Delicious!

I think I want to go back to before they discovered garlic. And strong spices. And canned chopped tomatos. And all this fancy foreign muck

Our mum was a very good cook and able to turn her hand to anything she made some amazing meals from vertually nothing sometimes,we always had a Sunday Roast and any left overs where used on Monday to make Bubble & Squeak served with mushy peas made with a little tablet dropped into the dried peas overnight.
We where lucky as our dad worked on the docks at Liverpool and all manner of tinned stuffs found their way to the dockers when a case accidently broke open.
I remember my dad bringing us oranges and bananas from a ship given to him by the cook off the ship we really did well in the mid 50's when things where still in short supply.

I was born in 1955, grew up in the country. We had a large garden & grew lots of fruit & veg. Mum was a reasonable cook also she baked cakes, pis & biscuits. We ate meat every day or fish if Dad had been fishing.

Things I hated were tripe & onions, corned beef & tongue. I can't eat fat on meat although I cook meat with fat on it (keeps it moist).

Mum taught me to cook, she became more adventurous after Dad bought her the Cordon Blue Cookery Course. I miss cooking for a family now I'm on my own but I still conjure up tasty meals. I do try to stick to fruit & veg in season & as local as possible

I was brought up in the 50’s. My mother worked full time, quite unusual in those day, she was a marvellous cook. Remember home made steak pie with ruff puff pastry. My favourite was tripe cooked in milk, butter and parsley with a plate of creamy mashed potatoes on the side!

My husband hated tongue apparently it was one of his grandmother's specialties.

I was only laughing with a friend the other day we were in a food hall and on the cooked meats they had this 'pressed bacon' can't remember what 'posh' name they gave it. Reminded me of when my grandmother cooked a piece of bacon As soon as it was cooked it would be kind of chopped up and put in a basin with a saucer placed on top then a weight or a brick. Left in the pantry overnight then turned out of the bowl and sliced. I hated it and that was just like the meat we saw.

I hated Tuesdays when I was in school as the fish man came around and my mother always bought cod steaks and they had that big roundish bone with three spikes in the middle. Funny how you seemed to have the same food on the same day most weeks. I eat of lot of fish now but hated those cod steaks. I also hated spring cabbage I think due to the amount of bicarb that was put in it to keep it green!!

My Dad would eat brawn , sweetbread all those kind of things and was it sheep's brains on toast? ugh!! Nothing was wasted.

My Mum used to make delicious soup from the chicken carcass. Pea or lentil soup from the stock after a piece of ham was boiled.

Reading Sara 65 also reminded me of the things that were eaten with bread and butter- like Sunday tea, ham salad and bread and butter followed by tin fruit and cream and bread and butter. Bread and butter with Fish and chops was ok as you could have a wonderful chip butty. Suppose the bread and butter was to fill you up?

We never had take aways and never went hungry so have a lot to be thankful for.

My mum was and, at the age of 91, still is a brilliant cook. She cooked what so many others are remembering - roast on Sundays, minced leftovers on Tuesday(maybe with a bit of curry powder & some carrots & a sultana or 2!) then beef or chicken stews with dumplings which I loved & still do, and her amazing steak and kidney pudding. I tried to replicate the latter and also her fabulous oxtail stew but somehow it never tasted anywhere near as good as mum's. She didn't like me in the kitchen "interfering" so I learnt my cooking from a Marguerite Patten book as a student.

I was a child in the forties and will never forget school dinner puddings. Rice pudding, sago pudding, macaroni pudding,ground rice pudding, occasionally with a blob of jam on,l hated them all! I think I have only cooked rice pudding once since. Our home followed the general rule of roast on Sunday,cold on Monday,my Father loved the cold gravy on his, mince in some form on Tuesday. And although we lived on a farm only chicken about twice a year

,

In the mid 70s when packet cake mixes were all the rage , my dad bought home a cheesecake packet. My mum made it up as per the instructions, but my dad insisted on eating as you would a quiche ( saying it was cheese ) with new potatoes and a salad !

I was married in 1946 and that winter was a freeze up in London for three months. Had to queue up for a couple of pounds of spuds, fish and half a pound of meat and a pint of paraffin for the stove. Bread was rationed for the first time.2 oz cheese. Etc. Don’t know how I survived to have a baby. By the time my son was born in 1949 things were a bit better. I used to get marrow bone from the butcher and cook it in the pressure cooker. There was two inches of fat on top which meant I could make pastry and the marrow bone jelly was the basis of baby food. I gave the children the butter and had the Marge myself. My daughter called it Mummy’s drene. We had a tin of fruit on the ration at Christmas. There was a horse butcher on the market so I could make stews and meat pies. Whale meat and rabbit was not rationed either, We survived and were never ill. In 1951 I joined my husband who was working in Italy and had pasta for the first time. When I got back had to go to Soho to get it. Rationing was not completely finished until 1954.

Not for me thanks Gonegirl! I’ll stick with my salad!

This is all having quite the opposite affect on me, someone just mentioned tongue! This was a frequent meal , eaten with tomatoes, till I realised tongue was actually Tongue!!!

I was brought up in Uganda during the colonial era so we had a live in cook amongst others. When we arrived at our first house my mother said she wasn't going into the kitchen for a month. She had had a terrible 3 week sea crossing with two toddlers plus a drive of several hundred miles along mostly unmade up roads.

Eventually she made her way into the kitchen. The cook was preparing doughnuts. He was rolling the dough under his armpits to get them perfectly circular!

I recall in the 60s being on the Isle of Wight and Mum asked in a bakery if they had cheese and onion pies. The owner was fascinated and chatted to her about c and o pies, she, Mum, then spent the next couple of hours showing the staff how to make them.

Well, Gonegirl, I’m assuming you are joking. The point I was making in my first post was that we are fortunate to live in a time when there are lots of different foods to choose from- you can choose not to eat spicy food, but some of us like it. It’s a shame you dismiss garlic, tinned tomatoes and spices as “foreign muck”- but perhaps you have never had a lovely garlicky tomatoey sauce with pasta, or a fragrant home made curry.

Well, I have actually. My younger daughter is an excellent cook, and we have enjoyed many delicious meals she has prepared for us. Mostly from recipes of celeb chefs, taken from the internet.

Have you not thought, this being Gransnet - ie a forum for older people - my present dislike/intolerance of the things mentioned, might be due to present state of my digestive system?

Sorry if I upset your tender sensitivities. Not sorry.

You didn’t up set me at all- but I thought your use of the phrase “foreign muck” was a bit crass.

It was a joke. Thought that was easily readable.

Have not a clue what you mean about "setting you up".

Oh, it's a typo

If I wanna be crass on here, I will be stuffin' crass.

That’s really interesting Bijou and Framilode.

Gonegirl I usually cook ‘interesting’ things that my mum would never have dreamed of. My herbs and spices occupy half a cupboard.
But sometimes I crave plain old fashioned food and we have potato pie or bangers and mash or cheese pudding.

Like a few others I was born before WW2 and grew up with a limited range of food . Mum was a good cook, and Grandpa had an allotment. also one of my aunties was married to a farmer so we had plenty of eggs. We lived on the coast so often had fresh fish.
I can't remember feeling deprived, because I didn't know any different.
But everyone was very excited when the first bananas, sweets and chocolate arrived in the shops.
And we had an Italian immigrant family who sold ice cream .

I was born a year into the war and grew up with rationing until about the time of the Coronation in 1953. Our generation has been reasonably healthy even if we didn't have the advantage of living on a USAF base! My dad grew our vegetables and we had eggs from relatives who kept hens. No-one in our immediate family took sugar in tea, so what sugar we had was used by my mum to make the occasional cake as a treat. Although a good baker, she was an uninspired cook. Mince and tatties was a staple dish - for long after the end of the war.
My little sister and I had our first ice cream on VE Day, from our local Italian confectioner. If we had a Mars Bar, it was divided into five for our family. Today kids will eat a whole one. Bananas made their first appearance at a neighbouring child's birthday party, a welcome change from banana sandwiches made from mashed parsnips with banana flavouring!

I was so lucky - my Mother was a great cook. My favourites were Toad in the Hole, Rissoles with HP sauce made from minced joint left overs, and wonderful Bubble and Squeak (also with HP sauce!)
Wonderfully light steamed puddings (jam, golden syrup, and sometimes marmalade). With these she made the wonderful Jam Sauce, wbich msy have been her own invention. It consisted of jam and water thickened with arrowroot. May sound gross but was scrumtious as it soaked into your plateful of lovely sponge. Also Eve's pudding, and Junket.

I don't remember anything Mum cooked that I disliked but I do remember my favourite lunch- Spam fritters and chips!

Sorry too many wonderfuls!