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Original poster

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:
Titsalinabumsquash · 04/04/2015 12:17

I think she's just someone who doesn't enjoy cooking or being in the kitchen and it comes across in her skills/competence in the show.

I cook a lot better when I'm enjoying it compared to when I'm doing it because it needs doing iyswim.

ppeatfruit · 04/04/2015 12:26

I don't know, how old does anyone reckon she is, in her late 40s? It depends on the school. In the 50s and early 60s we were taught the lot (only the girls though Grin) There was a specific house bought by the council in which we were taught cleaning, making beds etc. and we had proper domestic science classes. Cooking from scratch.

When our L.O.s were at sec. school in the early 90s there was nothing, well something called food technology, which involved taking tinned ingredients to school and , if they were lucky, putting together a pizza. Quite ridiculous. maybe someone of Rochelle's age will let us know Grin.

WyldChyld · 04/04/2015 12:45

I'm also finding Rochelle irritating! Damnit, woman, I don't know anyone that bad in the kitchen and my granny won awards for inedible food! Plus she is miserable - I just want her to stop whingeing and either get on with it or not take part. I'd have killed for a chance at this!

HoraceCope · 04/04/2015 12:46

we did cooking at school, girls only, and I am 49. perhaps she is younger. my friend whose mother couldnt cook, also did cooking. and my friend sitll cant cook. her dh does the cooking
i think it is a skill handed down through the generations

Fugacity · 04/04/2015 13:52

I am 50 and had Home Economics at school. We learnt how to make the standard dishes of the day with all the correct techniques. I still do as I was taught :)

My mum was a good cook but had a very narrow repertoire. There was not the same range of ingredients in the 70s, so it was always seasonal produce or tins.

She was a super fast chipper - hold potato in one hand and knife in the other, and fire the chips straight into the boiling fat. I can only remember one chip pan fire but we all knew what to do thanks to Public Information commercials :)

ppeatfruit · 04/04/2015 13:52

Yes true Horace we taught our 3 dcs to cook properly and dd1's friends at uni were very impressed that she could cook (which surprised me). They are very happy that they're able to cook, and one is a boy.

I suppose it's if you WANT to do something then you will, if you see it as a badge of women's submissiveness then you won't want to Grin.

LMLytton · 04/04/2015 14:43

Can openers: I still have no idea how to use any kind of can opener and 'did a Rochelle' the first time I needed to open one at Uni because we had only ever had an electric can opener.

Chip pans: mum always used a proper chip pan with oil, but I have never and would never dare do chips in a pan. Too scared. Obviously the public information films made a deep impression. The AIDS tombstone made a similar impression in an entirely unrelated area... Wink

KenDoddsDadsDog · 04/04/2015 14:46

I can't do can openers - have an electric one !

Jacana · 04/04/2015 14:52

So who fed the children when they were young then? I'm imagining dad gave them breakfast and then they sat there,with their mouths open like little chicks,waiting for him to come back to the lovenest with a worm or two, which he chopped up into little bits with the bread knife, obv.

HollyJollyDillydolly · 04/04/2015 15:07

Only just realised the title is to do with going back in time Easter Shock I'm so dense sometimes.

ppeatfruit · 04/04/2015 15:40

Well in the 90s it was all pre prepared if you wanted it to be Jacana Rochelle probably haunts M&S and Waitrose prepared food aisles which are extensive aren't they? With a couple of packs of cereal and a loaf then the dcs are fed Easter Grin

SecretSquirrels · 04/04/2015 15:41

Just found this thread!
I was born in 1958 so grew up in the sixties and was a teenager in the 70s. Our house had a lot of orange Grin.

The first time I ever went out to a restaurant was in 1976 when I met DH. We had prawn cocktail, steak and chips and my first ever taste of wine, a bottle of Mateus Rose.
Fugacity Yes I learned to cook at school. There was a "flat" in the cookery department where we were allowed in turn, to spend the day preparing a meal to be served to whichever unfortunate teacher we invited.

Just got a glimpse of the 1980s and they have my old kitchen. I decorated my first ever kitchen in bright red and white, with Habitat wallpaper.

Jacana · 04/04/2015 15:41

Good play on words, isn't it? Smile

Jacana · 04/04/2015 15:47

She'll be fine when we get to the 80s and she has a microGrin

ppeatfruit · 04/04/2015 15:56

Anyone remember stuffed avocadoes? the height of sophistication in restaurants in the 70s. Plus prawn cocktails Secretsquirrels of course sometimes stuffed into avoes! Oh yes and dh loved steaks that's when I knew I was basically a veggie too Grin.

outtolunchagain · 04/04/2015 16:05

Rochelle was fine with pasta and bolognese , I suspect she can cook a few dishes and I doubt the children starved however its just not her forte

Why is is such a heinous crime for a woman not to be able to cook . I think she has quite a successful career in RL and her children seem lovely .

Surely the point is to show how women were chained to the kitchen even if their husband would have been the better cook .

mistymeanour · 04/04/2015 16:43

It's for entertainment really so the BBC probably deliberately chose her as a bad cook. They are also very selective with the menus they choose. Convience foods were very expensive to use for a whole family - if we had any it was a big treat.Hmm My mum could only afford to cook from scratch for our family of 7. Most of my friends had frozen beefburgers and the like maybe once or twice a week - not all the time. My granny used tinned vegetables and potatoes - they were foul.

We had a lard filled chip pan - yuck! very jealous of my BFF whose mum used Spry Crisp and Dry (vegetable oil). Thought the kitchen was really authentic - I used to get every infection going (measles, scarlet fever etc) and I used to get dizzy and hallucinate with all the clashing patterns (my house have always been painted white/neutral).

Jacana · 04/04/2015 16:46

out, didn't I read that she does recall and reminiscence classes (r&r) with the elderly? Appols if I've got this wrong Confused. I took group sessions with this client group and the 'old-fashioned' kitchen stuff was in my box of goodies to promote sharing experiences of life back when. And we cooked bloody fairy cakes and water iced them too.

Wtf did they volunteer for this? Guesses anyone ?

MrsJacksonAvery · 04/04/2015 17:11

Just googled and according to a Telegraph article, Rochelle is 52 and Brandon 53. Funny how nobody seems to be commenting on the fact that Brandon couldn't work the tin opener either when she asked him to help.

I actually really like Rochelle and particularly like the relationships between the children and parents - they seem like a lovely family.

Jacana · 04/04/2015 17:35

mrsj, in truth ive held back from remarking how neither of them could fathom out how the openers worked...for the first, think leverage, for the second it's just latch on and twist? Shock

Bet the boy could have worked them out in a trice.

Lovely children, pity about the parents..

CornChips · 04/04/2015 18:35

I really like them all too. Honestly.... I think it is really unkind to comment about her 'miserable' face, but I may be sensitive as I have a face that always looks pissed off or grumpy and I can't help it. It is particularly bad when I am concentrating. (In fact, in my 20s I actually had a boss comment alot that he 'did not like my face'. This was not in the Uk though... doubt you'd get away with it nowadays).

I think the interactions between the parents and children show a warm, close, mutually loving relationship.

I'd love to do a show like this. My idea of heaven.

Vitamints · 05/04/2015 01:19

Did anyone notice Giles Coren basically just reciting a bit from this 2007 article verbatim? I was trying to find out where he got the idea that Golden Wonder was a Japanese company Confused

Pipbin · 05/04/2015 08:01

Oh. I didn't question that Golden Wonder wasn't Japanese after he said it.
That's very poor. I'm sure a lot of people will know better and have picked up on it.

Bunbaker · 05/04/2015 08:16

"Rochelle is 52 and Brandon 53"

In which case there is no excuse not knowing how a manual tin opener works. I am three years older than Brandon and there was no other type of tin opener around when I was young. And at 52 Rochelle would have had home economics lessons at school. She would have left school in 1981 at the latest.

Halsall · 05/04/2015 11:10

Bunbaker, I'm slightly older than the mum and dad too, and I also know how to use one of the tin-openers. So does DH. My parents (probably a bit older than the parents of my contemporaries) were both in the RAF in the war and I grew up knowing all about the war, rationing, and wartime/50's cookery, because they talked about it, and it was a vivid recent memory. I also did Home Economics at school.

I agree that Rochelle and Brandon, despite both being in the teaching sector, and therefore intelligent and educated people, do seem pretty useless.

Maybe they just chose people who aren't practical and clued-up. As many have pointed out, it would make very boring telly if she consistently served up delicious, savoury concoctions magicked out of cold liver and cabbage, without so much as turning a hair Grin