Food then and now

for years, until i was about 43 and a half, i assumed the small pale green items in fruit cocktail were gooseberries, because i don't think i'd seen any other possibilities when i was a child.
so i din;t eat them, because i didnt like gooseberries, seemed bitter and prickly, an odd fruit.
somehow i discovered those items were in fact pale grapes, which i like, but i still feel a bit dubious about the ones in fruit cocktail, such is the power of early imprinting.

Oh what a lovely post Antonia.
My mum was a brilliant cook. All homemade.
We knew what day of the week it was by the dinner she made.
In the winter on a Monday it would be stew and dumplings using the beef left over from Sunday roast, Bubble and squeak or hock and dough.
She always made 'afters'. Things like eve's pudding, steamed jam roly -poly, spotted dick.
Treacle tart, lemon curd tart, blackberry and apple pie. We had stewed rhubarb and custard with cream crackers at the bottom which went soggy which I loved, sliced banana and custard. Stewed plums and custard. I can remember my younger sister and I putting the plum stones on the side and to see who we were going to marry we pointed at each stone and chanted, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
We had rice pudding cooked in the oven and loved the skin on top.
Saturday tea was either egg and cress or red salmon and cress sandwiches and tinned fruit and evaporated milk. If it was fruit cocktail my sister and I always shared the cherries and always saved them and ate them last.
Happy days.

Tizliz, you can still buy creamed corn online, or if you google it, you'll find recipes on how to make your own.

My favourite was gammon with a slice of tinned pineapple and creamed sweet corn - they stopped making this a few years ago ?

Scouse is kind of stew/hotpot which is local to Liverpool. I think it’s similar to Lobby which is a potteries dish.

Home made Yorkshire ducks ( faggot was a rude word ?), pigs tails or trotters with split peas, chicken wings or jacket potatoes with butter for tea. I think there were times of more month than salary.
Chicken was expensive so a rarity.

Oh god, liver - the bane of my life as a child. I just couldn't eat it. My mum used to insist on serving it up to me although she knew I hated it - and her philosophy was, if I didn't eat it, it got put down to me for the next meal. This went on for about three days until she finally accepted I was never going to eat it...

Antonia ditto to all you said but lemon meringue was hand made, my job was to beat the whites and no vesta, that was when I was older.
I had to eat up because every crumb was a sailor lost. I was so thin my mother took me to the doctor’s, who gave some horrible tasting medicine, a spoonful before every meal, enough to put me off eating. Wish that was the case now but I believe we eat food that has too many chemicals which has destroyed the balance.

If I was hungry between meals mum would say "Have an apple" and if I refused this she'd say "Well you're not hungry then!"

We had liver every week with onions or bacon because mum said it was full of iron. Sometimes she served up tripe and onions but I just couldn’t eat it so I went without. We used to have a lot of tinned cream ( can you still get that?) I don’t know what scouse is,either, thought it was someone from Liverpool!

Scotch broth made with pearl barley and home grown vegetables with a couple of boiled tatties added to fill us up.

Corned beef hash was a regular until there was an outbreak of typhoid in Aberdeen caused by meat imported from Argentina in a contaminated tin. Cheery thought!

Mum's budget didn't rise to roasts but she was able to buy excellent fish from a man with a van.

We got a lot of Scouse sometimes it was blind without meat.
I don't understand - what is Scouse?

The foods people are talking about are bringing back more memories. I also remember the three colour ice cream, and the Fray Bentos pies, and I had forgotten the Vesta paella. I should have remembered it, as, on my first French exchange visit, my friend's grandmother asked me what I liked to eat. My French was extremely limited, but I thought the word 'paella' was the same in French, so that's what I do said, my only experience of it being the Vesta one.
So, off she went to the market and the fishmonger, and came back with headless chickens and piles of fish. I have never, before or since, seen a mountain of paella like she made. She piled it on my plate and was so disappointed that I couldn't manage more than two platefuls ! Happy days!

JackyB i remember the kilner jars, tomatoes, gooseberries and Victoria plums, along with all the jams. Mum baked every Friday, fruitcake, chocolate or plain sponge, ginger snaps, cream horns and meringues, dried in the airing cupboard. Everything was cooked from scratch, we did have spaghetti bolognaise and went out to an Indian restaurant, I was born in Pakistan, but Mum didn’t make Asian food. Dad only cooked a breakfast at the weekends, bacon with rind and a small pice of bone in each rasher, fried bread with tinned tomatoes. We used to have drop scones made on a hot plate on the boiler.

Rissoles were frozen looked like beef burgers made with lamb and barley Birds eye. They were greasy but compared to eating a lot of offal as we did they were a treat!

A Scottish childhood in a poor working class family but the meat was to die for ! My Mum got the best from the Co-op butcher . We had mince from rump steak and home made steak pies. Never had a roast chicken as it was too expensive and turkey was definitely an "English" dish only ever seen in magazines at Christmas. How I longed for an English Christmas meal as it seemed exotic.
Puddings were home made apple sponge or steamed ginger sponge. Ice cream blocks bought just before eating as we had no fridge. I remember a "Neopolitan" block in three colours.

My mother was a very good cook, and in fact had trained as a baker before becoming a nurse when I was a teenager. I don't remember any ready meals but bought myself Vesta paella and chicken supreme when I was in 6th form! Mum's roasts were the best and my children couldn't understand why I couldn't cook vegetables like grandma. Her cakes were legendary and I still remember the sponge with cream and jam that was sooo light. When more 'international' foods started to appear, she made the best spag bol with incredibly long spaghetti from those dark blue packets. If we were hungry between meals we either had a slice of bread and butter or fruit. My grandparents had an orchard with apples, pears and plums so there was no shortage of fresh fruit. They also had a vegetable garden, as did my father. In fact I don't remember mum buying fruit or veg, or eggs for that matter. We kept chickens and when they stopped laying dad would dispatch them and mum would cook them. Sweets were rare unless we bought them out of our pocket money. Toffee wrecked my teeth! So, we ate three good home-cooked meals a day, and stayed slim and healthy. I only knew one overweight child at school and he had a thyroid problem.

My mum made tapioca and rice pudding in a big bowl in the oven until a thick crust was formed I still make it exactly the same.

My mother was a very good cook and managed to make repetition even seem interesting. I don't remember her ever referring to a recipe.

We had a huge garden and always had fresh vegetables. She would bottle tomatoes - there were usually about 40 kilner jars on the shelves by the end of the summer.

She turned out wonderful meals whether at home, on a boat or in a tent.

We did have the odd Vesta ready meal or Fray Bentos pie, but generally she was wary of anything exotic and cooked basic British cuisine from scratch.

I still do this but sliced cucumber and onion in malt vinegar in a glass dish with the Sunday tea bits

We had most of the above and I loved it all. Sunday tea would be lettuce, celery, tomatoes and Dairylea cheese triangles. If it was pilchards in tomato sauce I had to have mine in a different room because I detested it.
My mum's roast beef dinners were the best I have ever had - her yorkshire puddings were divine.
When I came home to lunch sometimes she would do tinned tomato soup with a boiled potato in it - actually nicer than it sounds.
In my memory we always had a pudding and I used to complain like mad if it was stewed apples as it was 'boring'

what were rissoles? My grandma used to make them and they were full of gristle

I still cook mr brains faggots everyone loves them

Rissoles! (Ugh!)

No Vesta meals at our house but certainly basic salads, sausages, a steak pie, a roast, fish at least once a week and my dad called tinned peaches sunshine fruit. Puddings were mostly pies of all kinds and later maybe a crumble. No rice other than in rice pudding and no spaghetti at all unless it was a tin of Heinz. I had one bar of chocolate to last all week. I suppose in a way I still cook all the above plus the rice and pasta perhaps that accounts for my extra weight?

Fabulous thread - thank you!
Childhood dinners I remember.
Cadburys smash. My mother made a cottage pie with this on top of a tin of mince and gravy for us 4 children to have for dinner. It was followed by instant whip.
We always had roast lamb on Sundays as it was cheaper than beef or chicken which I can't remember ever having. Always with roast potatoes and cabbage. We never had more than one vegetable at a meal apart from potatoes that were served at every dinner. We never had rice or pasta - in fact I didn't know there was any such thing!
Stew and dumplings followed by rice pudding. We weren't allowed jam on the rice - that was reserved for scraping thinly on bread only!
Steamed steak and mushroom pudding with boiled potatoes and cabbage.
Birdseye fish fingers, chips and tinned peas.
Sausages - sometimes with mash and sometimes with chips and beans.
Sunday tea was half a slice of ham 2 slices of tomato, cucumber and beetroot, 3 crisps [a whole packet had to do all of us] and half a slice of bread and butter. This was followed by tinned peaches and evaporated milk.
Other teas would be bread and jam or an apple with a spoonful of sugar to dip it in served on a side plate with half a slice of B&B.
Sometimes we had swiss roll - that was about as exotic as it ever got!

I had virtually the same diet as you Antonia. We had a predictable pattern of meals: if it was Tuesday I knew what we’d be eating. I supposed overall it led to a balanced diet but Fridays held considerable dread for me as I don’t like white fish. Fish fingers (?) weren’t an option.
Beef dripping spread on toast is now a distant memory of deliciousness. Ooh, the thought of it!
Lucky bags, jubblies, and dandelion and burdock were my treats.