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

That fireplace is v.v.familiar! And we had G-Plan furniture, too, but I think our lampshades were slot together plastic ones. Yellow.

Exactly Davro. I was born in 1959, and my mother cooked out of her Good Housekeeping cookbook from 1952 all through the 1960s, along with a few cakes out of a WI cookbook. That was it. Elizabeth David passed our family by totally. We did have one exotic - curry - using curry powder & beef mince, with sultanas in. Once mum accidentally bought the hot curry powder so until the tub was used up we had horribly hot curries.

The totally wrong fashions annoyed me too, but I like the family: they are genuinely nice and funny and seem very close. I think Mrs just has a face that looks fed up, unless she's smiling when she looks lovely. I hope she realises how she stops at the end of this and starts to walk tall.

We still have a fireplace like that in our front room. People suggested we rip it out . Why would you do that? We have a nice open fire in winter instead.
As for the farm programmes, Ruth Goodman is very experienced in living history and has got into the mindset of the eras she does. If you get used to having 19th century facilities and try to think like a Victorian for example it becomes second nature. You just know how to keep things, use up leftovers etc. If they gave the mum a month or so to practice before filming began she would have cracked the 1950's food. I believe the TV producers for these "put modern families in the past" programes don't want people who know what they're doing because it is not as entertaining to viewers.

I caught up with the first one last night, so very late to this party, but I agree that the mum was a hopeless cook. Lots of shouting at the telly chez moi. Couldn't believe that she served cold liver - as everyone's said upthread, at least warm it through with some gravy, or make bubble & squeak and fry it up!

I knew they'd be making a fuss about offal, though, they always do in these progs about 'the olden days'. Mince and potatoes was a regular meal when I was growing up in the 60’s, and if there was kidney in it, that was a special treat! Kidneys came from the butcher, encased in their little swaddling of fat, which you had to peel off. We also ate stuffed hearts and they were bloody delicious.

For an educated pair, a teacher and a lecturer - at least in their late 40's/early 50's? - I thought the mum and dad were worryingly clueless, or pretended to be.

We had john Lennon caps, hippy bells and we used to go to carnaby street, I remember a shop called Gear and we had clothes from Kids in Gear. Lime green, cord, bell bottom trousers with a button up panel at the front, not a zip!!!! Tie dye hot pants with criss cross laces, "wet look" clogs. I now realise that we were considered quite bohemian, my parents were in CND.
Does anyone else remember fighting to get the pork chop with the kidney in it?!

I still have my hippy bell, though not the leather thong it hung from.

Am still an old hippy

totally agree Dr.

I do love these sort of social history programmes. Nice and easy to watch and not offensive.

I remember my mum making me liver in the late 60s. I did not like it and I hate kidneys. I thought they were mushrooms when they were in a casserole. Apart from that my mum's food was good but this was the late 60s onwards not the 50s and they were reasonably well off.

Davros ...i used to love pork chops with the bit of kidney on it. Why don't they sell them like that now ?

Davros, your family sounds really cool!

I don't think any of those things hit our northern outpost until the 70's and the paper lightshades were still all the rage in the early 80's

We had leather liver and onions for school dinner. Steak and kidney pie/pud and brains at home. Yuck. I have never liked offal!

Oh God you just reminded me Davros our parents were CND too we went were dragged on the marches as little ones fgs.

And dsis and I saved our bday and xmas money and bought ourselves mini skirts in Carnaby St.; I had a bright orange corduroy one with a low slung cord black belt and a tight black sleeveless polo top. (I was sooo proud of that) with black tights and patent leather heeled pointed shoes.

Dh considered our family bohemian and exotic, too

We also ironed our hair to look Twiggy

I don't think pork chops with kidney are allowed to be sold anymore, but I can't remember why.

I remember pork chops with kidneys! If we got one, we'd cut it out and give it to dad, who would end up with all our kidneys.

I thought the kidneys are sold with the steak and kidney mix in butchers?

I still buy pork chops with the kidney when I go to visit my parents. Trad butcher, in Northern parts. Unfortunately the teachings of the divine John Shuttleworth (’Shopkeepers in the North are nice/they ask after your kids and wife') don't hold good, as they're a bit surly. But I'm prepared to endure that for the sake of the kidneys

Bring back tripe and onions! Can't be 'authentic' without tripe and onions. Cooked in milk.

So, for my very own 50s family, bit like the tele lot? Father a white collar worker but the days of having 'help' gone -the last war saw to that- but exposure to other cooking from other cultures there? Kedgeree anyone?

And, my own 50s family, like the tele lot, had the input of columns in mags..my own had a pic of our home in people's friend, and there were cookery books, another growing market. I'm thinking marguerite Patton etc.

50s also had the arrival of the WIndrush and the tastebuds wake up call.

I'm reading that already the tele team have got things wrong, shan't be watching the rest. Sorry.

Oh shame Jacana Interesting about the days of having 'help'. There was an odd snobbishness in those days; I remember women saying "oh I couldn't boil an egg". My dgran said it and what it meant was that they had had a cook (or a poor little maid of all work) so wouldn't be demeaned by actually COOKING anything. It could be why the mum in the show's mother hadn't cooked.

Also there are people (even now) without imagination, the intelligence, or confidence to read cookbooks and actually follow recipes properly. Elizabeth David was read by a minority.

I also remember a recent TV show about the people who were among the first to go fly "abroad" in the 50s and 60s and all they said about the food in Spain was "yeuch it was so oily". It's still 'tea and fish and chips like muvver makes it' in some places in Spain.

DH and I both went on holiday "abroad" in the 60s. We went to Ibiza (DH Majorca) as my dad had worked there (in the building industry, probably helped destroy the place!) When my dad first went there, there was only one hotel on the whole island! He took us there because he thought it was so beautiful (it was/is). Having said that, despite foreign travel, neither DH or I remember ever eating pasta at home during the 60s or 70s except Heinz out of a tin. Our kitchen was an odd mixture of modern with Hygena type wall cupboards but very old fashioned built in floor cupboards and a big boiler in the middle, heaped with drying or airing underwear! My older sister was a skinhead towards the end of the 60s, just in terms of clothes and music which were brilliant! Oh, I've just remembered the badges we had that said "Forget Oxfam, Feed Twiggy"!!!

Poor Twiggy she was naturally that shape! We were lucky because dm used to cook Jewish dishes; dad was Jewish (we weren't bought up as Jewish though) so she cooked really well and we ate unusual stuff like cholent and had that lovely plaited bread challah! He cooked once a year; a turkey curry at Christmas! It was nice!

I love shows like this! I loved the one years ago - was it called the 1900's house? Where they lived from decade to decade too.

70s this week. My word but this family are being edited / portrayed as a right bunch of clueless pampered wallies. The parents lived through the 70s apparently - but wife can't cope with a can opener, can't cook chips etc. I really hope it's unfair editing.

Oh the meal from Delia!

Cottage pie isn't really that hard is it?

i remember the cod in sauce, but we would have had potatoes & I think frozen peas.

smash;no!

The camping stove would only have been any good for tins, wouldn't it?

We had a gas cooker, but I remember playing cards/board games as a family by candlelight.

I was a teenager in the 1970s and recognised the dinner service. I remember the decor, clothes and music vividly.