what was your mums SNAZZIEST recipe when you were little

[FluffyMummy123]

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melon had powdered ginger sprinkled on it, no of your fancy 'melon boats'

Gran's showstopper was homemade lemon meringue pie (considered real nouveau cuisine in Devon in the early 80s)

Would have been great if the woman actually had cooking ability.

The homemade pastry was like concrete
Lemon filling was the colour of a builder's high viz jacket (what the hell was IN that)
Meringue topping about 2 feet high in my memory and all glazed an burnished on the outside, disgusting runny gloop when you cut into it.

Dinosaur - we also used to have 'goldfish in aspic', which was tinned mandarin bits in orange jelly. Did your mums make jelly then whip in milk, so it went bubbly and opaque? I think that was all you did to it.

Kitty I assume it was like my Mum's lemon meringue and made with a packet mix with a little capsule in it?

My Mum did two weird things although this was 80s rather than 70s. She got a microwave and used to cook all the veg in it, one after another, then leave them in their cooking water and stick them on the table with a draining spoon. Then she would reheat any veg left from the previous day using the same method and so on and on. So we might end up with 3 day old cabbage that had been remicrowaved every day. Because she was also a believer in the saying that "if there is nothing left you haven't made enough".

And she still makes gravy without flour so it is essentially stock rather than gravy. ie just meat juices made to go further with water so quite pale in colour esp if poultry stock but with no fat removed (or mixed into the flour obviously) but just floating on the top. DH is well unimpressed having been bought up on bisto that you can stand the spoon up in.

I'd completely forgotten about that capsule in the packet, so satisfying when it burst in a little explosion of fake lemon

My Mum used to subscribe to a weekly cookery magazine called Supercook. Every week we would have really Snazzy things which generally I hated. She still makes something called Javanese Pork which still can't stand as it contains warm celery ...yak yak yak.

She did used to make a fab lemon meringue though

Beef bourguignon - we called it beef bogeyman. I'm sure she must have used substituted something for the red wine though. I don't remember wine appearing in the household until the early 80s.

Yes - it was a packet mix, was actually really saitisfying to stir, but was the hottest thing known to man and lethal if you spilled it in yourself!

Did you lemon meringue turn out to be almost luminous yello, or is that just me thinking that!

And bloody hell my gran used to make gravy like that - literally just stock. Looked like you were pouring weak black tea all over your roast dinner. We only had proper (ie thickened) gravy at Christmas

Oh god apologies for all the typos!

Mum used to use the left over chicken from the sunday roast put natural yoghurt over it with curry powder mixed in. Add broccoli and bake for 30 minutes wierd but quite tasty.

Yes lemon meringue included mucho fake yellow colouring. I actually quite liked it though, apart from my Mum's pastry being half an inch thick.

Pastry base. Next layer jam. Next layer custard.(So far so good) And ruin it with a liberal shaking of dessicated coconut. It makes my throat close up just thinking about it.

Oh, and we had the jelly mixed with carnation milk and whipped up too. We called it fluff . Much to our amusement!

my mum still makes a very bright orange lasagne out of packet mixes

sadly it is her best meal

It was definitely hi viz lemon filling.

We had the cheeseless cheesecake too, I thought they were delicious.

Ooh gran's homemade trifles. Trifle sponges. Jelly. Birds custard. Instant whip. Covered in hundreds and thousands. Christ knows how old I was when I realised trifle should have a bit of fruit and real cream in it. Probably the same age as when I realised cooked carrots should have a bit of crunch and cooked cabbage should still be green.

yes, I think I had a similar epiphany when I was about 12 so I got a paper round and bought brown bread and houmous.

Stepmother made a Birds trifle for sundays..remember dream topping was used alot on tinned 'cocktail' fruit

what was dream topping made from?