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.

Every adult in my family works full time. My parents are the eldest, and they still work full time.

I will be driving 150 miles on xmas eve with a car full of children & all the stuff we need to take. Even if i had the time to make home made chutneys, I couldn't transport them. My mum, who (voluntarily, as she loves doing it!) goes shopping for the xmas food the day before xmas eve when she finishes work. She will cook an almost fully homemade xmas dinner (shop bought Yorkshire puddings!) For 16 of us. My dad will be making sure the house is etc up and ready for 16 of us to be there for 4 days.

My sibling and his wife will be working until xmas eve lunchtime.

None of us have time to be making chutneys etc for a couple of meals. We would rather be enjoying what precious time we have together and with our kids and have some piccalilli from a jar and frozen sausage rolls from iceland than someone having to worry about making it.

If someone wants to and has the time and energy to, great. But our xmas is all the better for Iceland and the like because it means everyone is less stressed and has more time

Hmm, surely processed and convenience foods have been around for decades?! No one is making anyone buy them. My mum cooked everything from scratch (I have coeliac disease which possibly played a part in this) but she was brought up on a lot of convenience foods which she hated.

However, she was a SAHM until her youngest went to school which nowadays most people can't do as 2 incomes are required. For my family, I cook a lot as does my partner but we go get the odd takeaway and jar of sauce etc. But we both work FT. I'll be working Christmas day and Boxing day, he'll be off so he'll cook, I'll make a pudding and we'll celebrate a different day.

But my partner does more cooking than me in general, despite being from a culture where it is still seen as women's work. Many Christmas days are down to the work of a single woman in many families. It's wrong, but it's true.

Never made jam or chutney or pickles in my life!

YABU, feel free to make your Christmas food any way you like. Why are you saying you miss something when you're perfectly entitled to prepare it exactly the same way as 40 years ago if you want to? I love to cook and make 95% of our food from scratch but there's nothing wrong with a bit of m&s if you've not got the time or skills.

I was born in the late 80's and do not have good memories of food from that time. So much bland, overcooked, stodgy food. I definitely don't miss it.

Our food is still the home cooked - indeed my green tomato chutney is maturing in the cupboard and my sausage rolls have been requested yet again

so you don’t have to go the easy cook and ultra processed way

but yes I do agree it is sad what had happened to food and how it harms our health is just being noticed

Agree with this.

My Nan was in the kitchen most of the days leading up to and on the day of. We barely saw her and 2bh, we’d have rather had time with her than the home made pickles and mince pies (I mean that).

I’m Pregnant with a toddler and do you know what? I’m going to be buying the M&S ‘processed UPF rubbish’ for an easy life and to spend time with my family/rest.

No one’s forcing OP or anyone else into the doors of M&S.

I think a lot of this is nostalgia - everything I think felt fresher and more exciting when you were say under 15 - and yes my grans house was a hive of paper garlands, Xmas cards strung up and balloons on the ceiling - none remotely ‘curated’ - so as a child it felt very celebrational rather than ‘beautifully tasteful’ absolutely no one seemed to have food issues to be catered to , they just scoffed it - I remember an awful lot of UPFs , birds trifle, Sara Lee gateaux, vol au vents made with tinned mushroom in cream sauce , tinned sausages on sticks , viennettas etc - I also remember some fairly vile home made concoctions too that people brought - so yep I do miss that vibe, nope I don’t miss the food , maybe other families had better cooks and yes as others have said 90% was done by exhausted women , blokes sat around expecting to be waited on, going to the pub and blowing up the odd balloon. The big difference was I feel fewer women worked, certainly fewer worked full time , if at all where I came from ( big mining town) my gran on one side helped my grandad on his business doing the books about 10 hours a week max, my other gran did sod all paid work wise from the minute she married till she died, my mum did 5 years teaching before a succession of 12 hours a week jobs and stopped altogether in mid 40s, my ex Hs mum did 15 hours a week as a school secretary . Cheap area, cheap housing - maybe different in pricey areas.

Well I distinctly recall the kitchen being a whole family affair

we spent time together cooking and creating and clearing up

leaning useful skills and laughing at the same time

replacing one type of disfunctional arrangement with another isn’t really an improvement is it?

The reality is that everyones still wants to eat this lovely homemade stuff, but most people can be bothered to put the effort in themselves.

Oh what I would give to taste my mother's pressed ox tongue again! Can you even still buy it?

The reality is that ‘people’ is actually women. Women are expected to do it.

edit : I actually also think that men don’t care. Most men will eat whatever and be merry. A lot of these expectations are women putting them on other women.

I guess as a grew up enjoying the time with my parents in the kitchen it seems like fun to me

so many of my recipes come from that time

my dad died (sp edit ) few years ago and Christmas dinner is so in his honour - remembering those happy days

in other words - it doesn’t have to me mum in the kitchen and everyone else outside it having fun - the creating of the food can be part of the fun

Yes but have you ever thought that maybe some 'women' actually really enjoy cooking nice food for their family? my Grandma used to do it every year and genuinely loved it.

I enjoy cooking when I’m not pregnant. I wouldn’t start dissing other women who have different priorities on the day. I also wouldn’t pretend there’s an army of men who will be doing much on the day. Check back on MN on Xmas day and see how many threads there are about women being taken the piss out of by their husbands.

Throughout generations of my family it’s been women who’ve organised the shop, the presents and the cooking. To say ‘people’ can’t be bothered is missing the fact that it’s usually women taking on the task/burden.

If women have chosen to take some of their freedoms back and have a more relaxing time I say fair bloody play.

You wrote that in minutes. Genius.

There was a thread the other day about who has never cooked xmas dinner, there were many who said their DH does it and enjoys doing it.
I see no evidence that women are so 'expected' to cook in the year 2025

Absolutely!!!

Reads like an M&S / Waitrose ad....

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.

Simple food shared together......no-one could forsee then what food would become.

I've never cooked a Christmas Dinner or Sunday Roast in my life . I married well 😜

Well that settles it then, equality has been reached. Have a great day.

Yes but is he pickling his own onions? 😂

I remember having potato croquettes, sausages and gravy with sauteed carrots and then a nice chilled cake. We had special cups and plates and it's a lovely memory

Remember those , but they were crap.

He absolutely does! DH pickles absolutely anything he can get his hands on. We currently have a huge Kilner jar of pickled eggs (due to a mis-delivery by the milkman 😂), red cabbage, cucumbers and of course, onions.

Although maybe they're not as good as Uncle Ken's legendary pickled onions...

It's lovely you had so many family members who could cook

Personally I remember my great nans brussel sprouts that were so mushy and sulferous we used to claim she boiled them in her pants for 2 weeks!

I don't remember parties of nice homemade foods I remember vol au vents that tasted like vommit, suspicious pink speckled egg mayonnaise, dry cake and weird pink beetroot stuff

Personally I cook mostly from scratch over Xmas, however I am also incredibly greatful when I go to the inlaws and see the M&S packets on the counter. A lot of homecooking is bad, I think many people don't have memories of nice homecooked chutneys and sausage rolls, hence why they buy

This is what it’s about. If someone enjoys doing it like your DH and OP then that’s awesome.

Have a Merry Christmas and enjoy those pickled!

I find these sorts of threads intensely irritating. Another sepia tinged view of the past, with a soupçon of trad wife superiority re UPFs. Do you work OP? Have more than one child? What’s your DH’s income? Just curious as these will all have an impact on someone’s ability to make things from scratch. It’s not always that someone can’t be bothered to put the effort in.