Dad was a Scot and quite happy with mince and tatties which was literally mince, onions and an oxo cube and a couple of plain boiled potatoes. Mum was more keen on the war time foods, lots of suet and stodge. We did, however, have quite a lot of fish because it was quite cheap back then. When housekeeping money run out tea could be chunks of bread soaked in boiled milk with a knob of butter and a sprinkle of sugar which, when you think about it, wasn't too unhealthy for a small child. Always a roast on Sunday with far too much salt in the veg. Things did get better but, like the OP, I did end up buying and preparing most of my own food when I started work.
This food was so boring I had no interest in eating or cooking it. When I had to cook for my own family I learned to make yummy stuff - pasta, curries, anything spicy, herby, flavoursome, and everything from scratch with fresh ingredients. My mother and father would never eat my food. They couldn't understand how anyone could eat that sort of stuff. It just wasn't food to them.
My mother boiled green veg to death. If it was green mush it might be cabbage or sprouts or beans. If it was white mush it was cauliflower. Naturally, the only veg I'd eat was frozen peas.:D I didn't taste broccoli until I was an adult, nor a mushroom come to that.
I here that.
Cabbage and cauliflower may be very nice but the memory is far too strong for me to try and find out.
I come from a different background, being Italian. When I was still at home living with my parents my mum cooked twice a day, proper lunch and dinner.
First course was pasta, sometimes rice (never with meat on the same plate, it's not how you cook rice there) or risotto with mushrooms or with saffron or with mussels, second course meat and vegetables usually.
My mum is a good cook, can cook anything but only Italian cuisine; I have tried a different cuisine for the first time only a couple of years ago, when I came here and had chinese so I went for about 24 years only eating typical italian food.
My mum doesn't season meat at all prior to cooking, she serves it plain.
Only herbs she uses are oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary: oregano on salad tomatoes or pizza, basil in tomato sauces, parsley on salad potatoes or baked fish fillets and rosemary with roast potatoes.
Chilli powder or fresh chopped chillies were normally used to make pasta with garlic, oil and chilli.
Salad and veg in general were always dressed with olive oil and white wine vinegar, later balsamic vinegar (I never liked vinegar).
I rarely had proper mash, I usually had instant mash (which by the way I prefer, strange I know).
When my mum cooks a pork chop or steak she cooks it until well-done, so my dad complains it's tough; I used to think rare steak was disgusting but when I started doing my own cooking, I tried it and now I think steak it's best eaten medium, medium-rare and I do put salt and pepper on it so it has a better taste.
Polenta is quite bland now that I think of it, tastes rather soapy in my opinion but I didn't mind it grilled once it had gone cold.
Have enjoyed reading every post here ... just now...:)
Food at home .... was nothing great as I grew up
School dinners were absolutely fabulous !!!
delicious Cheese pie~fish pie~stew~
and a yummy pudding every day ~with loads of thick hot smooth custard~
Everyone put their jugs of unused custard on my table ~knowing how much I loved it ~and I ate it all
from the age of 10 upwards
every night home food was
mainly chips with maybe beans or a chop or food from a deli
the most exotic food we got when I was about 12 was grey boiled onion and mince on pasta spaghetti
It was bland ~ loved the texture of the spaghetti
I have mixed memories of my food growing up. I lived with my gran as a carer for a while and she was old school way of cooking but yet even though it had minimal seasoning (salt was about it as far as I recall) I always remember it tasting really good and she made home made (clootie) dumpling and pancakes and I usually enjoyed eating with her more than when I was at my parents. She also made the best porridge and best omlettes
That said my gran did start to get more adventurous in he later years she actually liked things like spag bol and pasta although she was guilty of using ketchup as a pasta sauce and liked her curry from the chinese takeaway and she loved pizza. She never did get into herbs and spices as such but I think had she still been around now she would have been trying lots of new things almost one of my funny memories is her ordering plaice and chips and not actually knowing what it was and the look on her face when it turned up totally priceless.
My mum and dad well mum didn't do fancy food but did like chips and curry or gravy it had an (onion/slightly spiced kick) from the chinese and it was set meals each night and even now there is still some things I struggle to eat. My dad wasn't so bad he was more willing to try lots of different things and if he had half a chance to get in the kitchen you never quite knew what was coming out of it. His soups and stuffing at Xmas were fab as well as and this sounds random but a carrot gravy I don't know if that is exactly what it was but it tasted fab.
My mums cooking deterioted as she got older although in fairness she was diagnosed with inflamation of her stomach so spicy food was generally a no no but she got into the habit of just buying ready meals and her major food crime was watery mince eugh she wasn't bad with the veggies though just the mince.
The 1950s were very dull for home cooking.............I think we still had rationing and basically people had got used to wartime food
Nothing fancy or foreign at all
Does anyone remember back in the 60s and 70s when 'garlic' was seen as some sort of latin homosexual affectation..........:D
I remember when our family first started to go on package holidays and camping in Europe...........my Dad and all other dads would make a big hullabulloo in restaurants about telling the waiter not to put garlic in the food.............of course they took no notice, garlic was in everything, but the dads had made the point that they didn't want no foreign muck !.............:D
As a child (before turning veggie at 13) we had a set days of the week menu
Monday- beans on toast
Tuesday- cold tinned tuna and oven chips
Wednesday- plain cooked mince and carrots and boiled potatoes (always my most hated meal)
Thursday - a most exotic vesta paella
FridAy- fish cake and boiled potatoes and peas
Saturday- cheesy baked potatoes
Sunday- pork chop and mash with cabbage
Desert was generally cake and custard, angel delight or a mr Kipling cake
Now I cook for my son and OH- my son is autistic so texture is a challenge- for example he will eat pasta twists but not bows or penne, no potatoes but sweet potatoes, no sauce on anything, no margarine/butter on anything and will only drink water
I have phases of wanting plain food and phases of not making it
I would never make anyone eat plain mince though- I remember numerous times sitting at the table with cold mince on my plate being told I couldn't leave the table til I ate it, which generally ended up with me being sick and sent to bed!
One of my earliest memories of a Sunday morning is being awoken by the smell of cabbage on the boil (at around 8.30am)!!!
Don't get me wrong, my mother does a great Sunday roast and I still go back now for it...but it's very simple and ordinary. I have managed to educate her in how to cook vegetables though, thankfully.
Sunday roast usually consisted of "best neck end of lamb" (whatever that was) or brisket. It's advanced onto topside these days lol. They probably can afford it now there's only the two of them to feed. However, she still cooks the same amount of vegetables as she did when there were six of us there.
We were a typical "something with potatoes" family, four kids and not a great deal of money so we never had anything adventurous.
I used to love school dinners because we had chance to taste curry and bolognese.
I remember buying the ingredients to make a curry when I first started work and my dad made such a fuss about the smell.
My mother is also a huge fan of chips. I took her to a Chinese Buffet recently so she could sample all sorts of chinese dishes...her first plateful consisted of a couple of pieces of chicken satay and half a ton of oven chips!! Annoyingly, she probably weighs about 8 stone.
Another childhood memory is a tin of "Ye Olde Oak Ham" appearing in the pantry around November, all of us under orders not to touch it because "it's for Christmas".
Oh happy memories of that oval shaped pink slab of stuff covered in brown jelly.
A tin of Goblin hamburgers in onions was a rare treat...the thought of the smell makes me gag now.
I think someone else mentioned spaghetti on toast with the addition of sausages to make it ever so slightly more exciting.
Dripping on toast for Sunday tea, plastered in salt!!!
I could go on for hours but won't bore you lol ....
I grew up on lemon curd sandwiches for lunch, and for dinner (or 'tea') potatoes/chips with something, usually overcooked veg.
I didn't even eat a tomato or cheese until I tried my first pizza at a friends house at the age of 12. I didn't eat pasta until I was about 16 when my mum moved out and my dad got a bit more adventurous!
I do eat a much more varied diet these days, although I still can't get over the mindset that every meal needs potato in some form.
Steak Pie
Mince Pie
Cottage Pie
Chicken Nuggets
Fish Fingers
Turkey Drummers
Chicken Pie
Chinese Curry (Sauce from the Butchers)
Sausages (Fried/Grilled)
Frozen Fish
Fish Cakes
Sausages in Gravy
Cooked Chicken from Rotisserie at Butcher
All served with Potatoes/Chips/Waffles and some frozen veg.
This would be my menu growing up if I hadn't rebelled about age 10 and demanded other foods that I'd tried elsewhere. Started making my own food separate from everyone else once or twice a week aged about 10 and since probably 14ish, pretty much every night I eat differently.
Never a fan of having meat in gravy (why would you season a meat with a sauce that is meant to replicate the taste of the meat!? I just don't get it), my mother has expanded what she eats a little, but of the above list she doesn't even like half of it, and wouldn't touch vegetables at all.
None of it was bad food really, just dull and I much prefer my cooking.
I grew up on plain food, spuds most nights and occasionally we'd have a spag bol, that was rare, even when we had Chinese which was rare is was chips gravy and sausages.
Then I met my Mrs, and I only thought I was having plain food at home, spag bol out of the question, the most adventurous I get now is curry flavored chip stick crisps. The kids won't eat anything exciting either so its a waste of time cooking a curry or something for 1.
By her own admission, my mum isn't a great cook, but I find I look back at the food I grew up with with equal amounts of affection and revulsion.
I still love stews, and mince'n'tatties, for example - lots of flavourful gravy, and onions and veg in there and it's delicious. Rice pudding done in the oven, with big fat sultanas. Heaven. Pudding every night, tinned fruit in syrup with evap, cake & custard, bananas & custard, semolina with a huge blob of jam (I do like pudding, me)
On the flip side, spag bol used to be mince (fried off, with onion, carrot and gravy) on the pasta.
We also had 'chipsteaks' - reformed horrors, like a big burger but nowhere near as nice.
Meat was always well done (even now, she won't touch it if it's even a little pink). Veg over-cooked (better now, especially since she got a steamer)
Comments
Mainly as OH likes dumplings and I do t so I have potatoes- but he eats them too!
The term was 'foreign muck!"
I here that.
Cabbage and cauliflower may be very nice but the memory is far too strong for me to try and find out.
Don't like peas either.
there were times when there was no wine in pubs, just mackesons for the ladies.
no imported veg. you just ate whatever was in season
and no garlic. or garlic bread.
And Babycham!
Disclaimer: am not old enough to have suffered from such limitations, but remember the adverts ....
Port and lemon(ade), that was another "lady's drink". Can't remember the last time I heard anyone ask for that.
You mean Pizza Crunch
First course was pasta, sometimes rice (never with meat on the same plate, it's not how you cook rice there) or risotto with mushrooms or with saffron or with mussels, second course meat and vegetables usually.
My mum is a good cook, can cook anything but only Italian cuisine; I have tried a different cuisine for the first time only a couple of years ago, when I came here and had chinese so I went for about 24 years only eating typical italian food.
My mum doesn't season meat at all prior to cooking, she serves it plain.
Only herbs she uses are oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary: oregano on salad tomatoes or pizza, basil in tomato sauces, parsley on salad potatoes or baked fish fillets and rosemary with roast potatoes.
Chilli powder or fresh chopped chillies were normally used to make pasta with garlic, oil and chilli.
Salad and veg in general were always dressed with olive oil and white wine vinegar, later balsamic vinegar (I never liked vinegar).
I rarely had proper mash, I usually had instant mash (which by the way I prefer, strange I know).
When my mum cooks a pork chop or steak she cooks it until well-done, so my dad complains it's tough; I used to think rare steak was disgusting but when I started doing my own cooking, I tried it and now I think steak it's best eaten medium, medium-rare and I do put salt and pepper on it so it has a better taste.
Polenta is quite bland now that I think of it, tastes rather soapy in my opinion but I didn't mind it grilled once it had gone cold.
Food at home .... was nothing great as I grew up
School dinners were absolutely fabulous !!!
delicious Cheese pie~fish pie~stew~
and a yummy pudding every day ~with loads of thick hot smooth custard~
Everyone put their jugs of unused custard on my table ~knowing how much I loved it ~and I ate it all
from the age of 10 upwards
every night home food was
mainly chips with maybe beans or a chop or food from a deli
the most exotic food we got when I was about 12 was grey boiled onion and mince on pasta spaghetti
It was bland ~ loved the texture of the spaghetti
That said my gran did start to get more adventurous in he later years she actually liked things like spag bol and pasta although she was guilty of using ketchup as a pasta sauce and liked her curry from the chinese takeaway and she loved pizza. She never did get into herbs and spices as such but I think had she still been around now she would have been trying lots of new things almost one of my funny memories is her ordering plaice and chips and not actually knowing what it was and the look on her face when it turned up totally priceless.
My mum and dad well mum didn't do fancy food but did like chips and curry or gravy it had an (onion/slightly spiced kick) from the chinese and it was set meals each night and even now there is still some things I struggle to eat. My dad wasn't so bad he was more willing to try lots of different things and if he had half a chance to get in the kitchen you never quite knew what was coming out of it. His soups and stuffing at Xmas were fab as well as and this sounds random but a carrot gravy I don't know if that is exactly what it was but it tasted fab.
My mums cooking deterioted as she got older although in fairness she was diagnosed with inflamation of her stomach so spicy food was generally a no no but she got into the habit of just buying ready meals and her major food crime was watery mince eugh she wasn't bad with the veggies though just the mince.
Nothing fancy or foreign at all
Does anyone remember back in the 60s and 70s when 'garlic' was seen as some sort of latin homosexual affectation..........:D
I remember when our family first started to go on package holidays and camping in Europe...........my Dad and all other dads would make a big hullabulloo in restaurants about telling the waiter not to put garlic in the food.............of course they took no notice, garlic was in everything, but the dads had made the point that they didn't want no foreign muck !.............:D
Monday- beans on toast
Tuesday- cold tinned tuna and oven chips
Wednesday- plain cooked mince and carrots and boiled potatoes (always my most hated meal)
Thursday - a most exotic vesta paella
FridAy- fish cake and boiled potatoes and peas
Saturday- cheesy baked potatoes
Sunday- pork chop and mash with cabbage
Desert was generally cake and custard, angel delight or a mr Kipling cake
Now I cook for my son and OH- my son is autistic so texture is a challenge- for example he will eat pasta twists but not bows or penne, no potatoes but sweet potatoes, no sauce on anything, no margarine/butter on anything and will only drink water
I have phases of wanting plain food and phases of not making it
I would never make anyone eat plain mince though- I remember numerous times sitting at the table with cold mince on my plate being told I couldn't leave the table til I ate it, which generally ended up with me being sick and sent to bed!
These days, we have a takeaway meal at least once a week, whether that be a McDonalds or a Chinese takeaway meal or fish and chips! :yawn:
One of my earliest memories of a Sunday morning is being awoken by the smell of cabbage on the boil (at around 8.30am)!!!
Don't get me wrong, my mother does a great Sunday roast and I still go back now for it...but it's very simple and ordinary. I have managed to educate her in how to cook vegetables though, thankfully.
Sunday roast usually consisted of "best neck end of lamb" (whatever that was) or brisket. It's advanced onto topside these days lol. They probably can afford it now there's only the two of them to feed. However, she still cooks the same amount of vegetables as she did when there were six of us there.
We were a typical "something with potatoes" family, four kids and not a great deal of money so we never had anything adventurous.
I used to love school dinners because we had chance to taste curry and bolognese.
I remember buying the ingredients to make a curry when I first started work and my dad made such a fuss about the smell.
My mother is also a huge fan of chips. I took her to a Chinese Buffet recently so she could sample all sorts of chinese dishes...her first plateful consisted of a couple of pieces of chicken satay and half a ton of oven chips!! Annoyingly, she probably weighs about 8 stone.
Another childhood memory is a tin of "Ye Olde Oak Ham" appearing in the pantry around November, all of us under orders not to touch it because "it's for Christmas".
Oh happy memories of that oval shaped pink slab of stuff covered in brown jelly.
A tin of Goblin hamburgers in onions was a rare treat...the thought of the smell makes me gag now.
I think someone else mentioned spaghetti on toast with the addition of sausages to make it ever so slightly more exciting.
Dripping on toast for Sunday tea, plastered in salt!!!
I could go on for hours but won't bore you lol ....
I didn't even eat a tomato or cheese until I tried my first pizza at a friends house at the age of 12. I didn't eat pasta until I was about 16 when my mum moved out and my dad got a bit more adventurous!
I do eat a much more varied diet these days, although I still can't get over the mindset that every meal needs potato in some form.
Mince Pie
Cottage Pie
Chicken Nuggets
Fish Fingers
Turkey Drummers
Chicken Pie
Chinese Curry (Sauce from the Butchers)
Sausages (Fried/Grilled)
Frozen Fish
Fish Cakes
Sausages in Gravy
Cooked Chicken from Rotisserie at Butcher
All served with Potatoes/Chips/Waffles and some frozen veg.
This would be my menu growing up if I hadn't rebelled about age 10 and demanded other foods that I'd tried elsewhere. Started making my own food separate from everyone else once or twice a week aged about 10 and since probably 14ish, pretty much every night I eat differently.
Never a fan of having meat in gravy (why would you season a meat with a sauce that is meant to replicate the taste of the meat!? I just don't get it), my mother has expanded what she eats a little, but of the above list she doesn't even like half of it, and wouldn't touch vegetables at all.
None of it was bad food really, just dull and I much prefer my cooking.
Then I met my Mrs, and I only thought I was having plain food at home, spag bol out of the question, the most adventurous I get now is curry flavored chip stick crisps. The kids won't eat anything exciting either so its a waste of time cooking a curry or something for 1.
Oh.. you've never tried my wife's boiled chicken fillets with spuds, I have to poison it with pepper and salt just for a kick.
I still love stews, and mince'n'tatties, for example - lots of flavourful gravy, and onions and veg in there and it's delicious. Rice pudding done in the oven, with big fat sultanas. Heaven. Pudding every night, tinned fruit in syrup with evap, cake & custard, bananas & custard, semolina with a huge blob of jam (I do like pudding, me)
On the flip side, spag bol used to be mince (fried off, with onion, carrot and gravy) on the pasta.
We also had 'chipsteaks' - reformed horrors, like a big burger but nowhere near as nice.
Meat was always well done (even now, she won't touch it if it's even a little pink). Veg over-cooked (better now, especially since she got a steamer)