To let you know that panic buying starts next week.

[GladAllOver]

The government is starting an advertising campaign next week telling us all to "Get Ready!".

What else can it mean?

By the way, it's costing £100m.

@Mablethorpe , no reason to think we will have power cuts unless you are in NI - different grid set up.
Unlike USA, our power network is mostly underground.

I remember gobbling up tongue and thinking it delicious.

My mother used to cook tongue ^boak^ It looked revolting when boiled, then she'd skin it, roll it, push it into a pudding bowl until cold and set. It really was delicious. She used to stuff heart as well, that was delicious too. I imagine that heart goes into dog food now...

I often wish I could still eat meat, for some of those yummy childhood foods.

Sorry Rufus

I have a few bits put away, wish I’d started earlier but couldn’t really afford it

Fussy eaters here (asd) it was bad enough when ASDA stopped selling their cheap tinned meatballs

What did we eat in1975?

Pink salmon from a tin. I didn't taste a piece of fresh salmon until 1977 (is was a very special occasion so I remember it well), having never actually having seen such a thing in real life.

The posters above have missed out favourites such as 'glow-in-the dark' prawn cocktail (shredded limp lettuce and four shrimps stuffed into a tall ice-cream glass and covered with pink gloop) followed by a rubbery, boot-sole 'steak' from what purported to be a steakhouse. That counted as a 'special meal out' and happened no more than twice a year.

It was a running joke that if there was fresh fruit in the house, somebody must be ill or they were expecting a visit from MIL, the local priest or the doctor.

Although there were Chinese restaurants and an occasional Italian (although these tended to be ice cream parlours or coffee bars) I don't remember seeing many Indian or Thai restaurants, and the 'ethnic' shops and stalls were yet to emerge. I remember the first time I saw a kiwi fruit in Safeway; likewise an avocado. Chicken was only eaten on Sunday - roast beef was a luxury we couldn't afford. There were no fast-food chains (KFC, McD, Burger King etc), only fish and chips, which everyone seemed to eat on Fridays. Meat pies were a pastry case with something brown and chewy inside (except pork pies, which were pink and greasy). Sausages were pink and flaccid and rumoured to contain nothing more than minced gristle and sawdust. 'Beefburgers' came frozen together in packs of 4. You had to separate them with a big knife without cutting your thumb off before putting them into the pan, where all of the water and grease ran out and they shrivelled to half of their original size. We masked the taste with fried onions, ketchup and mustard (which you made yourself using Colman's yellow powder).

The final thing that I remember was that nothing ever got thrown away. My parents had experienced 15 years of rationing, so the remains of the roast chicken from Sunday formed the basis of the soup for Monday (having had a school or works canteen dinner, the evening meal would be soup and bread). Leftover boiled potato and veg was refried the day after. Stale bread became bread pudding.

inews.co.uk/news/politics/no-deal-brexit-food-shortages-boris-johnson-plans-sainsburys-boss/amp/

Although supermarkets are warning of food shortages, the government is still not publicly saying there will be any problems.

Come off it Juells. Stuffed hearts tasted like you'd spread a bit of Paxo on some stale-tasting tyre. They were revolting! It has to be said that my mother was a quite atrocious cook though.
The other thing with a lot of this food was that it required the little woman to spend several hours a day in the kitchen, skinning and pressing tongues etc.
God, I can't wait for the good times to roll around again.

@Havanananana

ohh memory flashback there! Thank you.

ahhhh.. the 70's.... I remember Chicken only on a Sunday and we only ever had gammon and roast beef at Christmas (part of the paid for weekly hamper).

No takeaways and fish and chips on a Friday (or chip butty)

You'd get the thin sliced bread (which broke when you tried to butter) as you got more slices to a loaf.

If you were lucky you had an allotment to grow your own and the milkman would bring round a huge brown sack of spuds. (spuds with everything).

Mum would made pies from scratch, mainly involving mince and bacon and egg pie which was delish. Shop bought meat pies mainly were grey and filled with tubes. Sawdust sausages and everyone knew someone who had ended up in A&E from a frozen burger incident.

We had a LOT of mince... my poor bloody mum trying to come up with new things to do with it.

Bejam was a world of wonder and involved holding small children by their legs so they could get the the stuff RIGHT at the bottom (or was that just my mum and dad)

Holiday food at a campsite involved burgers in a tin.. well everything in a tin really.

And tinned salmon, have you SEEN the price of a tin of salmon these days?! I remember huge tins of the stuff.

nothing ever got thrown away

I remember this too - obviously it is laudable and something we should aim towards anyway. (But of course in those days almost every home had a woman providing full-time unpaid labour.)

My grandmother used to take old rubber gloves and cut them up to make rubber bands. Small ones from the fingers, big ones from the hands/wrists.

I remember those frozen beefburgers too! Oh and prawn cocktails, height of glamour. I love bread-and-butter pudding though.

If you’re interested in a different perspective on Brexit I’d really recommend the Spiked podcasts. They don’t always talk about Brexit but when they do it’s always interesting. Bright group of journalists, educated, generally pretty young, pro-Brexit, nuanced viewpoint, absolutely not panic buying and generally with a very sensible outlook - the kind of people who are capable of holding 2 opposing views in their heads at the same time.

Thanks @jillyhilly, I’ll check it out. I can’t resist pointing out that panic buying and stockpiling are two different things though.

and the 'ethnic' shops and stalls were yet to emerge.
I grew up in London in the 60s, so you could get ethnic food if you went out of your way - Southall for Indian stuff, Shepherds Bush Market for yams and plantains, Soho and Clerkenwell for Italian stuff etc. Not that we'd have known what to do with most of it. Mostly we just gawped at it with suspicion.

Bright group of journalists,
Like Julia Hartley Brewer?

Another oldie here, and that does bring back memories!
I do remember housekeeping being very labour intensive. I'm very creative with leftovers thanks to my mother.
Oh the soggy salads! We were quite well off and had a roast on Sundays, but it lasted us in various ways till Tuesday. Mum had her own mincer. None of that newfangled raw minced beef!
Everything was rationed in our house too. Nobody just helped themselves to fruit, for example, like my 90s born kids did.
Apple pie, gooseberries and rhubarb (still hate them) cos mum grew them. Fluorescent pink synthetic - like yoghurt, instant whip for pudding.

socksontheradiator I still have my mother's old mincer! Never used, but it's in the bottom of a drawer waiting for the day it's needed

Stuffed hearts tasted like you'd spread a bit of Paxo on some stale-tasting tyre. They were revolting! It has to be said that my mother was a quite atrocious cook though.

My mother was a good cook, and the stuffed hearts (lamb, I think) were delicious, roasted. She made proper stuffing, not bought. She stuffed fish as well, for some reason - probably all the stuffing of bits of meat and fish was to make it go further, but that never occurred to me. The only disaster she had was when she tried to pass off pig's cheek as bacon. God help her, she'd gone to so much trouble cooking and rolling and disguising, and then I found a tooth

Nobody will go to those lengths nowadays though, nobody has the time or the interest.

Love mumsnet.

'getting camping toilet down'

'boiling, shaving and pressing tongue and stuffing heart'

Havanananana

Not forgetting the ubiquitous frozen Black Forest gateaux at the Bernie Inn. God we thought that was so foreign and decadent 😂

Bright group of journalists,
Like Julia Hartley Brewer?

She has occasionally appeared as a guest on Last Orders, which is a Spiked production but generally focuses on the ins and outs of governmental control and civil liberties. I quite like some of her viewpoints - for example she is very gender critical and really stands up for women’s rights.

However I was more thinking about their regular editors and contributors like Ella Whelan, Tom Slater and Brendan O’Neil. I have really enjoyed listening to their perspectives because they are different to mine and that has helped me to understand the whole Brexit debate better. It has helped me to understand others’ viewpoints and some of their arguments really make sense to me. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything they say - it means that I understand things in a different way and I don’t get swept along with Remainer panic.

The point for me is that I really don’t miss those days of Fray Bentos and boiled cabbage. Or eating the same things over and over, or fresh fruit being a treat.
It’s fun remembering my childhood, but I’m pleased my children have had a better diet and I’m cross that those days of limited options may return for many.

^remainer panic'

Please explain. Is this was the Spike crew have said?

As in, there is panic, and its only remainers?

I didn't, and don't see that. I didn't think stockpiling was a panic process, just gradually building up a backup as a contingency plan. This is what govt is advising companies to do. Having contingencies when its not cut and dried as to how smooth or not ongoing imports and production is going to be, is what can avert crisis situations.

I remember seeing my first avocado pear. My dad stuffed it in his mouth and took a big bite out of it. His face

We were also clueless in the face of a Kiwi fruit (or Chinese gooseberry as they were first introduced).

You knew were you were with an apple or a plum, but were on dangerous ground with the foreign stuff.

remainer panic

Please explain. Is this was the Spike crew have said?

No, this is an anxiety that I myself have felt at periods over the last 3 years as a remainer. Going out of my way to read different perspectives from people I consider articulate, intelligent and informed has helped me to keep calm and understand things better. It’s all about where you get your information, and I find it helpful to try to get it from a variety of perspectives including trying to understand properly why some people think Brexit is a good idea. Otherwise the tendency is to get stuck in a bubble in which people shout the same hyped up stuff at each other and it hasn’t helped.

Stockpiling:
I go to the supermarket once a week for 12 weeks. There are 200 cans of beans on the shelves. Instead of buying one can, I buy two, eat one and store one in case shortages occur due to bad weather or supply issues. There are plenty of cans left for other shoppers and the supermarket registers that I have bought an extra can and restocks accordingly in a planned fashion.

Panic buying: I go to the supermarket on 30th October. There are 200 cans of beans on the shelves. I buy them all, leaving none for other customers.

I thought I’d have a go at explaining this without being patronising in simple terms because I can’t cope with people who think stockpiling and panic buying are the same thing. How is it wrong to buy a can of beans in August when there are plenty of cans and I have both money and storage space, so that I don’t need to buy a can in November (which can then be bought by someone who didn’t have the money or space to buy one in August). In both scenarios I’ll just end up eating the beans, so how does that harm anyone?

As a PP put it so well, if we were preparing for Christmas or bad weather everyone would be congratulating us on our foresight. If it’s shortages due to Brexit, apparently it’s going to be all our fault if things go pear shaped.

Went to Farm Foods. Got 24 x tins baked beans, tins of soup, tins of tomatoes, frozen meat, bags of pasta, 54 loo rolls, boxes of cat food, massive boxes of washing powder, frozen chips, frozen veg and more.

I post on the BHF forum. A discussion started about meds post-Brexit as we’re all on various variations of ‘if you don’t take this you’ll die’.

One poster said something along the lines of ‘I don’t believe there’s any issue with medications after Brexit. The NHS will have been secretly stockpiling and have plenty of reserves going forward.

There are also several spouting the Y2K thing. There is generally an older demographic on there, it is quite scary that they have so much faith (dogged stubbornness) and are refusing to acknowledge the leaked Govt documents which basically read ‘oh shit, here we go’. They have thought no further than their local supermarket and have no concept of there being anything more to supplies other than someone willing to sell it to us.

Interesting times ahead.