Revisiting food from your youth.

I disliked the mashed swede served at school dinners and as we had to eat everything on our plate I recall throwing it under the table. Funnily enough I really like it now!

Chizz chizz greyduster

I was a milk monitor - giving out horrible warm one third of a pint in the summer and trying to push paper straws through the frozen cream which had risen out of the bottle in the winter!!

I had a landlady who was an amazing cook and I put on weight in the time I was living there.

ps I remember looking for digs when I arrived in the city and was advised that I should try Mrs B - 'She keeps a good table'

She certainly did!

Menopaws ?

Bread and dripping with the brown bits and salt on, although my Mum sometimes gave us bread and lard when she was really hard up..yuk!

mmm, or toast and dripping with salt!

Bread pudding - my brother loved it but I only liked the crunchy outside bits . I haven't seen or tasted it since I was a child .

I once asked my mother (once we had got out of the 60s and 70s and into more aware eating habits) if she'd do a Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie-in-a-tin for nostalgia's sake. She just laughed at the thought!

When I was a very young teenager, I had to go into hospital to have my tonsils removed. The day after the operation a nurse brought a dish of cream coloured slop for me to eat. As I hadn't eaten for two days and my throat felt like I'd swallowed a razor blade, I ate the slop. It was only when they came to collect the plate that I was told that it hadn't been porridge, as I'd thought. It was sweetbreads. I'd never heard of sweetbreads! And when one of the ladies on the ward explained what they were, I promptly threw them back up. Just the thought that I've eaten it still makes me shudder.

I remember Fray Bentos pies but suspect I'd find them revolting now. I used to love "luncheon meat" (much the same as spam), particularly in fritters. I think I might even like spam fritters now, but the calorie and fat levels would put me off.
Some foods I do not miss:
Semolina pudding
Salad consisting of nothing but soft lettuce and tomato
Endless boiled potatoes.
Tinned peaches
Jelly
Kraft cheese slices
Milky coffee with skin on it
All Bran

My favourite treat - only allowed on Sundays - was white bread and butter with a thick layer of soft brown sugar on it.

When I was at college...food provided in those days, as well as tuition...the Saturday evening special was Spam fritters and chips! We had tables for six or eight, and one person would collect the meals for the table...and a second person would go up for an extra batch!

Fish fingers squirted with a Jif lemon and accompanied by Heinz tinned spaghetti was my favourite childhood meal. I can't recreate it exactly because I can't eat gluten, but I can occasionally buy gf fish fingers, and I do eat them with gf spaghetti and a stir-in sauce that reminds me of the original. A small guilty pleasure!

1960 I worked in a the labs of a food firm. Every morning I counted the air bubbles in Trex then made up and tasted the latest batch of powered potato. The rest of the packet I got to take home, newly married we had that most nights. Used to love Fray Bentos Pies , tinned corned beef, tinned Goblin Hamburgers. Still buy sandwich spread, love it.

When I was a child, so much of what I was given to eat was actually disgusting, at school and at home, eg liver, grey casserole with random kidneys floating about in it, tinned processed peas and many other delights.

Some of it was my mum's cooking and school catering, I suppose. I remember being very impressed because my friend's mother had a peppermill so that their black pepper was fresh. One day I saw her mother cooking rice to eat with their dinner. The only rice I ever saw came out of a tin and was eaten as a pudding.

Do you think we ate badly then? Or do today's children have worse diets?

When we were first married we ate Campbells tinned meatballs, served with pasta. We thought we were so trendy.

Vesta crispy noodles remind me of early seventies when I had a babysitting job on Saturdays and was always left a vesta meal for my supper

I had a craving for Vesta paella when I was pregnant with my first child in the late 60s. It was a very small one portion box, think they might have just come out back then. Loved Heinz tomato soup ....childhood memories of that eaten with small savoury biscuits sprinkled on top! Never liked the skin on custard or any other puddings that formed a skin on them although everyone else seemed to argue who would have it! We used to have something called Pease pudding as a child .....not a sweet, but a revolting mix of lentils and dried peas which I think were boiled up together to make it. Never ate that again...yuk.

Rice Creamola! It was a sort of cross between custard and ground rice, and you made it like using custard powder. My sister and I adored the stuff, made as thick as possible, then left to cool so there was a decent skin on it. We had to go halves on the skin, one would carefully cut it in half, and the other then chose which half they wanted, on Dads orders after too many squabbles! I'd simple sell my soul to have some now, but the company have gone out of business sadly!

I used to love luncheon meat in batter, i only had it for school dinners never at home but loved it. Also loved the cheese and egg flan we had for school dinners it was pastry case with a hard boiled egg on top covered in cheese sauce. But my favourite was a tart that I think may have been called Manchester tart. It was pastry, jam. Butterscotch custard with a dollop of cream on top. I've never tasted anything as delicious as since!

My mum had been a cook before her marriage so we didn't have any of the above! I did try Vesta curries once or twice as a teenager. I'm a vegetarian now though I wasn't when my mum cooked for us. I can't face ready-made meals.

Does anyone remember Rice Cremola? I loved it but it was discontinued 30+years ago - sadly miss it! it was just Ground Rice, which you made up with milk, but it had a wonderful yellow colour and the flavour was incredible - I have tried making "ordinary" Ground Rice as a quick pudding, but it is bland and boring. Wish I could still buy Rice Cremola!!

GannyRowe Ooh yes! I had just added my comment about this and then I saw that you had posted about Rice Cremola already! Like you, I absolutely loved it!

My mother was a typical 1950s Irish woman and never purchased tinned or packaged foods.....it was bacon and cabbage all the way and boiled potatoes, cheese and hot door steps of bread from the bakery, home cooked corned beef, lamb neck stews etc. Its probably why I don't eat processed foods...and I still eat lamb neck stew with loads of pearl barley and vegetables..yum...my favourite!!