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.

Loads of bacon and cabbage 🥬
Bread and marmalade
Salads with ham and hard boiled eggs
All spud dinners with meat had lashings of proper butter.
She lived until she was 91 with next to no medications.

Mine was born in 1896 and worked as a cook. My earliest memory is standing on a chair next to her while she made suet pastry. Absolutely everything was home made and very plain.

Main meal in the middle of the day, always meat and two veg followed by custard/rice pudding/semolina. Homemade soda bread every day, eggs from the hens, a Snowball at Christmas. Homemade blackcurrant or gooseberry jam.

Mine lived in Belgium, lots of fresh fruit, seafood, meats, steak, veggies and fresh cream cakes! She also loved beer and lived to 100.

Loads of UPF biscuits and cakes, loads of ready meals like Aunt Bessies, lived until her mid 90s, of course.

'Heaven. BUT..nan kept the rest of the sausages on a plate in the cupboard for the next couple of days until they were all gone. I ate them but I would never do that now lol'

You'd probably be safer now with the amount of preservatives in sausages!

DMum used to keep the remains of the Sunday dinner ON TOP of the fridge, rather than in it...........

Spam, chips, tinned veg, egg and chips with tinned tomatoes, meringues, trifle, apple crumble. And so on in the same vein. Born in the 1920s.

Great gran, born 1900, ate a lot of sandwiches, cold meat, baked beans, pickled onions, potatoes, cakes. Meals on Wheels, for a few years before she died in 1998.

This is both fascinating and delightful, thanks everyone!

Home cooked from scratch. Cheap cuts of meat; brain, heart, kidney, liver, tripe etc. Vegetables grown by my grandfather in their tiny back garden so seasonal veg eaten with cheap meats, stews and casseroles. I remember pea soup with bacon bones being the family favourite. Cakes baked a couple of times a week. Grandma's go to pudding when we were visiting was baked custard tart. Sunday 'tea' was sandwiches with leftover meat from Sunday lunch, Swiss roll, jelly, custard and a couple of biscuits. Sterilised milk was the downer when served with a cup of tea. I can taste it now! Awful stuff. Grandma thought my Mum was mad buying sausages, those dried oriental meals and fry bentos pies in a tin, blamanche sachets and that awful powdered orange juice. This was the late 60's/early 70's. My favourite though was my Grandma's toast, thickly cut bread with lashings of butter. I remember my Grandma stabbing the toast with the handle end of the knife before putting the butter on. Delicious!

Brawn and pigs trotters, piccalilli. Lots of cups of tea.

Well they didn’t have freezers, or microwaves!

My nan used to have breakfast, dinner, tea then supper before bed.

They worked manual jobs, factories, cleaning, shops so on their feet all day so needed the calories.

Sounds like my kind of gal 😊

As I recall when staying with her, fried bacon on white bread sadwiches breakfast with strong sugary tea. A cooked meal at lunch, usually a chop with boiled potatos and peas, sometimes a pie. Tinned fruit and evaporated milk for 'afters'. Tea would be another white bread sandwich with boiled ham, spam, luncheon meat, corned beef or some other pink meat in a square tin with a twisty key. Then a piece of homemade fruit or sponge cake. Lots of tea throughout the day (never drank anything else) sonetimes with a couple of rich tea biscuits. I wouldnt dream of adopting her diet. Yet she was slim and lived till 90 odd.

So much cake.
Where are we going wrong now? Car dependency, lack of activity?

Many say activity doesn't help them lose weight, but I beg to differ....

JUST TELL ME IT'S NOT THE CAKE FGS!

Boiled egg for breakfast. Fish/meat with a potato and vegetables at lunchtime and a sandwich at tea time. Everything was in moderation. None of my 4 grandparents ever had an issue with their weight and the oldest was well into her 90’s when she died. Everything was cooked from scratch and veg came from the garden or local supplier. None of them owned a car or could drive so either walked, cycled or bus!

Mine was very much the smoked salmon and champagne type. Not a nice woman but she had style 😁

I forgot tongue sandwiches. Not eaten since I was a teenager but can still remember the flavour . Bloody lovely with some salad leaves and brown sauce

One set of grandparents ate very healthily- home grown, seasonal, cooked from scratch type meals. Mostly the same each week, Sunday roast, Monday leftovers, Tuesday stew type thing. Hardly ever anything processed. Teatime snack like a piece of cake or biscuit but no snacks otherwise. However only ever drank tea, never even a glass of water just tea.
Other set not so good, grandma very much embraced the convenience food trend in the 60s and never returned. Used to try all the fad diets like cabbage soup and then binge eat, weight always up and down.

She was awesome, loved a good party too, she was still out, living her best life until near the end! I used to love going to visit as a child.

I loved that juice. It was called Appeal if I recall correctly.

I remember my gran grew all the veg in the back garden, loads of different stuff.. was mainly meat and veg.. but i did get my love for natural yoghurt from her.. she had it with everything and now so do i... bit snobby now though getting the greek stuff and protein stuff, but i still love the cheapest tesco natural yoghurt, the runny stuff can drink it.. yum!

My grandma drank a lot of gin too 😂. And her favourite food was sushi.

Mine cooked things like suet puddings, meat and 2 veg (veg from grandad's garden), though ate slowly and very small portions. She liked liver and onions 🤢. She particularly liked tinned salmon or sardine paste sandwiches, dripping on toast, or crumpets. She loved strawberries and cream. Milky coffee in the morning, tea from lunchtime till about 3, gin after 3, whiskey in the evening.

I have one remaining grandparent who is still going at 95 (I’m 41, parents are 69, her eldest great-grandchild is 24) and she was an excellent cook, only slowing down in the last ten years or so. Meat, potatoes and veg, roast chicken and salad type of meals. She was a brilliant baker and could make pretty much anything from scratch. These days she mostly eats crisps, jam sandwiches and dairylea dunker things. It’s a shame.

I remember my grandma complaining that fruit now tasted watery and bland compared to when she was younger (born 1920).

She ate very well and we ate about the same. The only things I wouldn’t eat are lamb brains, fish heads (there’s a specific fish for this) and chicken feet. Sorry grandma, I love you but that’s a no.

I still miss her food.