Revisiting food from your youth.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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!

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!

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 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 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!

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 .

mmm, or toast and dripping with salt!

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!

Menopaws ?

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!

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

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!!

Chizz chizz greyduster

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!

I was in digs for a year with a landlady who made Spam fritters on Tuesdays. They were lovely, but I put on a LOT of weight that year...

School milk in little bottles (third of a pint) with cream on the top unless you shook them, and too warm if they were left too near the radiator in winter before we got at them. Yup. Remember it well.

We used to eat Brains faggots when I was a child and my father used to complain that they didn't taste like,they did before the war. Obviously the memory is always better than the reality.

I have never eaten mashed potatoes since experiencing them at school. My DM always made lovely fluffy mashed potatoes with a little bit of top-of-the-milk beaten in (butter was rationed). School mashed potato was made from potato powder and always had tiny little lumps in it that made me retch.

As for gristly mince, I had a loose tooth, which came out while I was eating a plate of this grey product at school, not realising, I swallowed it, thinking it was just a bit of gristle and then was very upset because I thought the tooth fairy wouldn't visit me because I hadn't got the tooth. DM reassured me that the fairy could see it was in my tummy.

And don't start me on the free milk we used to get.

Hi you can buy the boxes of curry at Poundstretchers and BM sometimes. My guilty pleasure. X

Heinz mararoni cheese with Parmesan cheese toasted under the grill to make it crispy.
I think the combination of textures transported a rather ordinary meal into cordon bleu cooling?