To ask what did your granny eat?

[PassTheCordialCordelia]

I hear a lot of noise concerning how we ought to eat how our grandparent's/great grandparents did, or something of that description. We know that modern, ultra processed foods are crap, unhealthy and usually very cheap, although many foods from long ago were pretty awful too!

So just in a lighthearted frame of mind - what did yours scoff down on?

Mine were fond of home baking, scones, biscuits, etc. Most meals cooked from scratch, although grandmother was a full time housewife, with a space to grow some fruit/veg. I think the large supermarket chains were still extremely tiny when my GP's were alive, so I have no idea if they might have enjoyed more processed stuff if they had lived to see it.

My Nana grew up in a farm in Ireland.
Breakfast was usually porridge. But they did make black pudding and have bacon for fries.
Lunch homemade soda bread and butter with some leftover meat from dinner day before. Jam would be a treat and homemade. Also kept chickens so had eggs
Dinner Potatoes, veg and bacon five days a week. On Sunday would have chicken or turkey. Friday was fish.
Milk was the usual drink with meals.

Now we say bacon is unhealthy but back then they cured it themselves. No carcinogens were used to cure the bacon. The neighbours would take turns slaughtering the pigs and divide out meat to the other families.
Very repetitive but she still likes those foods somehow.

So many of the posts here sound glorious, but more like grandparents who learned to cook pre-war, or people who were either middle class or lived in the country. It’s more golden-tinged nostalgia than the actual diet of most of Britain between 1950-1990, when the country was absolutely famous worldwide for terrible, terrible food. It really was a food desert in the 50s- early 80s, unless you were farmers or lived rurally, were well off, or unusually good at cooking.

I honestly am thinking back to the late 70s and 80s, and simply can’t reconcile the lovely memories of home cooked food in most posts above, with the reality of British working-class food of the time (or indeed, British postwar food culture more widely). Think of restaurant and pub food in the 70s, when a glass of rehydrated orange juice was a starter; gammon and pineapple was unbearably exotic; and the only lunches pubs did (if you were lucky), was a Ploughman with a chunk of greasy Red Leicester, a giant pickled onion, some limp lettuce, two slices of processed bread and a pack of Golden Wonder! Soup was a packet of Florida Spring Vegetable in a powder; or a can of thick greasy Oxtail. A block of processed ice cream made of hydrogenated animal fats with two wafers stuck either side was considered a gourmet dessert.

Both adults and children were constantly eating cheap biscuits, sugary squash, fizzy pop, crisps, chocolate bars and sweets. Even in my primary school, you brought a 2p piece every day for a fig roll and a rich tea biscuit to have with your warm school milk carton. Vegetables were tinned (or in the 80s and 90s, frozen). Primary school hot dinners in the 1980s were boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, mystery meat, and squashed fly pie (currant tart) with lumpy custard with skin on. Secondary school lunches were fried pizzas and chips with Angel Delight as a pudding. There was no veg at all, but plenty of Mars bars and cola cans in the vending machine. Everything was made out of animal fats or artificial fats, with food colourings to literally make your hair stand on end. Nobody had as much heard of a cappuccino in my Northern town until about 1995.

I’d love to think of the past as home cooked chops with fresh garden produce and apple pies with cream, like an Enid Blyton book; but the reality where I grew up was completely, utterly different. Less Elizabeth David or Mary Berry; more Coronation Street.

All I remember mine eating was boiled eggs and grapefruit for breakfast dinners were mainly curries with the odd roast chicken

Alpen for breakfast
sandwich for lunch
meat of some sort and boiled potatoes and veg for dinner

Maybe my granny was a lot older, she died in 1979 and I'm now in my 60's

Granny lived through the war and rationing so it was always scrimp and save, no waste

But even though the meats were cheaper, ( a hell of a lot of offal ) , meals were a small portion of meat, at least 3 veg ( boiled to death I grant you ) and either spuds or bread, even both

Granny made brilliant suet puddings - from steak and kidney to spotted dick :)

I do cook like granny, small meat portions , loads of veg - and a bowl of salad - and a simple carb - boiled spuds, jacket, or rice

In my granny's time, when she cared for us nippers, she had an open fire and gas lighting - I can remember the council coming to put the leccy in - and the iron got plugged into the light fitting as there was only one plug socket per a room put in :)

Granny;s way pf cooking, the cooking I did in my young days, was simple and plain. There was always a pudding - a suet or a crumble/pie or triffle - was to fill you

Ive worked as a professional cook for a lot of my life ( Im no chef ) and our mantra is we are here to feed not fatten, and I think that's what granny did

I do think the advice of cooking like granny means going back to basics, dont rely on processed foods, fill the plate with veg and have a dessert - stops the snacking

Ive watched/read somewhere, maybe the Glucose Queen??? , that eating a dessert straight after dinner is ok. Waiting till later, when boredom sets in, you get the sugar rush ( that the veg from the dinner stops ) and then the munchies and bad habits kick straight back in

Mine used to eat a Greggs sausage roll or pasty between two slices of bread, to protect her from the massive crumbs.

Meat, potatoes, veg and gravy… one of the very reasons I can’t eat mash properly anymore. When we lived with her we had it like 4 times a week. Not because we were poor or anything, just because she loved it.
my other nan is Anglo Indian so ate a lot of Indian food which was fantastic. Used to pop by her house (lived on the same estate as me for my first 8 years on this earth) just to get some tandoori chicken

Both my grandfathers (one was a widower) worked shifts and I remember a lot of cooked breakfasts being served!
My paternal Grandma cooked traditional stuff which included tripe, rabbit and lots of offal. Occasionally there'd be a bucket of mussels in the kitchen - lord knows where they came from!
There were casseroles in the colder months and meat and potato pie, hot pot etc. In the summer there was salad with ham and egg and Jersey royals (plus cucumber and onion in vinegar). Sunday dinner was always a roast with lots of vegetables: new potatoes with mint and freshly shelled peas in summer, mash and root veg or a roasted onion in winter. Delicious baked apples for pudding when it was cold, jelly or tinned fruit when it was warmer. We had a very big garden and a good section of it (around .25 of an acre) was vegetables and cane fruits so there was lots of produce and all meals had plenty of veg. We shared the garden with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle's family - we all lived practically next door to each other!
We also had chickens so omelettes, scrambled egg etc were plentiful.
There'd be bread and dripping, or bread and jam for tea. We rarely had cakes and biscuits, they drank a lot of tea but liked a tipple or two. My paternal grandparents ate pretty healthily really but they did smoke, and they both died in their early 60s. I was devastated to lose them.
My maternal grandfather fried just about everything he consumed but he ate small amounts and was physically fit and lived to 93.

My granny loved pasta with milk and sugar cooked in the microwave!

Sugar sandwiches

My dad’s mum was an absolutely shit cook. I was about 10 when I realised the grey meat she served us for Sunday lunch was actually beef! Vegetables were just mush. I remember tongue sandwiches, boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce with new potatoes. She died aged 78.
I mentioned my mum’s mum above… she drank a lot of gin and her house was the first time I had sushi, when I was about 10. She also loved Thai food. She died aged 92 last year.

I think of this every time someone says only eat what your grandparents would recognise.

White bread and dripping, tea with copious amounts of sugar, main vegetable potato, any other vegetable boiled to death.

With, of course, two packs of cigarettes a day and multiple pints of beer after a 12 hour shift down the pit.

The good old days.

I eat better than any generation of my working class family ever ever has.

I absolutely love this thread, my granny used to love fried bacon with a can of Heinz beans in it on plain scotch bread and butter, she also loved fried trout (my grandparents went fishing for trout most nights in the summer time) pancakes with butter and raspberry or blackcurrant jam, load of cups of tea, they never drank coffee, my granny enjoyed a chips and curry sauce from the Chinese but grandad thought it was “too foreign” they were both born in the 30’s

Oh, and in her old age she mainly ate (drank) Complan...

Great thread!

Scottish plain bread- makes the BEST toast
Wrapped choc biscuits in a special tin
Tinned salmon sandwiches
Dairylea

My Nana was an excellent plain cook. She would have a grapefruit or cornflakes for breakfast .

Grandad came home from work lunchtime and they had their main meal then, usually bacon egg beans, meat and vegetable or stews.

Nana had a sweet tooth , lots of cups of tea with sweetex, they had a beautiful dish which always had some chocolate in it. I have this bowl now. They would have a plain Nice or Digestive biscuit with a cup of tea.

Tea would be a sandwich. I remember they had golden delicious apples. Nana would bake cakes , rice puddings , crumbles and Welsh cakes. None were eaten to excess. She maintained trim figure all her life. She died with Dementia at 94. Was that the sugar I wonder.

I miss her.

vegetable broth
irish stew
apple tart

A lot of salt!! Even breakfast was porridge with salt. She did a lot of baking and made meals from scratch but they also fried a lot of food using the same fat that was in the pan for ages.

Surely this massively depends on how old you are? My daughters granny was cooking in 1950-1990, so post war, but born and grew up with rationing. She saw rise of supermarkets but also the big shift in English cooking to “foreign” influences through people like Elizabeth David. She certainly used some connivence foods as they appeared like fish fingers, mince in a tin, ready made pastry etc. but she was also a very adventurous cook who would cook mostly from scratch. It certainly wasn’t plain cooking. Even though she worked full time from when I was 5

whereas my granny was born in 1917, went into service at age 14 and became cook and eventually house keeper . Everything was cooked from scratch. And very plain British cooking. She and my grandad, once married, kept a very productive garden so always fresh veg and fruit in summer, and often through winter as she’d freeze some, but bottle and preserve loads. Her pantry used to heave. She’d use lard, dripping, butter(marg was for rationing times only!). She’d use rabbitveither grown in the hutch in garden or “acquired” form my grandad by dubious means. They lived by a farm so weren’t adverse to sneaking a few cabbages or winter greens form the fields!

I spent last winter creating our family recipe book from my grans and mums recipes books for Xmas presents. I’d been asked by family members and it was lovely thing to do and gift.

did they eat more healthily? Yep..but it was balanced, even for me as a child Sunday tea was often dripping on toast! But there simply weren’t huge amounts of highly processed foods that are hard to avoid now.

Bessarabia is another name for White Russia. It's on the shores of the Black Sea. Lots of borders have moved in the area. I believe it's Romania now.

One set were teetotal, very simple food cooked on a weekly rota e.g. fish on Fridays. Mostly very healthy, meat and 2 veg. Lots of potato rather than pasta or rice (though they had rice pudding). One vegetarian dinner a week. Homemade cakes that probably weren't hugely sugary e.g. rock cakes and coconut buns. Grandad made a lovely steamed pudding with custard.

Other side were American, a bit more adventurous and partial to a sherry. Grandma made chocolate brownies before they were everywhere. She also did a lovely chowder and made a side dish with roast dinners called home baked swede that was so yummy - my aunt gave me the recipe for a thanksgiving dinner and it has loads of syrup in! I cut the quantities drastically when I made it.

Haven’t rtft but my grandparents live (d) in rural Scotland and had a very strict routine.
breakfast - toast/porridge
fly cup - cuppa and a cake/biscuit
lunch - soup and sandwich/oatcakes
tea - meat and two veg
Supper - cheese and biscuit

roast on a Sunday.

never ate out other than occasional fish and chips on camping trips

Thanks 🙂

You do know that that isnt causal, right?

My Grandparents did the same, almost all of their veg were homegrown. She had dementia and was felled by a massive stroke. He got lung and heart disease as a result of his job. Neither were overweight, smokers or big drinkers, a couple on a Saturday night at best.

Sorry to pull this up but your post sounded very smug, like the fact they didnt suffer as my grandparents did was somehow due to their superior diet.

I can remember my older grandma cooking beef stew and making bechamel sauce for another dish. She was a capable cook, but also ate a lot of junk food especially very sugary shop-bought cakes. She lived to 95 nevertheless.

My younger grandma also ate meat but I can't remember what she cooked. She often ate bread and cheese and she loved cakes and biscuits. She also liked tinned fruit (which we never had at home). When I think of eating at Grandma's house, I think of tinned pears. What was slightly unusual about my younger grandma was that she got up and went to bed very early. She liked to have lunch at 11.30, but would grudgingly have it at 12 when we visited.

Lots of variations on meat, potatoes and veg. She didn't like chicken though. Cod, haddock, plaice, salmon. Prawns with bread and butter.

Tinned meat and fish. Meat paste in tiny jars.

Excellent macaroni cheese (only time pasta featured that I recall).

Rice pudding (only time rice featured, definitely).

Rhubarb that grandad grew.

Scottish things: neeps and tatties, Scotch broth.

Blancmange made in a huge stone mould. Home made cakes (Victoria sponge, Madeira, Dundee cake). Sponge puddings with evaporated milk poured over. But also lots of bought biscuits and Mr Kipling type cakes. Home made fruit pies and crumbles. What she called Poor Man's Trifle: bought trifle sponges with jam spread on, bananas and Bird's custard and nothing else bar the evap or pouring cream (my favourite). Bought crumpets with lots of butter for supper. Kitkats and Club biscuits. Way too much Scotch.

Endless tea. Didn't drink water.

Halved grapefruit for breakfast, now and then. Otherwise, All Bran.

Braised steak. Lots of things cooked in her beloved pressure cooker.

Tongue sandwiches.

Salad that was a lettuce leaf, half a tomato, a few slices of cucumber and a blob of salad cream.

Still like it all except the salad. Oh, and the tinned fruit cocktail.

Tripe for granddad about once a month because he liked it. She never touched it. She grew up very poor (he didn't) and to her it was poverty food. I never tried it. Looked gross.

She and granddad were both quite rotund almost all their adult lives (only got thin towards the very end when their appetites went) and very healthy (and mentally sharp) into their late nineties.