Back in Time for Dinner

I also went to the 100 club, but in the 70s. As a non smoker the atmosphere was too smokey for me.

I used to change busses outside the Palais on my trek across London to school, although I never went there. The Metropolitan police stables were behind it and the mounted police would come out in the mornings. x

That's how I 'learnt' to ballroom dance Bez; however I went to an all-girls' school (luckily my taller friend volunteered to be 'the man'.

Probably why I have never been much good at ballroom dancing

We definitely had corned beef hash (or at least a version of it) in the late 60's.

In the North we have a traditional dish called Panacalty (there are several other spellings) which consists of corned beef,gravy, onions, and sliced potatoes. My mum always added a few slices of chopped bacon pieces or even sometimes broken up sausage meat just to make it stretch further. I made it a week or two ago for the DGC and they absolutely loved it. Delish with bread to mop up the gravy too and cheap as chips to make.

Was anybody in the Worthing area in the early 1960s and if so do they remember the Ocean Club?

Am enjoying this......and I think the family have three delightful children. Especially warming to the two girls....they are enthusiastic bright, charming and seem to me to be completely unaware of just how pretty they are.

DH likes corned beef hash, so I had to learn how to make it (well, I just made one up).
Everyone seems to have a different version of it, though.

I wasn't near Worthing, the nearest I got was Hove to visit an auntie who lived there. But she moved when I was about 7 so I never got to any clubs.

I like these "back in the days, how we used to live" type of programme. I was born right at the end of rationing, but that period did seem pretty dire. Vague memories of bland food. My father being half English and having experienced other cuisines, thought British food was the pits and as a child I remember his occasional forays into the kitchen with a lot of garlic, tomato paste and the very long pasta that came in blue paper. My dad used to moan that the English had no concept of seasoning, they thought an Oxo cube did that job and the only meal they had mastered, roast beef, they ruined by over cooking it. My father-in-law's attitude was the polar opposite he thought all British food was wonderful and all other countries, particularly France, produced foreign muck! presumably as opposed to home grown muck, like Brown Windsor Soup He particularly hated garlic, although strangely when my parents-in-law came to Sunday lunch at ours I did serve roast Lamb with garlic and Rosemary and he said he enjoyed it. Not so with a Samosa my husband urged him to try and after which he complained forever more that it was the worst thing he'd ever tasted. Looking back I can see my own parents were quite adventurous in seeking to try new tastes, when the first Indian restaurant opened in my home town they were among the first to eat there and thought they had ascended into a culinary heaven. I do adore Indian food too, but I couldn't eat it every day. The first programme that featured the '50s really did project the most awful image of the nation's food and the '60s weren't much better. We are very lucky today we have so much choice. I still enjoy a Sunday roast though!

Mamie I agree with you, a lot of women worked in the 1950s, my mother did, as did MiL and my best friend's mother did. DH's mother returned to work as a teacher out of economic necessity but my mother and friend's mother worked because they wanted to.

As I said the modern media interpretation of the 1950s is weird. Why don't they come and talk to the people who lived through them?

My recollection of a meal out in the sixties was a Chinese "businessmens' lunch". We used to get luncheon vouchers of 3 shillings a day so we saved up two and had a nice lunch on a Friday sometimes. Fruit juice as a starter and a pudding with custard that had no milk in it. The cup of tea was 6d extra. Happy days!

merlotgran, when I went up the A1 last July the Ram Jam was boarded up and for sale. A sorry sight!

Same here, Rockgran. A work colleague and I would go to the new Chinese restaurant for a businessmen's lunch in 1966. We were the only females in there. It was always chow mein, accompanied by huge bowls of boiled rice that we couldn't possibly get through. From what I can remember of the menu, there was very little choice - nothing like the hundred or so dishes we can choose nowadays.

Yes. grumppa. I read about its misfortune on Trip Advisor. Such a shame.

The wall was destroyed in a fire many years ago but we stopped there for lunch eight years ago en route to a family 'do'. It was very good....and full!

I totally agree with Hilda about the family, they appear to be a very close family and very good spirited people to enter into this program in the first place. They could not have found a better family, it is not an easy process they are going through, especially the children.

I would love to know the ins and outs of the working of the show e.g do they have to eat the food constantly or just a few days for filming, did they make the show whilst the children were at school or during their holidays. In other words how much of what we see is not too stage managed, accepting there has to be a certain element of that to produce this type of show.

I remember mum making corned beef pie and corned beef hash but my favourite was corned beef fritters (coated in light batter and fried). Food was bought almost day to day and dug out of the garden, we had our own 'layers' so eggs were always available and I never realised the odd one went missing and we had chicken as a treat

It certainly has reminded me of how mum and dad must have struggled because eating out was definitely only on mum's birthday or special occasions . On a thread before I mentioned I knew when mum was 'being treated' because she would be wearing a frock or the twin set she kept for 'special days' and wore lipstick and perfume.

Mum didn't have a fridge, blimey you lot were posh! I remember being washed in the tin bath until we moved to Bath when I was 5 in 1957, we had a council house then with a 'fancy bathroom'. It seems crazy now but if cousins ever visited the first thing they would ask is "Can we have a bath Aunty Queenie". Dad definitely ate different meals to us and I didn't remember his sitting alone so much when eating until I watched the program. Now I see mum saying go and play leave your dad alone to eat his supper. He was most definitely 'The man of the house'.

We have corned beef hash quite often - although as I'm vegetarian it is just "hash" for me with some corned beef added to DH's portion. It is very tasty with lots of root veg, onions and baked beans. I had to chuckle at their opening of the corned beef can. It could have resulted in a trip to A & E!

I wonder how many would have coped with the rationing that we had to make do with went in the 40s. I can remember my mother buying twopennorth of bones to make bone broth.
We had to make do with meagre meals but we got through AND there were NOT so many obese folk about then.
This is a page from my WW2 website showing what we had each week.
www.memorylanehf.oddquine.co.uk/food.htm

I got married in 1949 and we were still on rations then.

Maywalk that bone broth is becoming fashionable again now - the paleo diet!

I remember corned beef hash, we still have it now, with pickled beetroot. Gorgeous.

Every week Dad used to make a broth from a ham hock and veg. It was nice the first time we had it, but not the 99th weekend on the run.

Eejit

A bit like being expected to react with joy at the prospect of sitting on the back door step chewing a pig's trotter.

We knew how to live in those days

In the 50s, I remember winning an ice cream cake/extravaganza at the cinema (Saturday morning pictures) and having it delivered. It was packed in dry ice. My mum unpacked it, put it in the fridge (I can't remember the make, but it was cream with a red top) and then put the dry ice in the sink and ran water over it to wash it away. I have no recollection of how the cake tasted, but I do remember the clouds of fog rolling out of the kitchen and through our flat. As for the 60's, who remembers Dream Topping and Angel Delight. I enjoyed it until I read the list of ingredients and that made me ditch packet food and go back to cooking from basic ingredients as I had been taught at school.

I remember, because we had no fridge I the fifties, my mother used to buy "fresh" cream in a tin to put on tinned fruit for Sunday tea. It was very thick and tasted faintly metallic, but we loved it. I gave my kids both Dream Topping and Angel Delight in the seventies and early eighties and they ate bucketloads of it, but when I thought recently that GS might like to try it, I changed my mind rapidly after reading the ingredients! Makes you wonder how our own children grew up to be such healthy adults!

Nostalgia drove me to try Angel Delight last year. It was revolting! I wouldn't risk Dream Topping!

I recall that Once made, Angel Delight had to be eaten with two hours or it disintegrated.

I can't imagine what ingredient caused that! I should think it would taste over sweet now.
x

We did a 70s themed party for DDs 40th birthday. Mostly BBQ but a cold buffet table as well. Angel Delight was the biggest hit of the day, things on sticks not so much. Health and safety issues amongst those attending with younger children.
At the end of the programme there was a brief mention about the advent of the supermarkets and the subsequent demise of corner shops. How their arrival had made shopping easier and more adventurous for the housewives of the day, which of course it did in many cases.
They forgot to say that the corner shops kept the working poor fed back then. When the money ran out on a Tuesday or Wednesday the corner shop became their pantry, everything on 'tick' until the following Friday. Sometimes even 1/- for the gas. It wasn't ideal but at least children were rarely hungry.
The Food Banks of their day? Maybe.