Back in Time for Dinner

The seventies' carpets made me smile, and not just because they brought back memories of the carpet my parents bought in that decade. I have an elderly maiden aunt (83) who lives quite a secluded life, and really has no idea at all of changing fashions. She decided quite recently (well, within the last five years anyway) that she needed to replace her very old lounge carpet. We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the new one - it was straight out of the seventies! I have a sneaking feeling that some carpet salesman couldn't believe his luck having finally managed to offload a forty-year-old carpet that had been gathering dust in his warehouse. Either that or she's more on the ball than we give her credit for and it's actually the latest 'retro' style

I still use my Bel cream maker. I prefer the "home made" cream to the shop bought variety

Goat's cream and butter are more difficult to produce than cow's because the milk is naturally homogenised. It's only recently that they've been available commercially.

I went through a phase of cooking whole chickens in the microwave at the start of the 80's. We used to paint ours with soy sauce to make it look roasted. It took half an hour rather than two hours.

I can't get goat cream here. Butter, yes.

I am sure that our local Tesco sell goat's cream and butter

You would need goat's butter as well as milk for the cream maker. Is there such a product available in the shops?

I've met one of these sometime years ago, it looks familiar.
But the big idea it gives me now, is that I could make goat cream? If it works the same way....
I wanted ice cream last year and I can't drink cow milk - and yes I know I could send for goat cream but the carriage costs more than the cream!
Then I could make my own icecream....

I had a cream maker on my Kenwood Chef - same method just electric!

Maybe people thought that Georgian or Victorian furniture was hideous at the time and hilariously old fashioned. Now they are valuable antiques. Is it possible that the furniture featured in this prog could be antiques of the future!

Shysal I am deeply embarrassed to admit to having owned such an object.

Did anyone else have one of these?
Bel cream maker
You combined milk and melted butter and pumped it through from the top receptacle into the bottom, where it became cream, from which I sometimes used to make clotted cream. Just like the real thing!

Utility furniture was made to government orders by some well known names, such as Waring and Gillows and Ercol.

It had to be made strongly, but using less materials than usual. x

Utility stuff was of good quality - I wonder how many of those kitchen cabinets are still in daily use?

But we liked them at the time. Fifty years from now our grandchildren's grandchildren will be looking at pictures of the houses of today and wondering how on earth anyone could have put up with the decor.

LOL, so did we, shame they were such good quality - it is still on the floor in my workshop.

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.

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.

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 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!

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

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

(No, neither did we!)

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?

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.

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.

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.