Back in Time for Dinner

Yes, they did.

I have a vague recollection of luncheon vouchers. Mine was 1/- and we got five of them inside our pay packets. In those days (1966), we got paid weekly in cash.......... or did I just dream that?

Cynthia Payne's sister was a friend of my mother's. She was the antithesis of Cynthia.

The luncheon voucher was invaluable to us back in the day.

We were paid well, (I was what would now be called a PA) but having a LV just to spend on food was a real luxury.

We explored Italian Restaurants, Department Store Cafes, Indian Restaurants, (not many of them at that time) and up market restaurants where they served wine and snails!!! as well as the Chinese restaurants previously mentioned.

It was such fun and a real education. How we managed to eat so well and arrive back at work in time ready to do an afternoon's work astonishes me now. There were a group of us and we could run really fast even in high heels.

Just watching this weeks program. I'm sure most of our GNers (certainly Mrs P) could cope in the kitchen far better than this woman, she is always whinging. The kids seemed to cope better. SMASH, how on earth did we eat that, we certainly did, looks like wall paper paste. We still have our camping stove and gas lights from the power cut era.

I haven't seen it yet, so have the Smash to look forward to!

Oh yes, I remember the power cut era - Oh shit dear the lights just flicked on and off as I typed that (that was spooky!)

I agree with Pompa, the mother is worse than useless, I want to shake her. She is still incapable of opening a tin, and unable to even cook egg and chips.

I imagine the family were selected from a lot of applicants, so the producers got what they wanted. The meals were chosen to be spectacularly awful, so it is no surprise that the cook was too.

Then they gave the husband a lovely meal to make - in real life that would probably have been the first time he had cooked, and he would have made a hash of it. In real life the wife would have been cooking for at least eighteen years, and would have been at home in that kitchen.

Manufactured social history. Bunkum. It would be laughable if it it didn't broadcast the notion that the nation lived for decades on rubbish cooked by morons until the wonders of - ta-ra - brown rice and flavoured potato crisps.

And why did they wait until the seventies to let them grow some of their own food? Most gardens had a vegetable patch.

I agree elegran. It is contrived in that mother never does the cooking in real life, father does it all, so mother has not been a happy bunny in the kitchen and is spectacularly useless at everything. The meals are also carefully chosen to be dreadful and not normal fare for most families which I knew.
I do have that original book 'How to cheat at cooking' by Delia and there are much better recipes in there although I have only ever used one or two. A bit unfair on Delia I thought!
They have obviously never been camping and used a gaz stove. What a ridiculous performance by the females!

I did wonder what sort of food they eat now cooked by father (he is very likeable) as are the two girls.

Did other families always end their meals with a cup of tea? We didn't except at breakfast.

A vegetable was the mainstay during the war years - mum told me how the next door neighbour dug up the front garden as well for her so she could plant potatoes (dad was away). After the war most of the back garden continued as a vegetable garden throughout the decades and the front reverted to dad's beloved flowers.

Perhaps I shouldn't comment but mum is so terribly thin (worryingly so) I wonder if she eats much at all and is just not interested in food and cooking. Or perhaps she has a 'fast metabolism'. I wish!

Correction: A vegetable garden was the mainstay
And the bracket in the wrong place after 'likeable'

We need an edit button! I should have previewed.

She always looks worried sick and discontented too, with her forehead wrinkled and mouth pursed, though maybe that expression is just because she needs glasses.

I suppose they are trying to make an amalgam of families from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds which reflected extremely varied tastes and access to different sorts of foods. I recognise some aspects of 60s/70s life but certainly not all. We did tend to eat good stews and lots of veg but Mum sometimes experimented with new things such as Vesta Curries. We had crisps in the 1960s I well remember and Spaghetti Bolognese was commonly eaten in our house in that decade too. We never had chips or really any fried food except occasionally herring in oatmeal. We didn't have a garden or grow veg. Grandparents in the country did though.
Its an impossibility for this programme to produce an exact way of life for "every family". They are making a noble effort though. They do contact people living in those days too- eg Mary Berry and that lady who wrote the cooking in a bedsit book.

A vegetable being the mainstay makes sense though - we ate a lot of vegetables.

Elegran

The mother spoils it for me. I was newly married in the 70s, having been in academia up till then. I had a better idea of cooking than she does and always had a positive hope that the dish would at least be edible. Mostly turned out OK!

I had two cook books, the OXO book of Meat and a cheese cookery book, both given away free with purchases!

x

And you could use a tin-opener!

Only the butterfly ones, I hated the stab in ones! x

I still have the cheese cookery book J52, and a McDougalls one which was free (and I have to look up Yorkshire pudding or popovers every time in it, even after all these years )
I never had a stab in tin-opener, I am sure the butterfly ones were around in the 60s.

I also still have the cheese one. I amazed family and friends making the Pizza recipie. It was so exotic! x

Newly-wed in 1970 I have always remembered Katharine Whitehorn's invaluable advice in "Cooking in a Bedsitter"(Penguin 3/6) which was to do with wine - red or white?
"It should be news to no one that red wine goes with red meat and most game; white wine with fish, veal and the sweet course. More to the point perhaps is that white wine goes with carpets; red wine only with floors you can wipe clean or don't need to care about "
That about sums up my first forays into cooking in the early 70's!

Power cuts in the early 1970's were difficult for most families, but not for us. We lived in a house with a solid fuel Rayburn with a solid hotplate and oven. My mother could cook and bake whether we had electricity or not. The very first Pot Noodle I ever ate was in Nurses accommodation while visiting my sister. We were not very impressed!

I have only ever eaten part of a Pot Noodle and never bought any for my DC. Although youngest DD sneaked one in occasionally!

It was very odd last night, having read

In the 70s, my greatest asset was my pressure cooker. Great for all sorts of stews as well as for vegetables and soups. The Kenwood Chef was another indispensable piece of equipment. Nowadays, I still use the pressure cooker a lot but the Chef has given way to a Magimix.

Mrs P regularly uses her pressure cooker, still has and uses her Kenwood chef from 1963, had to replace the rubber feet a couple of times , otherwise still going strong.
We bought the Kenwood with Kensitas tokens when we were engaged.

I love watching this it does take me back, it is bitter sweet for me because I wish I was back there