Seventies Christmas

[Doone22]

I'm so into doing a seventies Christmas this year. Cheese and pineapple hedgehog obviously, prawn cocktails, advocaat. What would be on your seventies Christmas menu?

There's one thing that really used to say 'Christmas' and nobody's mentioned so far. You can still get them, but they are a pathetic shadow of their former selves.

Quality Street.

Iceland was called Bejam in the 70's.

A rock hard avocado with prawns in it. Everyone looking at one another saying ‘Is it supposed to be like this?’.

Melon balls, or melon with ginger sprinkled on it and a glacé cherry

Prawn cocktail

Turkey, sausage meat stuffed, cransberry sace from a jar, roast potatoes, potato croquettes, brussels, carrots, peas

Trifle and Christmas pudding (with a wrapped coin in it) and brandy butter

Sweets included liqueur chocolates and a tin of Quality Street

Portions were much smaller, not sure how authentic you want to be?

Petticoat tails shortbread in a tin. I also made shortbread when I was doing Food and Nutrition O Level ('71) and Home Ec A level (73). I made a lovely Christmas cake too with intricate royal icing.

M and S Chunky Chicken is the one

Potato croquettes. Yes, I loved them!

Oh and Christmas cake with rock hard icing that would break your teeth, complete with plastic figures of santa and children sledging stuck in at a drunken angle

I want some ‘70s Quality Street and some ‘70s Matchmakers now.

You've got to make snowballs which is advocaat, lemonade and an optional dash of lime cordial. Best milkshake ever. Port and lemon (a measure of ruby port topped up with lemonade) was the preferred tipple of many women in the 70's and was bloody lovely. Not forgetting a bottle of cherry and/or apricot brandy as standard. And definitely not forgetting Babycham.

Food wise, people didn't tend to have very much in the way of "nibbles" and Christmas party food wasn't really a thing, not like it is now. Unless you were invited to "Abigail's Party". But mum always made sausage rolls and boiled a big joint of gammon as well as making Christmas cake, Christmas puddings and a sherry trifle. She would also do tinned shrimps on generously buttered toast and cut into fingers which was simple and delicious. We always had a bowl of nuts that Dad was in charge of cracking. Dates in boxes and dried figs on the sideboard along with a big bowl of Satsumas, a box of Turkish Delight and orange & lemon slices.

Still do a lot of this to be honest including the Christmas cake with plastic figures (brought out every year), the dates, the advocaat, the sherry, the marzipan fruits and the liqueur chocolates!

Don’t forget the maraschino cherry on a cocktail stick in that Snowball.

Kick it all off pre lunch drinks with a brandy and babycham with a cherry on a cocktail stick 🍹 together with some salted peanuts for nibbles. Invite all the neighbours and make sure you include that slightly creepy man in his 50s who looks a bit too long at the women’s boobs.

then it’s got to be prawns served in individual mini trifle glasses on a bed of floppy lettuce and smothered in pink sauce full of e numbers

then your turkey and all the trimmings obvs. Try to cook the spouts and veg to oblivion though.

Xmas pud n brandy butter.

and then out come the ashtrays and everyone lights up. 🚬 with a Nescafé while the queens speech is on.

happy days 🎄 🦃

We didn’t have tiny portions. My mum used to cook enough to feed an army. Always enough for turkey curry and chips or cold turkey and bubble and squeak on Boxing Day too.

Good point. I always wanted to eat a whole jar of those as a child!

Dm bought me a jar one Christmas!

Best Christmas present ever!

Oh yes, of course it was.

Yes I have to pick up on the trifle. People these days just do trifle so wrong, too fancy, too 'light'.

My mum used to do swiss roll for the sponge with jelly poured over. Then that would set

Then blancmange poured over that, then that would be left to set

Then solid custard poured over that, then that would be left to set

Then fancy squirty cream on top

That is what I call a trifle. No fruit, no thank you.

Watch all of the episodes of Fanny Cradock cooks for Christmas from 1975.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p05jvnwl

And I see plenty of mention of turkey in these posts, I didnt know anyone who had turkey, we had capon and so did everyone I knew (if I knew what they were eating). We couldnt afford turkey, I dont remember people even talking about turkey.

RIP capons.

Duchess potatoes.
A soda syphon with a pineapple shaped ice bucket on the sideboard. Or a drinks globe!
If you’re in the north, some Mather’s black beer with lemonade to make a Sheffield Stout(think it’s discontinued though, you’d have to improvise).
Paper chains on the ceiling.
Dont forget some inexplicably blue coloured bitter lemon that will probably not get drunk, but ‘just in case’.
Really sweet sherry served in teeny sherry glasses.
Paxo made with boiling water.

Our Bejam became a Keymarkets in the 80s before I think then being Iceland. Iceland bought out Bejam I think

This sounds like my normal Christmas offerings, I just do what my mum did when I was a child (of the 70’s) and add whatever takes my fancy.

Advocaat, lemonade, lime cordial and cocktail cherries for snowballs.
Vol au vents with leftover turkey, make a white sauce and add a chicken oxo cube and stir well on the heat until it thickens. You can buy the cases frozen or make your own from puff pastry.

Dates stuffed with marzipan & dipped in chocolate, medjool are best.

Cinzano, Martini Bianco and Babycham, though it tastes nothing like it used too :(

Sausage rolls, sausages on sticks, peanuts, piccalilli, finger food in general the beiger the better! Definitely a prawn ring.

Jelly fruits, chocolate liqueurs and sugared almonds and mice.

Nuts you need to shell, Brazil, Walnuts and hazelnuts. Buy at least 4 nutcrackers if you do this and expect lots of swearing.

Spot on!