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 don't use the mixer for crumble (just my fingers) and freeze the uncooked topping - one recipe does seem to make too much for us 4.

They’re both my favourites too, and you’re right, most definitely no longer cheap !

If you don’t want to use fingers, a rough going over with a pastry blender is good for crumble.

I understand the basic gist of not buying specialist ingredients for a single recipe, but food prices have changed so much. Chicken is now relatively much cheaper (due to huge changes in breeding and reading) and red meat more expensive.

really the key is planning and not wasting. I never regard using leftover chicken for sandwiches instead of a second dinner as wasteful. I don’t get enough leftovers to make a second meal and I’d still need a sandwich filling.

similarly if you do buy herbs, spices, etc, you need to be using them all and not wasting half packets of things.

With prices today I would judge that fewer meat based meals would work out more cheaply. What’s saving money for the OP is less “1950s” and more the repetition and control.

I have a copy of The Austerity Cookbook by Bridget Ardley, published in 1975. It seems hard times come and go. It contains recipes for such delights as Sulimans Pilaff and Turkey Cigars!

Real British food is absolutely amazing. It's what I crave the most.

I buy the biggest chicken, as the carcass is the same size for small medium or large - so you get a lot more meat ratio

we had an extra large chicken for xmas and it fed 3 people, then another 4 portions form the left over meat

Best ratio of meat is chicken thighs, I got a packet this week and they cost £2.99 for 1 kilo of meat - extract 6 small thigh bones and most of the packet is meat flesh. Id expect to get enough flesh of the small bone to make two chicken dishes to feed 4 people

Possibly. Although there would have been oranges and lemons, spices etc available in Cairo. I was born in North Africa in the mid 50s and my parents were amazed at the abundant produce on sale as opposed to post war Liverpool.

Until the 1970s/early 80s chicken was a treat but lamb was relatively cheap. Lamb is far more expensive now.

I do think one way to keep it down especially with kids is to limit the amount of just grabbable snacks you have in - if going back to even late 60sand 70s snacks in our house were restricted to crumpets, soreen malt loaf, a ginger cake bar, cereal, toast ( with jam, honey, mashed banana) and a set amount of fruit - once it was gone it was gone. We simply didn’t have cupboards full of grab able stuff - I think a lot of parents in particular think they need to have a never ending supply of this kind of thing - people have got used to having masses of variety for ‘what they fancy’ - everything else in our 60s/70s house was meal planned and shopping lists written . A bit tedious I know , but it does work .
i do buy a really big organic chicken from the farm shop every other week ( about 2.3kg) - as they are really meaty - costs me about £17 - but then it does Sunday lunch for 3, 2 ramens for 2 the next day and spare chicken leg for lunch the day after - I also use the simply cook kits as I like buying fresh and easy for me to do so , but means I don’t buy spices/herbs that often that sit around after being used twice. I’ve

Neither would I. I meant buying expensive ingredients for recipes that you might not use again before the flavour has faded. You wouldn’t save much by not buying garlic and chilli powder but then you have to spell it out for some people.

DH would eat egg and chips nearly every day if I let him 😂

Thank you worstnotholiday. I replied before but I’m adding more now. Your reply is EXACTLY what I meant. You understand what I mean perfectly. I like your example of not making lamb ottolenghi- perfect example of the kind of thing I don’t do anymore. Some posters seem to think I need advice on going ‘veggie’ 🙄 a couple of days a week. Others have taken my post as some sort of challenge or sabre rattling.
It’s more a case of ‘I used to make steak in brandy and cream sauce on Fridays but now it’s homemade burgers’.
My 1950s reference was a nod to the use of very few ingredients with simple s+p added. Eg a small amount of beef mince with potatoes and onion makes a cheap pie. Some posters are screaming LENTILS! CHILLI POWDER! - like I’ve never bloody heard of them 😅

I’m ’ignoring a wealth of international food’? I haven’t listed everything we bloody eat FGS. They are examples. 😀

My in laws arrived in Istanbul at the end of the 50s (from Ireland and Scotland) and were overwhelmed by the variety of foods available - plus so exotic compared to the plain cooking they had been brought up with.

yes I do this kind of thing, too. DH ca me home from Aldi with a ton of veg at 8p each. I peeled, prepped, blanched and froze and ended up with a freezer drawer full of ready vegetables. He spent less than £1. 😀

No, I’m not ‘on the wind up’ - it was my reaction to a silly person who asked did I throw away cooked chicken. It’s difficult to answer ridiculous questions seriously.

Yes, I agree. When COL really kicked in I thought about the meals my grandma used to make. Her repertoire was small but her food was good. So I started replicating her cooking for a few days a week. Her ‘potato hash’ for example was potatoes and onion with pieces of meat scattered in, sometimes a carrot chopped small. The portions were smaller, too!

My DM always did extra vegetables and we’d then have bubble and squeak the next day.

I was born in 1957 so basically grew up with 1950's cooking. My mum made:

Homemade faggots (proper ones, nothing like the ones you buy frozen)

Pea soup (she'd boil a ham hock and take off the meat which she added to a soup of soaked boxed peas, celery, onion and carrot) served with crusty bread - bloody delicious.

Rolled and stuffed breast of lamb

Roast belly of pork with apple sauce

Pan fried liver with onion gravy

Toad in the hole

Steak & kidney pudding

Boiled gammon joint with parsley sauce (the rest of the joint did for sandwiches)

Various omelettes with chips or new potatoes

Smoked haddock with poached eggs on top

We always had a roast on Sundays but usually lamb or beef. Chicken was a luxury back then. Battery farming didn't exist and frozen chickens only become available around the late 1960's. We did have our own chickens but kept them for eggs, not meat. We also grew all our own veg, plums and apples.

I've just had a flyer from Farmfoods through my door which was advertising a 1kilo chicken for £1.99 . I'm not sure how much meat is on a 1kilo chicken but I'm sure some people would be tempted. It's clearly labelled as coming from Brazil and I can't imagine what conditions it was kept in to be sold so cheaply. Is this a forerunner of the USA chlorinated chicken? I would rather eat lentils.

This post isn't in response to any other posts on this thread but is related to COL and I needed to vent.

We're a family of 7 so we rarely have enough leftover to do one more meal let alone several. I've got to be honest I quite often go for cheap pizzas and stuff like that because it is the cheapest way to feed so many people.

That’s my processed food belief 😂. Cheerios, Cornflakes, baked beans, marmite, soy sauce, stock cubes, ketchup/mustard etc. plus oat milk for my tea because I love it and my kids aren’t affected by it.

I think I’m doing normal cooking but it’d be recognizable to people around the world at various time

Cut down massively on ‘fancy’ veg, herbs, spices.

Cutting down on herbs and spices seems like such a false economy. I buy 1kg bags of spices for a few quid and they last months. A 49p pack of coriander or basil will do multiple meals. And both make cheap ingredients taste so much better.

We’ve always used leftovers, but our cooking has definitely become more basic and more like what my mother used to cook 70/80’s. Padding meals out with more potatoes and seasonal veg and using single serving leftovers for lunch the following day (made easier by working from home). Fruit wise I tend to stick to bananas, apples, pears ans oranges, avoiding berries and the more exotic fruit. Snack stuff like crisps, biscuits and chocolate is rarely bought. I‘ve also given up alcohol, although DH still drinks. I reckon we could save a fortune if he stopped.