We didn't have a TV, so no Delia for us, but even if we had, I doubt my mother would have had much truck with it - learn to cook, when she already could? (She had Opinions about us having cookery lessons at school, too.) We had Mrs Beeton, plus a file collection of magazine articles and supplements - jam was mostly done from a magazine supplement that was years old.
We were on a farm, so I was very well aware that we were supporting British farmers by eating beef, pork, lamb, chicken. I grew up seeing the pigs and cows. Our milk came straight out of the bulk tank. I have an early memory of Mum warming milk on a shelf over the Rayburn then slimming clotted cream off.
We had a large garden with a lot of veg and soft fruit. We had a freezer from early on, and I remember sitting round the kitchen table, topping and tailing blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries for the freezer, not to mention stringing beans and podding peas before they were blanched then frozen. Mary Norwak's A-Z of home freezing featured heavily here. And in summer, "pick a colander of raspberries/strawberries before school" - and again when we got home. Occasionally, Dad would come in with a bucket of field mushrooms if he saw a good patch in the stubble after harvest.
As we had a Rayburn, stews/casseroles with baked spuds featured a lot in winter, along with things like cottage pie, lots of fruit crumbles and so on.
Sunday was always a roast, and the next day would be sweet & sour if pork, or curry if beef, lamb or chicken. Curry came with a selection of side dishes - dessicated coconut, sultanas, wedges of fresh tomato, sliced banana. Spag bol was common midweek meal, containing actual veg, mince and tinned plum tomatoes and ground paprika. Also liver, faggots (they containing offal like lung,) steak & kidney pie (pastry made with half butter, half lard.)
In season, there was pheasant, because the farm has a shooting, and they went out beating, and got paid a brace of pheasants each. I hate drawing a pheasant (removing the guts and gizzard.) We were known to complain, "not pheasant again!" At Christmas, everyone on the farm got vouchers for a local butcher, so that filled the freezer. And one year, after we had got rid of the pigs, we were asked by the police to take three pigs which had been stolen, so couldn't go back to their original farm and they ended up in the freezer, brawn and all. Don't think I've eaten brawn since then. There was always a tongue at Christmas, which was booled, then the scalded skin removed and it was curled up and pressed in an old biscuit tin with a weight on.
Fish featured more often than I liked ' sardines on toast for a Saturday tea. Sometimes we were given trout or mackerel from local fishing friends. Mum liked whitebait, too, tossed in flour then all fried up.
I still don't eat fish. Mum was quite good about stuff like that. You had to try things, but it was soon clear I would not eat fish, and my sister would not eat eggs, so it wasn't forced. We never had broccoli because Mum didn't like it (though lots of purple sprouting,) nor suet puddings, which Dad have liked.
My parents had good parties, which were usually with buffets - slices of cold roast meats, British cheeses, dressed whole salmon, vol au vents, devilled eggs. And puddings. Mum loved making puddings, so there would be fruit fools, meringues with cream and soft fruit, profiteroles, lemon meringue pie, trifle, cheesecake. All home made.
As babies, our first food was the same as Mum & Dad's, whizzed up in the blender bit of the Kenwood Chef that I still have, over 50 years on.
At our best friends', their mum was very into health food, so I remember lots of quiches with wholemeal pastry, cottage cheese on wholemeal toast, and chilli on brown rice, which was mostly mince and onions with chilli powder.
There was an Indian restaurant in town, which we might go to for special things like a birthday. I don't remember a Chinese till well into my teens in the '80s. My first Chinese was in a restaurant in Perth, which must have been about 1983, on our way to Westeross. We rarely went to pubs, but I do remember chicken in a basket on holiday in Devon, where they also had a space invaders machine. My sister had scampi in a basket.
I suspect our diet would have been less varied if we weren't on the farm, because I think we had access to more food than we could have otherwise afforded.