What do we NOT have in the kitchen these days??

lemon, we like butter and like to have a spare butter dish so we can have seamless supplies.

We eat Cornish sea salted from Waitrose which is almost as good as the actual stuff we bought in Cornwall.

My nan had one of those tea making spoons but it wasn't a good fit and tea leaves always escaped - yeuk! I make tea for one in a tiny pot with real leaves!!

A potato ‘peeler’ with rough sides which tossed them around. It didn’t completely peel them but my mother gave it to me as she knew although I enjoyed cooking, I would do anything to get out of peeling potatoes.
Ancient earthenware jelly/mousse moulds.
An omelette maker, not a success.
I do wish I had kept my balance scales from the 70s.

Got married in 1992 I had a portable washing mashing which I used to put on a plank over the bath fill with hot water from the taps (having put the emersion heated on for a hour first) and plug in via a extension lead into the kitchen empty and refill to rinse and then empty and transfer the washing to a spin dryer in the kitchen. Of which if I had forgot to put a bowl under the spout would flood the kitchen. DH who had moved into my house as I had a invalid mother thought we were in the dark ages and the first thing he brought me was a new washing machine bless him

Still don’t know what a spong mincer is

Do you think they meant sponge mixer?

I have balance scales and two sets of weights. Putting the scale pan in the dishwasher has reduced its weight, so now I have small coins glued to the scales to make them balance again ?.

One of these

One of these ?

Espana - Spong is the name of the make. Mincers (and you can still purchase them), that would clamp on to a table or worktop - pushed meat into top, turned handle and minced meat came out into a bowl you provided to catch it.

In my case it's a man but I can't say I miss him!

Hellogirl1 - I used to have one of those tea leaf straining spoons! My mum used to have a little silvery teapot on a chain in which you put loose tea then dangled into your cup of boiling water. Seem to remember on it’s little box it said something like “Mytea Infuser” - gave it to son who likes to use loose tea!

Haven’t had a kettle for over twenty years, replaced it with a boiling water tap. Never have to wait for kettle to boil, easy for cooking vegetables, rice, pasta etc.

Is the water actually hot enough to brew tea GG? We are having the kitchen worksurface replaced so now would be a good time to do it.

Definitely kittylester it is a boiling one.

If you are shopping around check the temperature that the tap reaches as they are not all boiling , we have a Quooker.

Grammaretto

I had one of those pastry makers once Honeyrose
What I do recommend, as I also like the best butter, is an insulated butter dish from Lakeland. It keeps the butter just right.

I’m glad you like using your pastry blender, Grammaretto - I’m not sure whether many people use them. Thanks for butter dish recommendation. I have a Le Creuset butter dish. At this time of year, I do have to soften butter to be the right consistency for spreading - does your Lakeland butterdish keep butter at spreading consistency?

Sorry - just re-read your post Grammaretto and it says you HAD a pastry blender!

Seem to have most of the items mentioned here and can't resist buying extra odd bits when I spot them in a charity shop/car boot sale. DH actually bought me, after much searching around, a bean slicer one Christmas after we had had a particularly fruitful harvest. Only actually used it once since then and have now given up growing runners. Still know where it is though unlike the one I had originally.
Use my grandmother's clamp-on mincer with cold roast meat or onions. Bit messy but does the job.

What a good thread! I too miss my clamp-on mincer. The suction ones were never the same. Another thing I no longer have is wall-mounted kitchen scales. But what I do still have are the Addis washing-up bowl, dustpan-&-brush, broom & one other brush from a wedding gift set from 1973 - all in daily use! (And all orange plastic)

I miss my chicken brick, broke it years ago. I have replaced it recently with a coqua pan. It’s brilliant.

Has any one mentioned wooden boards next to the sink. They had channels for the water to run back in the sink and a cut out for the soap and scrubbing brush? I spent many a daily wash sat on one of those when I was little ?

NanaDH my mum had a draining board like that. It’s where she scrubbed the collars of shirts for my dad and 5 brothers, before she put them through the mangle outside the back door, and then pegged them on the garden line to dry.
On very cold but blustery days she would come in with frozen fingers after all that.

At home back in the day we always had a cut glass sugar bowl on a pedestal which was in daily use.
In the pantry was always “emergency” tins of ham, salmon and fruit (segmented mandarin oranges and fruit cocktail withe cherries in for any unexpected guests/callers).
What were those plastic things that were mounted on the wall to push tea towels into? - really pinched your fingers

Have loved reading these. I bought DD1 a Sodastream for Christmas - on her list. Our butter dish is Lurpak Norman one - love him.

Thinking back to my mum’s days of cooking and housekeeping for a family in the 40s and 50s, she didn’t even have the basics like wooden spoons, mixing bowls, rolling pin. She mixed a cake with a fork in a saucepan and rolled out pastry with a milk bottle.
She cooked on a black range so most of our food tasted of smoke.
She’d have loved the items we’ve all thrown away over the years.
Things did get better as time went on but she never had the things we take for granted.

Re the plastic tea towel holder - just remembered an old Victoria Wood sketch:
“Dear ‘puzzled of Essex’ - no this is not normal behaviour - please tell your husband that those things are for putting tea towels in” .....