Sunday tea

Saturday night we had yellow peril (smoked haddock) and poached eggs. Sunday lunch time always roast beef or lamb and for tea poached eggs on toast followed by tinned fruit cocktail and evaporated milk. We kept chickens!

Evaporated milk was popular, wasn't it?
Does anyone still use it?

I quite fancy a coffee with some in, just to see what it's like because my mum sometimes had that.

My dad was a fishmonger, so every Sunday we had cockles, mussels and other shellfish with plenty of bread and butter. My sister and I used to pick the "black spot" out of the winkles and put them on our faces like beauty spots.

What lovely memories this thread has evoked.

I make Gypsy Tart with evaporated milk. Only once in a blue moon, though, as it must have a zillion calories in it per bite!

I remember I was always hungry as a child and yet there were many vegetables, and other foods, that I disliked so much I just couldn't make myself eat them. I used to have to 'pay' my sister in food I liked to get her to eat the food I didn't! (Leaving food on the plate was not an option.)

Ah, that was a rotten deal for you.

I had been thinking this thread might be a bit difficult for those who had less than ideal family lives.

We were very poor but I never went hungry. I was so lucky. I was a poor eater and was a skinny kid.

Me too.
Not that you'd ever guess, these days!

I couldn't, and still can't, abide fat in any way but it was part & parcel of joints and ham and bacon in those days. I'd have to stay at the table until I'd finished it, all cold and congealed, but if my older brother got the chance, he'd walk behind me and swipe it from my plate and either eat it himself or get rid of it.

Annoyingly, I'm the one who today has weight issues, while he still weighs about what he did 50 years ago!

When I was three we flew out to Egypt to join Dad who was posted there. He met us off the plane and took us to our flat where he had laid the table for tea. I remember the tea tasted funny because there was no fresh milk so everything was made with diluted evaporated milk. It was Ideal Milk before Carnation came in. This was something I soon became used to.

I also remember the crisp white tablecloth and the pretty blue and white cups and saucers. He must have been so pleased to see us!

Lots of happy memories here. I was a child of the 50s and like many here have fond memories of family mealtimes especially Sundays. My parents, 2 brothers and I lived across the road, not more than 50 yards from my mother's sister, husband and their only child. We usually spent Sunday lunch and tea over at their house where my auntie would have prepared a feast. The usual Sunday roast with homemade Yorkshire Pudding and all the trimmings. She used to mash turnip into the creamed mashed potatoes which were delicious. Plentiful vegetables. Then pudding which could be homemade apple/rubarb pie/crumble with custard. Maybe a choice of this or jelly tinned fruit and ice cream. Unusually for a 50s wife auntie worked in an office with my mam looking after her only child so she would bake for Sunday tea on Saturday night. Always a gammon and egg pie and and a savory mince tart. Scones, custard tart, jam tarts, white cake and chocolate cake. Open tinned salmon buns were usually there as well. We children would play with our cousin while mam and aunie set the table and we were called to 'sit up to our tea' Despite the mammoth Sunday lunch we managed to do justice to the tea. In fact if I couldn't manage both a piece of chocolate cake AND a piece of white cake there would be a bit of persuasion and loud wonderings about whether I was 'sickening' for something. Happy days and strangely none of us were ever over weight. I wish I could say the same now

We had a salad of lettuce, tomato and cucumber occasionally with radishes or spring onion. Mum did onions and cucumber in vinegar . The meat was usually ham from a tin or PEK chopped pork. If we had visitors if might be salmon. We had tinned fruit with carnations or Nestle tinned cream.
Mum made cake or buns from a mix which might have been Mary Baker. When Birds trifle mix came on the market we would have one as a treat. Happy days.
When I was pregnant with my youngest son my craving was tinned fruit and Carnation. The man in my local shop said I was just about the only person who still asked for tinned fruit!

This thread is bringing back memories. We had the usual huge roast dinner then we had what we called “catch as catch can” for tea. In other words, raid the fridge and get what you wanted, sometimes leftover Jersey potatoes fried in butter, sometimes some of the pudding from lunchtime, anything that mum didn’t have to make! We always had tinned peaches, pineapple, pears, that sort of thing with carnation cream until ice cream became plentiful. We still have catch as catch can lunches, just get what you fancy!

Forgot - a special treat to go with hotpot or corned beef hash was onions and/or cucumber in vinegar, still do!

I made sliced onions and cucumber in vinegar a while ago- a reminder of the past.
Strangely enough, I found I wasn't keen on it any more, but some of the family loved it!