Food and drink from the past.

Whenever I'm in Ireland I have a small bottle of Club Orange and a packet of Tayto crisps, it takes me straight back to my childhood.

I never drink fizzy orange or buy crisps at any other time

Watching "Back in Time for Dinner" the other night (it was the 50s) brought back lots of memories; pilchards for example, (and one of those tin openers that I could never work, with a sort of claw thing on the end.)

I do like ginger beer too. And I love a steamed pudding, with custard - would never cook it now, but am always tempted if it's on the menu anywhere, especially One that my grandmother made, with golden syrup at the bottom.

I love steamed syrup pudding but would only ever have a spoonful of someone else's now. My brother a retired chef regularly tells me about the lovely things he makes that we used to have as children like steak and kidney pudding and rice pudding- he thinks healthy eating is all rubbish but I don't. I would never eat those things now- he still eats Wagon Wheels too.

Does anyone else remember Jubblies? I used to love those and its only juice and water.

I don't think I eat any of the meals I used to have as a child now I think they were trying to fatten us all up after the war. the worst thing I ever had to eat as a child was boiled beef and carrots with pease pudding. YUK!!

Yes I watched the programme but don't remember it being quite so austere in the kitchen, my father's presence certainly wasn't banned. It was his job to carve the Sunday roast and mine to stir the white sauce for the cauliflower. My mother cooked tripe and onions, and stuffed hearts, meals that many people would baulk at these days, myself included. She made the best ever steak and kidney pie, melt in your mouth pastry. I have never tasted pastry that comes anywhere near as wonderful as hers, and she had a part time job to contend with as well as the home to manage. My father, my brother and myself, all helped with the chores. It was a good grounding for us children for the future.

One of my favourite puddings was lemon meringue pie, which is rarely seen these days.

I got the impression that whoever wrote/produced it had a neat progression in mind from horrible/boring meals to delicious/exciting ones and the programmes are going to follow this. She clearly had to make whatever was prescribed, to the recipes chosen for her, instead of going with what she had available and her own imagination.

Her husband usually does the cooking - so why was he not involved in the process? My father was involved in the kitchen, though not as head chef. He peeled vegetables and washed dishes and ws helpful, he didn't sit in state to be waited on. That was a myth put about by writers, not the reality of ordinary family life. And if she had daughters in their teens, she would have been cooking for eighteen years or so, much of the time under wartime rationing restrictions, so she would be adept at stretching food and making meals palatable.

I was 7 in 1950, the fourth of five children but my Mum was an excellent cook and we never had such unappetising meals as shown in the programme. The Mother hadn't a clue about cooking and at the same age as those two daughters, both my sisters and I could make a dinner, a sponge cake etc. We often had pilchards (I still like them) either on toast or with a salad grown in the garden.

I agree Elegran, the producers have manipulated the progression and it does not reflect what it was really like.

Mashed potatoes, porridge and custard are still my comfort foods.

My dad could and did cook. He certainly wasn't shy of the kitchen. Some of my earliest memories were of him washing pots.

I think that the food served up in the programme said a lot about the lady and her lack of imagination and knowledge - who ever heard of serving cold liver because she didn't have a fridge!! Surely she must have known that it would stand in reasonable condition until the evening.

I can't remember the bread and so much of it!!

It all seemed a bit stereotyped to me.

You are right - I couldn't remember food like that. (I was born 1946) we had a cellar with steps down to it, and the shelves on the side were a sort of larder. But although food wasn't as spicy as it is today, it was full of natural flavours. My grandmother did the cooking and yes, her pastry too was superb.

The woman in the programme didn't cook, though - her husband did the cooking so she had little idea of how to deal with food in general. Oh, that liver...how I hated it. And tripe, and "cow heel" as Nan called it.

I love liver, especially calves liver very lightly cooked - delicious.

I don't eat meat or fish now - haven't for over 30 years, but I do remember Nan insisting on young animals' livers as it didn't have all the tubes and things in it.

It was a bit much to generalise from this mother's lack of culinary skills and imply that liver like shoe leather would be served up, then given to the children at teatime with cold cauli and mash. Her cake making ability was abysmal. We didn't have a fridge in the 50s but jellies would set in the pantry on a cold stone ledge, and the milk and meat stayed cool in there. My mum wasn't much of a cook but she could turn out a variety of pies, stews and puddings. The stuff presented on the programme bore little relation to the meals we were given.

I still like apple pies, rice pudding, mashed potatoes and custard, but only tend to eat things like liver in restaurants, occasionally. I've got rhubarb ready for picking this weekend, so there'll be crumble and custard.

My gran's larder was stuffed full of preserves and there was a meat safe on the wall. I can't really remember any tasty meals from the fifties because my mother was not a good cook although the Sunday roast was always OKish.

I didn't have a sweet tooth so I think apple pie is the only thing I can remember with fondness because unlike DH, I couldn't stand milky sweet things like rice pudding.

The sixties got off to a good start because my mother discovered frozen CHICKEN!!

We have a joke in our family that after months and months of roast chicken on a Sunday we were about to sit down to lunch and my ten year old brother started yelling, 'IT'S BEEF!!!'

He was ecstatic!

Certainly none of the men in my family could cook, and would have been quite taken aback if asked to. My father only started to cook after we had been abroad a few times and seen french men cooking, and italians and spaniards. He was actually very good, and adventurous. Even Ex in the early 80s refused to cook, even though I was working full time! He said that all he would ever do was the odd cooked breakfast (which I didn't eat). He did gradually learn, because I didn't make enough curries for his liking, nor were they hot enough. However if was very much a case of, only if he was in the mood, and if it meant he could greedily eat half a joint of meat before it got to the table.

DBH is a brilliant cook, I got it right the second time around.

I did not think much of the programme, the Father went out to work with a suit and a briefcase. Middle Class, we were, and we had a fridge, a tub washing machine, and a Hoover.
My Father did nothing in the house but my Mother had all 'Mod Cons' available to her. I make jelly for DGS and do not put it in the fridge, just half and half, hot and cold water, or a nice tin of fruit, or even for a special occasion, for me in the 50's, not DGS, a tin of Carnation milk whipped into it.
We did not see her really working very hard did we.

I used to love seeing my mother get out the mincer, attach it to a chair and mince up the leftover Sunday roast to use for Shepherds pie on Monday after school. Spotted Dick was (and still is) my favourite puddind.

We do have sponge/suet puddings regularly, either jam, syrup or spotted dick , also rice puddings. We also have on occasions (not too often), toad in the hole, stew and dumplings, liver and bacon with onion gravy. OH love spam something from his youth , in sandwiches or with egg and homemade chips..

Was it a Spong mincer HildaJ? My mother had one of those. We also had a Prestcold fridge in the 50's which came complete with a lock and key!

I still use my Spong mincer. Excellent for making pork terrine at Christmas.

I remember seeing Keith Floyd in one of his early TV shows mincing some pork singing, 'With a Spong in my Heart'

When I had my first child in 1965 I had two friends all with young babies and when they were a few months old we started visiting each other in turns for lunch. One friend (at our request I must say) always did stew with dumplings and treacle sponge. This was only every three months and didn't do us any harm as we are all now in our 70's and what is more are still all friends.

I've recently rediscovered Dubonnet. It was my first real tipple (in 1969) and still brings back memories.

I seldom cook a "Sunday" roast, which always included roast parsnips and potatoes and sometimes Yorkshire pudding, but I do still enjoy it occasionally. My mother made a very fine fish pie and I quite often make a similar one. My favourite childhood dinners were probably braised steak served with green beans and a baked potato, which I also cook from time to time, and a dish known by me as slurpy chops and called by mother Spanish cutlets – a casserole of lamb cutlets onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers.

So many memories here, from rissoles to lemon meringue pie.
Mum made dad a dish of pasta, melted cheese and tomatoes, that, at the time, I thought looked like sick, so I wouldn't eat it. I would now though!
As mum's family were famers, we ate whatever we could catch, from jugged hare, through pheasants and pigeons to nuts and berries. I remember collecting walnuts to pickle.
Stuffed hearts, liver, savoury ducks... I'm salivating now.
And Mum's curry, which I still miss, with either a pink or blue tin of curry powder, apples, sultanas and left over meat. Not too much rice, as dad was worried about Berrie berrie (sp?)

We also had a Spong mincer, attached to the shelf in the larder. I don't think we had a fridge until I was about 10 but it wasn't a problem.

My gran used to make a lovely lamb stew on the hob but she did liver and bacon in the oven in fat, which made it too greasy. I love liver but tend to have it in restaurants as DH isn't keen.

We also had stuffed hearts (sage and onion stuffing) plus if we had marrow it was always served on toast and covered in a white sauce.

Mum used to make melting moments, rolled in crushed cornflakes, but she worked full time so I guess we only had them at the weekends.