Back in Time for Dinner

They're making it sound as though a woman without a job was just a boring domestic drudge. I spend the seventies at home bringing up three children but my friends were in the same boat. We visited eachother regularly with our children, swapped recipes, knitted, made clothes, gardened, used the library, discussed politics etc. They were happy days before the pressure of having to work full time while still doing the lion's share of the housework because the cost of living had gone through the roof.

Did we really eat so much frozen and tinned food?

In the late 50s/ early 60s we had a very boring diet, sunday lunch(roast) was the best of the week, Monday was reheated sunday lunch, Tuesday was home made broth/soup, Wednesday was mince, Thursday
home made chips/pie and Friday was usually pot luck, anything, Saturday was baking day so pie/suet pud etc and for other meals we had sandwiches. Until the 70s I never heard of sphagetti, curry or anything that this programme says we ate.
it also seems a bit middle class, the families were all two parent and the father worked so they were reasonably well off, a widow with daughter and child living alone with one wage could not afford meals like this nor the gadgets they had. I remember having sugar sandwiches or just a plate of baked beans for supper, only a boiled egg for breakfast. We had no cereals no tinned food apart from beans and we had no fridge till 1973. So although the main meal which was mid day, was quite substantial, the rest were scanty. I couldn't imagine a breakfast with only an egg and no other foodstuff, yet today I cant remember when I could afford a roast dinner.
Having said this the programme was interesting.

I think what this discussion has made clear - and what the programme is not interested in showing is that there was no one unified cuisine for any decade. Just a range of foodstuffs that were more popular or new to the market in that decade. In any decade how and what people actually ate was immensely varied depending on their financial circumstances, family attitude to food, whether they lived in a big city like London, where a there were street markets selling a wide range of fruit and vegetables unavailable elsewhere or in a more remote rural area.

And nothing has changed. DD and I were discussing this programme today and noting that while both she and DS are good cooks with an interest in food, their preferred eating styles are immensely different. DD's choice of cuisine I what I would call main stream English, roasts, pies, simple dishes relying on good ingredients. DS loves all ethnic food. When we visit we get meals from North Africa, the Middle East, Ethiopia and Asia.

It is what I call the curse of the average, what the 'average' family ate is not representative of what the whole population ate. It is like saying that the average family has 1.94 children and then trying to find a family with that fractional number of children

I thought the last programme was more accurate. I was providing meals for 3 hungry sons, lots of their friends and a hard working husband during the 70s and 80s. The programme missed out two strange but popular devices from the era - the Soda Stream and the Sandwich Maker.
"Get busy with the fizzy Soda Stream."
It's etched for ever in my brain together with trying to clean the Sandwich Maker.

My mother died at the end of the sixties, and my father, not being a cook at all, was probably pleased to be able to feed my brother and I boil in the bag beef. He was of the generation of evaporated milk in the tea. I was a bit peeved to see the girls last night reading Jackie with Gilbert O Sullivan on the back, he was not featured that late in the Seventies, 1979, he was early seventies. I did enjoy seeing the crockery patterns as well, very authentic. I left home in 1980, couldn't afford a cooker at first, I thought Pot Noodles were invented for me, and ate a lot of KFC!

I remember having sugar sandwiches
That is about the only thing I remember about my granny, we used to go there and I always asked her for a 'sugar buttie'.

MIL had that crockery pattern; we had Woolworth's blue and white checked gingham pattern (I wish I still had DM's set.)
I still have my pressure cooker though it rarely gets an outing these days.
I also have Fred the flour shaker and that pickle jar in my kitchen. I am stuck in the 70s!

I remember DH refitting the kitchen in our first house (1975) with blue formica cupboards and teak formica worktops. It was very modern!

I still sneak a slice of bread and dripping when her indoors si not watching (beef dripping of course - with lots of salt) Yummy

So would DH if I didn't put it into the food recycling!

How could you ?

I'm not sure that i see the point of making a programme about food with a woman who can't even fry an egg or open a tin. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when she said how wonderful ring pulls are, hasn't she ever had one come off in her hand and been faced with a sealed tin?

I suppose we were a bit odd in the 70's because DH's family were Italian so we ate a lot of pasta, fresh ravioli from the deli, salami and prosciutto, and of course Panetonne at Christmas long before it became fashionable. As he lived in central London we spent a lot of time in Cypriot and Turkish restaurants eating hummous and taramasalata, pitta bread and kebabs.

pompa I don't always recycle it, sometimes I make cakes for the birds with it

Deedaa you were ahead of the times!

I think the programme would have been better if they had found a couple where they both cooked and then we could have seen how inventive she was in the 50s and 60s instead of so useless.

Well, the mum has certainly cheered up now! She seemed happy, laughing and making jokes. Perhaps she feels more sure of herself now she is in the 80's, out at work and having help in the kitchen!

I remember our kids having TVs in their bedrooms and waltzing in and out of the kitchen grabbing food as and when they needed it. I didn't care a jot. It felt like sharing a house with adults instead of having to be a modern day version of The Waltons.

We always sat around the table for Sunday Lunch which was still a special time.

I do not remember anyone getting a microwave and getting rid of the main cooker. That was rubbish.
We lived in Peterborough where Sodastreams were made. I think we were the only family not to have one. We didn't need one as many of my sons' friends had family working at the factory, so they were not without Sodastream drinks.
We only ever had one television and only got a colour one when we got a BBC computer.
We were odd as well, Deedaa, as we became vegetarian in the mid 70s. There were possibly a lot of odd people around at the time.

I don't think anyone took 2 and a half hours to cook a roast chicken dinner in the micro-wave, as usual, everything is exaggerated. The mother seemed amazed at most things, she frequently used the phrase, "Oh my goodness." I wonder if that actually is her job or whether that is just a fictitious one for the programme. My sister-in-law first served me Viennetta which I considered to be very luxurious, I still love it today.

I think she's a teacher in real life. They couldn't have found someone more hopeless in the kitchen but then it sounds like her husband does just about everything.

The only person I knew with just a microwave and no main cooker was DN. They had just bought their first house and couldn't afford a cooker but had a microwave from her flat. Then, as now, she was a brilliant, innovative cook.

That isn't the mum's normal job, I expect she is just pretending to do anything as each year lasts a day! I think they said she is a teacher.

We didn't have a sodastream either, although next door did and I thought that was in the late 70s.

We did all sit down together for a main meal each day. DD2 was only little and it was a job to get her to eat anything.

Just annoying that every single thing on these programmes is authentically of the period being presented. Who had all new furniture, kitchen gadgets, clothes, car, everything, every ten years or so? Or stopped cooking everything they had cooked before because new things were available in the shops?

Didn't you have that garish wallpaper and a bright red kitchen with a bright red plastic table Lilygran?

(No, neither did we!)

We had the same round sink and drainer. Ours was green with red taps. (Trendy!) The programme had the tap in the wrong place and it was the wrong type of tap. The tap went between the bowl and drainer and had to be a swan necked style to reach the drainer as well as the bowl.

These went ' fetchingly' with the Habitat sprigged green and red wall paper. We still have the green toast rack. x

We had an extractor fan above our cooker in the late 60s far less the 80s as in last nights prog. Also had a Sodastream as a wedding present in the 70s. Some problem with dates for introduction of items? In last week's episode I really enjoyed seeing the ladies in Laura Ashley style dresses. I well remembered them- my wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses were in that style.
Sorry to say that the 80s wallpaper was very like the one chosen by DD for her bedroom! Not surprisingly she soon painted over it!

The eighties also had the fashion for heavy wallpaper - usually a flower patter- on the bottom half of the walls and a much lighter pattern on the top half with a border between. I think they choose the WORST decor of the era which they could possibly get away with and show it as typical. The plain walls - often with one done a dark colour started in the 70s and a sort of mix and match wallpaper and paint.
I had a new kitchen fitted in 1983 and it was nothing like that shown last night - that was the sort the house had late sixties and we threw it out - do you remember those Liden chest of drawers etc you bought and painted yourself - I had a couple for the children's bedroom.
I am just loving how they are managing to get so much wrong! Maybe it will be all correct next week when it is the 90s

We moved in 1980 and the house we bought had a blue formica kitchen with mirror wall tiles.
As soon as we had a bit of money we went to MFI and DH changed the kitchen to one with plain beige doors with wood trim. Probably boring but lighter and liveable with.
All the decor was awful in that house (but not garish, just strange)
and we just wanted to lighten it all up, so we had cream walls and brown velvet curtains!

Our clothes were in the cardboard hanging wardrobes provided by the removal men for ages as we couldn't afford wardrobes.

In 1967, we had dreadful carpets, beautiful quality but awful designs. We still had them when we sold the house because we couldn't afford to replace them and they showed no wear. No fitted kitchen and most of the furniture was given by loving family members. One or two nice items but most just used - we had a utility (war economy standard) wardrobe. In the next house, we had a fitted bright orange kitchen and a maroon bathroom. We didn't choose either but we never replaced them. The next house had 1930s to 1950s fixtures, fittings and decor. In the 1980s.