Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

My grandmother and uncle lived with us and Sunday tea was something you were never allowed to miss. Uncles and aunts visited and there was never less than ten of us round the table .. sometimes a lot more
Me and the cousins ate in the front room, not enough room round the table.
My grandmother was 70 when I was born and she still made the puddings and potted shrimps and always wore a lacy white apron - do people still wear aprons?

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Yes Pat darlin' - Sunday 'high tea' - pints of cockles, whelks, mussels all washed down with 'brown & mild' (although not for us kids). When tea was finished we all trooped off the pub for a Sunday sing-song - (Dragon played the piano (jo-anna))

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Neither do I still like vegetables, " You must eat your vegetables, they are good for you"

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Again Janela memories - never saw Nan without a pinny - only once - in a photograph
Yes - UJ - everyone say at the opened up table - great times - I do miss the sing-alongs at the ol' Joanna

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Yes Pat darlin' - fond memories indeed, great uncles, Uncles, great aunts, aunts, cousins - the whole clan used to gather on Sunday evenings and all traipsed off down the 'prospect'.

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

We regularly have eight to ten family members around for Sunday lunch. I love to cook and bake. It seems to be rubbing off on the one daughter I have still living close by, she often cooks lunch too.

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Sometimes my Dad would kill one of our chickens for Sunday dinner & for tea we'd have bread & butter pudding with jam & whisked egg white on top, I think it was called Queen of Puddings, yum! Some Sundays my Dad would row with my eldest sister & then go down the garden & sit with the chickens!(I don't think he won many arguments - house full of women!)

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Good thread! I know your title is "Eating in the UK" Geoff, but here's my feedback from our family meals in Canada.

We had potatoes every single day of the week. By the time I was old enough to peel them it was my job.

Other than potatoes, the only vegetables we had at supper were corn, brussels sprouts, green beans, wax beans or carrots. Carrot sticks, radishes and celery in our lunch boxes. Pickled beets and dill pickles were a treat. We didn't have meat every night but there was always enough for the seven of us and my mother could stretch what there was.

Sometimes supper was egg noodles topped with ground walnuts and sugar, or ground poppyseeds and sugar. Once in a while we enjoyed a meal of homemade yeast donuts, topped with powdered sugar then split in half and filled with jam while still warm. We thought these were delightful entrées, being kids, but I realize now they were what my mother cooked when money was short. Good memories all the same.

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

How great is that Mall - keeping up with the tradition and hopefully passing it on - so sad we strayed from the family get-together
Annie - Mmmmm potatos are Pats favourite food - could live on them... Yum

Re: Eating in the uk in the fifties

Yes, I remember most of that with the exception of fish being eaten on Fridays. We never ate fish on Fridays because catholics did.

Unfortunately mother (she of the Glasgow school of 'cookery') thought that any seasoning other than salt (even pepper) was only for foreigners. She cooked the most bland food imaginable - she could make the best tasting ingredients seem bland.

I regret her reluctance to shop in Peppy's, an Italian owned grocers. The smell emanating from his emporium was wonderful. Freshly ground coffee, hams, cheeses ....... mother shopped in Lipton's.

Stepping back to the 40's, father occasionally mentioned an Italian internment camp. If I've got the story right, they used to take parts of crashed planes there and the inmates used to strip out the instruments which were sent for re-calibration and re-use.

Anyway, he said that the Italians used to grow lots of herbs and vegetables in beds round their huts. He described the smells that used to come from their cooking - adding cynically that they ate better than he did!