Tea with your grandparents

Fullers coffee and walnut cake. Hated it. Didnt like walnuts. A bit sophisticated for little kids

Teas at my grandma's were pretty much the same as my mum served if any relatives came for Sunday tea: tinned salmon, mixed green salad, cold ham or chicken sandwiches, pickles, hard boiled eggs and pork pie. Then a huge variety of delicious homemade cakes for afters.

Oh and I still hang out my washing exactly as Aunt Isa taught me to.

Everything was special in the summer holidays we spent with my maternal grandmother, as she lived in Copenhagen and we in Glasgow.

Rye bread, buttermilk, Danish pastries, Danish boiled sausages eaten with bread, fried onions and, when we were old enough to like it, mustard, a whole list of desserts unknown in Britain, runny homemade jam you were allowed to eat off a saucer with a teaspoon. Perfectly good manners in Denmark, even grown-up ladies did it!

Daddy's parents lived in Fife, so we saw them more often. Grannie baked scones, black bun, made marvellous treacle puddings - don't remember her dinner dishes, so they can't have compared either with my mother's or my (great)-aunt Isa's. She made the world's best stovies, meat-loaf and pot- roasted silverside with potatoes, dark gravy and green beans. And I have never been able to cook butter beans so they even faintly resembled hers. But I can and do make her meat-loaf, cooked in a fireproof dish set to boil in a pot of water, with the potatoes added to the boiling water for the last half-hour.

As you can see from the menu, Aunt Isa usually invited us to dinner, which she still ate in the middle of the day, not in the evening.

We used to go to the paternal Gran for tea on Sunday. It was always a big bowl of winkles with our own pins to dig them out of the shells, a jug with celery sticks in, bread and butter for winkle sandwiches, jelly and custard. Gran would tip her tea into her saucer to drink as it “ cooked it down” plus she liked bread and butter with her jelly 😂
Such a character!!

Blossoming!! That's exactly what we had at my Grandmother's in Huddersfield, the orange segments occasionally alternating with tinned peach slices. This was in 1947 just after the War. I still like a banana with evaporated milk,

Introducing myself,Scottish and grandmother of nine from 3 months to 17.I have lurked for years and enjoyed all your posts .I had no living grandparents and it was a source of great sadness to me and my siblings..I have enjoyed your lovely memories.

Daftbag1

One of my grandmother's used to make sardine sandwiches which even now make my mouth water.
My other grandmother used to cook what we called cat food. Mince, onion, carrot, baked beans and potatoes. Made with marmite!

Oh dear was 'other grandmother' trying to deter you from visiting!

One of my grandmother's used to make sardine sandwiches which even now make my mouth water.
My other grandmother used to cook what we called cat food. Mince, onion, carrot, baked beans and potatoes. Made with marmite!

My Mum and I lived with her parents and my Gran liked to keep up the tradition of 'high tea' on Sundays. My Mum usually prepared it and it would be tinned red salmon & cucumber sandwiches made with unbelievably thin bread, cut into quarters with the crusts cut off. Homemade apple pie with double cream, or lemon meringue pie. Battenburg cake and (bought) rich fruit cake, or occasionally iced fancies, served on a tiered cake stand. My Gran insisted we used her motley collection of bone china, and always cups & saucers not mugs, and of course serviettes and doilies. Sunday Tea was Gran's opportunity to instil in me the importance of good table manners, using the correct cutlery and not talking with my mouth full etc. I'm glad she did. My hands and nails had to be scrubbed and my hair brushed & tidy before I came to the table. My gran also 'dressed' for tea by changing her blouse or dress. My grandad put a tie on. The rest of the week meals were more relaxed.

I remember Sunday High Teas with great affection because my gran enjoyed it so much. For those few hours she was once again the elegant Victorian/Edwardian lady of her youth even when Alzheimers started to steal her from us.
Happy times.

Paternal granny's speciality was scones baked on a girdle (Scots for griddle) with raspberry jam made with berries grown in her huge and very productive garden. My maternal granny wasn't known for her cookery, Her rock-cakes fully deserved that name!

Kryptonite

Soft boiled egg in a cup mashed up with little pieces of bread and butter.

My mum used to mash up a soft boiled egg with pieces of buttered brown bread whenever I was under the weather as a child. I still remember the taste and how comforting it was.

My grandparents lived a long way away and visited once or twice a year for a week. I remember the teas my Mother made well, she was a good cook and a good host. We did stay with my maternal grandmother sometimes but I don't remember her food atall. We were taught "children should be seen and not heard" when we saw grandparents so never felt close to them.

Paternal grandmother. We used to look forward to visiting for what she called ‘high tea’ on Sunday afternoons. There would be individual salads on side plates, along with home made mayonnaise, coleslaw and potato salad, salmon sandwiches on home made bread and little fresh baked savoury pastries served up on a three tier porcelain cake stand. To finish there would be Victoria sandwich cake and scones with jam and cream or jam tarts. Christmas high tea was extra special. Gran used to make her own mincemeat and her mince pies were coveted - served up at Boxing Day high tea. She loved to make a fuss with the best tablecloth, set with ‘Sunday best’ china.

I still have her tea caddy - an ornate wooden casket containing three crystal lidded tea boxes, each with its’ own spoon, and a porcelain mixing bowl, in which she blended the tea. Wow, haven’t thought about this in a while and it brings back some warm memories. Good thread.

My memories are of a high tea - the main meal having being eaten at mid-day.

Ham salad, and for up pudding - junket sprinkled with nutmeg and clotted cream. The junket was divine as it was made with full cream unpasteurised milk.

Yum!

Soft boiled egg in a cup mashed up with little pieces of bread and butter.

Maternal GM died befire I was born, paternal when I was 4 and she was in her 90s. Didn't live nearby, visits were very rare so no memory. Do kind of envy those who remember GPs. My parent's died when I was in 30s so my DC don't have a lot of memories of their GP. Think a lot was due to having parents who were in their 40s when I was born.

My grandmothers had both died before I was born but I had lots of aunties who were all good bakers. I was told what a good girl I was if I ate one of everything on the table! My only two grandchildren live on the other side of the world and I haven’t seen them for 4 years so sadly they won’t have memories of tea with me!

High Days and Holidays, Granny in Falmouth always had a tinned Oak Ham super thinly sliced by Grampa, tinned cli g peaches in a cut glass bowl, Always a Battenburg cake, Cornish splits with Cornish cream and homemade jam, strawberry or blackberry and apple, or honey, her exquisite sponge cake always with white glacé icing and grated Cadbury flakes on the top and a buttercream chocolate filling, a salad of hardboiled sliced eggs tomato cucumber and lettuce hearts,a home made fruitcake Dundee style, and homemade scones..Gallons of tea and at Christmas the grownups might have as a great treat a glass of asti spumante / or Bristol sherry in a blue bottle, and there were special green stemmed crystal wine glasses ...all the plates cups and saucers were either willow pattern or at Christmas a special set of bone China with an ivy leaf pattern and a beautiful lace or crocheted cotton edged white table cloth with a little silver tinsel tree with miniature baubles in the middle of the tablecloth.. ah the memories...

My gran provided Sunday tea of tinned red salmon sandwiches on Hovis, lemon juice squeezed into the salmon whilst mashing it up. As I got older, that was my job and picking out the bones and skin, yuck! If there was a ham salad, the lettuce was very lightly sprinkled with sugar - I’d forgotten about that til fairly recently and I tried it - it does bring out a certain flavour in the lettuce. Nice. Tinned fruit was accompanied by brown bread and butter, which I hated!

Can't ever remember having tea but do remember a pink sugar mouse at Christmas , and every year she would give my dad jars of honey and jars of thick black goop ( think it was malt yeast ) to give me a spoonful every night to keep the lurgy away.
Thankfully my parents never gave it to me.

I didn't know my maternal grandmother, she died when my Mum was only 13 and my paternal grandmother didn't have much time for us as we were adopted and she didn't class us as her grandchildren.

ginny

Maternal g/mother… tinned pink salmon with vinegar. Slabs of cake, usually fruit or Maderia.

Paternal g/mother… very thin slices of bread and butter which she sliced holding the loaf under her arm with jam. She didn’t make blancmange. but made a set dessert using cornflour .

Ginny my grandmother sliced the bread like that too. Perfect thin slices every time.

I remember 2 plates of different sandwiches would be brought in (egg/tinned salmon/ham or sometimes just cucumber). We had to clear all the sandwiches off the plates before Grandma would bring in the scones and cakes. Plain home baked scones, already buttered in the kitchen, she served with them with her homemade raspberry jam (no cream, this was Glasgow!)
After the scones, she brought in her forte - a plate of what I think she called English Madelaines, I called them Tower cakes. They were moulded sponge cakes, covered in the raspberry jam, rolled in dessicated coconut and topped with a glace cherry. All washed down with tea for the adults and Irn Bru or Ginger Beer for the littlies. Proper linen napkins and pretty china. Paper doilies involved. And I too, was given the button box to play with while the adult chat took place!

We never went to either sets of grandparents for afternoon tea as they didn't live near enough; we went to stay with them for holidays but the meals weren't special occasions as we were staying with them just normal meals.