Childhood food revisited

I still remember the look on my father's face when my mother first started putting a teaspoonful of mixed herbs into her Spag Bog (c. 1980) - first confusion, then disgust, and finally outrage at her fancy modern ways. ?

As for food standing the test of time . . . we were at a party on saturday night discussing childhood food, and after a few drinks decided that sunday lunch would be findus crispy pancakes (beef for her, chicken for me) along with potato croquettes. Suffice to say we changed our minds in the cold light of sunday morning. I also have no interest in potato waffles, frozen burgers, spaghetti hoops, meat paste, Bachelors savoury rice, Vienetta or arctic roll, after eating more than my fair share as a child.

Primula cheese spread and fish fingers (not together) have stood the test of time though, along with mum's recipes for pork casserole and her chicken and bacon pies. Gran's rock cakes and syrup sponge are also perennial favourites.

My mum's cooking has always been pretty good - I don't remember her not using herbs, spices etc. I do remember when she first got her microwave (early 1980s) and there were some fairly um, interesting, experiments performed in it. That's probably what you get for having a pharmacologist as a mother who grew up cooking her lunch in the lab... ?

I still cook macaroni cheese pretty much exactly the same way she did though. It was always my favourite as a child, and still is. Nothing fancy - no onions, bacon or other crap like that ? a simple cheese sauce - butter, flour, milk, cheddar, little salt/pepper and a can of tuna fish. Yum.

I must have been extremely fortunate. I'm 43 (or maybe 42, I don't remember) and so was a child in the 70s. We had spag bol cooked from scratch (with herbs), home-made chilli, fresh curry, all sorts. We also had mango when no-one else I knew had ever heard of them. In fact we also used to have tinned guavas (not nice BTW). My parents didn't choose to eat much then that I wouldn't eat now. Except hearts - yuck. Even Mum's liver and bacon rocked.

We did have pre-packaged stuff, but only because I demanded them. I loved mini kievs and Bernards turkey steaks (eeeeeew). And I loved (and still do) fish fingers and beans on toast. And we did have some shocking puddings - there seemed to be a lot of evaporated milk and tinned fruit, Angel Delight and flans with QuickGel on top. That said I'd eat most of that now, except maybe the AD.

My weakness is Bisto gravy powder. Not the granules, the powder. I use it (and water) instead of flour and stock, just as my Mum did, and I love it. Mr JK says it's the best gravy ever, and I made it last night for the first time in nine months. Yum.

Edited to add that my Mum was born and brought up in India and then Australia. I think this gave her a more adventurous palate maybe. My Dad (born and raised in darkest North Kent) was evidently keen too though, as we only really ate what he liked.

My mum was also born in India, but her family came back at the end of the war when she was about 3, so she doesn't really remember it. But it almost certainly means that she was brought up with more "adventurous" food at home. And her parents lived in Italy for a few years before she was born which probably added to it too.

Turkey Drummers, Potato Waffles and baked beans were my favourite meal - we used to have them on a Tuesday night when Dad worked late. We even got to eat them on our laps in front of Heartbreak High and the Raccoons ?. This was unheard of when Dad was at home for tea. It has to be meat and 2 veg eaten at the table at 6pm. So it seemed wild to have a meal like that on our laps. ?

My Mum is welsh so she used to make us eat faggots. Urgh. Not nice. I also recall Mum and Dad doing the BBC Diet which was big in the early 90's. My sister and I rebelled when they served barley for tea so we rebelled and made fish fingers!!?

Dessert wise it has to be tinned fruit and tip top and strawberry angel delight (I can't touch the stuff now)

Pearl barley! My nana used this in her "dinosaur stew" (leg of meat still unbeknown to me now) stewed for hours with carrots, onions, bay leaf & pearl barley. Served with over cooked burnt boiled spuds ?

However, I could happily eat her "rainbow dinner" every night. Boiled bacon, carrot & swede mash, cabbage and mash potatoes ? Oh and liver and bacon, I love that still with lashings of onion gravy and the crispy bits from the pan!

My mum mostly cooked proper food - with herbs and spices - and I spent my childhood jealous of my best friend whose mother gave her Findus crispy pancakes, waffles, Turkey drummers/turkey steaks with the cheesy layer....

We still eat fish fingers and baked beans ?

I remember dinner parties with Vienetta and pork with pineappele, chocolate flakes and ice cream being a treat for the kids. I also remember looking forward to my annual Sunday school picnic because it was the only time I got a whole can of coke. ?

We ate a mix of things - my dad worked shifts so when he was on late (not home until 9pm) he'd cook a curry or lasagne or macaroni cheese or shepherd's pie etc for my mum to reheat/whack in the oven when she got home so she didn't need to 'cook' after getting home from work, just throw some veggies in a pan and it was ready. It was always from scratch and completely yummy.

Other days though, we'd beg for 'convenience' food and get mini kievs and oven chips, or fish fingers and potato alphabet shapes. God, we loved those. I must admit, I think i still love mini kievs. I've never tried a turkey drummer or crispy pancake though!

My parents made one kind of soup (a vegetable/lentil thing cooked with ham hock) and it was/is amaaaazing. We'd have that with chunks of bread for weekend lunches and it's still one of my favourite meals.

Joints of meat were always overcooked though. God forbid a roast beef had a hint of pinky blood in!

We were lucky in that Mum was an adventurous cook (born in Edinburgh and raised in the Highlands so no exotic influences there) and we had plenty of interesting food from an early age (in the early Seventies). This was when the newly-opened Trattoria in the village offered about the only foreign food you could get, that and Vesta curries. ? I have fond memories of her sweet & sour pork, pizza, moussaka, curries, goulash, chilli con carne, empanadas, fajitas... I can remember being looked at oddly by friends for whom lasagne was about as adventurous as food got. I rarely got boring old sandwiches in my school lunchbox either. It was homemade quiche, chicken Maryland, soused herrings, satay etc.

No processed foods in our larder back in those days. It was only when I went round to friends' houses for tea that I got to sample the 'delights' of fish fingers, Findus crispy pancakes, Birds Eye beefburgers, potato waffles, croquettes etc. Wait, I tell a lie, we did get the occasional bowl of Angel Delight or a tinned syrup sponge with 'vap milk for pudding if Mum was too tired to make something from scratch.

One of my favourite childhood dishes which I still have now is Mum's Spanish meatballs. It has to be served with mashed potato and boiled carrots, like she did it, even though I don't like boiled carrots! Her Queen of Puddings has also stood the test of time.

We never had Angel Delight. We always had the Sainsbury's version instead as it was cheaper? usually mint-choc with 100s & 1000s on top.

Our monm always cooked herself she coulddo it much more delicious than others

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Crazzy about jessica alba wallpaper...

Some parents really do make the most tremendous sacrifices for their children. ?

Aw, as snobby as people get over 80s trash food I still look back fondly. My Mum has no interest in cooking, although is fine at it (in all honestly as long as you are prepared to follow a recipe I don't see how anyone can not "cook")

we had mash (lumpy) with every meal, allegedly as she couldn't be bothered to do anything else but quite why mash was thought of as less work than any other form of cooked potato, I have no idea.

She also made up random, nonsecial meals, like corned beef, mash, peas and a fried egg. peas and carrots were pretty much our most commonly eaten veg.

My dad only ever cooked for me whilst my mum was in hospital, having my sisters. He warmed up a can of heinz soup and I didn't have to sit at the table to eat it, which was pretty cool.

I also loved ice pops.we used to buy boxes and boxes of floursecent liquid to freeze, then in the summer I'd eat pop after pop whilst read the babysitters club. there was also big ugly industrial tubs of ice cream (none of your posh Haagen Daz malarky for us) and those little pots which were like soft ice cream with a syrup swirl in them (you could get mint choc chip too) and loads of cheap industrial choc ices (I hate choc ices and won't even eat an unheard of at the time magnum)

We also snacked on 5-4-3-2-1s and blue ribbon wafers.

I'm sure kids don't eat as much sugar and as many additives as we did then! god knows how our teeth survived! ?

I was a child during the late 50's and the 60's - my dad did a lot of the cooking (which in itself was pretty revolutionary) and I remember my friends being gobsmacked that he did things like putting garlic and wine in gravy (they loved it though) and cooked puddings like pears in red wine etc from the Elizabeth David cookery book. At the other extreme, my grandma, with whom we lived for a lot of my childhood used to make good old puddings like spotted dick and jam roly poly (proper suet puds, boiled in a cloth on the stove) which I used to have with custard, syrup AND cream - yum! Junket was another favourite which I still love today. However, she used to make stuffed hearts which I really liked at the time but couldn't stomach now.

I seem to remember that Wednesdays we had the best meal of the week, Steaklets and chips. I used to love it. We didn't have any herbs or spices in the house as far as I recall because with tinned new potatoes, frozen peas, fray bentos pies/crispy pancakes/turkey burgers as your meal, then none was required.

L
xx

My mother is from the Mediterranean so cooked everything from scratch with herbs, spices etc and lots of pasta involved. My brother and I used to come home from friend's houses and tell her of wonders such as Findus Crispy Pancakes and those breadcrumbed ham steaks with cheese. She did give us fishfingers and waffles on a Friday and succombed to the Crispy Pancakes occasionally but didn't give us much processed foods as it was expensive.

We drunk water or milk during the week and if we were good mum would give us a glass of fresh orange juice at the weekend as a treat. We also weren't given chocolate but my uncle would visit every Saturday and bring us a chocolate bar each. Mum would put it in the fridge as we weren't allowed to eat it until after dinner but that meant that it would be rock hard when we finally had it. I've never liked rolos because of this as they turn into bullets after a few hours in the fridge.

We weren't given fizzy drinks either and thought dad was the bee's knees when he came home one day with a soda stream machine ?.