All this fancy stuff you eat and drink nowadays, were you brought up on it?

[charliecat]

Or is it a sainsburys/waitrose/millenium thing?

God i'd forgotten the supercook series of magazines. My mum got them for a while too. The number of chef's hats at the top of the recipe was supposed to tell you how difficult it was. We could never cook half the stuff due to living in small village with tiny shop selling only tinned stuff.

Think I should be fair to my mother, after getting nostalgic for 70s crap down the thread. She is a very good cook and we had dishes from her cordon bleu cookery book like boef bourginon (sp?), traditional english food like 'kate and sidney pudding', proper curries - I remember prawn curry particularly, spaghetti bolognese and other Italian food. I was horrified the first time I ate curry at another English person's house. It was awful! Watery and curranty. Nothing like my mother's cooking at all.

Oh yes, I used to lo9ve making the Rise & Shine orange.

What about homemade Rissoles anyone?

..and packet creme caramel (& angel delight of course)...and Smash!

Can I claim to have the world's worst cook for a mother?

Actualy she was very good at pastry and cakes but her meals were horrid!

Meat cooked until it tasted like leather. Veg cooked to a mush.

45 minutes for cauliflower florets at which point they were mashed. And all cooked with masses of salt and bicarbonate of soda.

I still remember my first real food. my brother went to teacher training collage and learned to cook. He cooked us beef in beer, with broccoli and baked potatoes. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I simply didn't realise that 'dinner' could taste so nice

Oh so much crap mentioned on this thread that I loved to eat as a kid

Yorkshire puds were (and still are) a big thing at home. Loads of savoury ones with onion and gravy as a big starter (so you didn't eat too much of the roast meat!) and then loads more with syrup or jam for afters.

Mixed grills were a big favourite too - the whole shebang with sausages, ribs, steak, liver, kidneys, chops plus fried eggs and chips. Mum would put a big platter out and we all helped outselves. Would cost a fortune to do anything like it now.

We used to have home made pavlova for birthday treats. Mum used to put some sort of pretend cream in coz we couldnt get fresh in our village. It was like angel delight, but cream.... cant remember the name.

tip top?

It wasnt tip-top. That came in a tin. It was in a packet like angel delight. I think it was a blue and white packet. She used to make it up with less milk than instructions so it was thick and lovely.

Dream Topping.

By george you've got it!!!

LOL had completely forgotten that fresh orange juice was a treat! Even now we don't always have it in the house and DH goes mad whereas I'm all "What?? We had some last week..."
Also, fruit was rationed to one piece a day - and we were helped to understant that this was over-generosity; and we ate chicken maybe four or five times a year.

Dream Topping with tinned manderin orange segments. Yummy

Ooh - do you know I have some tinned mandarins AND a Birds Trifle, so I could nick the topping from the trifle and indulge in some memories.

Yes fresh fruit was a treat. We were allowed to choose one piece as an evening treat. It was an apple, orange or pear. Rarely we got grapes or bananas. Although, bizzarely, i remember pomegranates being eaten with a pin regularly.

ooh fancy some dream topping although im eating strawberries and cream!

we used to squeeze oranges to make juice.. alot, we felt so cosmopolitan

we used to get through tons of winkles eaten with a pin

We have pomegranates, with pins, every October when the fair hits town.

You have to - it's traditional

do any of you remember having mousse but in a brick like ice cream? think it was from sainsburys that was yum

With bright sugary crystals stuck all over the edges?

with wafers on the sides?

sugary crystals ring a bell

Prawns& avocado, beef stroganoff, black forest gateau. Thought those were the height of sophistication!

What about a Berni Inn steak?

Where I grew up, we didn't have any supermarkets (good butchers but crap greengrocers). The town did get a deli but after I left home.
We had Spar, Co-Op and Fine Fare, tiny shops really. And Presto in Inverness for when we were living the high life.
Hence I am now raised to almost spiritual and possibly sexual heights by Waitrose.