Childhood meals that made your heart SING

[LoveFall]

Inspired by the thread about awful childhood meals. What made your heart sing and your mouth water. I'll start with a couple.

Barbequed chuck steak made on the barbeque after marinating in a special marinade I have lost the recipe for.

Fried chicken my Mom made.

Potato salad.

Roast beef with Yorkshire puddings.

Swedish pancakes (plattar) on holiday weekends. With butter and jam or Maple syrup.

Special open faced sandwiches with a tomato/cheese/shrimp mixture, broiled. Also featured on holidays.

What my Dad named "rollie ups," which were hot dogs slit and stuffed with a piece of cheddar, then wrapped in crescent rolls and baked. Yet again, special holiday food.

I'm making myself very nostalgic, and hungry.

Sounds weird, but chicken cooked with soy sauce, and a separate slightly spicy sauce made from blended pineapple.

Called Polynesian Chicken, but I suspect it originated closer to Penge.

Bloody loved it, but I explained it to DH and suggested cooking it a while back and he was not impressed.

Mums cakes which were delicious and often a bit ‘puddeny’ in the middle, she did plain, fruit (always currents), coconut or chocolate.

If I stayed with my grandparents in the summer holidays my grandad used to make me a plate of perfectly sized triangle sandwiches with the crusts removed. I’ll never know how he managed to make them all the same perfect size, but the honestly looked like he’d used a spirit level on them. The filling was only ever dairylea and ketchup but they were made with love.

Primary school cheese and potato pie with thick buttery pastry and loads of salt....it made me so happy

Chocolate concrete with chocolate custard

Chips and gravy, piping hot with tons of salt and vinegar, I grew up in Stoke and it was manna from heaven

My dad's muesli pancake with stewed blackberries

Cheese and bacon oatcakes with brown sauce

Definitely school chocolate crunch - never been replicated

Chicken supreme - not sure if mum made it from scratch or a ready meal but I loved it!!

And anything my gran made - her chicken stew (mainly salt!!) was heavenly. And always appeared with a bottle of original lucozade if you were ill

Egg and chips ... it’s still my favourite dinner.

My grandma’s meat and potato pie made with suet pastry - she died when I was 11 and I just can’t replicate it.

My mum’s bramble jelly - she died when I was 23 but I can replicate it. My brother cried when he tasted it because it reminded him of her.

Coq au vin made with a Coleman’s casserole sachet - my mum’s quick tea, and I still love it - prefer it to the real thing which I can actually make.

Something my mum made called custard meringue - recipe lost in a fucking house move. It’s a bit like floating islands but made in the oven and served hot.

My mum's pork casserole and mashed potatoes.
Grandad's boiled eggs.
School quiche about 3 inches deep with coleslaw, that is the meal I wish I could eat again.

Mum's Yorkshire puddings, she served them with gravy as a first course before roast beef. She was the Queen of Yorkshire puddings!

Poached chicken in an egg sauce served with rice.

Skate wing served hot with black butter sauce, or served cold with mayonnaise.

Large tomatoes, hollowed out, stuffed with shrimps in mayonnaise. This was a summer treat for high days and holidays only. My job was peeling the shrimps.
I make something similar with prawn cocktail when I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for that elusive "childhood summer" taste.

My mum was a fantastic cook, so nearly everything she made was delicious. The only two things I didn't like was spinach Florentine (the spinach was slimy, and I once found a snail in my spinach) and summer pudding (she never put enough sugar in it)

My mums roast dinner
I don’t like roast dinner generally but hers were wonderful.

My dads Welsh rarebit

Oh and she used to make a butternut squash lasagna which was something else

My mums beef stew, cooked in the terrifying pressure cooker.

Homemade cherry pie. Steamed jam sponge.

Elvers which my grandad used to fry in bacon fat with a scrambled egg. Not sure I’d be able to eat (or afford!) them now but as a child I couldn’t get enough of them.

My Grampa used to make me homemade chips and poached egg every Friday night when I stayed there and I absolutely adored it

Another one is my mums homemade lasagne, I honestly could devour the whole thing in one sitting

My nans roast dinner. It’s something about the way she made the gravy ... nobody ever seems to be able to match it mmm

My grandmother’s lamb korma. No one has ever been able to replicate it. Never will be.

Deep-fried apple and blackberry pancakes with custard from the school canteen. They probably cake from a giant catering pack but god they were gorgeous. I used to sneak back in the queue for a second helping!

Beef and red wine pie. Amazing. Always ask for it for my birthday.
Schools cheese and egg flan. Always with chips and beans.

Sausage, egg and chips.

My mum wasn't the best cook, we lived on convenience food, but this was my favourite dinner a still is. Whenever I've had a really day it's the dinner I cook to cheer myself up.

Queen of Puddings
Sweet and sour pork (made on weeks we'd had roast pork for Sunday) which was always topped with crispy noodles
Vegetable soup with teeny star pasta shapes
Home made ice cream (made with cream from our goats and eggs from the chickens), especially the christmas pudding one which was amazing
When microwaves were new, mum had a phase of doing syrup sponge in there, served with industrial quantities of cream
A weird jelly mousse thing which was lush - maybe it was double strength blackcurrant jelly whizzed up when not set with evaporated milk?
Savoury rice which was onion, bacon, rice, mixed veg and stock. Claggy and lovely

My dad’s eggy bread (French toast). Pretty much the only thing he cooked. Savoury with salad, or golden syrup for pudding.
My mum made the best sausage and apple pie. I can’t get close to it. Also an amazing potato salad.

My grandmother made a soup we just called “The Soup”. No idea what was in it but it was the bomb, so comforting after a long journey to get there. I really miss The Soup actually.

Corned beef beetroot and chips

Cottage pie my mum made when we were little. She'd always leave a spoonful out before putting the potatoes on the top.

Practically everything, my mum was a superlative cook.

Particularly the fruit puddings of my childhood. Pies, crumbles, flans, fools and sponge puddings, or just stewed, poached or bottled.

We were early adopters of lasagne. Let's face it, there isn't really a better meal than lasagne and green salad.