Funny stories that show your age.

I remember my mum deciding to cook something exotic and making curry. It had apple, raisins, and desiccated coconut in it - more like a pudding than a curry!

My then boyfriend took me for a meal in a posh restaurant, the meal came with broccoli which neither of us had ever seen before. We were not sure we were supposed to eat it or whether all of it was edible. In the end we at a bit of the stalk, a bit of the flower and left the rest on our plates. I’d have been 17 at the time and he was 20.

In the 50s we lived with my nan in a pub. In the summer we would get get regular deliveries of ice in huge bath sized chunks wrapped in sacking. Pre fridgeration obviously!

My SIL thought she’d impress her new boyfriend by cooking him dinner. She decided on a recipe for stuffed mackerel but didn’t have any mackerel so she sewed kipper fillets together. Miraculously he wasn’t put off and they’ve been married now for 45 years

That poor bin man would have been dragged over hot coals, sacked and probably arrested if he did that now.

When I was very young the ‘Goldfish Man’ used to come round. Basically he was a rag and bone man and would exchange a goldfish for old clothes. However, many decent jumpers etc were exchanged behind mums’ backs much to their annoyance, especially as money was tight those days.

Before we were married a friend gave me her recipe for chicken fried rice. We bought all the ingredients and followed the recipe to a tee. However the rice remained uncooked. The friend forgot to tell us to boil the rice. We ended up throwing the food away. If only we'd known to cook the rice 😆

I was about 14 and our little gang consisted of several boys and girls about the same age.
I was wearing my then fashionable hipster bell bottom jeans and while we were all larking around I must have bent over revealing the top of my sanitary belt.
One of the young lads shouted out “ Blimey, Sparkly’s wearing a parachute outfit!”
Obviously the lad had no idea what it was but I was mortified.

leeds22
A posh night out for me in the late 60s was a Berni Inn: prawn cocktail, rump steak and black forest gateau + a schooner of sherry. Still love a prawn cocktail!
Exactly what was a treat for DH and I in the early 70’s. I wonder if Berni Inns had anything else on the menu!

My parents managed steak houses in the early 70’s. You could have soup, orange juice or half a grapefruit with a glacé cherry on top! Then rump or sirloin steak, gammon and pineapple, chicken or breaded plaice. Ice cream, bfg or cheese and biscuits. Then, if you were really splashing out, you’d finish off with a special coffee! All washed down with a bottle of Blue Nun.

No frozen chips in those days, and my dad insisted on using freshly shelled prawns! They could turn the restaurant over three times on a Saturday night. Waitresses were paid a notional amount for their shift and got to keep their tips.

I remember having people over for dinner and doing trout meunière. I left four trout carefully prepared in the kitchen, ready to pop in the oven when our guests arrived. When I went back out there, the cat was busy eating one of them in the middle of the kitchen floor!

Luckily she started at the head end - I picked it up and put it back in the tin and into the oven. When it came to serving them, I was careful to put lots of extra parsley to disguise the half-eaten head and made sure that I got that one!

As a child I lived in a very rural village. A friend of my mum’s lived about 2 miles away and rode an adult sized trike. She kept chickens, and about once a month, on a Wednesday, she would pedal to our house with a live chicken in a basket attached to the handlebars. That was our Sunday dinner. Mother would dispatch it, draw and pluck it, and it would hang, head down, naked apart from the head and neck feathers, from a nail on the inside of the under stairs cupboard. That cupboard had all my toys in, and I would sit, unconcerned, cross legged on the floor, happily playing with my dolls, with a dead chook above my head.

Vesta meals were the bees knees very exotic as things like chow mein were unheard of
i remember when mum worked in a greengrocers back in the 1970s they had some avocados in. she brought one home and after hacking it open we all tried a slice thinking it was like a real pear. it was awful!

Forgot to say, this was circa 1956/7 (I was born in ‘51)

When Cheesecake first came out ( it was a packet mix , you added milk to the powder and melted butter for the biscuit base supplied ) my Dad wanted to try it .I
He was adamant it was like a quiche and insisted my mum serve it up with chips and salad !
Mum tried to put him right but he wasn't having it any other way .

In 1966 or '67, when I would have been five or six years old , we were on holiday in Wales with an auntie. One day, she bought a yoghurt (strawberry flavour if I remember correctly) to eat at lunchtime, and this was so 'new' that we all had a taste of it to see what it was like.
I can still recall the taste of that strange new food 😁

My much younger 3rd husband laughed his head off when I mentioned that the milkmans 's horse had bitten me. That dates you he sa id.

OldnproudWhen I first tasted Ski yoghurt back in the 1960s I thought it tasted like fruit flavoured, gone off milk.

Magenta8

*Oldnproud*When I first tasted Ski yoghurt back in the 1960s I thought it tasted like fruit flavoured, gone off milk.

I don't think I was particularly keen on it that first time, either -, but was not put off for life (despite bring a faddy child) and a few years later I discovered our local Longley Farm lemon yoghurts and have loved those ever since.

1968, I was 16 and went on one of the new package holidays to Benidorm with Dad and my brother. Having never left the UK or been on a plane we were overawed by the whole thing, but decided to be brave and go to a real Spanish restaurant. Our courage then deserted us and we ordered fish and chips. To my absolute horror real entire fish turned up, neatly curled on the plate complete with tails, fins and with the head propped up so the eyes were looking at you. We had never seen anything like it in our lives. I promptly burst into tears and refused to eat anything.

I’ve been having a quiet giggle reading through.

Two favourite Vesta meals for us were paella and chow mein. I’d forgotten all about them until reading here. My mum loved them too.

Our Friday night treat for several years was a home made prawn cocktail followed by bought, frozen black forest gateaux accompanied by a glass of Mateus rose. I still enjoy two out of the three. . Good friends could never understand why we didn’t have a steak main course as they did when eating out on Fridays. Simple. Couldn’t afford it with a young baby and one salary. Did we care? Not a bit.

Moth62

I love bone handled knives for spreading butter etc and have several from my mother and MIL. My granddaughter was setting the table for me yesterday and said, “ Granny, you’ll never believe it, but there was this EXACT knife on a table in the museum last week!” Out of the mouths of babes etc.

I still have my mum's bone handled knives for spreading butter. I wouldn't be without them! I shall await my grandchildren's comments when they are old enough for museums!

Mouse

My then boyfriend took me for a meal in a posh restaurant, the meal came with broccoli which neither of us had ever seen before. We were not sure we were supposed to eat it or whether all of it was edible. In the end we at a bit of the stalk, a bit of the flower and left the rest on our plates. I’d have been 17 at the time and he was 20.

I was brought up in the North and as a child we didn't experience much variety in vegetables. My first experience of broccoli was at a hotel in the New Forest one Summer holiday.
Meals were always meat and two veg. I didn't eat rice - other than rice pudding - or pasta until I was a student just outside London in the mid 70.s! The first time I was taken out for a meal in a restaurant my boyfriend took me for a Chinese meal. I didn't know what to order, but having eaten Vesta curry I ordered a curry. I was embarassed to admit I knew nothing of Chinese food!

My first attempt at cooking - apart from scones and jacket potatoes at school - was when my parents left me at home while they went on holiday. I was 18 and decided to make a proper meal to welcome them home. I decided on individual steak pies. I had no idea how to make the filling so I emptied tinned, stewed, steak into pie dishes and then made shortcrust pastry to go on the top. They came out quite well and my mother was impressed by my pastry.

When we were first married my husband and I were invited to dinner at a friend's house. She had cooked Chili con Carne, which was quite exotic in those days. Unfortunately she had used far too much chili powder and we ended up pouring it into a sieve and pouring water over it until all the sauce had been washed off.

All this home cooking was something I really missed spending my young life away at school with no domestic science lessons. Also, with my siblings away at school there was not much knowledge of family life. It was so enjoyable when watching the two lads chase each other to get home.
Did anyone else who went away to school feel they too lost a family life when young?

When I was a young teacher, we decided to ask the headmaster and his wife for a meal. I can’t remember what I cooked but can remember suddenly realising we only had 3 plates and having to sidle into the lounge and remove the plate under a pot plant!