Back in time for dinner

[hideandseekpig]

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

Did anyone actually have a filter coffee machine in the early 80s? Certainly didn't happen round my way.

I remember my parents getting one when I was still a young teenager and since I went to Uni in 1980 that must have been the 1970s. Mind you it was just a jug with a plastic cone that you sat on the top and filter papers to fit in the cone. It didn't have a hot plate or anything sophisticated like that.

Mum got a microwave in 1983.

Oh yes! I remember those cone things and the papers, mum and dad had one. By this time, tho, I was living in that Lunnon place , together with my SanyaMicro and Swanbrand pop pop percolator. And drinking wine from a wine box never remember having the fuss Brandon had, opening it.

I feel quite cheated actually good concept, wrong family, could have been so much more..

How olds the lad btw? Old enough to do a paper round or at least bob-a-job?(for those who don't know, that was the scouts and Cubs payment for doing all sorts, he surely would have been doing that, think you had to be 12/13 for a paper round but really don't know)

Jacana I have developed an irrational hatred for this family. Do you they think they did retakes until the mother made the most ungodly hash up of each piece of food she handled? Are we supposed to see her as some sort of feminist icon for not being able to cook? In my house, my mother dished up 3 cooked meals a day. She did not enjoy cooking but understood a thing or two about nutrition.

The boy is 10 so a little young for a paper round .

That mother has ruined that programme a bit, every week she's given a recipe and manages to ruin it and last nights episode was so predictable . It's like " I work all week and i can't cook, follow a recipe or even be bothered". Couldn't they if found a family who liked cooking especially as it's about food and preparation.

I'm agreeing with all the negatives here. Only thing that's really holding me back from really letting rip is that these are real people who might read this, not some paid actors in a show working from a script

It's been good to look at the peripherals and bring back memories of my parents/grandparents lives, even tho someone way upthread said that 'stuff' supposedly attributed to one decade was actually produced in another, but gosh! Even tho I've started and therefore I'll finish watching the series, the end can't come soon enough for me

I still use plastic cones and paper filters over mugs. Get the cones in French supermarkets.

I can't remember a Teasmade being mentioned. I had one in the early 80's: was definitely a "thing" then...in fact I still have it, gathering dust.

I'm starting to warm to Rochelle, actually. She was almost human last night.

What I really don't get is the apparent lack of very basic knowledge and understanding: how the jeff does it take two and a half hours to cook a roast chicken meal?

I bought a filter coffee machine for my parents, when I started my nurse training in 1983. Up until then, they had used a stove-top percolator. I bought myself one last year, just for the nostalgia of hearing it 'perking'.

Dh remembers buying his first microwave, in the mid 80s, I think - and it cost £400!!

StayingSam My brother bought us a microwave for our wedding in 1987 and they were a luxury item. It did last a long time though The ones we have had since were crap

I honestly think that Rochelle just isn't used to being in the kitchen, which is why the researchers must have been delighted when they found her. I don't think they're making a point about feminisim - they're just trying to make a watchable TV show.

I'm still using my Sanyo it's going to be baking a potato for me in a bit. They built things to last back then

And no, they didn't mention the Teasmade. Over the years I've had three, gave my last one away last year when I moved from a house to a bungalow. Didn't think I'd need it. Got that wrong.

I have decided that Rochelle is just not a very enthusiastic person - she's like a wet fish in most situations. And Brandon, though more lively, is clearly just as useless in the kitchen. He must have opened wine boxes in the 80's - I did and he's older than me FFS so why did he struggle? Also wondered why Rochelle wasn't happy with the TV dinners night - I thought that might cheer her up as she didn't have to cook, but she still had that miserable face on.

You lot are MEAN. I like the family.

Re the coffee machine etc, they're clearly making the family early adopters of every new technology that comes along. It took a few more years for things like microwaves to spread to the majority of the population. It's like making a documentary about the 2010's and giving the family a 3d printer to play with in 2015.

I was pleased to see the corned beef hash, that was the sort of food my Nan cooked from the 1950's right through to the 1990s!

I think she is just someone who's natural facial expression doesn't look very cheery or happy.

corn beef went out of fashion by some which I think was to do with Argentina, but I cant remember.

i wish people wouldnt continuously moan about this family.

Viva Argentina, their beef and even the stuff they put in tins. Love the country and their corned beef's ok too

With all the fashion changes, I see that they're still driving around in that car? Actually, Brandon's driving it. Bout time Rochelle's got behind the wheel of sommat too.

Moans about the family seem to be pretty well confined to their lack of prowess in the kitchen and if Rochelle seems to be particularly discontented when she's there, seems to me to be fair comment.

YY chocolate life I have a vague recollection about corned beef and the Falklands war. Either it became less available, or you deliberately bought Brazillian rather than Argentinian corned beef, in a similar way that you avoided South African fruit due to Apartheid.

Our corned beef hash as we called it was slightly different as we made it in a pan like stew and we still have it today a few times during winter. Not sure why it is considered unfashionable now. Maybe because it is cheap so considered nasty, but it is 100% beef apart from salt and preservatives.

Iwas born in 1973 so there were lots of my young childhood memories in the 1980s show. My dad was a miner so I remember the hardship well, such as the desperate struggles to keep food on the table. We probably did better than most because my mum worked a bit and I think grandparents helped out too. We got food parcels from the German mining unions and donations from the EU butter mountain, which was mentioned on the news the other day over something to do with EU quotas being abolished(?).

Probably because of the impact on finances due to the strike, we didnt get a microwave until a bit later on, but it cost something like 350 pounds . I was surprised to see the coffee maker and don't remember any of my friends or family having one in the 80s. We never had pizza delivery then either - takeaways for us, which were very occasional treats, were fish and chips or Chinese.

I remember the introduction of McDonalds as we had trivial pursuit in the early/mid 80s and there was a question about McDonalds and we had never heard of them . But I think the first time I went was for my birthday when I was about 14, so 1987.

I still like the family and thought Rochelle displayed a good sense of humour in the 1980s show but Ill still say they all need a masterclass in basic tin openers and knife usage (on several occasions they were using a breadknife to cut vegetables etc).

Ah, yes-the butter mountain. And the wine lake! My memory must be failing as I thought that was the 70's. I get the impression from these programmes that there was a snobbishness starting to develop around food, which seems to prevail nowadays. I regularly use corned beef and spam in cooking, together with Vesta meals when I can get them and fruit etc from a tin, supplemented by baked spuds (from the micro, obviously....).

When did we start to get so bloody precious around food?

Definitely the 80s when the food mountains started being distributed to 'the needy'. I remember my nan ran a community centre and she got a load of butter and tinned meat to distribute to the pensioners. I think it then started being sold, I started 6th form in 1988 and remember a fire exit had 'This Door is Alarmed' written on it and someone scrawled underneath 'at the price of EU butter'.

Less annoying in the 1980s but were they told to cook that chicken dinner solely in the microwave ? I don't remember Vienneta being thought of as being particularly special. We ate loads of it. Please give them a decent set of chopping knives for the next programme.

Viennetta was for birthdays and special occasions only in our house. And you got 3.5 ridges each, watched like a hawk by everyone else. The one the other night looked smaller to me. No takeaways other than very occasional fish and chips. And my mother tried to cook absolutely everything in the microwave for the first couple of years we had one (mid to late 80s). I still have the recipe book that came with it - instructions on how to cook your whole Christmas dinner in one!

seems crazy to cook a christmas dinner in the microwave!

I still have a St Michael microwave cookbook from the 80s. We did experiment a lot with it and things did take a long time to cook because you couldn't do everything at once. There very much was a sense of this being the new way of cooking and even the thought that conventional ovens might become obsolete. Lots of special dishes were available so you could brown bacon etc.

Chicken "roasted" in the microwave is vile. You couldn't season it before cooking and it ended up tough, anyway.