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

[charliecat]

Or is it a sainsburys/waitrose/millenium thing?

Two wafers, filled with a pink marshmallow type thing with crunchie sugar edges.

Damned if I can rememeber what thy were called.

I remember bringing a bottle of red wine home when I was a teenager. My mum served it in tiny sherry glasses and told me not to guzzle it so quick.

my mother was rather odd about fruit. She'd buy some and whinge like hell if you ate it as it was suppose to last. If you didn't eat it, she would whinge if the fruit went bad!

Mine were like that about the milk. We wernt allowed to drink it for supper coz it was needed for porridge in the morning, but by morning it had always gone off and had to be throw away. Porridge was made with carnation milk then.

The more I think about these odd old things (food habits i mean, not my parents LOL), the more I think I had a bizzare childhood.

Was thinking about this thread in bed last night. Did your families have a repertoire of meals that were repeated, with little variation, each week?

Ours was: Sunday - roast dinner, every week without fail. Monday: leftovers, we called it YMCA (Yesterday's Meal Cooked Again) - the meat, usually cold, with vegetables, chips and the reheated gravy. If it had been a particularly large joint of meat we might have it again on Wednesday - made into curry, or rissoles [as an aside I think England just scored - can hear a lot of shouting]. Thursday would be something like the corned beef mummy I mentioned, or Quiche Lorraine, or cheese pie (mmmm...cheese pie) and Friday was always fish - bought from the fish man in a van, caught in Fleetwood. Saturday - best night of the week, my brother and I got to eat our dinner in the living room in front of the TV (we sat at the table every other night) and have burgers (cheapy frozen ones), or hot dogs (those hideous flaccid pink ones out of a can) - and watch Six Million Dollar Man, or Wonder Woman, or - later - the A Team. It was the only meal we had that Mum didn't cook from scratch and we loved it

I used to be given Turkey burgers and mini-kievs . I didn't have curry or chinese until I met dh when I was 18. My mum's idea of cooking was/is to stick a few chicken breasts in the slow-cooker with a liquid of some sort. Then, the left-overs get put in the fridge to gather mould for a few days. One of my mum's well-used phrases is, 'This needs eating up, otherwise it will have to be thrown out'...mmmm, appetising!

As far as I know food was relatively more expensive years ago (as a percentage of the average wage) than it is now. Hence the reason for our parents being 'stingy'. Waste not, want not!

Marthamoo - Plumrose hot dogs?

Mmmmm, those were a rare treat!

Plumrose...and Ye Olde Oak

This thread (my alltime favourite Mnet thread, and much more ladylike than the cunnilingus one)has reminded me of the surgical precision that was involved in cutting a block of HB Neopolitain icecream into 5 exact pieces for my dsisters and dbrothers . It was my sisters job to make sure that we all got an exactly fair amount but I'm quite sure that we used to do my little brother out of his share

We also used to have that meat out of a funny shaped can (sort of egg shaped) - with cauliflower or macaroni cheese. And chopped ham and pork on our butties. Ugh...

Though one of my kids' favourite meals is a kind of 70s retro special of gammon steaks, with pineapple on top and cauliflower cheese.

mercy,very true re food being more expensive then

Findus crispy pancakes, frozen mousse in little pots, smash!!

But mum did used to cook ans she is a good cook. Remember her cooking canelloni (sp) for my dad as a treat, but mainly had fish fingers, cauliflower cheese, pork chops (with bacon and stuffing on), Chicken casserole (yuk), Stew (yuk then but yum now), Smoked haddock poached in milk (only fish I would eat), take away on saturday on the way home from dad playing rugby.

OMG just remembered two favs did anyone else have white custard (ie cornflour made as custard)? and I know its not dinners but space dust!!!!! Oh, and remebered that lovely drink in the 80s called quatro that disappeared, so sad!

my mum used to make milk jelly - she told me recently that she felt it was putting some "goodness" in, which is kind of true I guess. I tried to make some for dds and it was curdled and revolting.

MMoo, we were like that; on a Saturday my sis and I use dto eat on our own in the lounge, probably as mum and dad got fish and chips later, with hi de Hi on tv. Usually we got oven hips and sweetcorn and burget type things, but they wre oval sjaped. And I remember when chicken burgers came out, and we begged mum to buy them. She gave in eventually and we thought they wre amazing.
Don't think we had pudding very often, except if mum made cakes, usualy for a Sunday roast. Often coffee cake. Or chocolate.l

My mum knew I'd always eat fish finger sandwiches smothered in ketchup & vinegar.

Was brought up on them! Close 2nd favourite was
lemon curd sandwiches.

brought up where mangos & papaya would go rotting on the ground at times and how painful it is to pay the prices here for them. we would travel from garden to garden grazing through the many different varieties of mangos. and through them at each other too.

also miss various fruits that don't get to England: soursop, custard apple, rose apple, cashew fruit, baboon cap to name a few.

also ate loads of wild tropical animals in my time: deer, peccary, armadillo, paca, alligator, shark and wild duck.
Would not eat iguana out of principle (looks disgusting cooked) even when young. Have eaten sea turtle though but that was before it was put on CITES Appendix 1 and would never now. Never ate manatee as my family didn't think it right to eat those.

we would go to the islands and not only had to catch and cook our own fish but clean it as well. When we wanted conch and lobster, we dived our own - my grandpa had his own lobster pots set just off the island so it was all for free.

I also know how to husk and chip coconuts, cook on an open hearth and make my own tortillas from scratch.

Can you tell I am used to home cooking?

Wow, kiskidee - where did you grow up? It sounds fab!

i grew up in Belize. i am feeling nostalgic now.

I used to hate going to birthday parties because you could always guarantee that there would be a rabbit shaped blancmange.

I went to best friend's party and there were 3 of the buggers - vanilla, strawberry and chocolate 'flavour'.

Haven't read down but no, not at all.

I survived on fishfingers, sausages, peas, carrots, mashed potato, tinned spaghetti, angel delight and fruit & evap milk until I was about 8.

My choice.

I remember the first time I tried a french bread pizza my Mum was experimenting with and really liked it - even the fact that i was watching that serial about the russian bloke where they burned his eyes out (must have been about 13 at the time ) didn;t put me off.

Ooh - lots of nostalgia here... and I think marthamoo and I must have grown up in the same family?!

Lots of homemade chips in the deep fat fryer (yuk!)
Corned Beef hot pot
Roast on a sunday
Angel Delight
Chocolate mousses in containers shaped like rabbits, which you coudl use to make plaster of paris figures afterwards...

Don't remember Rise & Shine, but I DO remember something similar called 'Apeel' (?) which was powdered orange juice and no doubt full of colours.

I also remember special drinks being saved for Mum & Dad, and if we were allowed them we weren't allowed to 'guzzle' them as it was 'such a waste'...

Oh, and Soda Streams were the height of fashion....

seeing as someone mentioned birthday parties...I think they've got more austere since we were kids, but it could be my memory playing tricks on me. in my mind we had sandwiches and crisps and cheese and pineapple on coctail sticks and sausages - all very nice but just a necessary prelude to the real event - which was a hooooge array of different kinds of buns and biscuits and cakes. I am sure there would be at least chocolate rice kispie cakes, butterfly buns, chocolate fingers, jammy dodgers, those tea-cake things, possibly caramel chocolate short-cake, chocolate animal biscuits. not to mention birthday cake. and jelly and ice-cream. But then I think that surely can't be right or we'd have all been sick. am I rolling all the birthday parties I ever went to into one? or maybe we were restrained enough to not have to have one of everything? I'm so mean it's party rings and birthday cake for dds. and that's only if they eat their carrot sticks and strawberries

Anyone remember junket, my mother used to make that to get milk into us.

We used to live on crab, crayfish, mussels, lobster etc, I was bought up in Padstow for many years and we had a boat and used to go out with a crab box and lobster pots.

My grandparents lived in India, so proper curry was a favourite, as she used to grow all the herbs and soices on a windowsill.

Dandelion and burdock from thr Corona lorry, never ever allowed Ribena. I used to get paid for babysitting when I was 12 in bottles of the orange juice from thr baby clinic as I loved it!

We always had wired and different foods, my friends used to think we ate very posh food, but I used to envy a friend who had heinz tomato soup in her flask when I had to have home made!

Pomegranates with pins - oh that took me back to Xmas when i was about 6!

My Mum and her Mum were known for their eccentric cooking, chips with soup over, soup with a pork pie in the middle, baked beans fried in lard ...

Then the 80's happened and Dad got aspirational with food, frozen mange tout, courgetts fried in garlic butter, garlic bread (made with garlic salt)we were the most sophisticated family on our estate!