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 grannie ate meat and two veg, at the weekend a roast with meals made from it during the week and when that ran out she'd have mince, sometimes with an egg in it. She tended to cook the veg to death, and was the only person I know to heat baked beans in the oven. She made the best chicken soup, and the worst tinned soup as she would mix and match the tins so you got oxtail and minestrone in the same pan. She made fabulous pastry and jams and her apple pies were the best, and also very nice egg custard. For breakfast she ate all bran with warm tea poured over it, a half grapefruit, and a pot of tea. When she made a high tea we had lovely cakes including one made by a blind lady in the village who must have had muscles like Popeye as they were the lightest sponge cakes I have ever tasted. I never saw her snack, except on a barley sugar sneaked from the deep recesses of her handbag.

My other grandma was 20 years younger and quite the opposite and lived off concentrated tinned soup which she did not dilute, deli ham and crispbreads and shop bought cakes. When Marks and Spencer did ready meals she was in heaven and loved anything over processed and full of salt.

I do not think anyone would advise you to follow grandma's eating habits.

i have no words

Mine ate mars bar and apple sandwiches.

Excellent cook but loved an onion sandwich from her garden.
She had the constitution of an Ox and lived 20 years plus after aggressive lung cancer and chemo in the 70's.

My gran was a passionate cook, just about everything she ate up until maybe her last year of life was cooked by herself. Usually some form of meat, bread and veg, she was french, so not much potato, occasionally rice. Glass of red wine each day every day with her supper. However she ate too much, didn’t exercise much ( her disposition, plus she broke a leg in her 20s and it was badly re set). She was overweight, got diabetes and died of a stroke. I loved her.

Your gran sounds fun!

My lovely gran used to make us sausage with melted cheese served with Tizer. And Walls Vienetta. She liked to spoil her GC!
But normal food would be offal, or mince, or rabbit, served with plain boiled potatoes, carrots/ broad beans/ peas/ runners/pickled cabbage/ etc. IE small amount of cheap meat with homegrown veg. Also omelet, egg salad, herring in oatmeal. Adding butter to the boiled veg was insanely decadent - a bit like adding gold flakes to your Tuesday night pasta - you'd just not even think about doing it!
Steamed sponge with treacle or marmalade or jam at the bottom. Dried peas, lentils, beans, etc. Soups or stock from the ends of veg, the leaves of cauliflower or leeks, peel of carrots or potatoes.

It was very "wanted not want not", plain, simple, but also high Fibre, low chemicals, no insta-stress.

My Nanna always had a pot of beef dripping in the larder. I remember our Saturday visits, where, if you were hungry, she'd spread some on the end of a loaf, then slice it off, big thick slices of homemade bread. My Dad (her son) loved it, and never refused. Granda grew all sorts of different veg in the back garden, they had an apple tree and blackberry bushes and she was a great pie maker. She also worked full time in the hospital laundry until her sixties!

Mince with incredibly salty gravy.
boiled bacon slices.
bread and lard.
lard-based pastry.

and she lived into her 90s!

I wonder about diet and end results a lot. My Nana was slim and cooked a lot from scratch but enjoyed sweet foods, although home made. She died with Dementia at 94.

I’m reading a lot about sugar being a cause of diabetes and dementia. I am trying to reduce my sugar intake as much as possible as I’m scared of getting dementia. Sorry this happened to your grandparents.

This thread has me remembering dripping on toast (white sliced, Formica table, grand stand in the tv) so so clearly

I wonder if it is due a revival. Tastier than bone broth!

Grandma 1

a rigid menu by the day, I remember
Wednesday was toad in the hole
thursday was quiche (homemade)
Friday fish and chips
saturday ham and egg salad
sunday roast

lots of homemade cakes & bread, my grandpa got sausage sandwiches for breakfast no one else did.

grandma 2

all I remember is rum butter!

Mine seemed to live off anything in a tin

Meat potatoes and veg every night in some form, casseroles, chops, roasts but nothing spicy (actually grandad liked curry from army days but not nanna!) no rice or pasta (except rice pudding)

Meat and two or more veg. They had a long garden and grandad grew all their potatoes and vegetables. Lots of fruit pies and custard. I don’t remember cakes and biscuits but I do remember nanny loved ice cream, we had raspberry ripple ice cream from a block of ice cream with tinned loganberries (never see them now).

Lunches were rashers of green back bacon in crusty bread from an uncut loaf.

grandad didn’t have milk in his tea he had condensed milk (urgh, the can was always crusty, yuk).

@PyongyangKipperbang

Not snug at all - I just think that they were healthy and active and seem to have followed a “blue zones” trend. Have you seen thah documentary? It’s really interesting.

It's most definitely related to era.

I'm old enough to be a MNers's grandma, so I agree with your post if it's been written by a younger person.

My gran was born in 1901, my dad in 1932, so her diet was very different to the one you describe.

My parents were born in the early 1930s. They ate seasonal food that was locally grown - there was really no other choice. I ate the same as a kid. So we had cabbage, turnip, carrots, onions and potatoes a lot. tomatoes and lettuce in the summer also strawberries - my mother would freeze the strawberries for winter desserts.

She bought her meat from a butcher and bought the best quality she could. We ate a fair bit of offal though - kidneys/liver/etc.

They ate breakfast, dinner and tea - main meal was dinner in the middle of the day. It always had a soup to start and a dessert of some sort. My dd did a semester in spain a while ago and stayed with a family. they ate the same way - three course lunch and a light meal in the evening.

My dad gained his adult weight at 18 and didn't lose or gain a pound after that. He went to a dietician at the age of 70 and she told him not to change a thing.

The spiciest tasting thing in our house was ketchup and YR sauce. And eventually my mother grew garlic so that added something to the mix!

Both excellent home cooks but I remember gran’s fried bread . Fried in the left over bacon fat .
I allow myself to have it once a year !
Other gran put me off porridge for life by giving it to me with salt on !

Granny 1: standard overcooked veg, but also lots of nice Yorkshire treats like parkin. She always made us treacle toffee for bonfire night. Guinness for when you were peaky and loved a sherry too.

Granny 2 and Grandad: toast with proper butter and marmalade. Nice roast dinners. Fancy tea and cake on a fancy tea set when visitors came (and possibly on their own, who knows?!) Campari.

G. Aunt was a famous confectioner who made the most astonishing cakes for NYE at the Masonic Hall. Had a secret drawer of chocolate that she would give us kids behind my proto-crunchy mum's back. G. Uncle, I never saw him eat a vegetable in his life, he shuddered at the thought. Loved them all dearly!

Sausage rolls, Rington's tea, biscuits and brandy. Lived to 105 😆

Irish farmers.
Meat, potatoes, home produced veg, milk, cheese, butter.
Home baked bread.
Brandy.
Brown Trout and salmon.

Mum lived to 88 despite smoking heavily, her mum was 98, great grannie 106. No sign of any dementia.

Beef dripping on toast 🤢, everything cooked from scratch but also fried bread, homemade fried chips, tongue/corned beef sandwiches. Probably much less snacking though!

I don’t really know what my Granny ate, but I seem to remember toast and marmalade featured at breakfast time. She didn’t eat potatoes (because they were too fattening), and as far as I know she never ate an apple whole, but always peeled it with a knife, cut it up and ate it with cheese at the end of a meal. She drank sherry sometimes, but not very much - all her food and drink portions were small. She lived to 101.

my maltese grandfather had chicken or pork chops veg or stew type thing most evenings for his dinner whilst my father and his 5 brothers and sisters had bread and dripping or jam sandwiches and they all watched him tuck in. my dads parents were very poor but somehow my grandfather always had the best meal of all.
i think it’s wrong but apparently that’s the way it was, he was head of the household.

My '80's childhood featured:
Fried breakfast every morning- egg, wee willie winkies (skinless, very processed sausages), grilled tomato, and a rasher of belly pork.
Findus crispy pancakes for lunch in school holidays. So many different fillings back then! School lunch would be mince & potatoes or similar.
tinned fruit salad
Gammon with pineapple (ie processed round of smoked bacon with tinned pineapple on top).
stuffed cabbage (utterly revolting - cabbage inside leaves scooped out, chopped finely with onion, large, porridge oats, beef oxo cube, put into the outside cabbage leaves and baked in the oven).
Offal, rabbit, stewed beef, neck of lamb, beef olives, belly pork masquerading as bacon (with hairs and the branding still in the rind).
Veg was carrots, or boiled onion, or cabbage, from the freezer.
Lettuce wasnt iceberg or little gem or mixed leaves. It was that floppy sad thing you hardly ever see now. Peppers were only ever green.
Drinks were tea, water, milk or orange squash. (No other flavors existed. No idea why!).

Broccoli, courgette, red pepper, iceberg lettuce... none existed! But Cremola foam and iron Bru floats were definitely a thing.

People weren't as overweight because food wasn't as nice.