I remember it well, we only had one fire, in the lounge, everywhere else in the house felt like it was outdoors, we wore out jumpers in bed and had our coats as extra blankets.
Same here, we used to argue over who was going to venture into the cold kitchen to make a pot of tea. None of us wanted to leave the fireside.
Mum tried all ways to keep us warm, she used to wrap the oven plate in brown paper and put it in our bed, so that we got into a nice warm bed.
Same here, we used to argue over who was going to venture into the cold kitchen to make a pot of tea. None of us wanted to leave the fireside.
Mum tried all ways to keep us warm, she used to wrap the oven plate in brown paper and put it in our bed, so that we got into a nice warm bed.
In the winter, did you have to scrape the frost off your bedroom window in the morning to be able to see out?
When my wife and I were young and living in a small flat with just our first child, we couldn't afford a lot of money for heating.
But my wife, ever resourceful, used to cook a lot of rice puddings.
This meant she could "legitimately" have the oven on for most of the day while I was at work and she and our son could sit in the kitchen/diner and be warm as toast.
In the winter, did you have to scrape the frost off your bedroom window in the morning to be able to see out?
When my wife and I were young and living in a small flat with just our first child, we couldn't afford a lot of money for heating.
But my wife, ever resourceful, used to cook a lot of rice puddings.
This meant she could "legitimately" have the oven on for most of the day while I was at work and she and our son could sit in the kitchen/diner and be warm as toast.
Yes we did, it was tough getting out of a lovely warm bed into a freezing cold bedroom. I used to grab my clothes, and get dressed in the kitchen in front of the open oven door.
Yes we did, it was tough getting out of a lovely warm bed into a freezing cold bedroom. I used to grab my clothes, and get dressed in the kitchen in front of the open oven door.
When we were at school we used to put our school clothes under the blankets so they would not be freezing cold in the morning. Our Mum used to drape our Blazers and macs on a horse around the fire so we could put them on warm before we ran out.
My bedroom faced North .... The North Sea and it was freezing. There was pink Lino on the floor.
When we were at school we used to put our school clothes under the blankets so they would not be freezing cold in the morning. Our Mum used to drape our Blazers and macs on a horse around the fire so we could put them on warm before we ran out.
My bedroom faced North .... The North Sea and it was freezing. There was pink Lino on the floor.
We had heating upstairs. A paraffin heater; stunk the bloody place out.
The potatoes we had we utterly foul - all core.
And another vote from me for liver.
Oh yes I remember the parafin heater We used to have one standing on the landing and have all the bedroom doors open in the hope of some heat getting in, but it was horribly stinky and probably dangerous too. Used to sneak it in the bathroom when I was having my weekly bath in about 4" of warm water.
I really luxuriate in long, deep, hot baths nowadays.
Exactly.
Liver, heart and tripe along with stews made of fatty breast of lamb were often served for dinner in my house as a child......and we were not as poor as many.
I have never been able to face tripe and never seen heart served. I was also fussy about what I ate until I went to university but there was no choice in our hall, you ate what was served or went hungry. We never worked out what some of the meats were and had a running joke with a chap from West Africa about various exotic animals they could be. Probably be accused of being racist by the PC brigade now!
We had heating upstairs. A paraffin heater; stunk the bloody place out.
The potatoes we had we utterly foul - all core.
And another vote from me for liver.
When we visited my Taid he cooked on a Primus stove so you could smell that around the house, I think he had electricity but the later place where he lived had no electricity or mains water.
Oh yes I remember the parafin heater We used to have one standing on the landing and have all the bedroom doors open in the hope of some heat getting in, but it was horribly stinky and probably dangerous too. Used to sneak it in the bathroom when I was having my weekly bath in about 4" of warm water.
I really luxuriate in long, deep, hot baths nowadays.
Our next flat was huge with no central heating and only an open grate fire.
I bought a paraffin heater, which had two burners..
I used to have to take a can to work in the boot of my car and call at an "ironmongers" on the way home, to fill it with paraffin, twice a week in really cold months
We used to have tripe now and again when we were kids and we hated it. As if it weren't bad enough on it's own, my dad always used to dish it up with lava bread. For the benefit of those lucky enough never to have encountered it, it's not bread at all, but a revolting dark green/black paste made from boiled seaweed, roughly the consistency of porridge.
Expecting kids to eat tripe and lava bread would probably be considered child abuse these days by some. I'm not entirely sure I'd disagree
We were only talking here the other day about how common it was for families to more or less live in one room through the winter, dashing in and out of others only when they had to because it was too cold to heat the whole house. All this would have been in the 70s/early 80s for me, but I can remember the 'coats as blankets' thing and dreading Sunday afternoons because it meant sitting in a shallow bath of slowly chilling water until the precise moment that you judged it to be only one degree less arctic than the bathroom you'd been avoiding getting out into.
What surprises me though is how, just by thinking about it, I can still smell that scorched newspaper smell that came when the coal fire was 'drawn' with a sheet of newspaper against a shovel every morning. I'm grateful that the smell of tripe and lava bread can't be conjured up that easily!
I don't know what was going on with the thin slices of liver having to last all week. I am pretty sure that offal was only ever rationed briefly, and that was in the early forties!
We used to have tripe now and again when we were kids and we hated it. As if it weren't bad enough on it's own, my dad always used to dish it up with lava bread. For the benefit of those lucky enough never to have encountered it, it's not bread at all, but a revolting dark green/black paste made from boiled seaweed, roughly the consistency of porridge.
Expecting kids to eat tripe and lava bread would probably be considered child abuse these days by some. I'm not entirely sure I'd disagree
We were only talking here the other day about how common it was for families to more or less live in one room through the winter, dashing in and out of others only when they had to because it was too cold to heat the whole house. All this would have been in the 70s/early 80s for me, but I can remember the 'coats as blankets' thing and dreading Sunday afternoons because it meant sitting in a shallow bath of slowly chilling water until the precise moment that you judged it to be only one degree less arctic than the bathroom you'd been avoiding getting out into.
What surprises me though is how, just by thinking about it, I can still smell that scorched newspaper smell that came when the coal fire was 'drawn' with a sheet of newspaper against a shovel every morning. I'm grateful that the smell of tripe and lava bread can't be conjured up that easily!
For part of the day, my wife would drag two old big leather armchairs into the kitchen area of our living room and place them facing up against each other near the oven with the rice pudding on the go. Then she and the toddler would sit on them facing each other with a blanket over their legs, she would read or knit and he would play with his toys. They'd be warm as toast that way.
We used to fold the fireguard down flat, place that against the fire aperture and put the newspaper up against the fireguard, less hazardous than using the coal shovel as sometimes the edges of the paper would get drawn in round the shovel and catch fire!
Then you had to try to stop the burning paper going up the chimney!
We used to fold the fireguard down flat, place that against the fire aperture and put the newspaper up against the fireguard, less hazardous than using the coal shovel as sometimes the edges of the paper would get drawn in round the shovel and catch fire!
Then you had to try to stop the burning paper going up the chimney!
We had a metal sheet with a grip / handle on, called a 'blazer' that we used in the same way as the sheet - sometimes used the newspaper if no-one could be persuaded to go out to the coal house for the blazer. We did have some little gas fires in the bedrooms too, that we rented from the coal board - mam used to go up and light them maybe 10 mins before we went to bed. Later, in the 80s, when the gas fires got condemned, we had little gas wall heaters installed instead. This was right on the north east coast though - could lie in bed and listen to the fog horn - and still had to get dressed in bed cos it was too cold to get out of bed and get dressed
Funnily enough, we sat and watched tonight, while eating liver and onions - but ours was braised, with garlic and tomato and had a thick rich gravy! It was delicious.
My kids have eaten Lamb's liver, the secret is cutting into thin strips. My Mum used to serve a Schwartz recipe called Indonesian Liver with peanut butter coconut and soy sauce. I didn't tell them it was liver
I remember my Mum making Ox liver with a dark gravy and carrots. People don't know what they're missing, it's so cheap and nutritious.
We used to fold the fireguard down flat, place that against the fire aperture and put the newspaper up against the fireguard, less hazardous than using the coal shovel as sometimes the edges of the paper would get drawn in round the shovel and catch fire!
Then you had to try to stop the burning paper going up the chimney!
We had a metal sheet with a grip / handle on, called a 'blazer' that we used in the same way as the sheet - sometimes used the newspaper if no-one could be persuaded to go out to the coal house for the blazer. We did have some little gas fires in the bedrooms too, that we rented from the coal board - mam used to go up and light them maybe 10 mins before we went to bed. Later, in the 80s, when the gas fires got condemned, we had little gas wall heaters installed instead. This was right on the north east coast though - could lie in bed and listen to the fog horn - and still had to get dressed in bed cos it was too cold to get out of bed and get dressed
Funnily enough, we sat and watched tonight, while eating liver and onions - but ours was braised, with garlic and tomato and had a thick rich gravy! It was delicious.
I am in my early 40s and I've used a can opener like that, well I didn't use it like that! I used it properly.
My family certainly still had one kicking around in the 70s if not 80s. It might take me a while for muscle memory to kick in but I could use one now.
I was amazed that the two adults had never seen one before and didn't have the faintest idea what to do with it.
Me too! I was born in the 60s but our family wasn't well off at all and so in the 70s we still had many kitchen items that were from the 50s and quite a lot of furniture as well.
I was rolling around laughing at them all with the tin opener and wanted to grab it and say "Look you stupid women, you use it like this!". So simple to use if you use it correctly.
Interesting many on here saying errrr I would eat that! That in itself is a sign of the times as back then the parents were the parents and you did what you were told and eat what was put in front of you. The child's opinion wasn't required or even expected to have one.
Nowadays kids are given rights and are gobby from an ever earlier age.
You also had more meaning in family as there were not multiple TVs, computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets or games consoles. You ate together and all sat down to watch TV together. - Every day until you left to get married and set up you own home.
I used to have to take a can to work in the boot of my car and call at an "ironmongers" on the way home, to fill it with paraffin, twice a week in really cold months
Two burners?!!! Bloody rich people!
I fondly remember going with my mother up to the local shops (anyone remember local shops? A whole range of them!) with our paraffin can to get a gallon of paraffin that the old shop keeper would hand-pump out of a big tank at the back. Smelly, dangerous and had to use sparingly as we couldn't afford new wicks or much paraffin. But as the ONLY heater it was needed in winter.
I love programmes like this anyway, but especially this first episode because my mum was 12 in 1950, and she remembers that stage of rationing well - she still raves about the day sweets came off the ration!
My grandfather, her dad, was a butcher - sadly he's dead now, and I will always regret not getting him to write down all his stories from the war/rationing era, because he remembered it all and had some really funny things about what some of the meagre options were sometimes under the guise of the 'meat' ration. But it meant that my mum grew up with her mum being a fantastic cook who could make something out of nothing. They lived behind and above the shop (up until 1984!) with an outside loo all that time, and a bath and belfast sink downstairs off of the 'living room/kitchen' behind the shop which was where she did all the washing up too. My mum and her sister slept in the attic room which had no insulation - the stories they tell about the ice on the inside in the winter...! And I clearly remember my grandmothers still had a mangle in the garden even in the 70s - she had no room for a washing machine; she did everything by hand until my mum and aunt persuaded them in 1984 that they needed to move somewhere more modern to live instead of behind the shop!
Rochelle didn't seem to be particularly savvy in the kitchen, did she? We had one of those tin openers (I'd forgotten all about it until last night!) I'm sure still in the 80s - I certainly remember using it frequently in my teenage years, anyway!
Another vote for liver and onions here too - I love it! My grandmother did the most amazing liver, onions and bacon - no one does it like she did. Cooked well (I do mine in the slow cooker sometimes) it's divine with mash. I grew up eating nearly everything my grandfather sold (although I drew the line at tripe!) and we never knew what we'd get for Sunday - my grandfather just gave my mum whatever was left over after he shut on a Saturday - but we must have had nearly ever cut of meat going at one point or another, and I guess being the child of a mum and dad who lived through the grim years of rationing made it less likely any complaints would be tolerated - did it make us less 'fussy' than children who grew up less directly connected to these lean years?
Hows about Cow foot, Pig trotters, I'd be surprised if there's anyone South of Watford apart from Asians and West Indians still eating those.
Any takers for Pigs head/brawn, haven't some chefs and Jimmy's Farm tried to revive that one?
The key meat ingredient of Jersey Bean Crock! Although few people make it with trotters now, it is the traditional meat element of the island's 'national dish' (basically a slow-cooked stew of mixed beans and pork which was cooked in the bakers' ovens after they'd taken out the bread, and households would take their own crock pots down, stick them in the ovens, and then go and collect them a few hours later). It's still not unusual to see pigs' trotters on the odd butcher's counter over here, and the older generation wouldn't dream of using anything else - but I admit I usually use belly pork slices to make my Bean Crock with.
Looking forward to the next episode - not an era, food-wise, I know that much about as my parents never really talked about what they ate then (it was all about the music!) and I was only born in 1967 so I don't remember anything about it.
I really enjoyed that. One thing that did strike me was the accents on the 50s. If you weren't working class you spoke like the queen, otherwise it was a very strange Cockney twang that seems to face disappeared today (beautifully parodied by Catherine Tate in her b/w sketches set i. the 50s)
I love programmes like this anyway, but especially this first episode because my mum was 12 in 1950, and she remembers that stage of rationing well - she still raves about the day sweets came off the ration!
We "celebrated" with a tub of chocolate spread; richer than the pale imitation we get now.
The boy's Meccano set was bigger and grander than the one i had at that age.
Liked the Coronation memorabilia: my mug from school didn't last five minutes, and my propelling pencil, also from school, got stuck in the tram lines, (they were a bit slow in lifting them in our part of SE London). Had chicken pox, so didn't watch anybody's telly that day.
I hated Virol, I thought it was disgusting.
I had to laugh at the dripping. I love pork dripping on toast even today, especially the brown jelly layer, served on hot toast. We are lucky to have a proper butcher though, whose pork is tender, with crackling - supermarket pork seems almost fatless (and flavourless).
I too remember ice on the inside of bedroom windows - and just having your cold nose stuck out from under the sheets and blankets, watching your breath condense in the air above you.
Stuffed heart is delicious!
Comments
Same here, we used to argue over who was going to venture into the cold kitchen to make a pot of tea. None of us wanted to leave the fireside.
Mum tried all ways to keep us warm, she used to wrap the oven plate in brown paper and put it in our bed, so that we got into a nice warm bed.
In the winter, did you have to scrape the frost off your bedroom window in the morning to be able to see out?
When my wife and I were young and living in a small flat with just our first child, we couldn't afford a lot of money for heating.
But my wife, ever resourceful, used to cook a lot of rice puddings.
This meant she could "legitimately" have the oven on for most of the day while I was at work and she and our son could sit in the kitchen/diner and be warm as toast.
The potatoes we had we utterly foul - all core.
And another vote from me for liver.
Yes we did, it was tough getting out of a lovely warm bed into a freezing cold bedroom. I used to grab my clothes, and get dressed in the kitchen in front of the open oven door.
When we were at school we used to put our school clothes under the blankets so they would not be freezing cold in the morning. Our Mum used to drape our Blazers and macs on a horse around the fire so we could put them on warm before we ran out.
My bedroom faced North .... The North Sea and it was freezing. There was pink Lino on the floor.
Yes, i saw the clothes horse in the kitchen.
They might at least have had the kids queue up for a spoonful of Virol before "dinner" (never lunch). One spoon for the whole class, IIRC. This stuff: http://www.womanandhome.com/forums/threads/54853-Virol-do-you-remember-it
(PS. Born 1945)
Oh yes I remember the parafin heater
I really luxuriate in long, deep, hot baths nowadays.
You had windows?
I have never been able to face tripe and never seen heart served. I was also fussy about what I ate until I went to university but there was no choice in our hall, you ate what was served or went hungry. We never worked out what some of the meats were and had a running joke with a chap from West Africa about various exotic animals they could be. Probably be accused of being racist by the PC brigade now!
When we visited my Taid he cooked on a Primus stove so you could smell that around the house, I think he had electricity but the later place where he lived had no electricity or mains water.
Our next flat was huge with no central heating and only an open grate fire.
I bought a paraffin heater, which had two burners..
Remember "the Esso blee dooler?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NRbmfLVoWo
I used to have to take a can to work in the boot of my car and call at an "ironmongers" on the way home, to fill it with paraffin, twice a week in really cold months
Expecting kids to eat tripe and lava bread would probably be considered child abuse these days by some. I'm not entirely sure I'd disagree
We were only talking here the other day about how common it was for families to more or less live in one room through the winter, dashing in and out of others only when they had to because it was too cold to heat the whole house. All this would have been in the 70s/early 80s for me, but I can remember the 'coats as blankets' thing and dreading Sunday afternoons because it meant sitting in a shallow bath of slowly chilling water until the precise moment that you judged it to be only one degree less arctic than the bathroom you'd been avoiding getting out into.
What surprises me though is how, just by thinking about it, I can still smell that scorched newspaper smell that came when the coal fire was 'drawn' with a sheet of newspaper against a shovel every morning. I'm grateful that the smell of tripe and lava bread can't be conjured up that easily!
For part of the day, my wife would drag two old big leather armchairs into the kitchen area of our living room and place them facing up against each other near the oven with the rice pudding on the go. Then she and the toddler would sit on them facing each other with a blanket over their legs, she would read or knit and he would play with his toys. They'd be warm as toast that way.
We used to fold the fireguard down flat, place that against the fire aperture and put the newspaper up against the fireguard, less hazardous than using the coal shovel as sometimes the edges of the paper would get drawn in round the shovel and catch fire!
Then you had to try to stop the burning paper going up the chimney!
We had a metal sheet with a grip / handle on, called a 'blazer' that we used in the same way as the sheet - sometimes used the newspaper if no-one could be persuaded to go out to the coal house for the blazer. We did have some little gas fires in the bedrooms too, that we rented from the coal board - mam used to go up and light them maybe 10 mins before we went to bed. Later, in the 80s, when the gas fires got condemned, we had little gas wall heaters installed instead. This was right on the north east coast though - could lie in bed and listen to the fog horn - and still had to get dressed in bed cos it was too cold to get out of bed and get dressed
Funnily enough, we sat and watched tonight, while eating liver and onions - but ours was braised, with garlic and tomato and had a thick rich gravy! It was delicious.
I remember my Mum making Ox liver with a dark gravy and carrots. People don't know what they're missing, it's so cheap and nutritious.
We had a metal sheet with a grip / handle on, called a 'blazer' that we used in the same way as the sheet - sometimes used the newspaper if no-one could be persuaded to go out to the coal house for the blazer. We did have some little gas fires in the bedrooms too, that we rented from the coal board - mam used to go up and light them maybe 10 mins before we went to bed. Later, in the 80s, when the gas fires got condemned, we had little gas wall heaters installed instead. This was right on the north east coast though - could lie in bed and listen to the fog horn - and still had to get dressed in bed cos it was too cold to get out of bed and get dressed
Funnily enough, we sat and watched tonight, while eating liver and onions - but ours was braised, with garlic and tomato and had a thick rich gravy! It was delicious.
Me too! I was born in the 60s but our family wasn't well off at all and so in the 70s we still had many kitchen items that were from the 50s and quite a lot of furniture as well.
I was rolling around laughing at them all with the tin opener and wanted to grab it and say "Look you stupid women, you use it like this!". So simple to use if you use it correctly.
I don't have it now but lived on liver, onions gravy and mashed potato in the 60s and 70s.
Nowadays kids are given rights and are gobby from an ever earlier age.
You also had more meaning in family as there were not multiple TVs, computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets or games consoles. You ate together and all sat down to watch TV together. - Every day until you left to get married and set up you own home.
Two burners?!!! Bloody rich people!
I fondly remember going with my mother up to the local shops (anyone remember local shops? A whole range of them!) with our paraffin can to get a gallon of paraffin that the old shop keeper would hand-pump out of a big tank at the back. Smelly, dangerous and had to use sparingly as we couldn't afford new wicks or much paraffin. But as the ONLY heater it was needed in winter.
My grandfather, her dad, was a butcher - sadly he's dead now, and I will always regret not getting him to write down all his stories from the war/rationing era, because he remembered it all and had some really funny things about what some of the meagre options were sometimes under the guise of the 'meat' ration. But it meant that my mum grew up with her mum being a fantastic cook who could make something out of nothing. They lived behind and above the shop (up until 1984!) with an outside loo all that time, and a bath and belfast sink downstairs off of the 'living room/kitchen' behind the shop which was where she did all the washing up too. My mum and her sister slept in the attic room which had no insulation - the stories they tell about the ice on the inside in the winter...! And I clearly remember my grandmothers still had a mangle in the garden even in the 70s - she had no room for a washing machine; she did everything by hand until my mum and aunt persuaded them in 1984 that they needed to move somewhere more modern to live instead of behind the shop!
Rochelle didn't seem to be particularly savvy in the kitchen, did she? We had one of those tin openers (I'd forgotten all about it until last night!) I'm sure still in the 80s - I certainly remember using it frequently in my teenage years, anyway!
Another vote for liver and onions here too - I love it! My grandmother did the most amazing liver, onions and bacon - no one does it like she did. Cooked well (I do mine in the slow cooker sometimes) it's divine with mash. I grew up eating nearly everything my grandfather sold (although I drew the line at tripe!) and we never knew what we'd get for Sunday - my grandfather just gave my mum whatever was left over after he shut on a Saturday - but we must have had nearly ever cut of meat going at one point or another, and I guess being the child of a mum and dad who lived through the grim years of rationing made it less likely any complaints would be tolerated - did it make us less 'fussy' than children who grew up less directly connected to these lean years?
The key meat ingredient of Jersey Bean Crock! Although few people make it with trotters now, it is the traditional meat element of the island's 'national dish' (basically a slow-cooked stew of mixed beans and pork which was cooked in the bakers' ovens after they'd taken out the bread, and households would take their own crock pots down, stick them in the ovens, and then go and collect them a few hours later). It's still not unusual to see pigs' trotters on the odd butcher's counter over here, and the older generation wouldn't dream of using anything else - but I admit I usually use belly pork slices to make my Bean Crock with.
Looking forward to the next episode - not an era, food-wise, I know that much about as my parents never really talked about what they ate then (it was all about the music!) and I was only born in 1967 so I don't remember anything about it.
We "celebrated" with a tub of chocolate spread; richer than the pale imitation we get now.
The boy's Meccano set was bigger and grander than the one i had at that age.
Liked the Coronation memorabilia: my mug from school didn't last five minutes, and my propelling pencil, also from school, got stuck in the tram lines, (they were a bit slow in lifting them in our part of SE London). Had chicken pox, so didn't watch anybody's telly that day.
I hated Virol, I thought it was disgusting.
I had to laugh at the dripping. I love pork dripping on toast even today, especially the brown jelly layer, served on hot toast. We are lucky to have a proper butcher though, whose pork is tender, with crackling - supermarket pork seems almost fatless (and flavourless).
I too remember ice on the inside of bedroom windows - and just having your cold nose stuck out from under the sheets and blankets, watching your breath condense in the air above you.
Stuffed heart is delicious!