Cooking up nostalgia.

As a child I really liked sago! Couldn't look at it now! whitewave I made deep dish meat and potato pie on Saturday when DH came for lunch. When I was a child I hated it and spent many long evenings sitting in from of a slowly congealing plateful of the stuff which my mother insisted would on no account be wasted. I love a steamed pudding in the winter. Ginger and syrup is a favourite.

As well as sago, I thought tapioca was ok, many others at school didn't! I first met tinned tomatoes at school and was disgusted although I was ok with them once I accepted that they were not recognisable tomatoes!

Loved pobs with heaps of sugar?. Also pea soup wirh bacon ribs in it &dumplings ?

Something about semolina. There are two kinds around - one is much finer ground and cooks with no texture at all! It's like custard.
The other kind is much coarser and is the kind I like.

I hated pobs and to this day can't stand the smell or taste of hot milk.
Bread dipped in hot bacon fat was delicious, much frowned on today of course.
I seem to think we ate more when I was a child too, cooked breakfast, main meal at lunchtime then high tea. Always supper as well.
My father used to save me something from his snap tin and I considered this a real treat even if it was a rather battered piece of cake.

I love all milk puddings, rice, semolina, ground rice. But tapioca makes me retching just to look at it. Still think it looks like frogspawn!

I'm with you there Chewbacca

We used to get frogspawn at school, some of it had large globules some had small and large. All equally revolting.

I do fancy a nice hot bowl of semolina with jam in the middle though.

mmmmm!

Oh the school lunch hours I used to spend weeping into a plate of Rice, Tapioca or Semolina pudding! Of course my mother could have written to the school to say I wasn't to have it but she never did anything like that. And Junket is even worse - just hideous slime!

We used to love Cremola pudding a golden vanilla tasting ground rice baked in the oven until it had a golden skin on top was good hot or cold!

I always remembered blanc mange, preferably pink, as being the most wonderful pudding in the world, when I was a kid. Some years ago, I saw a packet mix by Pearce Duff's blanc mange and so decided to "treat the family". Their faces like this . And it really was hideous! So slimy and tasteless. Wish I'd just consigned it to memory!

Deedaa, I wish that I had sat next to you at school, I could have scoffed all yours. I love all the milk puddings, and junket. Can you still get it, or buy rennet?

Last year we made DGD a pink Blancmange rabbit on green jelly grass for her birthday tea. She was enchanted. ( I had to stop DH putting currants on the grass by the rabbits bottom?)

I liked pobs ( I still call it that when bits of bread are put into soup) usually when not well.
I always hated semolina puds though, and sago and tapioca, much beloved by school dinner ladies in the 1950's.
I still make ( DH requests them) rice pudding, also bread and butter pudding, Summer pudding.Now and then a bread pudding.Cold and cut into squares, very yummy.
DGS also likes the Brown and Polson coloured custards ( blancmange, if you leave it to set.)

I have an old tin of Cremola foam in the cupboard [for auld lang syne memories].

On a visit from one of my nieces she took it upon herself to have a rummage in the cupboards, found said 'Cremola Foam' tin.

It was in a sorry state all clumped together, useless.

Mind you the sugar police now would have confiscated it. Even as an adult I would use it as it got rid of the indigestoin burps

I managed to find rennet for junket in Waitrose not so long ago. Re sago pudding---when my brother was a little boy, he had to go into an isolation ward with scarlet fever. When he came home, he was in quite a distressed state, begging my mother not to make him eat "shiny pudding". Mum hadn't any idea what he meant, and one day dished up sago pudding --and he went into hysterics. So sago has always been referred to as shiny pudding ever since. I quite like it .

I love my semolina, too, and will do myself a panful if I'm on my own in the evening. (And eat it out of the pan!) Jam, brown sugar, honey or golden syrup - anything sweet to go on it! It only takes about 5 minutes to make!

In fact lots of the nostalgic comfort foods are quick to make - dripping is another favourite (but on toast, not bread) and egg custard - done in a trice in the microwave, or also, but with a bit more faff, in the pressure cooker.

When I was a student, I worked during the summer in the Brown and Polson factory on the custard powder line. To this day I hate pink blancmange. We wore white turbans and overalls, which often were pink by the end of the day. We also smelled strongly of custard.
My mother in law worked in the test kitchens and used to bring home 7lb pound bags of strawberry and pineapple custard. When I got married and had three small children in quick succession, I was very hard up. Custard formed an integral part of my three children's' diet. In fact they were reminiscing about it the other day to their partners. Oh how their tastes have changed!

I used to love all the milk puddings served up at school but always had to keep the blob of jam in the middle, not stirred up into a pink mess. Loved school custard too until the day I took a boiling hot spoonful and got a blister on my tongue.
Our dear old Mum used to make bread pudding in the meat tin. A clod of that was very filling!. I'd love to know how she made it and give it a try. Anybody got a recipe, please?
We also occasionally had fatty cake which was like a Chelsea bun impregnated with lard and sugar. Ooh, this is making my mouth water!

Oldgoat--- here's how I make bread pudding (I never measure anything).Soak about half a loaf of stale bread in water, then squeeze it out, put into a mixing bowl and bash it to bits. Add about half a cup of dark brown sugar, the same amount of either suet or melted margarine, mixed dried fruit, S.R.flour,2 eggs and a heaped teaspoon of mixed spice. Beat it all together adding enough milk to make a fairly sloppy mixture. If you've got some black treacle, you can add a tablespoon of this as well. Pour it into a baking tin to a depth of about one and a half inches , sprinkle liberally with demerara sugar and bake at about 180 C until nicely brown. Eat hot with custard or cold as stodgy cake!

Thank you chicken. You have made my husband very happy. I'd forgotten about his memories of his mother's bread pudding. Now all I have to do is find which bakers are selling stale loaves!

DH loves bread pudding but I don't make it for him as he would eat the lot!
However, somewhere not far away from here is a lovely cafe which sells home-made bread pudding so he does have an occasional treat if we go there.

Love semolina, bread and dripping, steamed suet puddings cooked for hours with a cloth over the basin (eg steak and kidney, or apple with cloves for desert ), loved suet pastry as a meat pie crust, or suet dumplings roasted round the lamb joint or boiled in a stew, 'bread and milk' is what we called POBS which we had when we were ill and had no appetite, fried bread was sprinkled with water then fried in the bacon fat. I still make bubble and squeak. But I'm happy to go without the bacon roly poly pudding.

Thanks for the bread pudding recipe chicken. I'll have to give it a go and try it out on the GSs. May slip off my Slimming World target though if it turns out well.