Eating well for little cost!

Prawns on toast with mayonnaise. If you leave out the toast and mayonnaise....

We like 'em with Astley Ainsley's Wild Mushroom Risotto.

Prawn omlette?

Ah!, might have risotto or couscous in. Good thinking batwoman

Does anyone remember "high tea? "

Regular thing in Scotland - lunch (or dinner ) was the main meal at midday and high tea was a hot meal (or salad) with the added bonus of bread and butter, scones or cakes as well. I get very annoyed at high end hotels etc referring to Afternon Tea with cucumber sandwiches and so on as High Tea!

That's how I remember it. Seed cake, I hate carraway.

Growing up in the 50s, my family always had a hot meal at lunchtime (which we always called dinnertime), when we would walk home from school, and high tea at about 4.30 pm, then we would have a supper of milk or ovaltine and biscuits before bed.

When I started at grammar school, I would have a school meal and missed that lunchtime/dinnertime. My father took sandwiches to work and had his hot meal at 6 o'clock, by which time we children would congregate around him to see whether he had a lot of gravy on his plate - this meant we could each dip a piece of bread in there - our treat!

When I started grammar school, I was thrilled to find we got a pudding every day - at home it was just tinned peaches and Carnation milk on a Sunday, or rice pudding after Sunday lunch. I loved my school meals - my mother was a good plain cook but there was little variety in our menu.
When I started work as a secretarial trainee at the CWS in Balloon St., Manchester, the canteen offered free bread and gravy. We used to just get a big bowl of gravy and dip in the bread, so we could spend our money on a rock and roll session at the Ritz ballroom - I think it was 3d. It was some time before the canteen staff cottoned on to the fact that we were not paying for anything!

It is interesting that the main meal of the day, usually called dinner, has been taken at different times in different ages. In some Jane Austen books, it is taken at 5 p.m. but of course the coming of the industrial revolution meant that workers could only have a 'snap' for lunch and had their main meal, such as it was, after work.

Does anyone else remember having tinned fruit accompanied by slices of bread and butter? Seems very odd but that's what we used to have at my gran's if we went for tea and if we were having something savoury we had the tinned fruit and bread and butter first

Yorkshire pudding before the meat? I prefer the Yorkshire!

We never had bread and butter with our tinned fruit in southern England, but in Edinburgh my Fife-raised in-laws usually did.

Libradi - yes, I do remember that! It was a Sunday tea thing, wasn't it? This was in England at my Grandma's - though my Scottish mother always offered this, too. Diagonally-cut bread (posher, my mother thought) with the butter already spread on it, and laid out nicely on a flowered china bread-and-butter plate (which I have to this day)!

No - we never had bread and butter with the tinned fruit. The bread and butter always came first, followed probably by scones and jam. Fruit, if any, came last.

Here speaks a Yorkshire lass.

Traditionally Yorkshire pudding was eaten on its own before the meat. Preferably a plate-sized piece each with lots of gravy made from the meat juices. That's how we used to eat it. My mum had her gran's proper Yorshire Pudding tins, which are a bit like sandwich cake tins but deeper and usually of slightly smaller diameter.

Then you have your meat and two veg, and more gravy. Then apple pie and custard.

I think the idea was that the meat would go further (enough left for Monday?) if you filled up on the cheaper but still nourishing (eggs, mik, flour) pudding. People were more concerned about getting enough calories then!

The wee itsy bitsy Yorkshire puds that seem popular now and which are served with the meat seem weird to me.

Yes greenmossgiel the bread and butter was cut very thinly, granny used to butter the bread first and then cut it and she always used the bone china Maybe its a westcountry thing

My nana served bread & butter with tinned fruit. This was in Harrow, but she came from Wales. A large uncut loaf would have the cut end buttered, then holding it up to her chest, she would slice towards herself with a wicked bread knife and make perfectly equal thin slices every time.

I am still amazed by how people stick rigidly to the main meal at lunchtime here in France; always three courses and always at 12.30 sharp. Nearly all the small shops close and some of the big ones as well. We live about 15 minutes from the nearest town and people say they would never buy a house out this far because they couldn't get home for lunch. When I taught in schools I was amazed by the fact that although the classroom resources were nowhere near as good as the UK, there was always a sit down three course meal for the staff, complete with cheese board.
Just so I don't do too much thread creep, the evening meal round here is always soup.
We are having a winter favourite tonight - sausage chilli (or should that me chilli con sausage.)

I have never heard of tinned fruit served with bread and butter. My treat as a child, when I had lunch at Gran's, was thick Bird's Custard and tinned fruit - loved the mixed fruit cocktail (and also enjoyed the skin which formed on the custard - much to my sister's disgust!)

Tinned fruit and cream-off-the-top?

My dad always ate the custard skin, for which the rest of us were thankful. My youngest brother had to get the custard jug last because he would always finish it off.

Yes to both of those em and Mamie I used to have tinned peaches with carnation milk and bread and butter especially at my grandmother's house. I wondered if it was a northern thing.

bagitha my Gran used to do the yorkshire pudding first and then the full meal to follow. Her mother was from Yorkshire and she carried on the tradition, funnily enough my mother didn't. my mother liked to do things as she had seen them done when she lived in Surrey. She was a maid in a Judge's house and got a taste for fine food. My mother never once drank out of a mug, she always had beautiful china teasets.

phoenix We've just eaten your 'chowder thingy' it was lovely and very tasty, I added some chopped bacon too and a little low fat crème fraiche.
Delicious...thank you for the recipe. (DH also enjoyed it especially as he's recovering from his jaw operation and can't chew yet.

I invented something yesterday. At least it was new to me.
Toast 2 slices of bread. Put some slices of cheese between. Bung in the microwave for 1 min, until cheese melted. Almost instant toasted cheese sandwich!

Er what are you thinking of calling it?