Really mean things people do to save money.

To this day I do not know how British housewives managed to keep us all going in WWII. I'm pretty sure it couldn't be repeated - too many traditional skills (and just plain yucky jobs) have been forgotten. Our kitchen at home sometimes ponged a bit, when Mum was preparing a chicken that had yesterday been clucking in the garden... I was fascinated by the as yet un-laid eggs that she carefully preserved, although I never liked to ask her what they were for!

We laughed as we hung around the stove where a lump of horse-meat for the dog was cooking - and we salivated!

Two failures only (not her fault) - whalemeat, and canned snoek that the government got a good deal on, but in the end mostly had to go into animal feed.

My mum had to feed six mouths each day and she did wonders with very few coins in her purse. She had to. One large cod fillet, about 1.25lb in weight, would be sliced into six portions, smothered in thick batter, fried and served with chips and peas, with rice pudding to follow. My DH would eat half of that fillet today. There was many a time when we four kids would sit down to one of our favourite dinners - cheese and onion pie. This was slices of cheese and onion topped with mashed potato and browned under the grill. It cost next to nothing but it fed four hungry children.
I agree with you Alea - I don't like the claim that this frugality is 'really mean'. Many of our parents' generation had known real hardship, through war years and the terrible Depression in the 1930's and I am incredibly humbled by those men and women who kept their families fed and clothed through sheer ingenuity and hard work. Rice with the mince? Well done, your children's bellies are full!
We don't know we're born these days.

In recent years I have been extending meat based dishes by adding evrything from large quantities of vegetables to pulses of all kinds, not from any sense of frugality but for a host of environmental and animal welfare reasons.

I am very unhappy about the industrial rearing of beef cattle which is routinely dosed with antibiotics (I am allergic to penicillin and have other drug intolerances) and the amount of land devoted to growing animal feed, and I now only buy more expensive organic meat from cattle that are grass fed and not routinely dosed with antibiotics.

I am also aware that a diet heavy in red meat is probably not a healthy diet and by extending meat based recipes, the portions of meat I eat in any meal are much smaller.

We all have our irrational small frugalities but meanness means deliberately making unjustifiable economies, to deprive other people of something we want for ourselves, with malice afor thought. I have met very few deliberately mean people in my life. Perhaps meanness lies in the eye of the beholder.

I learned to cook by helping my mum. Like most of her generation, she could feed a family on not a lot. My children learned to cook the same way, in the kitchen, watching, chopping and stirring. They were both shocked when they left home for the first time, to find some of their housemates didn't know how to make a spag bog sauce, either with mince or using only vegetables. Home made soups etc are all so good to eat yet don't cost a lot.
grannyqeenie is spot on, economy shouldn't be confused with mean.

I'm with you there Alea, my (post war) mum was a good cook who could create a tasty meal out of very little. When my children were small and money was tight I did the same, including rice/lentils/extra veg in the mince at times! Nothing wrong with being economical, not to be confused with mean, that's a different thing altogether in my book anyway!

I think what bothers me is the implication that either the people are really mean or the things they do, when being frugal was an integral part of our parents' lifestyle -rationing apart, few people had the spending capacity or habits we see today.
What is wrong with padding something out, "stretching" a lb of mince to feed the family?
Cookery writers like the late Marika Hanbury Tenison or Jocasta Innes or Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall have all written cookery books using left overs, avoiding waste and making ends meet.

My DH eats pickle with shepherd's pie, however it's made. I have been known to add lentils and canned tomatoes to mince. When I was a child, my mother often made soup (broth made with stock from a ham shank), and a pudding for tea when meat was expensive. It was usually a steamed sponge of some sort. My dad called them rib stickers!

I am in entire agreement with Eloethan. I had an Uncle who by the time he retired was a very senior civil servant with pension to match, but still bought most of his clothes in charity shops and, after his wife died, always bought the cheapest possible food, from the cheapest shops (we found the food he gave us inedible it was so nasty) but it reflected his poverty stricken childhood in Yorkshire during the depression, he never lost the deep sense of insecurity and inadequateness engendered by this poverty plus being brought up by an unloving mother and a father, deeply psychologically damaged by his years as a soldier in WW1

So he and the OP could have a lovely time spending all her dosh?

If she was so loathsome and used physical violence on him, why did your DH keep in touch when he grew up

Perhaps your MIL could not get out of the habits learned during the war years and rationing.
Even though she appears to have been quite well off.

I did have great difficulty encouraging my MIL to spend money on herself as she had spent most of her life hard up and only had a bit more money in her last couple or so years.

I love and regularly serve liver and kidneys but the thing I cannot eat is lambs hearts which my mother would cook. It smelled disgusting and tasted worse. But mince for Cottage Pie always has grated carrot and parsnip added to the mince, more for flavour and added veg than for economy although I can be as canny as the next when it comes to saving on food.

I loved my late MIL but she was a terrible cook. God knows what went into her Shepherd's Pie but as it was nearly all potato it didn't seem to matter. She would put jars of pickle on the table which I think was meant to disguise the taste but the pickles didn't look very appetizing either.

I very quickly learned to understand DH's addiction to tomato ketchup.

On Mumsnet someone mentioned their tongue and tail terrine. I can't find it now but it would either be delicious to DH or nauseating to me.

How about tripe? We used to have it as children and I loved it. As an adult I've enjoyed trippa alla romana in Italy. I always try liver with sage in Italian restaurants. Much more tender than some of the rubbery stuff cooked with bacon as supplied by pubs.

I always think it's rather sad when people scrimp and save, buying the cheapest food and denying themselves, when there is no need for them to do so.

People who have lived through very hard times often behave in this way because they can never quite believe that they won't go back there again. I remember Max Bygraves in an interview saying that he had a poor childhood and even after he became rich he was still very careful not to waste anything and his children and wife found his frugality both annoying and amusing. It's not necessarily about meanness, it's sometimes about a lingering feeling of insecurity.

I'm all for offal as listed by you Alea and kittyl, but I'd draw the line at brain and tongue needs to come cooked and ready sliced as opposed to au naturale.

I love liverbacon and onions with mash and a gravy flavoured with balsamic vinegar!,

I know what you mean about offal, it does taste (or can) taste more of "animal" than suits modern tastes. However, S&K pie or pudding is second to none, calves' liver, devilled kidneys, sweetbreads in beurre noir, pork chops with the kidney attached, oxtail stew, ox cheek or pig's cheek casserole - how much poorer our cuisine would be without them.

I've always 'stretched' the mince with additions of all sorts of veg and lentils too. Nothing to do with being mean- but to have respect for food and especially meat.

I've always had a problem with eating offal, ever since I was a kid growing in rural Switzerland- tripe, tongue, liver, kidneys, etc- just can't do it. But I truly wish I did- again in respect for the animal. If we kill animals for food, we should really eat most of it. By the next generation, practicall no-one will be eating offal- and we will need to kill more and more animals, with all the environmental problems raising meat (land, grass, water and methane, etc). Makes no sense. I suppose as we have more and more pets- some of it will go into pet food

Crossed posts alea

Have you read Margaret Forster's book Have the Men had Enough?

my mum used to have a friend who made delicious broths! of course I ate them with relish when I was at school

it was only in later years that I learned that mothers friend would put sheeps head to cook in the broth oh myyyyyyyyy I ate the juice from sheeps brains, have never touched broth since.......

Yes I know that in some parts it is custom to put sheeps brains in stews etc ..but not for me...(green emoticon)

Alea and Loopylou, you are adding flavoursome foods to the mince, very different from adding rice for bulk!

And MamaCaz is correct, she was a loathsome woman. She thrashed Himself with a leather belt till his legs bled and attacked him with a kitchen knife when he was 20 years of age.

I naively thought spits was a pseudonym for the MIL... Oh dear

Soya protein stretches mince! I mentioned this once and had the person doing most of the cooking in a shared house 'fess up that he'd been doing half and half for months to save on the housekeeping.
For Shepherd's Pie and Spag Bol etc. I started doubling the suggested amount of carrots, onions and celery to sneak more vegetables into my grandchildren with no complaints!