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.

Can’t stand soft mince pie pastry! Genuinely don’t like shop bought ones, I’d rather go without. My dad makes lovely home made mince pies - he makes the pastry very thin, they’re delightful. I’m fairly awful at pastry but I can do an approximation. Not as good as his though.

On boxing day my mum always used to make soup by boiling the turkey carcass and adding carrots rice and pulses, with pieces of shredded turkey, all soaked up with a slice of white bread.

I don't think I could replicate it to taste the same if I tried. It was so simple yet so delicious.

I don't eat ultra processed food at Christmas we have roast potatoes, braised cabbage, honey glazed carrots and parsnips and sprouts. A roast for the meat eaters and a nut roast or home made pie for the veggies with homemade gravy. Desert if usually a homemade cheesecake and fresh fruit. Its still easy to have fresh simple food.

You could always host them.

My mum still makes sausage rolls and I will make a couple more chutneys to add to the one already made. The centrepiece is a huge cheese board and I’ll make crackers and fresh bread

and what happens when there's no uncle Ken or auntie Gloria?

I have a disabled child, my life is exhausting and I thanks heavens for UPF food at times because I would've lost my mind a very long time ago.

Iceland will be my go to at Christmas, guilt free.

You can still have the food you remember from childhood OP?

This. My Christmas food is exactly the same as it was when I was a child, over 50 years ago. (Although I don't remember any pickle or chutney being involved)

This reminds me of my grandad and made me laugh, as his contributions at Christmas were his much-celebrated bread sauce and onion sauce. He wouldn’t have dreamt of cooking anything else for the rest of the year 😂. He was a lovely man (and my gran didn’t work after she married him - though that’s another story as I expect she would’ve thrived in the workplace) but it was a very different time.

I was born in the 60s. Mum was great at cakes. She had a real skill at pastry. She was also a firm believer in cooking veg for HOURS. Salads were served covered in malt vinegar. She loved a beanfeast curry. Mr Kipling sent an awful lot of Battenberg cakes our way.

I don’t have a the same rosy view of old time cooking as the OP.

If we want this thread to go down the nostalgia route rather than making people feel crap that they have to work so don’t have time to make chutneys then my vote for a nostalgic Christmas treat is a Sara Lee Double Chocolate Gateaux - now that’s when you knew it was Christmas, when that bad boy was sitting in the corner defrosting away….

We still have the simple Christmas dinner we had as children. Homemade soup/prawn cocktail, Roast with all the trimmings and a homemade trifle, cheesecake etc. Courtesy of DP and I. I know the kind of Christmas dinner I love so I make it myself to ensure I enjoy it 😂 Everybody else claims to love it too so win win!

Just putting it out there but I’ve had too many episodes of food poisoning after festive family meals to feel nostalgic about elderly pickled things that have been sitting in poorly sealed jars for God knows how long growing new life forms, and cakes made by my weird relatives with their grim long yellow fingernails.

Give something mass produced in a nice sterile factory any day!

I don't miss much of the food, but what I do miss is being able to buy mixed fruit and nuts in a big tub. It always felt like Christmas when the tub of those came out! Nowadays, I have to buy about 6 different packets to make up anything similar!
I also miss my nan making the obligatory Bird's trifle from the kit - I know you can still make it, but nobody in my family eats trifle, so I'd be eating it on my own! But also, it was just something fun that my nan made as she didn't often do desserts! The memory of the sight of the hundreds and thousands on top of the trifle still makes me smile now! The last time she made one was in, probably, 1980!
I had a go at making my own pickled onions a couple of years ago. Total failure - not sure why! My nan and gramp used to make them when we were kids and they were amazing, mine just tasted all kinds of wrong! I just buy them in now!
Maybe some things are better left in the memory!

You’ve had many cases of food poisoning from pickled onions? How very strange. I suspect that-and the fingernails are a your family issue.

Uncle Ken and Aunt Gloria? OP are you a real person?

Then do it all that way again 😁

My literal dream Xmas dinner is a Chinese takeaway. One day...

Do it, Iceland puts on a great spread!

I remember crying when my mate gave me a lift home on Xmas day when I was a teenager (couldn't hide out in my mate's house longer to be fair!) as I was so unhappy at home. Still dream of a Chinese takeaway as my Xmas dream meal. It's tastiness and freedom all wrapped up into one 😆. I don't need the memories because I have the now and now is great.

Yup. It’s like people saying ‘Oh, in other societies old people are cared for in their families’ — sure. By the unpaid, uncredited work of women.

This thread is just an OP wanting to gloat at her domestic virtue whilst pointing the finger at other women at what she considers laziness

Well, I laughed at the ‘watching ads for Christmas food with a heavy heart’ bit.

I imagined the OP weeping into her homemade beetroot chutney and gasping heart-brokenly ‘To think there are people in the world who buy their pigs in blankets ready-made!’

Oh my goodness yes , they were the business - I remember the opposite in winter of 81 , no room in freezer , so was in the snow for a day or so just outside the back door!!

It really is delicious but the process was medieval!

Doesn't represent my childhood at all. Child of the 1970s. Noone made chutney or anything like that; don't think anyone ever had. Certainly noone reminisced about them.
My Gran was a plain cook. Roast bird. Boil some veg until it's dead and then boil it some more. Follow with a shop-bought Xmas pud that noone really likes and a Birds trifle.
All the men buggered off to the pub and came back at 3 for dinner then fell asleep on the sofa while my Gran and Aunty cooked and washed up.

We all welcomed the arrival of M&S Xmas food.

Last couple of years my husband and I have gone to the local Indian for a vegetarian buffet.

I remember how stressful making all the christmas food from scratch was for my parents. So yes I get mine in from M&S and spend Christmas day relaxing and actually enjoying my family. Zero regrets.