Glasgow chippy, c1983, and watched the guy chuck it in the fryer. Can you still get that in Scotland?

Mmmmm yes, a pizza crunch! It’s one of my guilty pleasures after the pub on a Saturday night!

My mum was considered very avant-garde in the early 70s because she occasionally cooked fancy foreign food like spaghetti bolognese and meals which deliberately didn't have meat in them, as opposed to not having meat in them because your food money had run out.

Otherwise at that time it was all meat-and-two-veg. If I ever went to tea in my best friend's house, the men were served first with chops and two veg, and the women and kids after with mince and two veg.

But the meals that weren't exotic then sort of are now. Pasta/rice (except for pudding) weren't so well known but who now makes home-made pastry. Meat pies, fruit pies, meat pudding, treacle pudding, shape, bread pudding, game or pork pie (my gran used to pour in the jelly juice in the scullery - actually where she also boiled up a pigs head for brawn in the copper). So many new things - so many old ones almost forgotten.

We had farmers cassrole yesterday - braising steak, carrot, leak, onions, turnip, leek, peas, butter beans topped with herby dumplings. Oxtail stew with pearl barley, root veg and dumplings. Pineapple upside down pudding.

So much gained and yet so much lost.

Chicken. Back in the 50's it was solely had at Christmas. (I've been told ) And now, the over farming of them (and other animals) is bringing the planet to its knees.

Sushi!

I had my first sushi on a school trip to London. I was 14 so very early 1980s and I bought a packet from Harrods food hall. I ate it in Hyde park. I felt so posh...me a girl from Manchester eating sushi!

Growing up in the 1970s posh food was

Ski yogurts
Cheesecake

I remember still my first visit to a Thai restaurant in London. They were the "in" thing and relatively expensive. I had glass noodles with chicken and vegetables - I still remember and yet I struggle to remember what I ate yesterday.

OhTheRoses Yes I do know what you mean. I still make some of those things, although I buy ready made pastry. Used to make my own but could never do it without creating a lot of mess with flour everywhere.

Great memories on here, thanks to all. What is there left that is super fancy still? Caviar. Truffles? Crystal champagne or one of its pricy mates? Nothing readily springs to mind really. Help me out, give me something to aspire to

Foraged stuff. But not commonly available like nettles.

(Or it would have to be a rare nettle subspecies flown in from a lost valley where the locals regularly live to 102 years!)

Hand dived scallops.

Sea urchin? Really struggling to think of anything.

There will be something poor people eat elsewhere that will be transplanted here as the last miracle food. Either that or they will find ways to commercially pick and transport delicious stuff like mulberries, that are not commercially viable at the moment.

Juneberries. If the birds don't get them first. I think I heard on the radio that squirrell was finding its way onto restaurant tables.

Squirrel makes sense. Wood pigeon is old hat. Hedgehog next? Fox? Acorns?

We really, really should eat more rabbit. Maybe after Brexit.......