If you have seen this before, it will still make you smile.....
For those who are old enough to remember - enjoy.
For the rest - it's a history lesson...!!
Very surprising how time and memory has taken its toll.
Have things really changed this much in our time?
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EATING IN THE UK IN THE FIFTIES
Pasta had not been invented.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Only Heinz made beans.
Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly, muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it they would have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never ever had on our table in the fifties .. was elbows!
Very good :).
We did have curry in the fifties. It was hot, spicy mince with sultanas in it and it always left a yellow stain on your plate. I used to love Camp coffee. Grapes were only available after the Harvest Festival display in church was taken down. A real treat was mandarin segments from a tin served with Nestle's thick cream, also from a tin. And Nestle's was also pronounced as 'the little village nestles in the valley.'
What did we eat in the 50's?
Whatever was put in front of us ... or there was trouble!!
That rings a bell !
Cheers - Phil.
Condensed milk on bread, anyone?
the first Curry recipe in the UK comes from about 1742 I think
As a kid our great treat was lemon curd on bread and butter - never mind that the stuff was pretty well solid sugar. We rarely got Camp coffee except at my nan's. Usually at home we drank chicory essence, ersatz stuff :-&
Not quite as old as some of my fellow posters but I do remember 'sweets' made of a lump of butter (salted of course) rolled in sugar...
And 'proper' licqourice sticks
Greetings
Some of these are pretty familiar from when I was vey young in the 1960s growing up in a village.
Regards
Edward
I actually like the Ersatz coffee stuff nowadays. And I am lucky I spent a lot of time at my grandma and got very well educated.
The modern "this is bad for you because" was not invented and people still lived happy and healthy. Less "allergies" and misbehaving little buggers as well back then...
Mind you I was young in the 80s...
Still pretty familiar when growing up I the stix in the eighties.
My mum met husband two who had travelled and experienced continental life, he introduced me to pasta, pizza and whitebait!
Remember my first olive based pasta, it was a hell of a shock, I thought it was a mushroom! :-&
Took me years to like them.
Some of the things that my dear old Mum used to cook.....I really loved when I was little.....
Some of them.....
Well....Now I know what the constituents were......Oh good grief. :-& :-& :-& :-& :-&
Cheers - Phil
Quote from: Nosher on 02 October 2013, 02:07:36 PM
And 'proper' liquorice sticks
My mum introduced me to proper liquorice sticks at the Glasgow Garden Festival (All those years ago) she basically handed me a stick and said chew on that. Love the stuff, always buy some when I can find it now.
Ok - more anti-welsh stuff.
At Broughton shopping park t'other Thursday the was a Traditional Celtic Craft Fayre. Cheese, cakes, honey, jam, perfume and CURRY. Curry ?
Explanations please.
IanS :d :'(
Curry cannot be far off the menu, especially as both Cardiff and Swansea were international ports, and a lot of army units came from Wales, Curry is probably more Welsh than you think.
Also the pot noodle is produced in the Valleys, and employs a great many former mining families. So Welsh cuisine is more varied than you think...
If you can call Pot Noodle cuisine!
Camp Coffee was chicory essence - it came in a bottle!
Quote from: mad lemmey on 02 October 2013, 06:48:21 PM
If you can call Pot Noodle cuisine!
The weird thing about pot noodles is that every couple of years I have an absolute
craving to eat one.......So I do...and then remember why I don't eat them more often, as I chuck it in the bin ! :-&
Cheers - Phil.
Ian
Was it Chicken Daibach?
Chad
It's when their feathers fall out, boyo.
I thought Dai bach was 'little Dave'.
Meirion would know. ;)
Cheers - Phil
What about those lovely dried Vesta Curries :-&
I preferred the Vesta Chow Mein. Right up there with Pot Noodle in the culinary stakes :)
My vote is the Vesta Risotto. Loved them.
Did anyone ever try tripe? My mother made me try it once. It was bloody awful.
Chad
Ah I love traditional meals
Started off with Prawn cocktail ( some defrosted prawns with a damp bit of lettuce drowned in thousand Island dressing)
Main course would be a Vesta Curry , or Scampi and chips, or if being really posh Chicken in a basket
Dessert would be Angel Delight or Baked Alaska
EDIT:...I forgot about sponge and custard which was sometimes served up
loved the Condensed milk on bread and Camp coffee, hated those bloody French Fancys, always ended up with the pink one at granny's house :-& still can't stand them
Quote from: Chad on 04 October 2013, 08:48:58 AM
My vote is the Vesta Risotto. Loved them.
Did anyone ever try tripe? My mother made me try it once. It was bloody awful.
Chad
Liked it first time, hated it since. No idea why in both cases.
Wife is chinese and they do trip in their 'hot-pot' dishes.
I do remember an ad on TV for some sort of tinned meat, the tag line was '...now with added fat!'
Fat was good for you back then.
Curry became widely popular during and after the Great War. Many Regimental cooks from battalions who'd seen service in India used to cook it and send it up to the front like trenches in 'Hay Boxes'. They worked on the principle that even if it was cold by the time it got to the troops it was still 'hot' and would warm the chaps up a bit.
And yes I remember curry as being sort of yellow with odd things in it like KN pepper.
There are lots of surprisingly good 19th century cook books from Raj officers who realised that Indian food was worth taking seriously. Useful reminder that it wasn't all Mrs Beeton! Literate wargamers (there are one of two) should remember Becky Sharpe's painful encounter with Indian food early on in Vanity Fair too.
Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to Rebecca. "What is it?" said she, turning an appealing look to Mr. Joseph. 34
"Capital," said he. His mouth was full of it; his face quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling. "Mother, it's as good as my own curries in India." 35
"Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish," said Miss Rebecca. "I am sure everything must be good that comes from there." 36
"Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear," said Mr. Sedley, laughing. 37
Rebecca had never tasted the dish before. 38
"Do you find it as good as everything else from India?" said Mr. Sedley. 39
"Oh, excellent!" said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper. 40
"Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp," said Joseph, really interested. 41
"A chili," said Rebecca, gasping. "Oh, yes!" She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. "How fresh and green they look," she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. "Water, for Heaven's sake, water!" she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). "They are real Indian, I assure you," said he. "Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water." 42
The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air— 43
"I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?" 44
Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl. Joseph simply said—"Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats' milk; and, 'gad, do you know, I've got to prefer it!" 45
"You won't like everything from India now, Miss Sharp," said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, "Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you."
"...and it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire..."
Quote from: Ithoriel on 04 October 2013, 12:08:50 AM
I preferred the Vesta Chow Mein. Right up there with Pot Noodle in the culinary stakes :)
Weren't they the ones where you had to fry the noodles and watch them curl up in the pan? Crunchy and delicious. :D
Quote from: Hertsblue on 12 October 2013, 12:01:57 PM
Weren't they the ones where you had to fry the noodles and watch them curl up in the pan? Crunchy and delicious. :D
Yup, that's them.
With all the faff involved with them you'd have been better off making it from scratch NOT that you could get 75% of the ingredients. ;)