Vienetta was considered a treat, but none of us actually liked it much, my mum just thought it was posh. She was very much wanting to be seen as keeping up with the Jones’s so would bring the latest must have home.
Other than Friday night fish and chips and maybe twice a year Kentucky Fried Chicken we never had takeaways. My DF would regularly get free curry’s from a lot of the Indian restaurants he supplied meat too but it was his and mums treat not ours. I only remember eating out once for their anniversary when I was about 9yo. I was 19 the first time I had pizza and even older than that before I had Chinese.
We were quite lucky as DF was a butcher who grew up in extreme poverty, but he was an amazing cook and could turn even the most cheapest cuts of meat and strag ends into something spectacular. There was no such thing as waste, even left overs were turned into something new and always had a Sunday roast.
We grew up poor, quite often no money for basics including heating, but because both my parents grew up in poverty to the point my DF and his siblings had to beg for food to survive, they made sure that we always had food at home, it’s the reason my DF became a butcher, my Nan sent him off to be a butchers boy at age 9, it meant he’d always come home with off cuts of meat and bones to make stews and broths with.