Everyone eats melba toast when they're ill

[ProbablyLate]

When I was young if I ever had a day off school poorly, mum would make me homemade melba toast by cutting the crusts off some bread, toasting it, then slicing it in half horizontally (like making two thinner slices) then grill it with what had been the inside of the toast slice up so it curled up.

I thought, until yesterday, that this was a perfectly standard off-ill delicacy and offered to make some for DH if he had a bad reaction to his vaccine. He was perplexed by the concept and consultation with a wider group suggests this was not as common a practice as I had been led to believe.

So two questions for you all:

1. Is homemade melba toast something that for you goes hand in hand with a day off ill?
2. If not did your parents/carers have any special recipes reserved for the suffering?!

I'd never eaten toast like this until I met my DH 16 years ago. He used to make it during his time at Uni studying Hospitity Management.

I only knew melba toast as the ready bought cracker type things you can buy which are about 1 calorie each (from my weight watcher days)

Nope and nope. We'd eat whatever we fancied when ill. Had to look up what melba toast is.

No although I do love melba toast.

If we were off poorly we had dry cream crckers with bovril or marmite, no butter. Now I'm a grown up, I treat myself to butter too...!!

I’ve never even heard of melba toast.
Heinz tomato soup is the ultimate poorly meal. Or dippy eggs and soldiers.

1. No
2. Depends on the illness but none-puking things were fish fingers, mash and hoops 💖 still one of my favourites 😂

I’m from a buttery egg in a cup house too! I had measles while staying at my mum’s friend’s house and she gave me lucozade in a tiny glass (may have been a shot glass) which I found incredibly sophisticated.

DS likes toast and banana if he’s unwell, eaten on the sofa under his duvet with the TV on.

Krisprolls and Campbell's condensed mushroom or chicken soup

@viques

We used to get a spoonful of my grannies black currant jam made into a drink with hot water. (Colds/daytime)

A baby aspirin crushed between two teaspoons in a spoonful of grannies black currant jam. ( colds with a temperature)

A spoonful of rum in hot water. ( colds/ nighttime )

If you were really, really ill you got lucozade, but that was for very serious, life threatening illnesses that you might not recover from, or recovery from having your tonsils out on the tonsil ward.

[Baby aspirin were a real thing btw, they were small and orangey and didn’t need disguising in jam as they were delicious.]

I too remember baby aspirin, thought they were lovely!

Nope

Marmite toast here.
Upgraded to marmite toast with boiled egg once feeling a bit better
With flat lemonade or lucozade

My gran used to make us Melba toast, but I don’t think it was linked to illness.

When sick it was Heinz Tomato Soup, with normal toast, unless it was a stomach thing in which case just toast. Egg in a cup was like a late tea if you had been to swimming or Brownies.

1. Nope. Just bog standard toast.
2. Soup with the bog standard toast.

Never when sick no.

But, I did have a job in a huge country hotel after school as a teen. Each day I went in and had to make between 20 and 50 loaves of bread into Melba toast for the evening dinners. There would be a basket on each table. Reading this thread twenty five plus years later I could perhaps face making it again now!

Thank you for this. It surely must be proper old-fashioned bread-and-milk, as fed to ill or badly behaved children, toddlers and hedgehogs in Milly-Molly-Mandy, Five Children and It etc etc.

That's 'pobs' round these here parts.

Nope - I had:

Normal toast (dry) or Ryvita.
Heinz cream of tomato soup.
Dry cereal.

Ambrosia creamed rice.

Nope. Never even heard of this until your post.

Heinz cream of tomato soup or a cup of hot bovril for me.

And lucozade.

No, hot ribena because I was usually off school with tonsillitis

Nope no melba toast here.

Lucozade with the cellophane wrapper and Heinz tomato soup. Sometimes a tin of chicken soup. Ice cream for a sore throat.

Buttered cream crackers or scrambled egg with a slice of toast.
Hot lemon squash with honey.

No lucazade and dry biscuits were the only thing I could stomach last week,

Lucozade covered all ailments in our house.

No. Never eaten melba toast I don't think.

My childhood illnesses were almost always throat infections, so my "ill food" was ice lollies.

I've never had melba toast in my life. It's usually soup and lucozade here.

I find it amazing that the lucozade makers fooled us all with the orange cellophane wrapping meaning it was somehow healing and good for you ! Clever marketing there. Then they made it boring and a sports drink to fool us all again.

Never heard of it. Toast was just made with bread. Toasted.