Food and drink from the past.

My Mum got a pressure cooker in the early fifties and I remember returning from school to see my Dad's favourite rice pudding dripping from the ceiling . I remember the mincer going hell for leather on a Monday, grinding up sunday's roast ready for mince and tatties that night. The Sunday roast was always known at BSL (bloody Sunday lunch); my Dad would be carving the meat, the table would be rocking back and forth and Dad would be yelling in his 'Army Officer' voice 'Dorotheeeeeee, this bloody meat is NOT cooked properly'. It was repeated every sunday for as long as I can remember. My most favourite meal from that era was mince slice - mince and veg squashed between two pieces of pastry - and that was a school meal! Oh, memories. Life was so uncomplicated in those days.

Thanks for that, Phoenix. I'll remember to look out for it. I was in Lidl only yesterday. Just don't tell my DD; she'll never speak to me again (very touchy about veal!)

I remember Mum making semolina cheese pudding , it was delicious . The cheese was the end of the slab , probably had the rind in and the blue scraped off

Soups and pies were favourites in our house .The 7th of 8 children my dad died in 1957 when I was12. The age range of the others was between 9 and 22. My mother had been a nurse and had to return to work at nights. She would arrive home at 8.00am and clean out the ashes and prepare the evening meal before going to bed. Soups and pies were favourites and her rhubarb pie was brilliant. When baking she would always wear a white apron and remove her wedding ring. She hated seeing Fanny Craddock.....remember her, cooking with all her jewellery on. I still adore soup and in winter usually have 4 or 5 in the frezer including very easy ones like carrot, orange and coriander, broccoli and Stilton. These 3 only take half an hour to make. Mum always baked extra to give to the milkman, dustman and others saying if you respect them they will treat you well. When she finally moved into a small house on her own she never had to put her in out as her friends the dustmen I sisted in collecting it from her back door to save her the trouble. I have never forgotten that.

Greyduster In the Autumn/Winter period Lidl have frozen "veal" liver, and it is very reasonably priced!

When I see it I tend to buy about 4 or 5 packs. Mr P doesn't like it, so all the more for me!

I make Eve's pudding when the family come to lunch. DS2 love apple pie, but the GDs like the cake bit!
x

When I was growing up we ate a rolling menu of about ten meals and puddings, rarely anything new. It was all traditional home-cooked food but, looking back, very bland and boring.
I still make Eve's pudding, rice pudding, apple pies and lemon meringue, Bakewell tart and custard, lots of the old-fashioned puddings. Sweet tooth! This is usually only on Sundays when the family comes to tea.

Home made ginger beer and lemonade, rabbit stew with herb dumplings, braised oxtail, "ladder staves" (braised beef short ribs), jam roly poly (boiled in a cloth), were all favourites with me when I was young. I still cook things like steak and kidney pudding, and beef short ribs, but cannot persuade DH to eat rabbit or oxtail. I quite liked liver when I was a child, and it was mostly calves liver my mother bought. It was a cheap meal. If I could find calves liver now, I probably wouldn't be able to afford it. The last butcher I spoke to about it said he didn't stock it because it was more expensive than fillet steak and no-one would buy it. I watched 'back in time for dinner'. I hope it was contrived because I would hate to think any modern family would be so dim that they would be unable to work out how to use the tin opener. If they had studied it for five minutes they could surely have worked it out - it's not rocket science.

We also had a Spong mincer, attached to the shelf in the larder. I don't think we had a fridge until I was about 10 but it wasn't a problem.

My gran used to make a lovely lamb stew on the hob but she did liver and bacon in the oven in fat, which made it too greasy. I love liver but tend to have it in restaurants as DH isn't keen.

We also had stuffed hearts (sage and onion stuffing) plus if we had marrow it was always served on toast and covered in a white sauce.

Mum used to make melting moments, rolled in crushed cornflakes, but she worked full time so I guess we only had them at the weekends.

So many memories here, from rissoles to lemon meringue pie.
Mum made dad a dish of pasta, melted cheese and tomatoes, that, at the time, I thought looked like sick, so I wouldn't eat it. I would now though!
As mum's family were famers, we ate whatever we could catch, from jugged hare, through pheasants and pigeons to nuts and berries. I remember collecting walnuts to pickle.
Stuffed hearts, liver, savoury ducks... I'm salivating now.
And Mum's curry, which I still miss, with either a pink or blue tin of curry powder, apples, sultanas and left over meat. Not too much rice, as dad was worried about Berrie berrie (sp?)

I seldom cook a "Sunday" roast, which always included roast parsnips and potatoes and sometimes Yorkshire pudding, but I do still enjoy it occasionally. My mother made a very fine fish pie and I quite often make a similar one. My favourite childhood dinners were probably braised steak served with green beans and a baked potato, which I also cook from time to time, and a dish known by me as slurpy chops and called by mother Spanish cutlets – a casserole of lamb cutlets onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers.

I've recently rediscovered Dubonnet. It was my first real tipple (in 1969) and still brings back memories.

When I had my first child in 1965 I had two friends all with young babies and when they were a few months old we started visiting each other in turns for lunch. One friend (at our request I must say) always did stew with dumplings and treacle sponge. This was only every three months and didn't do us any harm as we are all now in our 70's and what is more are still all friends.

I still use my Spong mincer. Excellent for making pork terrine at Christmas.

I remember seeing Keith Floyd in one of his early TV shows mincing some pork singing, 'With a Spong in my Heart'

Was it a Spong mincer HildaJ? My mother had one of those. We also had a Prestcold fridge in the 50's which came complete with a lock and key!

We do have sponge/suet puddings regularly, either jam, syrup or spotted dick , also rice puddings. We also have on occasions (not too often), toad in the hole, stew and dumplings, liver and bacon with onion gravy. OH love spam something from his youth , in sandwiches or with egg and homemade chips..

I used to love seeing my mother get out the mincer, attach it to a chair and mince up the leftover Sunday roast to use for Shepherds pie on Monday after school. Spotted Dick was (and still is) my favourite puddind.

I did not think much of the programme, the Father went out to work with a suit and a briefcase. Middle Class, we were, and we had a fridge, a tub washing machine, and a Hoover.
My Father did nothing in the house but my Mother had all 'Mod Cons' available to her. I make jelly for DGS and do not put it in the fridge, just half and half, hot and cold water, or a nice tin of fruit, or even for a special occasion, for me in the 50's, not DGS, a tin of Carnation milk whipped into it.
We did not see her really working very hard did we.

Certainly none of the men in my family could cook, and would have been quite taken aback if asked to. My father only started to cook after we had been abroad a few times and seen french men cooking, and italians and spaniards. He was actually very good, and adventurous. Even Ex in the early 80s refused to cook, even though I was working full time! He said that all he would ever do was the odd cooked breakfast (which I didn't eat). He did gradually learn, because I didn't make enough curries for his liking, nor were they hot enough. However if was very much a case of, only if he was in the mood, and if it meant he could greedily eat half a joint of meat before it got to the table.

DBH is a brilliant cook, I got it right the second time around.

My gran's larder was stuffed full of preserves and there was a meat safe on the wall. I can't really remember any tasty meals from the fifties because my mother was not a good cook although the Sunday roast was always OKish.

I didn't have a sweet tooth so I think apple pie is the only thing I can remember with fondness because unlike DH, I couldn't stand milky sweet things like rice pudding.

The sixties got off to a good start because my mother discovered frozen CHICKEN!!

We have a joke in our family that after months and months of roast chicken on a Sunday we were about to sit down to lunch and my ten year old brother started yelling, 'IT'S BEEF!!!'

He was ecstatic!

It was a bit much to generalise from this mother's lack of culinary skills and imply that liver like shoe leather would be served up, then given to the children at teatime with cold cauli and mash. Her cake making ability was abysmal. We didn't have a fridge in the 50s but jellies would set in the pantry on a cold stone ledge, and the milk and meat stayed cool in there. My mum wasn't much of a cook but she could turn out a variety of pies, stews and puddings. The stuff presented on the programme bore little relation to the meals we were given.

I still like apple pies, rice pudding, mashed potatoes and custard, but only tend to eat things like liver in restaurants, occasionally. I've got rhubarb ready for picking this weekend, so there'll be crumble and custard.

I don't eat meat or fish now - haven't for over 30 years, but I do remember Nan insisting on young animals' livers as it didn't have all the tubes and things in it.

I love liver, especially calves liver very lightly cooked - delicious.

You are right - I couldn't remember food like that. (I was born 1946) we had a cellar with steps down to it, and the shelves on the side were a sort of larder. But although food wasn't as spicy as it is today, it was full of natural flavours. My grandmother did the cooking and yes, her pastry too was superb.

The woman in the programme didn't cook, though - her husband did the cooking so she had little idea of how to deal with food in general. Oh, that liver...how I hated it. And tripe, and "cow heel" as Nan called it.

I think that the food served up in the programme said a lot about the lady and her lack of imagination and knowledge - who ever heard of serving cold liver because she didn't have a fridge!! Surely she must have known that it would stand in reasonable condition until the evening.

I can't remember the bread and so much of it!!

It all seemed a bit stereotyped to me.