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Back in time for dinner

547 replies

hideandseekpig · 15/03/2015 11:10

Is anyone going to watch this? I'm really torn because the presenter is Giles Coren who I don't like much but the idea is interesting. They are basically getting a family to eat from a different decade each week from 1950s to now

OP posts:
bluebump · 01/04/2015 13:37

Of course I meant chuckling, not chucking!

Butteredparsnips · 01/04/2015 13:41

I laughed at the mother complaining about all the animate objects, but have fond memories of Fred. DM still has the orange and brown flowery biscuit tin. It had cadburys biscuits in originally I think.

I was hoping for Delia's duck in cherry sauce. I still cook that from time to time.

5Foot5 · 01/04/2015 13:57

we had a fondue We still do Grin

That chunky pottery was Hornsea pottery. We used to go to the factory at Hornsea and my Mum got a set from the factory shop. We had it for "best" though.

Also that chopping board, I am sure I know someone who still has one and I just can't think who it is. Probably the PILs.

I can honestly say I only had one Pot Noodle in my life. It must have been around when they first came out as I was still at school. We saw them advertised on TV and I wanted one but my Mum said it was a waste of money and if I wanted one I had to buy it out of my pocket money. I did and I thought it was disgusting so never again!

The Smash advert - they missed out the best line. "And then they smash them all to pieces!"

eddiemairswife · 01/04/2015 14:17

During the three-day week the power cuts were scheduled in 3 hour blocks which alternated each day. the worst were the days when it was from 9 to 12 midnight. On one occasion so many people complained when a TV programme due to end at 9 overran and half the country missed the ending the BBC had to reschedule it.

TooSpotty · 01/04/2015 14:27

We watched this week with DS (12) and were laughing like crazy at the hummous and brown rice etc. Neither of us had even heard of the stuff till we were students, in the 90s, whereas the programme gave him the impression that it was commonly eaten back then. My MiL still doesn't know what it is!

It was really interesting that their favourite meal was the most 'modern' one. I was also slightly Hmm at Giles Coren saying he didn't like the idea of the macrobiotic meal as it was only stuff that isn't particularly unusual now, and looked delicious.

notsogoldenoldie · 01/04/2015 15:32

My friend was so enamoured of the Smash people that she wrote to the manufacturers asking for one. Noticed that the Robinson's Golliwog figures were noticeably absent too...I loved those (or was that the 60's?).

Angel Delight was less of a feature at ours than canned fruit with that thick cream out of a tin (or Ideal Milk) .

I still eat a lot of that sort of stuff. Lunch today was cheese and onion Smash and bangers for dd, and a Spam sandwich for me. I wish I'd had some Rise and Shine to wash it down with. ......

poisonedbypen · 01/04/2015 15:58

70s child here. We had a chip pan but used vegetable oil (very progressive!). Ate a lot of lamb chops (not much meat on them), I think my parents still do. My mother would never have used smash and Pot Noodles were something we had in the 6th form common room in about1979/1980.

TooSpotty · 01/04/2015 16:31

Yes, we had a chip pan with oil, not lard. My mother stopped using it in the early 80s after almost burning the house down and it was oven chips from then on, which must have been brand new inventions at the time.

Our diet through the 70s and 80s was very minced based really, cooked from scratch, with the occasional Crispy Pancake thrown in for the kids. Faggots were a popular dinner too. Liver still featured, but we kids hated it. Nothing remotely exotic. In the late 80s we started having frozen pizza.

Someone upthread said you can't mess up spag bol. My MiL's spag bol is fairly dry mince with a slightly brownish gravy ladled on to spaghetti. So it can be done.

Jacana · 01/04/2015 16:49

I've caught up.

Squeals of recognition at the Wheatsheaf pattern, the sunburst clock, the metal peacock displayed(why on earth did these become so must-have? I put M&D's in the charity shop when I cleared their house back when) and my jaw dropped at the first freezer centre bins....I'd no idea that frozen veg was loose and you scooped it up, tho I dimly remember later a shop where you could scoop flour/sugar/cornflakes/whatever into placcy bags. Just not frozen veg, etc.

That dinner party Giles went to, I was expecting a bottle of Black Tower or Blue Nun or evenWink chianti in a raffia wrapped bottle, given that Package hols were about in the 60s. Oh, and no raffia donkey with panniers? My mum's friend had one of those..

As usual, Rochelle continued to annoySad When she was frying the gammon? Her cooker would have had a grill,so...? And she obviously didn't/doesn't know that snipping cuts into the rind will ensure it fries/lays flat on the grill. And if frying an egg is beyond her, and it obviously was, why didn't she poach the b. things? I've got my nan's egg poacher so must have been a common item even then;I know that brown/red sauces were in her cupboard, so why not put them on the table?

The thing about the tin opener.....come on!Angry

My big laugh, tho, was the playing of Dennis Roussou (sp?) at the party. Very Abigail's PartyGrin

diddl · 01/04/2015 17:03

Oh yes, oil in the chip pan, not lard.

HoraceCope · 01/04/2015 17:48

in fairness to Rochelle, she is Jewish so probably doesn't cook Gammon let alone bacon

iklboo · 01/04/2015 17:54

Poor woman always look so miserable - or on the verge of throwing up.

Butteredparsnips · 01/04/2015 17:58

didn't realise she was Jewish. So why didn't she do chopped liver in 50's week?

ProfYaffle · 01/04/2015 18:11

Toospotty - yy to hummus in the 90's. I was saying to the kids the show seems to be focussing on things that were new and expensive, they took a while to trickle down to Council Estates in the north.

Jacana - there was a bottle of Blue Nun on the side at the dinner party!

I don't remember eating loads of convenience food in the 70s, iirc it was expensive. I remember eating Arctic roll at a friend's house in about 1979 and thinking it was proper posh. We seemed to eat a lot of fairly plain food, chips and egg, sausage and mash, new potatoes and bacon etc.

JuliaDream · 01/04/2015 18:25

I didn't get the crisps thing. Crisps were common place in the 60s. Maybe not all the Monster munch etc, but crisps were not a novelty like the programme made out.

We used to buy crisps in the tuck shop at school in the 60s.

Jacana · 01/04/2015 18:26

So there was blue nun?

WOW!Grin

HoraceCope · 01/04/2015 18:27

i think it was the synthetic flavours of the new fangled crisps that were a novelty?

at school, 1977 my classmates had no idea what salami was,

HoraceCope · 01/04/2015 18:28

think everything was served with potatoes in the 70s. or latterly brown rice/spaghetti

iklboo · 01/04/2015 18:31

It sort of suggests 'most people' had bought their own semi detached houses, had allotments etc. An awful lot of people didn't. When we had power cuts & 3 day weeks there was a lot of beans on toast, egg & chips etc for tea and tinned veg.

Jacana · 01/04/2015 18:36

About '72 I wrote to Walkers complaining about the lack of the twist of blue paper in the pack. I was 12 and into demanding my rightsGrin. I got a box of crisps back, my friends and I munched our way through them and discovered another packet....my friend wrote this timeWink

A complaint to robertsons jams and marmalade about a wasp in some jam yielded some silver shred marmalade, and I'm sure there were other things too.

Ah, those were the days!

ProfYaffle · 01/04/2015 18:47

I agree iklboo.

iklboo · 01/04/2015 19:32

Yeah - not many people in Salford terraced houses popped out to milk the goat. Unless it was a euphemism I'm not aware of Grin

Trills · 01/04/2015 21:49

Half chips half rice!

Jacana · 01/04/2015 22:02

Chips'n'rice yes....what was that all about then?Confused

iklboo · 01/04/2015 22:05

Half n half quite normal up here in the north. Even in a Chinese restaurant / chippy.