Back in Time for Dinner

My memories are like yours, I'd certainly never heard of, let alone visited, a motorway service station!
Definitely no ready meals, bought cakes etc
I do remember corned beef occasionally but there was a huge scare over Argentinian corned beef and ?anthrax. I remember mum and dad talking about it because at that time my father had given up his job to run his parents' grocers shop, and he'd had to check and throw out the infected tins if there were any.

Oh yes, I remember that now!

I thought that perhaps if you put any 40 something woman back then they would be flummoxed but I think my DD could improvise better than that!

My dad could cook too - although only when mum was not well.

The latest gem: ' in the 1950s you wouldn't have just gone and sat at the hairdresser's'

I thought most women went for a shampoo and set once a week (and didn't wash their hair in between).

Yes, I ate corned beef hash in the student flat I shared with 3 other girls in 1968.

I remember service stations being opened on the M6 - our nearest was Knustford, but while my parents liked to go out on Sunday afternoons in the car for a drive round the Cheshire lanes, our dining out experiences were limited to getting fish and chips from the chippy as a treat (not on Sundays of course as everything was shut) and eating them in the car.

My mother disliked cooking and we ate the same things week in, week out.
Monday - shepherd's pie.
Tuesday - fish and chips (cooked at home)
Wednesday - potato pie
Thursday - chops
Friday - Herrings or kippers
Saturday - cheese pudding or grilled cheese on a plate
Sunday - roast dinner
We never ate chicken except at Christmans.

Then in the early seventies the Cordon Bleu magazines came out and my mum belatedly took an interest in food, and started cooking things like carbonade of beef or armenian lamb.
But it was too late for me, I had already left home!

I don't remember having corned beef hash but we did have corned beef. I remember it with boiled potatoes or salad and also in sandwiches. I really liked it but wouldn't eat it now having been veggie for 30 or more years.

I do remember going to the service stations for an evening out. My parents didn't have a car then but I had a boyfriend who did, so we used to swan off up the M1 and dine out in style watching the traffic go past. What fun!

If you put either of my daughters back, or my daughter-in-law, you would get better meals than that.

But I did get the impression that the series had been written by someone very young with a fixed view of what food was like in the past. The plot to the whole thing seems to be that food used to be horrible and inedible and that the current era is the only time when we ate well.

The poor mother is being put through the kind of challenges that they give contestants in the stranded-in-the-jungle-with-only-a-penknife shows endure, with no training or guidance at all.

I think it was supposed to be about 1961 when they ate at the service station.

I remember the opening of the M6 - I was there and we were standing on the motorway!

Yes, I think corned beef hash was more student food.
A friend and I cooked spag. bol. but my DM never made it!

I have to say that we were no strangers to Vesta chow Mein. I thought they were lovely! Mum was a big fan of Elizabeth David so we had a lot of her sort of recipes -I had to go to Mr Mackintosh's chemists for the olive oil. So this programme is relatively accurate from my perspective. Our kitchen was that bright blue and yellow too.

The 1960s party buffet is recognisable! Sausages on sticks and cheese+ pineapple!

Ha ha - the trailer for next week shows my Fred the Flour shaker and my pickled onion jar!
I must be stuck in the 1970s.

Oh, yes, the Vestas. How sophisticated they were! Those little bags of dried brown stuff that turned into beef curry with sultanas when you added water. Then they started leaving out the sultanas which was a big disappointment. I lived in Southall in those days - I bet you can get a much better curry there now than you could then!

I don't remember my Mum 'cooking' stuff in the fridge but she did occasionally buy ice cream cakes which, obviously, were kept in the fridge.

We never went out for dinner in the evening bcause there was nowhere to go really until the Berni Inns started up. Before that we used to Lyons Corner House or the ABC but only as a treat.

I was waiting for the Berni Inns but perhaps that will be next week.

Prawn cocktail, steak and chips etc and Black Forest Gateau!

Yes, it was a staple, wasn't it? Our nearest one was the Leather Bottle at (I think) Uxbridge. It had a stream running through it under the floorboards with a glass panel on top so you could look through at the water. I was very jealous when my sister was taken there by a new boyfriend.

Remember having fruit juice as a starter?

I have never forgotten the chop (it claimed to be lamb) I ate at Watford Gap service station on the M1 in the summer of 1966. I was driving down in my Hillman Imp from the Isle of Bute to my home in North East London in a day. Modern motorway service station food couldn't be worse - mind you, I'm not sure it's a great deal better!

My first car was a bright red Hillman Imp, grumppa - nice wee car with a few idiosyncracies. I soon learned what a solenoid was and what to do with it!
The Berni Inn in King's Lynn was a family treat at one time. Yes - good old prawn cocktail, steak (or chicken) and chips followed by BFG. So popular was BFG with my DSs that they requested it as birthday cake and I had to adapt a recipe which went down very well.

Oh, yes, Pittcity. Fruit juice as a starter. Weird. Easy, though!

I learned to drive in a Hillman Imp. It was blue.

I think the programme was very inaccurate of the 60's and the programme makers are making it far worse than it was. I was married in '62 and had a Fridgidaire fridge, a Rolls washing machine and a smart electric cooker We both worked full time, I was not doing housework 7-9 hours a day, I made lots of casseroles which cooked while I was at work, and we had a very healthy diet. I do remember as a newly married, making apple pie and using a red plastic egg cup to keep the pastry raised in the middle!! Just when in-laws came to dinner!!
At weekends Vesta Chow Mein was a special treat, and if we dined out, it was the Little Chef.
Did any one notice the Dansette? My first purchase from my Saturday job, but that was back in the 50's!

I seem to recall we had quite a lot of mince, mashed potatoes and processed peas. We also had omelette and chips, roast meals (mostly lamb and beef - I think chicken was quite a luxury in the 50's), home made fish and chips, lamb chops, sausage and mash.

We were also very excited when the Vesta meals were introduced and thought we were being very adventurous eating them.

We had a lot of tinned fruit cocktail or pears for puddings. I can't bear them now.

I'd never been to a motorway service station either. We didn't have a car until Mum bought a Bond 3-wheeler when I was about 13. (Dad couldn't drive).

On Sundays DM always cooked a roast with fresh veg and tea was home-cooked ham or luncheon meat with salad (from the garden and greenhouse in the summer) followed by tinned peaches and tinned cream or evaporated milk and a home-made cake.
Where did we put it and how did I stay skinny?

I remember a neighbour popping in one Saturday lunchtime and being astonished because mum was cooking a joint of ham, boiled potatoes with fresh green beans and parsley sauce. 'A proper dinner on a Saturday?' the neighbour exclaimed!

We didn't have chicken often either - and no wine.

We had corned beef hash. In my mum's version you just mashed the corned beef in with the potatoes and added a bit of butter and pepper. We usually ate it with baked beans and tomato ketchup. I remember the first Chinese restaurant I went to with one of my early boyfriends. It must have been 1967 or 68. I don't recall what I had as a main course but we had lychees for dessert, very oriental. I had never tasted them before. I also remember the first time my mum made spaghetti bolognese, there was silence at the table as everyone was concentrating on eating it properly!

I remember always having to go on 'errands' to the shops, help wash up etc.
The mother in the programme seemed to struggle by herself until this week.

We did have curry - made from leftover beef or lamb from the Sunday roast, with curry powder mixed into the gravy, with sultanas.