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.

Birds eye chicken chargrills with homemade chips for dinner. Woohooo

Mum did an amazing stuffed lamb belly, it was filled with cabbage and stuffing, and so a really cheap meat dish, but it was the best.

Also giant Yorkshire filled with tinned stewing beef and peas. It must have been mum's 5 minute meal for busy days, it was the best.

I tried tinned stewing beef a few years ago and it was vile, so salty.

My mum makes a cracking Apple strudel!

Birds eye bbq chicken chargrills served with chicken super noodles and grated cheese.

Richmond sausages, mash, tin green beans
with thick bisto gravy.

My mum also made an amazing tuna pasta bake - not with tomato sauce (eww) but with a cheese sauce.

Cheese and potato pie, boil potatoes with chopped onion, mash and add grated cheese. Put in ovenproof dish with more grated cheese on the top. Bake for 10 minutes on 180 then top with sliced tomatoes and cook for another 15 mins. For some reason this was always served with crusty bread, salad and plain crisps! We loved it, my aunts and cousins and I still make it - our dhs all loathe it

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chocolate-concrete-caramel-sauce

I loved chocolate concrete...I'll be giving this try tomorrow!

My Grandad's cooking. He used to make chicken with paprika which I loved and Chinese soup with crispy noodles. This was in the 1970's so it was all so magical to me. My Nan also made lovely puddings, cherry pie with custard. DM's cooking wasn't quite the same and mainly came out of packets or the freezer.

My mum made the most delicious risotto out of random odds and ends.
My gran's roast dinners were in a class of their own. Also not dinner but breakfast, mushrooms freshly picked from the field at the back of the church, brought home, fried in butter and on your plate within 10 minutes. Mushrooms have been slightly disappointing ever since!
Honourable mention should also go to MIL, as I first sampled it aged 12, for her suet loaf. A classic Devonian accompaniment to a roast dinner, which sounds as if it should be appallingly stodgy but is actually beautifully fluffy and the perfect vehicle for gravy.

We call it baked suet! Always served with roast chicken.

@LoveFall

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!

Have a look in The Right Way To Make Jams, by Cyril Grange. You can probably get it from the library if nothing else. There's a relish in there that sounds similar.

A meal that was called meat and thick gravy served with chips, the stew wasn’t a treat but to have it with chips was. It’s had carrots and onions in in and we had tinned peas with it.
I used to request it for my birthday in January. Mum only cooked chips once in a blue moon as deep fat frying was such a faff.
I loved Mums homemade potted beef sandwiches with homegrown lettuce too.

Baked suet I loved that too.

fish and chips
Christmas dinner
pork pie
cheese on toast
instant mash with cheese melted in, eaten with celery (more of an adolescent meal, made by me)
Sunday tea - it was only boiled eggs and soldiers followed by basic sponge cake, but it meant that it was Sunday and later on I'd get to "help" with the crossword
fish pie
jacket potatoes with grated cheese
ham and tomato sandwiches
pilchard on toast
summer pudding

My mums scrambled eggs. I can make okay ish ones but not like my mum.
The same for her toast. My dc also have the love of her toast.

Along with those

My dads curry. He used to use ghee and crush all his own spices. Amazing
Mums goulash or spag bol.

My mum does an amazing Sunday lunch.
My favourite was breast of lamb. It was all crispy in the outside. With roast potatoes, Jersey mids, runner beans, carrots, broccoli, onion sauce and mint sauce. Amazing.

My Dad’s tea time classic, egg in a cup. Mashed hard boiled egg with lots of butter and salt, in a cup obvs! With hot buttered toast. Reminds me of Dad when I make it for my kids.

Home made ribs, with an amazing sauce made from the cupboard which so have never been able to recreate, I’m sure there was marmalade and ketchup in there though!

My Gran's (great Gma) shepherds pie on Mondays, using cooked meat and pots from Sunday. Her amazing macaroni milk pudding with thick skin :)
My Grandma's steamed spotted dick......never been bettered!

Chocolate concrete
Cornflake tart
Cheese and onion flan, school dinner version
Cheese and onion sandwiches
Tomato sandwiches
Mash with loads of grated cheese on top
My grandma’s roast dinners: mum couldn’t cook for toffee so that was one of the few home cooked meals I ever had as a kid
Something my mum called maids of honour, but I don’t think that’s the right name. Basically jam tarts with sponge cake on top. They were lush and we only ever had them at Christmas

This one, @LoveFall ?

My mum was not a good cook. Her cakes and puddings were amazing.
Apple and rhubarb tart. Sponge plain and chocolate. Fruit cakes and barm and tea bracks. Christmas fruit and birthday cakes with marzipan icing. Christmas pudding and simnel cake fir easter.Her dinners except for chips and fish were awful.

Jersey royals and salad from our garden. DMs cooking gave me my love of salad.

I had an unhappy childhood and my Aunty Alice was my saviour and she would make me milky coffee ,which in the 50s wasn't common ,and bacon sandwiches which were white bread fried on one side and the other sandwiched with crisp streaky smoked bacon . It was served with love in her warm kitchen and even now as a 70 year old make milky coffee if I feel the need for comfort .

@MargaretRiver

This one, *@LoveFall* ?

That looks so so close. Thank you so much!❤️❤️❤️

This will sound disgusting to anyone else I'm sure....but we used to have hot sausage rolls straight from the oven, with Heinz oxtail soup poured over the top. It was delicious 😋

@sadpapercourtesan

Cheese and bacon oatcakes with brown sauce

This made me smile fondly

Corned beef hash love it even today but the way I had it growing up.