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 other nana, I swear to god I never saw her eat anything that wasn't on toast.

Mine was born in 1917.

Mostly home cooked stuff, from scratch. A lot of root veg, and cheaper cuts of meat and offal. She used to buy pigs trotters and chase us round the house with them!

My granddad used to eat tripe.

She did a lot of home baking - cake, rock buns, scones.

Tinned meat like corned beef.

Cod in parsley sauce (boil in the bag).

🤣

Mince and tatties
Stew
Homemade soup
Roast chicken
Fish on a Friday
Tinned corn beef with sweetcorn relish and mashed potatoes.Sounds like an odd mixture ,but I actually enjoyed that as a young child.
Carros,peas,green beans,turnip,cabbage,cauliflower
Sausages with a fried egg

I looked after a lady of 99 in very good health for her age. She always had a cup of tea, strawberries and real cream each day as part of her afternoon snack. I think back then they used real food rather than ‘alternatives’. Most of the clients 80+ at the time were in much better actual health than many of the 60/70yos which makes you wonder what changed in the 20 years or so. For example, of the older ones none had diabetes or similar life style disabilities it was just purely age related care needs rather than health needs.

My Grandparents were born 1910 and it was meat and 2 veg plus dessert.

My mum also served up similar and then things like shepherd's pie, toad in the hole, bubble and squeak, pies, casseroles etc. Then we has desserts like treacle tart, lemon meringue pie, jam tarts, suet pudding and spooty dick and custard.

We never snacked at most we had a clementine or apple.

I cook most of the above however I'm more adventurous and cook a variety of different cuisines aswell. I don't do dessert though!

My nan grew up on a farm. She was a very hard working lady, cooked all her meals from scratch. So breakfast was cereal, fry up and toast. Mid morning tea and cake. Lunch. Afternoon tea....tea and cake. Main evening meal.....meat, potatoes and veg. Plus pudding 🤣 always remember she had a big Kenwood mixer always going. Also she used to keep ill baby lambs in the aga oven when she was hand rearing them. Miss her....a real character

Pork pies and beetroot, beef stew, ham sandwiches, cream cakes. That's about it really.

Life was less sedentary, but the benefit of this was probably better health generally than weight loss.

The older generations didn't snack the same way we do. My gran had one biscuit every day with her morning coffee and one square of chocolate in the evening with her hot milk. She always had pudding but it would be a small piece of cake, a scoop of ice cream.

These days instead of biscuits we eat large cookies. Rather than a scoop of ice cream we have a magnum. Instead of a square of chocolate it's a whole bar. Instead of a small fairy cake it's a chocolate muffin or a cake with a fuck ton of butter icing on the top.

Then we wonder what's gone wrong 🤷‍♀️

Porridge every morning and lots fish. She passed away this year at 102. Dh granny lived until 103 and she had porridge very morning aswell.

My grandmother was born in 1911, got married in 1929.
As a child in the 60s I spent a lot of time at her house.
Home made bread, home made cake, jam, puddings. Her pastry was awesome (rough puff). Everything was home made. Fruit and veg was often home grown.
Dinner was at lunchtime and was meat and two veg. Sunday roast was rehashed into four meals. Cold meat on Monday, meat pie Tuesday and minced meat with baked dumplings Wednesday. Puddings were fruit pies, crumble, home made rice puddings.
Tea was a sandwich and a cake.

No rice or pasta or anything spicy. Much smaller portions than most have now.
Never, ever ate out except perhaps at a wedding, certainly not a cafe or restaurant.

Three meals a day but no snacks, ever. She worked until she was 70 and was always as thin as a rake.

I eat very similar in many ways, mostly home made and a fair bit home grown but more variety than meat and two veg and I'm happy to eat the odd ready meal.

Food heaven

My mum cut bread that way too. With a very blunt bread knife (I sharpened it once so I could cut bread the normal way, I was in the doghouse for days).

One grandma - mostly gin.

I always thought it was just my granny that cut bread like that until I read a novel where a character did it - and got told off because it was unhygienic to hold the bread again her body 😂

My mum's mum and stepdad were very healthy from what I can remember. Largely centred around a meat and two veg dish, always cooked from scratch. Ironically my grandma had type 2 diabetes. She was like a rake, very active. My mum said she had a sweet tooth and that's why she developed it. Unfortunately it was what killed her.
My mum's dad and stepmum was all the hearty home cooked meals, lots of stress. Always with bread and proper butter. My mum used to play heck with her dad for not switching to margarine and processed "brown" bread. His diet was probably healthier than our "low fat" processed crap.
I would have faired better on either of these diets than the plates of beige my mum would dish up with Sunny D on the side. My mum was suffering with her mental health when I was a child, and as a result she stopped cooking meals when I was around 6. I have battled with my weight almost my whole life and I'm sure it's down to childhood diet.

Fried breakfast cooked in lard or dripping
white sliced toast with lurpak butter
tea or camp coffee with sterilised milk ( horrible)
cream soda and vimto
meat and 2 veg dinners with the veg boiled until it was dead with added bicarbonate of soda ( to aid digestion)
tinned salmon and salad all soaked in vinegar ( with cucumber and tomatoes peeled) Tinned potato salad with carrots and peas in it.
tinned ham ( oval shaped tin)
rich tea biscuits
rice pudding with a mince pie in the dish ( a Boxing Day treat)
birds trifle
absolutely nothing that could be considered foreign
Both grandmothers lived in the midlands and died in the early 1980’s. We tended to visit at Christmas and Easter. The food was never good.

My grandparents were born in the 19th century. (My mother was born in 1922 and my father in 1915).

My mother's parents were Scottish crofters and had nine children. My grandfather also worked down the village coal mine.

Granny made all her own bread, cakes, jam, marmalade, cheese, butter and cream.
All meals were homecooked, as no convenience foods had been invented (or were available) in tiny villages in Scotland then.

They ate the vegetables that they grew and had a lot of soup, boiling beef, mince and fish.

Granny did all this cooking and baking despite having all those children to look after.

There were only two bedrooms in their house, too, and no inside lavatory.

My grandfather actually built the house himself. They got married in 1904.

My Nan parented 2 children through the war. Was really experimental with her cooking, due to rationing- I made some of her ginger biscuits the other day and they were great - after rationing ended she would have small or cheap cuts of meat, fish on Fridays, small roast on Sundays and leftovers Monday with enough for bubble and squeak on Tuesdays. Lots of seasonal vegetables that she would grow in tubs. She would hedgerow pick for jams and chutneys. She made treacle tarts, jam roll poly, spotted dick, bread and butter pudding.
She also had half a pint of bottled stout or Guinness every evening. She died at 94 so was clearly doing something right.
Her sister, my great aunt, had a small holding and grew pretty much everything she ate. She had 2 cows, for milk and she’d send their male offspring for slaughter and jointing. 2 goats and a few sheep that she would breed for meat. Bunch of laying hens and a few ducks. Oh, there was Jeremy the gander and his gaggle of ladies. Best security ever and they laid breakfast. I loved living with great aunt.
She taught me a lot.

Fried slices of cod roe, fried potato discs and peas. And toffees. She always had toffees.

My Nana, porridge or wheaten bread, cooked dinner (meat potatoes and veg), old fashioned salad (lettuce tomato, cucumber, beetroot, scallions abd cold meat) usually with bread or new potatoes, pudding (rice, crumble, jelly and ice cream). Most snacks homemade scones, shortbread, cakes etc

My Nanny, toast, soup and bread or toasted sandwich or sandwich, cooked dinner. Bought biscuits cakes etc

Depends how old you are, I suppose. My granny ate a ton of UPF foods in later life like tinned soups, M&S ready meals and chocolate biscuits. Before that, lots of boiled meat and veg. She would bake from scratch but only used margarine as butter was deemed too expensive to waste on baking.

My 95 year old grandma is still alive. She was a farmer, as was my mum as am I. Our eating routine hasn’t changed much in 95 years.

6am - first breakfast of porridge
9am - second breakfast. These days it’s a cup of tea but in manual days it was a bacon sarnie or eggs
1pm - lunch. Always meat, potatoes and 2 veg. Fish on a Friday. Bubble and squeak on a Monday. I now add pasta and lentil curries to the meal rotation
5pm - tea. Tea, sandwich and fruit if busy. Tea and cake if not.
9pm - supper. Not eaten November to March but otherwise a bit of cheese or cake.

Shit tons of butter. She died early 70s of a heart attack.

Swore she was teetotal but loved a bit of whisky in her tea! She didn't live near us but I remember the butter softening by the fire for toast and dreadful salads floating in beetroot juice with soggy lettuce and ham. I couldn't eat anything at her house.