Food then and now

My Mum used “Mrs Beaton’s Cook Book “ She also made lamb curry as my Dad was in North Africa during the war,sherbet lemons on a Saturday and toast and marmite after school.I enjoyed reading everyone’s posts.

I think the food was very bland and repetitive, probably not helped by the fact my Mum loathed cooking. I once spent a Sunday sent to my room because when she reminded me of ‘ the starving children in Africa ‘ she heard me mutter “ you can send them this “ !?

Gosh ! Arctic roll,angel delight,vesta curry,those amazing super- filled fruit pies, dunkies,jubbly, fruit salad sweets, black Jack's,bubblegum, and those divine meat pies in a tin ! Happy Days.

Special Sunday afternoon tea served on best china (white with pink rosebuds). Sandwiches with tinned salmon, tinned fruit salad with condensed milk, bread and butter, homemade cake.... and a large pot of tea.

Have really enjoyed reading all stories and taking me back there.
I was born 1951, and rationing was still on, so things were always more difficult.
My Dad,s parents owned a grocery shop so were able to get bits first !!!!!!

Also to answer the souse question from Liverpool area. Yes it was a 'white' stew using what you have , some meat (lamb) and then onions, carrots, other veg , and potato pieces which used to soak up stock.......... you left it cooking at least 2 hours or more......... we would serve it with pickled red cabbage, piccalilli or the like. Normally served in a bowl to dip in bread.

The 'blind souse' refers to no meat cooked with it. 'So you must be blind if you can't see the meat !!!!!!' and a way to save money.
Also on the River Mersey, Camell Lairds was famous for ship building, but many a workers were 'blinded' in one eye while riveting the steel.

My mum and her mum and sister were all “good plain cooks”. I was a boom year baby born after the war, and our food was all home cooked, Mum’s battered fish and scallops (sliced potatoes battered ) were lovely. We had a roast every Sunday, rice pudding or tapioca or sago. Being northern our evening meal was always called Tea, still is! Cottage pie, hot pot, meat and potato pie, called Tatie pie. Didn’t have chicken very often, and all home made cakes except at weekend when we had a half a dozen fancies from the bakers. We were well fed on a strict budget and no waste. Dad had an allotment so fresh veg and fruit. School dinners were a shock when I went to Grammar school at 11!

Memories of my meals in childhood were always roast beef on Sundays - but chicken only at Christmas. Beef must have been very much cheaper than it is now, and cheaper than chicken - how things have changed.
Meals were always meat, potatoes and greens and carrots. My mother’s pastry was mouth watering, and we often had meat pie, apple pie, and I also remember syrup suet sponge pudding and custard.
We never had cream, except the top of the milk. No such thing as ready meals, or pasta. Rice was only for rice puddings.

My Aunty used to get potato fritters from the chippy ! I loved them , then she varied it with apple fritters , even better !
I think it was a Glasgow delicacy ? it was during the war and maybe fish was scarce some months
Mum was a brilliant cook and baker , so she was less than approving of shop bought!

We visited an aunt who gave us a salad including huge Cos lettuce leaves and celery sticks, We were allowed to squirt Primula cheese along the hollows - height of sophistication I thought!

I remember the Corned Beef scare, I’ve never eaten it again.
I also remember spam fritters, one of my dad’s specialties, the potato was raw, and the batter oozing with fat.

Homemade rissoles, dry and tasteless, spaghetti bell (Mum was taught by an Italian when Dad was in the army). Mince was the basis for almost every meal. My sister sarcastically bought Mum a cookbook 101 ways with mince...Mum thought it the best present ever! From then on Shepherds Pie had a cheesy, crumbly topping. We had boxed lemon meringue and chocolate meringue pie, which was a lottery of was it runny (yummy) or solid (yucky). Mum tended to overcook everything, but especially boiled potatoes on a Sunday - our neighbours said they always knew when our Sunday Lunch was ready by the smell of burnt potatoes!

Antonia..... snap! Your description sounds like my house all year round .. apart from Christmas ....I was the posh neighbour ....we had a turkey. Downside was..... it went on for days after Christmas. Apart from that....we’re twins! I SO remember thinking Vests chicken curry a very exotic meal!!

i was born in 63, i split my time between my grans and my mums, not much money but our meals were good, during the week it was things like chopped pork , beans and chips. scrambled egg, peas and chips, there was always a big pile of bread on table sunday was usally boiled chicken so she could make soup, chicken, mash and veg, usually cabbage or turnip, but we got a pudding on a sunday trifle, rice or cake and custard, sunday night after our bath we gor egg mayo sandwiches (mayo was salad cream) and a cuppa, very few chidlren were overweight as we payed outside always running about, my punishment for breaking a window and telling lies was to stand at my bedroom window watching all the other kids play outside. the food was always simple, if you don't eat you go hungry, we would get money for the tuc shop or the shop to buy penny dainties, whoppers or black jacks, my gran would buy me pick n mix from woolworths or old english spangles. life seemed simple for kids, it is only when you grow up and realise how hard it must have been for some parent trying to put a meal on the table.

Bijou I’d forgotten a cottage loaf!

Oh my goodness, reading all your comments reminded me of my first stay in England in 1973. What an utter shock for a French girl! The food was so different to what I was used to and bless her, Beryl the lady from the family I was staying with, was a frightful cook! I starved for most of the 2 weeks I stayed with them. But they were a lovely family and I came back to stay with them several times.

After the typhoid epidemic that was traced back to corned beef it and all other Fray Bentos products were banned from our kitchen for ever!

That didn't worry me at all, because I detested them.

Anyone else who shared my disgust of Spam sliced and fried? I could eat it cold but not fried and served with fried eggs!

Oxtail cooked in the Rayburn oven and served with dumplings! There was nothing better, Kidneys sliced and boiled as stew and eaten with mashed potatoes. Liver and onions! Here it is still possible to afford liver, but not oxtail or kidneys even if you could find a butcher who is prepared to order then for you.

Custard - I could happily have eaten gallons of it - fortunately our school cook made marvellous steamed puddings and served them with custard. Three or four girls in the class asked to be excused the custard, so there was always a second helping of it.

Never served at home, as Daddy disliked custard and Mummy being a Dane found steamed puddings abominable. She accepted Christmas pudding with custard, although only eating a token helping of it herself.

I didn't eat all that many sweets as a child - sixpence pocket money at irregular intervals didn't provide unlimited sweeties. Fortunately, I had a couple of elderly aunties who were generous with sweeties when we visited them.

Stews, soup, spuds with veg and different meats. There was always a large chip pan with hardened lard in it, really health conscious lol, although when I stayed at my grandparents my granda went out with his spade to dig up what we were having for dinner that day. My mum used to bake apple pies, fairy cakes and fruit dumplings, although a massive treat was Angel Delight, Jelly Fluff or a Vienetta at Christmas.

Chocolatelovinggran
Rice pudding, the absolute worst food ever invented.
When I was little I had a book with a poem in it, about a boy who grew into a croquet hoop because he wouldn’t eat rice pudding, and I really worried about it.

Toast made in the glowing red embers of an open fire and buttered at the hearthside

We had plain meat and veg type meals bread and sugar angel delight etc .Mum still doesn't acknowledge that rice and pasta exist lol .I took over cooking at 15 and we started having spag bol etc had to cook something else for mum ! I made cakes and deserts too .Healthy eating nowadays no puddings etc

Have a look at
www.1950s.co.uk/post/_food

Father less stew and tattie chads. The first was potatoes and onions cooked in a frying pan and if you were lucky a tin of corned beef was chopped in. Chad where I come from are toads so this was grated potatoes flour and onion mixed with an egg fried in portions probably would be rostii now with a fried egg.
Monday wash day was all sundays left over veg and patoes fried as a cake with the cold cuts from sundays joint.
Mum did make good pasties and meat pie and used a packet mix to make lemon meringue pie. Sunday desert was always "Chinese wedding cake" as my father called it bakes rice with mik butter and sugar and a dollop of what ever jam was available .
Looking back my mother was a commercial cook eventually in charge of school kitchens but we never saw an example at home. Then the advent of the frozen foods.
My grandswere completely different one lived by the sea and her food was baised around fish and the other in the country and hers was all all products from the local farms and she made her own bread and teacakes/baps

I have just remembered a school dinner memory: At primary school we had to eat everything on our plates but I hated mashed swede so if it was on the menu I chucked mine under the table! Funnily enough I love it now

Oh how I hated rice pudding- the work of the devil..

Things I remember from my childhood, Bread and Butter pudding, panackelty, yorkshire pudding, kippers, fish and chips with mushy peas and dandilion and burdock pop. I havnt had any of those things since I was 11