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 grandmother had been a cook in service to a wealthy family in Knightsbridge, so although she didn't have access to the expensive food she cooked for them, she was a great cook. I still have her handwritten recipe book from back then, and it has surprisingly interesting recipes in.

But yes, at home she made everything from scratch, and home made pies were a thing, as was oxtail and other cheap cuts of meat slow cooked in stews. Oh, dvd dumplings in the stew if course. She also made fruit flans, and I always baked with her as a kid, simple things like rock buns and crumbles and bread and butter puddings.

Home made mince and onion pie. Roast chicken/pork chops/silverside with potatoes and vegetables. My granny grew her own potatoes and vegetables, so they were really fresh. Chicken casserole. Irish stew. A very particular and recognisable vegetable soup that everyone in NI makes! Lentil soup with a whole ham or gammon boiled in it. Home made scones and tray bakes and sponge cakes. Apple pie. Rhubarb pie. Pudding rice with prunes. My mum made similar in the seventies/eighties, with a few convenience foods thrown in.

The other thing I just remembered is that she walked to the shops and back every single day! Except Sunday of course as everything was shut.

Home cooked meals. Roast on Sundays. Leftovers made into rissoles.Then offal, tripe, liver, heart. Rabbit stew.Eggs featured quite heavily too.Chips cooked in dripping. Apple pie, little buns and cakes. Parkin, caraway seed cake, scones and delicious flat bread known as “new cake.”
The tea time treat was tinned salmon sandwiches and bought Battenberg cake.

Paternal grandmother- home cooked basics.

Maternal a brilliant cook, however she only died in the early 90s and was very happy with all the modern food as well - frozen waffles, canned soup, microwave popcorn. She could have made it all but worked from choice until she died in her early 70s.
Id probably need to go generation before that to get to eating basic food without convenience foods.

Yes, all of this. And for tea, lovely white bread with butter, tomatoes from Grandad’s garden, and Shippams paste. And if you ate at least two slices of bread, you could have cake (Grandma’s homemade cakes or in the latter years, Viscount biscuits too.)

Fryups and Toffypops. Those weird cupcakes with a solid layer of chocolate icing on top. Haslet sandwiches.

Much smaller portions, no snacks, home cooked everything, manual work for the men and lots of housework and walking daily to the shops for the women.

I can still remember being trailed round lots of shops by my Nan (born 1901) because she reckoned she could get her potatoes cheaper somewhere else. We generally ended up back at the first shop.

As an adult she ate the kind of food described above - home cooked, often home grown, traditionally British, plain fare. Very healthy, totally unprocessed.

But growing up (1920s/1930s) she was malnourished - her mum was widowed young, got left with debts and she was one of 5 kids. She got put on castor oil at school. Her mum did her best but had no money. And then in the war and afterwards there was rationing. Not so healthy. She ended up with dreadful osteoporosis which I’m sure was linked to the malnutrition.

Rice pudding, crumble.
I make plenty of crumbles in the winter but rarely rice pud. I’m craving it now, might make some in the winter.

Fresh fruit and porridge for breakfast. Cooked breakfast on a Sunday. Fish & chips from the chippy every Friday. The rest of the time it was home cooked meat and two veg. Very little alcohol, perhaps a sherry for Granny now and again. There were always biscuits in the tin but no other snacks at all.

Meat, fish and root vegetables including fruit and berries in the summer

My grandparents grew every edible thing it was possible to grow in this country so every meal was full of fresh fruit and veg. But there was always a block of lard being used for something and more sugar than I’ve ever seen in my life being poured into the homemade jam! Most meals had gravy too and lots of salt so on balance, I don’t think it was particularly healthy.

I had one a bit like that - seemed to exist solely on whisky and lemonade, Thornton’s vanilla truffles and Benson and Hedges black. Only the gods know how she made it to 86!

I'm remembering my Irish grandparents now! My grandad ate a full fry up every day, he lived to the age of 92. It was touch and go at one point though as he fell asleep one morning and his frying pan caught fire. My dad was not impressed when he got a call from the fire brigade in Belfast 😱😂

Grandma 1: basically nothing. Was very thin and proud of it and lived off thin air and cups of tea. Would occasionally eat half of an M and S ready meal

grandma 2: normal food for her generation. Sausage and mash, fish and chips, chicken, the odd curry that my mum would make (my mum spent some time in Africa). Very few and “traditional” British veg only.

Jellied eel - no thank you!

My grandmother started cooking in the 1920s when she got married - she didn't know how to cook anything to start with! Must've been fun! Anyway by the time I arrived decades later she had mastered all the essentials - roast beef, lamb, pork and chicken. Various pies, casseroles (using the pressure cooker quite often). Many types of cake, biscuit and dessert. Everything cooked from scratch. I learned how to cook by watching and helping her. Nothing between meals, apart from 'afternoon tea' which would be small cakes, and everything was washed down with a cuppa. My grandmother lived with us so we ate well! But no-one was overweight, I suspect because no snacking and no processed foods.

During the war there was apparently a lot of rabbit eaten. Freshly caught by my Great-Grandad.
They still ate it when my dad was a child (I assume once Great-Grandad passed away the rabbit supply stopped).
My dad was the fussiest eater in the world (ARFID way before there was a name for it) but apparently he liked the rabbit.
We mostly went to my granny's for tea so I associate her with bread and butter, salad, ham and cake.
She always had "proper" bread the type you had to slice yourself. She sliced it in that weird way of standing it on its end, holding close to her chest and sawing away with the bread knife.
She used proper butter (no marge). I could eat slices and slices of that bread and butter.
The salad was all grown in the garden by my Grampy. If you wanted another tomato he'd just go and get one straight out the greenhouse.
The ham was always big thick slices of a giant ham piece. I don't like ham so I never had any but it always looked impressive.
I basically ate slices and slices of bread and butter followed by cake for tea at Granny's.
All very Enid Blyton 😋🍞🍰

My grandparents' diet would be almost indistinguishable from modern food in my country.

Sourdough bread, olive oil on everything, lots of tomato based sauce, olives, more fish than meat, salad with EVERY. SINGLE. MEAL

Lunch was always heavier than dinner, unless they were entertaining or celebrating something.

Oh, I've remembered. When I stayed the night, which I often did, warm milk, with a teaspoon of sugar and a grating of nutmeg.

I remember grating nutmeg on the top of the rice pudding and popping on little pieces of butter. And stirring bread pudding.

My very wonderful nan genuinely ate mars bar sandwiches

Potatoes with kefir

20 B&H a DAY, snowballs and endless packets of Fisherman’s Friends. Would not recommend

Maternal Granny: raised twelve kids, through both war years, they were hard up, but never went hungry, lots of homemade bread, dripping, suet dumplings , grew her own veg, kept chickens. Had gooseberry and blackberry bushes in garden, made jam, amazing resilient woman and mother and grandmother, her roast dinners and stews were the best.
Paternal Granny: better off financially, I remember tinned ham with jelly round the edge, salad consisting of tomato, lettuce and cucumber, bought sliced bread with marge. Pudding would be tinned fruit with dream topping type thing. Lots of sugar, sweets etc.