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

I watched both episodes last night on I player (didn't know it was on until then)
I thought it was interesting. And like a pp on page one remember a simplay programme (not 1040s house or supersizers)

When ex dp and I moved in together in 2004 he made a song and dance about buying Vesta meals (I'd never heard of them... I. Think it was his mums idea of gourmet cooking) fucking rank!!!

Can't wait for next week!

The programme I was thinking of was called The family: turn back time. (Thanks Google)

All those saying about Vesta being awful, I think that the texture was suspect.

but thinking after the slop that was being eaten, it may have seemed tasty?

diddl It was just over salted and peppered like the dried foods today. Nothing compares with properly cooked fresh food IMO

Ineed there was a program called Electric Dreams where they did the same thing but with household electricals.

Iremember electric dreams. Pipbin I love all these going back in time programmes. I enjoyed turn back time IIRC That was the one where they bought a row of houses and kept changing them each week It went from 1940's to 80's i thinhk but correct me if im wrong. I also love victorian/edwardian/wartime farm but not the castle one that was really boring

Don't thinkI saw electric dreams.
that's the one mrsschatz but I thought it started earlier than 1940s. I remember them having a nanny at one ppint and the children being taken to sat goodnight to their parents.

Dinosaur Yes it did start earlier, I checked the website it ran from edwardian times to the 70's. Did each house represent a different class.? I seem to remember the "working class" lady had to go and work in the "middle class" house as a housemaid They did another series afterwards withg the same concept but featuring high street shops. It was filmed in shepton mallet.

I think it was meant to reflect the actual families history iyswim but yes all different classes. Didn't see the shop one unfortunately

I was born in '64 and loads of the props and the food were just how I remember it. But we were probably a bit behind the times, being up North! I used to love those Vesta curries, particularly the noodles - they seemed really exotic!

I agree, the mum looks really miserable and is clueless with the cooking. And she barely eats anything - at Newport Pagnell services, she had a whole plate of food left when all the others had finished! But I guess it wouldn't really show how different it all was if she could make it all perfectly.

I got annoyed because she was wearing a mini skirt in 1960!

Yes I did wonder about the accuracy of some of the clothes and props - it seemed like some of the earlier years had stuff from the later years IYSWIM

My friends(older than me) observed that the scene of the 50s man, sitting alone at the table to eat, was inaccurate in that the table didn't have a proper table cloth on it for a meal.

The clothes and hairstyles weren't right - that beehive hair would have looked wrong by the end of the decade.

Jacana that's the thing that struck me the most, though I managed to omit it from my post upthread.

Have stopped watching it - it doesn't seem to have any point, and is not showing how people actually cooked, only how an inept non-cook can't manage.

These ladies also talked of having milk delivered daily to the doorstep and birds pecking through the top to get the cream;placing the weekly grocery order at the grocers written in an order book the shop gave them, it being delivered by a boy on a bike and the butcher delivering, like the old one round here still does. He's got an allotment, hasn't he? So no need to have a potato bag to take to the green grocers for the unwashed, claggy with dirt, potatoes to be tipped into. Veg.were the only staple food items they remembered having to go to buy in the 50s.

When there was rationing, the veg were the only things off ration Jacana Which wasn't made clear in the 50s section. So a good cook (or one who could read and follow a good recipe book ) could get on brilliantly if they had an an allotment!

Anyone else remember Victor Value!! The first supermarket in our town!

yeah, this reading business and access to all the tips published in the papers..what's really annoyed me is that she's so bloody devoid of any imagination she's clueless as to how to use leftovers..and surely she would have learned something from her mum, not just recipes passed on but replicating what she had seen/eaten when she was a child?

With veg off ration, wonder how inner city peeps fared during rationing?

Grrr, this series just isn't working for me.

ppeatfruit spill the beans (see what I did there?) on Victor Value, was it local to you, do you think?

Ah that wasn't cream (although I suppose technically it was) - it was Top of the Milk - great to add a little splash to puds etc. I still miss it.

I think we had the first Tesco's near us, way back when.

Think it is very much a London type based 60s. Not sure the swinging 60s hit Yorkshire quite so quickly!

I think it's quite interesting, but perhaps not many people's reality.

Love how everyone seems to have sugar in their tea!

The 50s was austere, although I remember(born 60s) eating meals & no snacks between meals.

They just couldn't be afforded.

Were a rare treat.

We had a biscuit tin & on the rare occasion it had biscuits in, we didn't help ourselves.

And never more than one!

I think one of the things today is that treats are treated as food.

People eat a packet of crisps/half a dozen biscuits because they are hungry & can't wait & then eat a full meal!

It was the first supermarket quite a while before Tesco (I think) in our town, in North London. I just remembered the name being a funny one last night Jacana

Also my friend who was a cashier (check out girl) working there, being 'kind' to us as we paid for our provisions. There's no way it could happen now!

Yes the woman is surprisingly undomesticated, she did mention her dh does the cooking, maybe her own mum never cooked either (it's possible of course). If she was more imaginative she wouldn't stick to the food diaries though, probably thats why she was chosen .

TheSilveryPussycat I remember dad loving the 'top of the milk' too, not me it made me feel sick, I hated the free milk at school too.

Oh yes, what happened to top of the milk? Is is all homogenised into the rest now?

I remember the milkman and butcher delivering in the late 60's (and the rag and bone man with his horse and cart) and also going to the bakers to buy our bread (they did tiny little Hovis loaves) The Post Office had broken biscuits in big bins at the front to be weighed out.

Ohhh - I remember the top of the milk! My mum used to pour it into a little jug in the fridge, and we took turns to have it on our cereal at breakfast. She hated her milk tasting too creamy, so this skimmed off the creamiest bit, and I suppose she was left with something akin to semi-skimmed.

We had a box that the milk went in, when it was delivered - to keep the birds from pecking through the lids and getting at the cream - my dad made it. We lived down a track from the road, and one of the household jobs was going and collecting the milk from the top of the track (which was as far as the chap from the dairy would come), and to take back the rinsed-out milk bottles for him to collect.

All the dairies had their own bottles too - with their names printed on - but somehow our local dairy had collected bottles from lots of other dairies, and put them into circulation - and at one point, mum started making a list of all the different dairies we saw bottles from. Blimey - the things you had to do for fun before the invention of the internet and TV that was broadcast all day!!