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.

A cake at school
Layer of thin pastry at the bottom, then jam, then sponge and covered in icing and sprinkles
So good!

My mums club sandwich. Roast chicken, mayonnaise, tomato, lettuce in lightly toasted brown bread - can’t remember exactly how it was assembled but it was 3 pieces of bread. Delicious

When it was my Dad's (rare) turn to cook he used to make cheese and potato pie. Layers of mashed potato and grated cheese with swirls of ketchup through it, finished off with loads more grated cheese grilled until crispy and bubbling. I loved it.

Marmite and cucumber rolls as part of a picnic en route to the ferry with tomatoes and hard boiled eggs. Even though I had horrendous seasickness, they were worth it.
Sheets of Yorkshire puddings with herbs and gravy served on Gran's willow pattern plates.
Schnitzel with mushroom sauce and skinny fries
Fried potatoes with crispy bacon and cheese
Fried plum and apple dumplings with icing sugar
My dad's sandwiches (baguettes filled with hard boiled eggs, five different types of cold meat, at least one cheese, tomato relish, cucumber, sliced tomatoes and anything else in the fridge)

Mom made a canned relish she called homemaker's relish. It was tomato based with onion and I remember mustard seeds. So good with roast beef.

I lost the recipe. I tried to get it from her in her last years but somehow she could not remember the relish (dementia).

I wish I could go back in time and make it with her again!

@Popskipiekin

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.

We had "Grandma's stew" that she always made when we were traveling to see them, at least a ten hour drive all cooped up in the car. It was just like The Soup. So comforting, like a warm hug,

Stew and dumplings.

Square fish.

My nan's bedtime ham sandwich- thin sliced bread, butter and ham. Simple and delicious eaten in bed whilst being read a story. Also, her fried breakfast.

My Gran's lemon drizzle cake, rice salad and damson crumble.

My mum's lamb roast with all the trimmings.

@sadpapercourtesan

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

Yep. From Stoke...cheese oatcakes.

My DM is visiting the week after next and will bring oatcakes.

Also yes to chocolate concrete!

Cauliflower cheese. Can't eat it any more due to a nasty combination of lactose intolerance and cheese induced migraine.

Also used to beg for some of the rice when my parents had a Chinese takeaway. Do Eat rice most days, now.

Honestly our food was so vile at home and at school my heart would sing for a simple tomato sandwich, cheese roll or tinned spaghetti on toast.

I think friends' mothers were bewildered when I fell upon their 'light snacks' like a savage.

My mum is a really good cook. She was adventurous and capable in the 70s and 80s. My ambition has always been to replicate her roast potatoes and I can get 90% of the way there. My comfort food was those potatoes with her gravy in a bowl.
Other than that, her chip pan chips especially with the fried egg cooked in the cooling chip fat, the lemon meringue pie still warm in the middle the pancakes and the spag bol.

Omg tomato sandwiches. In August at the height of the summer heat. Mayo, one HUGE thick beefsteak tomato slice. Lovely white bread. No equal anywhere.

My Dad grew enormous beefsteak tomatoes that tasted of sweet summer sunshine.

So much of the food from my childhood was dreary, always aimed at DF's preferences (stews, casseroles and floury potatoes) but very rarely DM would make a pie or pasties.

I could make these now but what I can't get back is the guilt free enjoyment of pastry.

@Chunkymenrock

Homemade cherry pie. Steamed jam sponge.

Steamed Jam Sponge! That takes me back, my Dad made an awesome one, 1st pudding he taught me to make.

Dad's Aberdeen sausage on hot toast with butter
Nanna's lamb shank & barley soup
Nanna's quivering sponge cakes with jam and cream
Nanna's curried sausages with mash

My granny's curry
My mum shepherds pie
My other granny's Irish stew
My aunts Mac and cheese
Any of their roasts

All lovely memories.

My parents were early adopters (for our very un-diverse little town) of 'foreign food'. But it was always a very 1970s English version. Obviously nowadays we have much more authentic versions but I do sometimes crave my Dad's curry (with sultanas, a very small amount of extremely mild 'curry powder', oxo cube and thickened with corn flour) and mum's pizza (basically a large, flat plain scone with slices of tinned plum tomatoes, cheddar cheese and 'mixed herbs').

At school it was generally agreed that 'pink cake' day was the best. This was basically a slice of pink coloured cake cooked in a huge tray, but the best bit was the sauce poured over it- it looked like warm, runny raspberry jam.

Mash with cheese, fried bacon and onions and tomatoes, then grilled so the cheese goes all melty. Eaten with bread and butter.

Nobody else in my household eats it, so I do extra mash and make it for myself when they have a freezer bolt on (fish fingers etc)

My Grandmother's bacon sandwiches
Jacket potato with cheese and beans
Cheese whirls from school, I recently tried to replicate them, but no luck.

@SlipperTripper

Mash with cheese, fried bacon and onions and tomatoes, then grilled so the cheese goes all melty. Eaten with bread and butter.

Nobody else in my household eats it, so I do extra mash and make it for myself when they have a freezer bolt on (fish fingers etc)

This sounds like proper comfort food

My mums homemade cauliflower cheese, scotch eggs, chips,

My grandmothers steamed suet pudding with syrup and homemade custard.

Lamb cutlets, our neighbours home grown potatoes and peas. This was when I finally went to live with my dad and step mum at 11, she was such a good lady and cook.

When we were ill my dad would make home made soup and home made cheese scones eaten still warm with melted butter. Still the best comfort food now

Roasts
Pasta with pesto, bacon, cream and olives, I still make this.
Any/all baking.
Spaghetti carbonara
Tomato soup