To miss the simple tasty Christmas food of my childhood.

[NotSoGloriousFood]

I'm old enough to remember Christmas family gatherings when mum didn't have the option of going to Iceland or M&S and everyone pitched in.
Simple but tasty spreads of homecooked meats, cheese, uncle Kens legendary pickled onions, Aunty's Gloria's beetroot chutney, Mary's green tomato chutney and pickled red cabbage, cheese (usually cheddar and Caerfilly) and homemade pasties and sausage rolls. Crisps were ready salted.
It was tasty, wholesome and real.
Desserts were all homemade. chocolate cakes, mince pies, trifle, Christmas cake.
Simple food shared together......no-one could forsee then what food would become.........ultra processed with long lists of ingredients.
I watch some of the Christmas food adverts with a heavy heart and wonder what we have done to food.

Yep. I bet the guy who brought the pickled onions got a medal and didn’t lift a finger the rest of the year! @NotSoGloriousFoodWe have Christnas food very like your All Creatures Great And Small fantasy-nothing stopping you doing the same!

Just putting in a word of support for processed food. 😋 I haven't got the time or energy to be making sausage rolls, mince pies, stuffing, gravy etc from scratch when the shop does perfectly good versions. This year I'm thinking of having a Christmas lunch in a pub before Christmas day so it's a reasonable price and sod the labour on the actual day.

Just cook what you want.

And stop having a wank off about UPFs. It is just the latest fad to freak out about.

None of this sounds like simple food. But no one is making you eat this 'modern' food anyway. Cook everything on your list if you want to 🤷

So have the food you want then. It’s hardly rocket science.

Your post is so far from my experience @NotSoGloriousFood . People are far more health conscious and into cooking now than when i grew up in the 80s and 90s.

What I do really miss from my childhood Christmases is a particular shop bought Tunis Cake, with the realistic marzipan fruits on top. You can occasionally find one, but it is not a patch on the 80s one.

OMG I love that

My Nan used to make that and it was soooooo good.

If Im lucky I might find tongue in one of the bigger Marks and Spencers but it is a food I miss

So what's stopping you? Do it yourself. QED.

Christmas when I was a kid meant all the crap we weren’t allowed the rest of the year - fizzy drinks, chocolate for breakfast, cheesy footballs and twiglets!

You are basically advocating for women - because it will be women - being tied enough to the kitchen sink to serve you and each other non UPFs at all times.

Seriously - and I say this as a SAHM who cooks from scratch literally every single day - I would much rather women have the ability and right to earn money to be financially independent and to help put food in their kids’ bellies and a roof over their heads, than that they didn’t work so they have the time to meal plan, shop, cook, clear up, day in and day out…..so that you didn’t have to eat UPFs as a guest in someone’s home. If those UPFs shorten that woman’s life by 5 years or result in the final years being less than picture perfect healthy, that’s a price worth paying in my book.

We never have, nor never did have, sausage rolls and pickles and pasties at Christmas (Cornish pasties? When??)

We have a turkey or turkey crown, fresh veg, with a few more set-piece veg like really well roasted potatoes and red cabbage done the day before. Home made cranberry sauce is super easy with a bit of orange and bag of fresh cranberries and it makes it all taste amazing.
Christmas eve we'd have smoked salmon and bread and salads and a yule log.
I used to make a pudding and fruit cake but none of my weirdo family now likes dried fruit (Why did I marry into this deficient gene pool and create weirdo children?) So I might make a big raspberry trifle.

I feel like this is slightly healthier and 'from scratch' than our usual food. I just don't really notice the 'party food' things when shopping, maybe we are grumpy and don't throw enough festive parties!

The kids obviously eat a whole selection box by 8am, as is right and proper.

Oh dear @NotSoGloriousFood 😆You started this thread in the hope it would go down memory lane with a few splashes of nostalgia, and a few heartwarming tales from the past from people. All you've got is snide and sarcastic remarks, like 'wot's stopping you having fresh food, and pickles and the like NOW?' And 'yes I really want crappy meat in a tin that's full of jelly and shit, from some random country! NOT!' And 'we never had cornish pasties at Christmas, what the hell are you on about?!'

This would have been better put on the Christmas board.

I get where you're coming from though.

.

I grew up in the 1980s. My mum was a midwife so sometimes worked Christmas Day. She wasn’t an enthusiastic cook anyway so many things were bought frozen. My (autistic) brother had a very limited palate so we never had a trad Xmas dinner. Only time we had a home baked Xmas cake was when I made one at school (and I didn’t eat it cos fruit cake eugh). These nostalgia posts never reflect anything of my childhood.

I also remember the Tunis cake it had thick chocolate and coloured icing. The one they make now has hardly any chocolate at all.

This. With bells on.

I confess to liking a nicely done vol au vent

But Christmas is such a weird place to direct OP's sadness that other people don't eat what she thinks they should.

I love that this is asked in earnest😭😭

We still make our pickled red cabbage and onions! I plan to try a trifle too

My mum was a shit cook.

we mostly ate chocolate in Christmas Day. I don’t see the point in Christmas if you have to eat like a health freak during it.

bloody relax and eat some treats.

OP, if you cook from scratch most of the time a little bit of shop bought food once in a while won’t hurt. People are busy, stressed, overwhelmed with expectations so cut them some slack.
Look at it differently - they invited you because they wanted to see you. It’s about connection, not about stuffing. Have a homemade snack at home before the party (it's what I do) and relax.

My sister remembers a Christmas in the 1950's when they had bacon and eggs for dinner as there was no money. And Dad saying have some brown sauce it will taste nicer. By the time I was born it was goose or turkey thankfully.

I much prefer kipñingr similar mince pies to home made. The pastry on home made is thick and hard and not light and soft.
Kipling mince pies everytime.

I know people think they are doing well, making homemade ones, but really you are not.

We still eat like that

i like the idea of MS and Iceland stuff, but it is so expensive and always a bit disappointing and always such small portions 😁

and all that packaging

every year I am almost tempted…

OP you’re lucky, like me you grew up in a foodie family where people made good stuff. But you’re falling into the trap of thinking your own family nostalgia is the same as other people’s food experiences from the same time. There was still plenty of terrible food! It may well have looked different from the packaged easy options we can all get now, but it could be just as nasty and maybe worse. There were plenty of bad cooks in the old days.

I’m sorry your in-laws food isn’t what you’d like - carry on adding your own bits when they’re hosting you, if they don’t mind, and make up for it when you get home. Hopefully you enjoy spending time with them, and that’s more important - and if you don’t, then it’s not the food that’s the issue!