Back to 1950s cuisine to cope with COL

[Bleachedjeans]

I started a similar thread a while ago and I wonder if the responses are the same. I now make Sunday roasts with chicken followed by a meal of leftover chicken , veg etc on Monday. Homemade meat pie, egg and chips, stews, salads made with basics: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber. Cut down massively on ‘fancy’ veg, herbs, spices. I’m really missing steak, asparagus etc. even my favourite ratatouille seems expensive these days and not the budget meal it used to be. I’m a keen cook but I’m now cooking like my grandma!
Still trying to maintain standards: no UPF, crappy pizzas, nuggets.
Anyone else?
Not really AIBU but I like AIBU 😊

I have tried making Tudor gingerbread - it’s essentially breadcrumbs, honey, ginger and black pepper. A lot of black pepper. It’s probably an acquired taste.

Cinnamon, cloves, saffron, mace, nutmeg etc were all used in savoury dishes back then.

Robert May’s Accomplisht Cook from the 1660s is a great source of weird and wonderful recipes.

Oh, for goodness sake. You know what she meant. It was very clear.

Yet, you apparently took the time to go on Ocado and the Tesco website to ‘prove her wrong’. If that’s not MN at its finest, I don’t know what is.

It was. I honestly didn’t expect anyone to take it seriously.

I make a roast for 5 adults for around £10, veggies and potatoes are so cheap.

It's around 1973 in my kitchen and I'm not very keen on cooking. So that's a challenge. Unfortunately I'm lacking some real 1973 favourites, particularly Ice Breaker chocolate bars. On a less frivolous note though cooking like my mum is cheaper.

I'm not sure how people get 2 or three meals out of a chicken. I paid £9 for a Lidl free range chicken for roast today for four of us but there won't be enough left for another meal except some soup.

I do not see how this is a problem

I’m afraid I can’t stand the brown meat either!

Even on the chicken fillets if I see even a tiny bit of brown I cut it off, even my cat won’t look at it. To be fair, he doesn’t even like the white bits.

If I make a meal with mince - bolognaise, cottage pie or whatever, I always add lentils in to bulk out the meat, it kind of melts into the sauce, (as do the mushrooms that D H ‘hates’ but eats when he doesn’t notice they are there!!)

Ha. Easily half a punnet per day just for me, plus six to eight tinned tomatoes a month. Not counting jars of sun dried tomatoes. I basically eat cherry tomatoes as a treat the way people may eat chocolate.

The size of chickens vary, do they not? Also it depends on how many are being fed, and, and how much chicken is served per person. Some chicken shredded and bulked out with vegetables, and topped with pastry, or made into a curry with potatoes, vegetables, served with rice. It is not difficult to see how this could be achieved.

Of course silly me. I'll try harder.

When I buy a whole chicken I buy an extra large. We strip the bird completely and divide out the meat before we serve it to ensure it goes between multiple meals. Very easy just to cook and serve and then it’s gone. Same with any joint. I make clear that the meat served is the meat portion and there’s lots of veg and usually a pudding.

Christmas dinner is a bit different, I buy a really big gammon and turkey and make loads of pigs in blankets and it’s eat as much as you like.

If one good thing comes out of the COL crisis, it will be the return of “1950’s-style cuisine” in terms of making healthier, unprocessed food more common!
And less waste…
I’ve been following my DM’s example for years now (she grew up during WWII and rationing). I “process” all my veg as soon as I buy it to prevent waste, meal-plan and bulk cook, too.
A (reduced price - I seek out and purchase beef, pork and lamb when it’s on offer and freeze it) Sunday roast does us for three meals if I carve and portion it out effectively, potatoes are parboiled and any more than we need for the roast are then frozen for roasting next time, cabbage and leeks are braised and portions frozen and carrots are prepared for the freezer. Yorkshire puddings are made from scratch and in a quantity that allows 2 per person only.
I also make a lot more soup and we often have this with bread as a main meal (vegetarian, too!)
Portion control also plays its part. I also process chicken breasts so that a portion weighs 4oz (the bits I cut off go into a container for casseroles, risotto Etc.) and a 500g pack of minced beef makes us 9 portions of dinner (cottage pie and pasta sauce normally).
If everyone is able to do this, imagine the skill set being learned and the savings made?

My granny (born 1884) used all those herbs. She also used turmeric to make piccalilli.

If o make bolognese or chilli I use half good beef mince and half soya mince ( Linda m was £1.75 a big bag at waitrose last week on offer) - my H actually prefers it.

I don’t understand why eating like that is 1950s. I suspect that the accompanying veg was things like turnip where as we eat broccoli and carrots which thanks to technology is available cheaply all year round. Do you buy canned and frozen veg? They get a bad rep but are just as nutritious as fresh.

Have you looked at the World Foods aisle at the supermarket? The spice quantities are far bigger for the same price as the little glass jars. It’s also fun to grow your own fresh herbs from scratch. Start with a supermarket (or even better a garden centre) plant, divide it into like 3 smaller plants and replant into 3 containers with some soil. The supermarket plants are overcrowded so they look more impressive in the shop but they don’t last because of lack of space, I can’t get basil to last years but have had success with other herbs.

Left over roast is my lunch at work on Monday/Tuesday. I look forward to it.

Surely the cheapest way to eat is by taking inspiration from other cuisines that have developed in poorer cultures, with ingredients that are readily available in the shops nowadays- unlike in the 1950s.

How can roast chicken be cheaper than dhal, pasta or home made falafel?

I would argue that it's traditional meat and 2 veg cooking that is the most expensive nowadays. Most cultures don't eat massive amounts of meat for every meal for a reason.

A bunch of fresh herbs is about 60p in Lidl and lasts for several meals- you can freeze it (apart from basil, which is a prima donna).

Hahaha Not in our house. Tbf my mum had grown up in dire poverty and herbs and spices just didn't figure.

Obviously it depends on who you are feeding and what job/activity they do but 4 oz chicken isn't a great deal for an active man, for instance. Love a bit of magic mince.

I think I’d rather use leftover chicken in fried rice or fajitas than go back to 50s recipes. But I live alone, very modern of me.

Surely this is just nomrla
eafknb 😂 I don’t think people only ate their leftovers in the 1950s. What on earth have you been doing previously.. chucking out away??

• normal eating !

My man is retired, not particularly active - and on a diet, so obviously that helps! Of course, you can trim the chicken to whichever size suits the appetites: maybe 2-3oz for small children…. I do tend to buy those large packs where the individual chicken breasts often weigh up to 7oz each though - hence the trimming to size!

It's the faff time, I think. To process a chicken carcase means picking off all the bits, then making into stock and then picking out all the little bones. I have done this, Waitrose makes better stock imho though unless you had a high quality chicken.
I can understand why someone might not choose to do that. Time/effort/money equation.