Richard Hawley (new album out the week after next) has lost two stone following the diet his father and grandfather ate. He says he never saw them eat crisps or chocolate. He still smokes and drinks.
I’ve just ordered a six pack of tins of Spam in order to achieve a six pack. I remember my dad eating Spam. Lots of it. And plenty of bacon, mostly in butties. Cheese, pickle, fish and chips on Friday, roast chicken plus two veg on Sunday. I remember him carving up oranges but not much else fruitwise. We had black pudding in the house but I can’t picture him eating that. Oh yes, almost forgot, liver and onions and kidneys with mushrooms. Stew, cottage pie, pies of various sorts. Pea and ham soup. Mmm. He, too, loved his cigarettes and alcohol.
I reckon I’ll get to a hundred on this regime, even though my dad died in his fifties.
Tiggerlion says
https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/may/19/richard-hawley-in-this-city-they-call-you-love-standing-at-skys-edge
Twang says
Oh dear. Tripe, liver and onions, horrific curry containing sultanas and pieces of apple, stew, Spam and ketchup butties. We also has pea and ham soup, and a trip to my Granny’s in Prestwich would mean her famous potato pie. My folks didn’t drink much and my dad smoked at work as he was in sales and it was expected by customers but not at home. My Mum smoked from age 30 for the rest of her life. We very rarely went out for dinner – we’re talking maybe once or twice a year, for a special occasion. A Vesta Chow Mein was a real treat. We had a holiday every other year, always in the UK. We never went abroad as a family and I only went abroad after I graduated for a summer job in France. But we was’ appy.
Tiggerlion says
In the early days of the M6, my dad would take the family to a service station for a treat. We loved it. It was great!
Black Celebration says
We used to go as a family to the car wash. I do it with my kids now and they love it.
Jaygee says
Always found showers to be far easier myself
mikethep says
Despite having a bit of a Baedeker war – Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Italy and, er, the Shetlands – my dad had no truck with that filthy foreign muck. It was soused herrings, liver and bacon, steak and kidney, Lancashire hotpot, roast on Sundays. All helped down by lashings of Worcester Sauce and salt and pepper. I had no particular complaints, apart from the pressure-cooked veg, although I wouldn’t go near those herrings. It was all cooked by my long-suffering mother of course – although he did the washing up.
Tiggerlion says
Pressure cookers!
*shivers*
Vulpes Vulpes says
Absolutely brilliant things. Cook your own chick peas from dry in less than a month. Puree a selection of lentils for a dahl in under 4 hours. Red kidney beans from dry? No problem. Bung ’em in the pressure cooker. Hugely energy saving, planet friendly things they are. Just make sure to clean the vent valve carefully. I’ve got two; one little one for everyday stuff and one humungous thing for big batches of beans.
Tiggerlion says
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed anything that came out of a pressure cooker. Clearly, I’ve not been following the right recipe.
mikethep says
Well if I can’t stand Brussels sprouts it may be my mother’s habit of pressure cooking them that’s to blame. I was absolutely terrified of the noise it made.
Mrs thep makes stock in one in 20 mins instead of all morning, but I’m still terrified of it.
duco01 says
I’m terrified of pressure cookers. I always feel that they’re going to explode with the force of several megatons of TNT, leaving my kitchen walls coated in a layer of toor dahl.
hubert rawlinson says
A neighbour called round once panicking she’d used the pressure cooker and it was rattling away and steam was escaping from the vent. She didn’t know what to do.
Luckily she’d turned the heat off, I went round and ran cold water over it, as it and she calmed down. Panic over.
retropath2 says
Arf! Who removers making banoffee pie, where you have to bili an unopened tin of custard for some time. A friend, to whom my wife had given the recipe, had one explode. Molten custard everywhere……
fitterstoke says
I vaguely remember that – although, in what’s left of my memory, it would have been a tin of condensed milk.
retropath2 says
One of the two.
Harry Tufnell says
My dad was evacuated during WW2 and his food tastes were formed during rationing. Due to this he was very strait laced, meat (beef or pork, never lamb, venison or anything foreign) and very limited range of veg, carrots, peas, runner beans and potatoes in some form with EVERY main meal, I never saw him eat fruit and all veg was boiled to within an inch of its life. It’s because of this that I never ate anything containing garlic until I left home, at age 16 the only pasta I had ever eaten was Heinz spaghetti hoops, I’d never eaten curry, cauliflower, black pudding, any fish without batter (ok, tinned salmon very occasionally), asparagus, fresh tomatoes, etc. it’s a wonder we didn’t get scurvy! He wasn’t a drinker but he smoked roll-ups which eventually killed him at 83.
Tiggerlion says
Salt and white pepper, English mustard, ketchup and HP sauce were the only seasoning we had.
My uncle, who was from India, cooked a curry for me when I was 13. It was revolting and I avoided it entirely until university when I discovered that what I’d been offered wasn’t actual curry.
duco01 says
Re: tinned salmon
“It’s the fish John West reject that make John West fish the best!!!”
retropath2 says
Roast chicken and roast pork alternate Sundays, except lamb at Easter and turkey at Christmas. Mince n tatties on Saturdays. I was more or less left to fend for myself during the week, so lots of cheese on toast, eggy baked beans, fried spam. Both my parents lost much the urge to parent after I arrived, a decade after my siblings, leaving the 30 weeks of boarding school meals as my main nutritional nod. They ate sandwiches Monday thru Friday: always processed cheese and jam. Fish and chips about every 6 weeks, usually on a whim; who remembers rock salmon? Aka catfish. Eating out? Never. Holidays were always to my Auntie Anne, who ran a b and b in Guernsey. I didn’t know any different. I survived. Only now do I understand the parts depression and PTSD played upon each of them, the repercussions affecting one of my elder sibs to this day. Hindsight: grim. Then: Ok.
Tiggerlion says
The bread was always white.
My dad had depression, I think, but no PTSD. He was conscripted post war and saw no action. He spent most of his army time in jail. He didn’t take kindly to being ordered about.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Rock Salmon aka Scyliorhinus canicula. Rick Padstein probably sells it for top dollar. I dissected a few of the unfortunate little beggars during A level Bilge. Not easy to prepare, but allegedly quite tasty if done well.
retropath2 says
The genus name suggests it was actually dogfish that was rock salmon, which, in hindsight I recall it was.
I have also had snoek, the wartime favourite, if in South Africa, where it is still a thing.
duco01 says
I seem to remember, from when I lived in the UK, that rock salmon was often sold in fish ‘n chip shops, simply as “rock”, without mentioning the word ‘salmon’. Which rather amused me.
hubert rawlinson says
When we visit that there London to stay with my BiL on a Friday it’s a visit to Toffs in Muswell Hill where my wife and BiL have Rock and chips, though sometimes it’s not available.
mikethep says
Toffs in Muswell Hill is one of the few things I miss about living in London.
hubert rawlinson says
@mikethep I’m on a quick visit to Muswell Hill so I took this especially for you.
yorkio says
It’s called rock eel in some places too, or used to be anyway. Rock and chips was always my regular order from the chippy but I’ve not seen it since I moved to the North East some 20 years ago.
Gatz says
Awful food. Just awful. My mother was a terrible cook and didn’t care about food, my father would make appreciative grunting noises as he shovelled down the plainest meat and two veg achievable. It didn’t stop him being a very fat man and I suspect a lot of it was down to being born just before WW2, and hence childhood experience of rationing. Mind you, my grandad was a baker so even as one of a family of 7 kids my old man probably ate better than many.
Flavour was strictly prohibited and any hint of garlic, herbs or spice was completely out of the question. Salads were wan raw veg and a piece of processed meat without dressings, veg was cooked until every scrap of nutrition had been boiled into the water and then the water was poured down the sink. A standard weekday dinner was something out of a packet with beans or peas and boiled potatoes. Even once he had packed in his two packs a day smoking habit in his 40s (and substituted them with the Polo mints which robbed him of his last few teeth) he never seemed to appreciate what anything tasted like.
There was never any suggestion of Indian, Chinese or even Italian food in our house and I had to learn to cook completely from scratch when I left home at 18 because there was nothing I could have learned in that kitchen that I would have wanted to.
Tiggerlion says
Salad cream was our salad dressing. No foreign food in our house either. There was one Chinese chippy in town. We never went.
dai says
We had a Chinese 100 yards from our house. We had a “set meal for 2” every Friday evening. It was comfortably enough for 4.
Black Celebration says
My mother was a good cook but there was a heavy reliance on liver, fish fingers, prunes and Instant whip. Potatoes always, all the time. We had a potato peeling machine that was fun to use. Until one day she decided not to peel potatoes any more. There is no need – I still think that but I have gone back to peeling because my GLW doesn’t like unpeeled spuds.
Another mother-led revelation was eating an entire apple, including the core. Completely fine. But I am aware that this is unusual.
Jaygee says
Obviously not their young as my sister and I are still here to tell the tale.
While not a great cook, my mum served Mary and I up food that made us
feel like Gods. I can still taste some of those burnt offerings all these years
later
dai says
Variations on meat and 2 veg originally, but my mother was a good cook and fairly adventurous so we moved on to other things. My dad could cook too. He hardly drank and had given up smoking when I was a baby. My mother did neither.
Thegp says
Frequently boiled mince with potatoes and carrots. Basically Russian prison food
And full English with beetroot.
No wonder I eat out a lot now
Tiggerlion says
I love beetroot. I’ll try that breakfast!
Diddley Farquar says
My mother was a very good I would say. She made her own marmalade, and Christmas pudding. Her roast potatoes were exemplary. Crispy and yet light and fluffy. One of my favourite things was an oven roasted ham joint served with a parsley sauce, mash and peas. Delia was the goddess whose word was gospel. We follow that tradition now. The best. My mother’s mother made roast chicken whenever we visited. The best thing was her bread sauce. Sublime. I always had a thing for mild, bland sauces. Especially custard. There was always custard left over at home in the larder and I got to eat it up.
We did eat out a bit too. The Paddyfields was a Chinese restaurant in Oxford. We had duck in pancakes with hoisin sauce. Still one of the best dishes I know. Then there was La Cappanina the local Italian. I guess we were a bit posh. Not that it seemed so. We went to Normandy once as my Dad wanted to see the war graves. We stayed at a Logi inn. 1976, the hot summer. Half board. We got mussels every night as a starter. I liked them but I always liked trying out something different.
Twang says
My dad was in Hong Kong for his national service and came back with a penchant for Chinese food so if I went out on his sales calls in the holidays a big treat was to go to a Chinese restaurant, usually in Manchester, probably with a customer, for chop suey or chow mein. I still love it.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Threaten me with dismemberment. Take away my record collection. Do whatever twisted thing you can think of, but you will never, NEVER, pursuade me to eat what my Mum thought was a treat and a delicacy. I’d rather starve.
Gatz says
Even my father wouldn’t eat the trip my mother would cook, and the smell of it gave the rest of the family the boak. Which I suspect was the whole point. She was like that. Still is for all I know.
Jaygee says
Tripe and stuff like beef bible is very popular in Asia where texture is considered to be every bit as important as taste
Harry Tufnell says
My dad was presented with a plate of tripe when he was evacuated in WW2, he was told it would be served to him every meal until he ate it, four days later he passed out at school and his hosts decided he probably wasn’t going to be bullied into eating it, something I’ve never tried and wouldn’t consider even though I love liver and haggis.
fitterstoke says
I believe it’s almost pure protein, with virtually no fat. Very good for you.
However, I also believe that you have to wash the bile and mucopolysaccharide slime out of it (erk!) and that the texture is like stewed cellular blanket material (gah!).
As Gatz comments – Boak!
Vulpes Vulpes says
What’s worse is the f*ckin’ SMELL. When my mum was cooking some I could smell it from two streets away on my way home from school. In through the front door and straight up the stairs with my nostrils squeezed tight shut, open the bedroom window – and breathe. She tried feeding it to me once, when I was two. I spat it all over her and she never tried that again. But she would keep buying the stuff and stinking the house out. I don’t think dad ever ate any either – he probably just fired up another Senior Service and disappeared behind the paper until the fug dispersed.
Twang says
Oddly enough I vaguely remember quite liking it but nothing could induce me to eat it now.
moseleymoles says
My mum was an excellent cook, when she did cook. Sadly at 87 no longer up to it. Once we graduated to adult dinner from mash and fish fingers, I can remember stews, goulashes, roast chicken, beef and lamb. Roast potatoes but never chips. My dad who made the great post-war social mobility leap would never allow fish and chips – a great treat when he was away – or other foods from his poor childhood. In later life she added Indian and Chinese to no bad effect. Her cuisine heritage was ultimately German jewish so we have inherited a stonking Christmas pud recipe, together with the enigmatic chocolate pudding (a heavenly steamed affair with little suger and lots of green label Menier chocolate), apple strudel, etc. Dad was a massive allotmenter so veg was from there: runner beans, sprouts, broccoli and soft fruits. More of a case of what we didn’t try at home – can’t remember much Italian.
Tiggerlion says
You were lucky. 😉
Vulpes Vulpes says
This thread has reminded me of Bird’s Eye Fish Fingers. I have added them to next week’s grocery order. I’ll swerve the Angel Delight though.
Do Sainsburys take Green Shield Stamps?
Rigid Digit says
Had a craving for Butterscotch Angel Delight a couple of months ago.
Wish I had left in to the memory because the reality was a synthetic let-down.
Fish Fingers, Chips and Spaghetti Hoops – still a regular dinner choice chez RD
Vulpes Vulpes says
Modern Angel Delight is shite, so I’m told – they’ve taken out all the damaging additives and now it’s so bland you might as well not bother.
Twang says
I remember the little highly coloured bit which hadn’t melted properly and was super powered flavour.
MC Escher says
These testaments are very typical of people with parents who grew up during rationing.
Thank God for Elizabeth David and her Mediterranean cookbook which must have changed the cooking habits of the next generation. Sadly too late for most of the above correspondents (myself included), but we live in a paradise compared to standard British cooking 50 years ago.
Vulpes Vulpes says
I have had to consult my copy of that little tome to figure out what the heck it was I ate at a little provincial French restaurant in Saint – James.
The hotel Saint – Jacques, where we used to eat, is now sadly for sale. Hopefully not because of some gastronomical tragedy.
SteveT says
Bread and dripping toast.
Crumpets toasted on the fire
Roast Beef, pork or lamb every Sunday without fail.
Homemade apple pie or apple and blackberry crumble. Fresh apples and blackberries.
Tinned fruit and carnation later Angel Delight.
Home made chips usually cooked in lard.
Old man never had heart trouble nor mum but he did have and survive bowel cancer in later life which has made me a little more careful.
Tiggerlion says
To be fair to my mum, she cooked superb puddings, all of which were served with custard.
Hawkfall says
One of the things I find interesting about the British desserts I grew up with is how tied they are to the empire. Those puddings that Ambrosia sold in tins (Rice, Sago, Tapioca) are all African and Asian staple carbohydrates.
Harry Tufnell says
Rice pudding was the only way rice appeared in our house, I can only try to imagine my dad’s face if he was served rice as part of his main meal, if it didn’t have some form of potato it wasn’t a proper dinner.
SteveT says
Sounds like my house growing up Harry. My mum even referred to Pizza as ‘foreign muck’ yet always wanted to go somewhere ‘foreign’ on holiday.
Boneshaker says
My grandmother thought nothing of eating industrial quantities of tripe, and her cooking was always suffused in lard. I ate tripe when I was very young, but even at the tender age of five could tell that it was disgusting and there was something not quite right about it. My Mum cooked meat just about every day, usually with mashed potato and the most gruesome form of bitter cabbage it’s possible to imagine. Jam and bread for tea followed by homemade Victoria sponge was a luxury.
These days I never touch red meat, don’t eat much chicken and only dabble in fish. The older I get the more squeamish I’ve become about eating dead animals of any kind. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations seemingly never gave it a thought either from a moral or health perspective.
Vulpes Vulpes says
When I was about five, my mum took me around to an auntie’s house that was a couple of streets away. She was actually a great-aunt, my mum’s mum’s sister, one of seven siblings. She was also a bit absent-minded and a little potty. When we got there, and she knew we were coming, no-one answered the front door. Mum tried the door and found that it opened. We were hit by a wall of stench that almost made me hurl. Auntie Jo was out in the garden, blissfully pottering, while in the kitchen a large suace-pan stuffed with cabbage had boiled for so long that it had gone dry and the cabbage was burning, filling the house with noxious smoke. Apart from tripe, the worst thing I’ve ever inflicted upon my nostrils.
Boneshaker says
Cabbage is one of very few veg that I still can’t face. Tripe used to have an odour of soggy blankets being boiled from what I can recall, only ten times worse. Mind you, that could actually have been the smell of soggy blankets being boiled. Great days!
hubert rawlinson says
My dad and his sister who brought me up were both born in India. We had curry which was based on ‘curry powder’ and sultanas, can recall any apple (unlike @Twang). My father was eight when he came here and my aunt about eighteen though as they had servants she probably never learnt to or had the need to cook.
Jam sandwiches, jam and cheese sandwiches, sausage and beans from a tin, ‘curried’ beans.
I had my first proper curry at the Chakwal in Leeds 25p in the early 70s.
Twang says
My Dad liked a hot curry. He said if it didn’t make your hair sweat it wasn’t hot enough. He’d had interesting National Service. Him and his mate were in the Signals and were training in Northumberland in the winter so they went to see the officer and requested a transfer overseas – somewhere warm. My Dad got Hong Kong and was demobbed there so the ship home was essentially a cruise, including a 2 week stop over in Sri Lanka (Ceylon then). His mate got Palestine and was killed in a terrorist attack in 1947. But for the whim of an officer their roles could have been reversed and I wouldn’t be here.
Tiggerlion says
I think that’s what happened with my uncle.
rob says
Oh my goodness – Chakwal was a mainstay of my life in Leeds in the late 70’s! Rampant inflation had taken the cost to 75p by then.
kalamo says
Chips with everything, as relatives worked in potato transportation. Our garden was filled with onions, that was my dad’s speciality. He would swap those for other things. We kept chickens, my mother could wring a chicken’s neck and pluck it. Back then everyone would know how to do that.
moseleymoles says
Whereas when we moved to the country my dad had a notion of shooting rabbits (infesting fields around the house) and so borrowed a shotgun from a local farmer. This was the seventies so you could do that type of thing. First rabbit he shot lay on the ground twitching and dad was not so up for clubbing it on the head.
Jaygee says
Your dad sounds like a thoroughly decent sort.
Hawkfall says
We lived on the coast and once in a while my parents would go out and collect whelks, for a treat.
What happened next was always the same. They would boil them in the kitchen, while my brother and I took refuge in the living room with the door firmly shut. What a stink. I think stench is more appropriate to be honest. It was a fug. It had texture. My parents would then gorge on these things, saying things to us like “Lovely! I don’t understand why you don’t like these!” Then, at 2:30am in the morning we’d hear them running to the toilet.
Sniffity says
Sort of on topic, when I was a youngster the bloke next door was an engineer for Chrysler. At one point he was sent to the main office in the US for something, and returned a few weeks later bearing all sorts of exotic trinkets.
One item was menu/brochure for an establishment called Zubin’s Rib Shack. It confuzzled me until it was explained what spare ribs were (even so it was many years till I got a go at trying ’em). But even more amazing was that I was led to understand that you could place an order for these things, and someone would deliver them to your door. Home delivery? Truly, the USA was the Promised Land!
PS Dear ol’ Dad grew up in the Depression, and often went hungry. He ate anything and everything that was ever put before him, but it was just fuel; I never once heard him praise or criticise a meal.
Gatz says
One of the later Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books starts with an American character phoning an order to a pizza place then being outraged to find they don’t deliver. IIRC she already knew they wouldn’t, it was a way of feeling in control.
NigelT says
I was born in 1950, and just about remember rationing.
My memory of food in the 50s chimes with many who have commented already, but I do remember having rabbit quite often. Chicken was a luxury and only eaten at Christmas. In the summer we would have salad…this was floppy lettuce, tomato and cucumber with some sort of tinned meat and salad cream (which is still my condiment of choice). Sunday dinner was a roast – I’m guessing lamb and beef were more affordable. Mince featured regularly, as well as liver, and sausages of course. I never remember Mum knowingly using an onion in anything.
My grandmothers would both cook delicious home made fish and chips, with their own batter and using fish bought fresh from the fish cart that would come round the streets in Leytonstone – wonderful!
Almost every child had a cooked school dinner during the week, so I expect many were like me and just had a light ‘tea’ in the evening…something on toast probably, like beans or sardines. Mum embraced the frozen food revolution with enthusiasm, so fish fingers also featured prominently. Breakfast was always cereal, preferably one that offered a free toy in the packet and was covered in sugar. Talking of which…bread and butter with sugar on is a memory too.
Dessert was often tapioca or the aforementioned Angel Delight, but there was also curds and whey….whatever that was. Tinned fruit salad with evaporated milk!
Needless to say, later on in the 60s curry was from a Vesta packet, and pasta was tinned spaghetti….not that we had ever heard of pasta. Rice was in pudding…probably from an Ambrosia tin.
We never, ever, went out to eat, although there would possibly be a treat in a cafe very occasionally, probably when we were on a seaside holiday at my Grandmother’s in Broadstairs.
But we was ‘appy….
Twang says
Home made chips were good. Cooked in the heavily crusted chip pan with oil which had been there for ever, just topped up occasionally.
NigelT says
I’m not sure cooking oil was a thing in the 50s…? I really have no idea.
hubert rawlinson says
I recall in 85 bringing back from a holiday in Greece ten 1 litre bottles of olive oil in my hand luggage because all you could get or seemed to get at the time was small bottles of olive oil BP for helping shift earwax.
In the sixties our chip pan as it cooled the inside would solidify back into a white block of beef dripping.
mikethep says
Lard probably! I remember the end of sweets rationing…
kalamo says
School meals were good back then, not sure if that’s still so. And yes rice was a pudding, I was probably in my twenties before the concept of rice and curry emerged.
Tiggerlion says
I loved school meals. They set me up nicely for hospital food, which I also enjoy.
fitterstoke says
Arf! I used to know the best-to-worst hospital staff canteens in Greater Glasgow Health Board: I wonder if the ranking has changed over the last forty-odd years?
SteveT says
It is remarkable that most of us were introduced to ‘Indian food’ via Vesta.
It is astonishing that anyone ever attempted to enjoy curry having eaten anything made by Vesta – truly awful yet Indian food is one of my favourites these days.
mikethep says
Still available, remarkably.
https://fabfinds.co.uk/products/vesta-beef-curry-rice-215g?_pos=1&_sid=ba6f26642&_ss=r
Or you can make your own.
https://brendierecipes.wordpress.com/2021/03/30/vesta-style-70s-fruity-chicken-curry/
Chrisf says
I actually have very fond memories of food when I was younger (born in 1967 so a teenager in the 80’s). My mum was a pretty decent cook and we also had a big garden where she used to grow lots of vegetables. Whilst we did have some of the basic “egg and chips” type food from time to time, I recall it being very cosmopolitan – from pasta to Indian (I even remember going for vegetarian Indian as a youngster before it was a thing) and everything in between . Even though I was brought up in a very traditional Sheffield, we very rarely had the traditional Pie and Mash type of food. The one thing I remember most clearly is that mum used too make quiche a lot – usually with salad (from, the garden).
The overriding thing I got from my mum’s diet / food I grew up with, that I still maintain today, is that generally everything is cooked from fresh – very very rarely was there processed food.
Vulpes Vulpes says
I can remember asking, “When can we have some spring onions again?”, only to receive a slightly patronising smile and be told, “When it’s spring, you silly Billy! They’re not in season yet.”.
Too many folk these days don’t seem to bat an eyelid at eating food flown in from the other side of the planet, 365 days of the year.
retropath2 says
Quiche! One thing my mother did cook was pastry, for the apple pies that always followed the pork or chicken on Sundays. Occasionally she made a bacon and egg pie, until the 70s, when suddenly it became quiche.
Twang says
Actually my mum did make her own pastry as I guess everyone did, and to this day her mince pies have never been bettered.
Vincent says
Pretty much the same as everyone above. Mum affected to be more sophisticated as she had attended a convent in Belgium in the 1930s, but the family still took a year to get through a head of garlic, and I didn’t eat pizza or pasta until I was 18. Salad was viewed suspiciously. But her classical British cooking was fantastic, and no roast dinner has ever touched hers,; nor could I imagine another’s roast turkey. Her toad-in-the-hole and braised mince with mash was magnificent. Baked lambs hearts … not so much. Nor was there much love for her steamed cod and mash, which was the blandest thing I ever tasted. Very little convenience food as it was “common”, but nothing “funny peculiar” either; she would eat a mild curry, but pulled faces about the very thought of Chinese or Japanese food. Dad was Glasnevin-born Irish and as long as it had potatoes and meat with nothing fancy about it, he was happy.
salwarpe says
Both my parents were born in the same year during the war, though with remarkably different childhoods.
Ny dad grew up in rural Essex, the son of an Ministry of Ag horticultural advisor, with a well-stocked vegetable garden and grandson of a local farmer who had a jersey cow in a barn next to his moated farmhouse to produce cream for afternoon tea and a walled vegetable and fruit garden open to the public which had espalliered pears and peaches growing on a south-facing wall.
My mum grew up in East Ham of more working class stock. Because her mum was a hospital nutritionist, she made sure they ate well, despite rationing, with a large joint of meat bought for Sunday lunch for the family (and all and sundry invited home to share), which was then used creatively in other meals during the week.
Consequently, they brought both food traditions into our family, with excellent meals based on vegetables and fruit grown in our garden and either eaten fresh or from frozen/pickled/preserved later in the year. John Seymour and the Good Life were 70s inspiration for them. I remember my dad bringing home and using a rotavator to plough up the fields behind our house. My mum loved trying new recipes, my dad enjoyed baking his own bread and making home made fruit wine and kit beer, and both my sister and I inherited their love of good food.
An added bonus for us was my dad was a packaging engineer, first for Metal Box in Worcester (so he would bring home trays of unmarked tins, decipherable only from the serial number – could be tinned fruit, could be dog food!), then for Jacobs Suchard in Zürich (many anonymous brown cardboard boxes full of Milka chocolate bars).
Tiggerlion says
Sounds idyllic. It must be great having a dad who worked for PiL.
salwarpe says
Sweet memories, Tig.
retropath2 says
A reflection: my very exhaustive and eclectic tastes in food I have always put down to the monotony of childhood meals, as a response or retaliation. Had I been brought up on gourmet foods and fine dining, would I crave simpler fare? I know a few food is fuel dullards, but have never wondered whether they were always that way, assuming so. Is it that we emulate the things we like from childhood and revolt against those we don’t?
Native says
I agree with this. I love eating out as well, and I’m sure this is because as a child we hardly ever went to restaurants.
And growing up on chips and beans with either egg, sausage or a frozen burger (but no bun) has most certainly had an impact on me now trying everything from all round the world.
Clive says
Ski yoghurt.
hubert rawlinson says
Is that a dairy version of Ski Sunday, or possibly Ski Sundae?
fitterstoke says
It’s the “full of fitness” food
For all the familee!
fitterstoke says
Native says
I recall visiting my grandparents on a Sunday and they would make huge Yorkshire Puddings. We’d eat them as starters with gravy and then as pudding with jam.
We’d also eat dripping on toast – with crunchy salt.
My grandparents smoked like chimneys – I recall the cigarette cards they used to collect – hundreds of the damn things! Every year they’d cash them in for pointless kitchen utensils and gardening equipment. My grandmother lived to her mid-60s, grandfather early 70s.
I also remember my parents used to get fish and chips, but the children got a fishcake rather than a fish!
hubert rawlinson says
@Native would that be a chip shop made fishcake with two slices of potato sandwiching a piece of fish and covered in batter, or one of those pre-made mushy bird’s-eye fishcakes?
Native says
Yes – the chip shop fishcake, with a hint of fish in the middle of potato and batter. Presumably a fraction of the price of a piece of haddock or cod. To be fair, I used to enjoy them.
hubert rawlinson says
We’d sit outside the chip shop and eat them with this.
Unfortunately there’s no picture of the contents but the drink was bright blue, I dread to think what was in it.
As I don’t eat fish anymore I’ll have a scallop, one large slice of potato in batter occasionally.
Proust can have his madeleine give me something deep fried in batter and I’m sat on a wall eating from newspaper.
Harry Tufnell says
In cosmopolitan downtown Barnsley they are called patties, lush with chips, sloppy peas (never the effete “mushy”) and bits – which you may know erroneously as scraps or batter bits.
Tiggerlion says
I presume you are talking potato scallops. I never knew that a scallop was sea food until my mid twenties.
hubert rawlinson says
Indeed I was, a deep fried slice of potato as above.
fitterstoke says
Now we’re talking! Potato scallops are a treat, a delicacy!
Mike_H says
With tomato ketchup and fresh-ground black pepper!
hubert rawlinson says
Ketchup, bleurghh.
fitterstoke says
A little salt and vinegar will do nicely thanks – away with your cosmopolitan fancies, Mike…you’ll be recommending mayo next!
hubert rawlinson says
Substitute the vinegar with lemon juice and I’m in.
fitterstoke says
I’ve never tried that. Sounds interesting – a different acid?
hubert rawlinson says
Citric.
fitterstoke says
Well, I like acetic acid…
And I like citric acid…
But which one is better?
There’s only one way to find out…FIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!
Native says
Also, my father can’t eat anything with even a hint of spice. If he orders a burger in a restaurant he finds it too spicy! Only thing he’ll order in restaurants in lasagne, and he sees that as exotic.
And he insists on calling HP sauce, black sauce.
Native says
I used to rather enjoy a spam fritter at school. Most kids hated them, so I’d end up with two or three a day!
Tiggerlion says
Mmmm. Spam fritter!
Rufus T Firefly says
In an idle and curious moment I once completed a questionnaire about the number of different foods that you’ve eaten or would at least taste (or something). I’ll try anything, reasoning that if other people eat it it can’t do you any harm. So I totalled 97 or something out of 100 (couldn’t track down a durian or some of that civet cat coffee). I did the same for my father (born in Dublin in 1928) and the result was closer to five per cent. Despite travelling the world, his aversion to anything other than ham, egg and chips, cod and chips, steak and chips and – occasionally – roast beef and roast potatoes, was almost phobic. He never drank alcohol, being content with tea, and lemonade. He had been an excellent Gaelic games player in his youth and that talent showed when he took up golf in his forties, so he regularly walked several miles during a week. He did smoke, but never in the house, until my mother died. He lived to be 92.
Tiggerlion says
Marvellous! You’ll live to a hundred and fifty with those genes.
Rufus T Firefly says
Thanks. I’m not sure I could switch to his diet. Could make for a very dull 150!
fitterstoke says
Did anyone’s parents eat Corsair Chicken?
Gatz says
Not that I remember, but Fray Bentos pies and steak and kidney puddings counted as a treat, and on weekend evening visits to my mother’s brother the usual catering was Smedleys tinned sausage rolls.
Boneshaker says
A hamper of tripe and Angel Delight for Tigger.
JustTim says
I guess my memories are very similar to most others here.
Just one or two things to add – my dad was a keen gardener, so I can still remember with affection the fresh peas and baby carrots that used to go with the roast at the start of summer. And the roast itself was always cooked on a rack above the tin for the yorkshire pudding.
Eating out was normally reserved for birthdays – usually the Turk’s Head Grill in Trinity Street in Cambridge (I’m not sure if it was a Beefeater or a Berni Inn) – and, as I got a bit older, I was allowed the special coffee in a glass, with the cream floating on the top!
Tiggerlion says
And powerful alcohol and plenty of sugar at the bottom!