Revisiting food from your youth.

It's funny how food takes you back in time and to different places. Sizzling sausages take me to my grandmas kitchen. Mashed potatoes...well it was with almost every tea. Porridge....we used to have it for tea when we'd had a day at the seaside.

I liked most food and, as a child, was easy to feed but I really didn't like pilchards in tomato sauce and had to be in a different room when they were on the menu!
I use most days a tablespoon that was my mum's - the edge is worn at an angle from her use - and I always think of her at the gas stove stirring away every time I use it. A very happy memory

The typhoid epidemic was in the 60s, and started in Aberdeen. My sister was a student there and she and a friend were among the first to succumb - very ill for a long time. IIRC it only came from the big catering tins of corned beef - the kind you'd buy in slices - not the small tins you buy to open at home.

Pilchards - we used to have the tinned in tomato sauce kind mashed up - skin and bones removed - on toast and put under the grill. They were very tasty.

Dairylea triangles! You still see them everywhere, but when I was a child they were a great treat - my mother never bought such things so we only ever had them when we went to a granny's for tea. Same granny always gave us Penguin biscuits and orange jelly with tinned mandarin oranges in. Height of luxury then!

After that granny died I kept the dish she used to serve that jelly in - it wasn't very beautiful but evoked so many memories - was so sad when it eventually got broken.

Soft I mean

Sort cod roes on toast with my dad, still love it

Love this discussion!
Nanna58 I do remember Mac Fisheries and eating sausage in batter (or pinapple in batter) with chips.
I hated school milk and school dinners for the same reasons others have said,lumpy smash and horrible meat.
Probably why I am veggie now
I also remember my dad always having a 'tongue' at Christmas.

My Dad used to eat chitterlings, mentioned by Greyduster, and also he sometimes had pilchards. Yuk! I loved the Vesta Paella and Chicken Supreme. We used to make toast in front of the fire so it always tasted smokey and then spread dripping on it. Sometimes we even had sugar sandwiches! My Mum would often by Symingtons table creme in Maple and Walnut flavour. Lovely.

SunnySusie
'For Mash get Smash'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4MTgjNkfyI

My mother used to buy pork chitterlings, and 'bag' (not sure what the bag was), but with vinegar salt and pepper I remember enjoying it. In those days nothing but the squeal was wasted on a pig! Never liked tripe, though my father did. I remember telling my GS about tripe - he thought the very idea of it was gross! It is actually highly nutritious.

I used to love the liquid that came with tinned peas. Mam would drain it into a cup so I could drink it.

We only had tripe and onions once. We had to eat it because there was nothing else but even mam had to admit it was foul and we never had it again. Also it was the only time she let me smother food in tomato ketchup. Anything to mask the disgusting flavour lol.

Dad used to like chittlings (intestines).

We ate a lot of offal esp. liver both at home and at school. I hated it but had no choice but to eat it. I never eat offal now.

I must be in a minority, but I don't think Fray Bentos tinned pies are too bad at all. We have one very occasionally when I am too tired/lazy to cook. Though 99% of meals in this house are from scratch.

I used to love Vesta Paella, not that we ever had it at home. It was a treat for myself now and then when I was an impoverished student.

I always found Angel Delight pretty foul, but then I don't like anything very milky.
Never care much for Spam, either, ditto tongue, which my mother would buy now and then.

I had a student landlady who once gave me some cold meat that looked like tongue, but paler. I didn't think it was very nice, but ate it anyway.
'Do you like that, dook?' she asked.
'Yes', I fibbed politely. 'What is it?'
'Udder.' !!!!!!

When I was at school I used to go home for lunch and one of my mum's standard meals was Heinz tomato soup with boiled potato in it. It was quite nice actually but don't think I would enjoy it now. She also put custard powder in her boiled rice pudding and that was lovely. I am just beginning to realise what a right little Delia Smith she was!!

Mazgoli......I grew up having Thunder and Lightning.....but I fear the approach of scone wars 2,as we put the cream on top. Still on the menu in tea shops in Cornwall. Don't think I could manage to eat it now,though.

An Oxo cube crumbled in a mug of boiling water was my relief from car sickness.

Even better with a slice of dry bread to dunk.

Still love the Heinz tomato soup we always had for Saturday lunch - I thought it was because we liked it so much. Only much later did I understand it was because we couldn't afford anything else!

Does anyone remember Instant Whip,the predecessor of Angel Delight?
Made the same way but more substantial. My brother,sister and I adored it.
In the 50's, way before the modern,soggy,sliced loaf,bread didn't go mouldy it just dried out thus making it possible to save all the crusts from the loaves over a week or so and make a huge, glorious bread pudding!
Soaked in cold tea then mixed with eggs,sugar, dried fruit and mixed spice mum would bake a roasting tin full of it. Served hot with custard or cold,sprinkled with more sugar.
And what about pork dripping on hot toast. If you were really lucky mum would give you.some of the meat jelly as well. My goodness, according to the present day 'food police' we should all have been stone dead long ago!!

Got married on a Friday, 1969. No honeymoon, so did a quick shop on the Thursday - which included a Fray Bentos pie and a Vesta curry! How unhealthy! We probably thought we were very 'with it' !

Honeycomb mould, sandwich spread and Fry's chocolate spread. My mum used to make wonderful peppermint lumps with National Dried Milk! Happy days

Oh yes, Cremola Foam! Big favourite for my brother and me. You could get lemon, orange or raspberry flavours.

Bought a can of Heinz tomato soup recently as a nostalgic kick. Had it so often in childhood. Had to say it disappointed. Maybe I needed my mum and the 60s to make it taste good.

Does anyone remember a shop called MacFisheries? As a treat we could have a fish cake and - the height of sophistication- potato croquettes!

Oh yes, I loved Cremola Foam - but it did create an awful lot of....erm....gas!

I used to love Fray Bentos pies but we were only allowed them on holiday in the caravan, served with Smash and tinned peas. Also for a holiday treat was a drink called Cremola Foam, does anyone else remember that? It was crystals in a tin and you would add water and stir until it fizzed up. Our final holiday special was Kunzle cakes, they were chocolate shells filled with sponge and cream. Yum.

Then there was an outbreak of botulism from tinned fish - I think some people died.

My mother dropped all Fray Bentos' products after the typhoid epidemic that was traced back to infected corned beef in the 1960s or was it 1959? I've never had the courage to try them since.

I remember that grandetante
It was sliced corned beef from the deli rather than tins of corned beef: apparently the very large tins of corned beef were lowered into the river in Brazil?? to cool rapidly and some had little holes in them so contaminated water got in. That was the story at the time, I think.