Food in the 50's

[Bryan]

Anybody on here too old to comment?

Food in the 50's - I remember it well!

* Pasta had not been invented.
* Curry was an unknown entity.
* Olive oil was kept in the medicine cabinet
* Spices came from the Middle East where we believed that they were used for embalming
* Herbs were used to make rather dodgy medicine.
* A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
* A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
* Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
* The only vegetables known to us were spuds, peas, carrots and cabbage, anything else was regarded as being a bit suspicious.
* All crisps were plain; the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
* Condiments consisted of salt, pepper, vinegar and brown sauce if we were lucky.
* Soft drinks were called pop.
* Coke was something that we mixed with coal to make it last longer.
* 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.
* A Pizza Hut was an Italian shed.
* A microwave was something out of a science fiction movie.
* Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
* Oil was for lubricating your bike not for cooking, fat was for cooking
* Bread and jam was a treat.
* Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves, not bags.
* The tea cosy was the forerunner of all the energy saving devices that we hear so much about today.
* Tea had only one colour, black. Green tea was not British.
* Coffee was only drunk when we had no tea….. and then it was Camp, and came in a bottle.
* Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
* Figs and dates appeared every Christmas, but no one ever ate them.
* Sweets and confectionery were called toffees.
* Coconuts only appeared when the fair came to town.
* Jellied eels were peculiar to Londoners.
* Salad cream was a dressing for salads, mayonnaise did not exist
* Hors d'oeuvre was a spelling mistake.
* The starter was our main meal.
* Soup was a main meal..
* The menu consisted of what we were given, and was set in stone.
* Only Heinz made beans, any others were impostors.
* Leftovers went in the dog.
* Special food for dogs and cats was unheard of.
* Sauce was either brown or red..
* Fish was only eaten on Fridays.
* Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
* Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
* Ready meals only came from the fish and chip shop.
* For the best taste fish and chips had to be eaten out of old newspapers.
* Frozen food was called ice cream.
* Nothing ever went off in the fridge because we never had one.
* Ice cream only came in one colour and one flavour.
* None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
* Jelly and blancmange was only eaten at parties.
* If we said that we were on a diet, we simply got less.
* Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
* Healthy food had to have the ability to stick to your ribs.
* Calories were mentioned but they had nothing at all to do with food.
* The only criteria concerning the food that we ate were ... did we like it and could we afford it.
* People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy so and so’s.
* Indian restaurants were only found in India .
* A seven course meal had to last a week.
* Brunch was not a meal.
* Cheese only came in a hard lump..
* If we had eaten bacon lettuce and tomato in the same sandwich we would have been certified
* A bun was a small cake back then.
* A tart was a fruit filled pastry, not a lady of horizontal pleasure.
* The word" Barbie" was not associated with anything to do with food.
* Eating outside was called a picnic.
* Cooking outside was called camping.
* Seaweed was not a recognised food.
* Offal was only eaten when we could afford it.
* Eggs only came fried or boiled.
* Hot cross buns were only eaten at Easter time.
* Pancakes were only eaten on Pancake Tuesday - in fact in those days it was compulsory.
* "Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
* Hot dogs were a type of sausage that only the Americans ate.
* Cornflakes had arrived from America but it was obvious that they would never catch on.
* The phrase "boil in the bag" would have been beyond our realms of comprehension.
* The idea of "oven chips" would not have made any sense at all to us.
* The world had not yet benefited from weird and wonderful things like Pot Noodles, Instant Mash and Pop Tarts.
* We bought milk and cream at the same time in the same bottle.
* Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
* Lettuce and tomatoes in winter were just a rumour.
* Most soft fruits were seasonal except perhaps at Christmas.
* Prunes were medicinal.
* Surprisingly muesli was readily available in those days, it was called cattle feed.
* Turkeys were definitely seasonal.
* Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
* We didn't eat Croissants in those days because we couldn't pronounce them, we couldn't spell them and we didn't know what they were.
* We thought that Baguettes were a serious problem the French needed to deal with.
* Garlic was used to ward off vampires, but never used to flavour bread.
* Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging treble for it they would have become a laughing stock.
* Food hygiene was all about washing your hands before meals.
* Campylobacter, Salmonella, E..coli, Listeria, and Botulism were all called "food poisoning."


* The one thing that we never ever had on our table in the fifties
…. elbows.

[2002EarlMarischal]

Not so sure it was much different in my home in the early 1960s!

[strang steel]

Those comments are so true, Bryan.

How things have changed.

I wonder how many people would entertain eating bread and dripping these days?

Do blue tits peck through the tops of milk bottles on the doorstep any more?

If you ask people a question involving time, no one answers "presently" any more. My grandparents always said that, which usually meant 'just keep quiet and wait until we are ready'.

Although, we did have offal quite regularly - I thought it was cheap. at least liver and kidneys. And brawn.


And I remember going with my parents to a late 1950s wedding in deepest Lincolnshire. There were meats on the reception table that I had never heard of, duck, turkey, pheasant, although my mother would not let me eat them because they might have been hung for a few days and be full of disease.

I don't think that I knowingly ate any turkey until the early 1970s.

We had a safe to keep the milk and butter in, with metal grille sides to keep the flies out and the air circulating.

[mr B]

if we had skate on the board they'd be a Q outside the shop , BB would have been happy cos' mam could dish out the scraps , as for the newspapers , where had they been or came from - but no one was ill

mr B

[manna]

G'Day Gents

I can remember as a kid, collecting old newspapers from the houses of our street and taking them to the wet fish shop, and receiving 3d from the fishmonger (did it every week)

manna

[Autocar Publicity]

And in the same vein:

YOU WERE BRUNG UP PROPER - CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930s 40s, 50s and 60s.

First, you survived being born to mothers who drank while they carried you & lived in houses made of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

You had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode our bikes, you had no helmets or shoes, not to mention the risks you took hitchhiking. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

You drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle... Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos. Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow you didn't starve to death!

You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with. You ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

You could leave home in the morning & play all day as long as you were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach you all day. And you were O.K. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes... You built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

You did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video or dvd, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and went outside and found them!

You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones & teeth & there were no lawsuits from these accidents. Only girls had pierced ears! You ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in you forever. You could only buy Easter Eggs & Hot Cross Buns at Easter...

You were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Rugby and cricket had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that! Getting into the team was based on merit...

The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! Your parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'. You had freedom, failure, success & responsibility and learned how to deal with it.

And YOU are one of them. CONGRATULATIONS - you lucky [devil]!

[60800]

And I'm a useless, witless sucker born in 1996, with nothing to do but meander to a poncy (ha!) college and sit around waiting for the next railway event, looking out the window and sighing at all these idiotic kids and their damned mobile phones.....

[Postman Prat]

Hi Blackout

You're the victim here, so don't feel bad.

It's my generation, and the one before, who let 'them' do it, who were actually part of it. We should feel bad about what we let them get away with, to rob the kids of this, and future generations, of what really was childhood.

One of my nephews, at the age of about 5 acted as though he was 35 - the only person I know who had a mid-life crisis before he was a teenager!!!

What's done is done, we've got to make the best of it!

[60800]

Yeah it's all the irresponsible parents

So most of the 18 - 21 yr olds then

[PGBerrie]

I wonder how many people would entertain eating bread and dripping these days?

On sale at the Italian Deli stall at our local market - also eaten as an appetizer at posh restaurants before you get the starter. It's just gone up in the world.

1950's: tripe and onion, pig's trotters, homemade brisket, elderberry wine, rhubarb wine and only drunk by mistake, comfry.

Peter

[60041]

No one has mentioned Spam, Sago, Tapioca and Butter Beans, all vital ingredients of school dinners and at bedtime there was the treat of hot milk with a spoonful of Virol in it.

[mr B]

mmmm,
licorice roots , barley sugar , tiger nuts only from the chemist's , not for getting going to the barbers and not understanding what was meant when he asked the man before " like someting for the wekend sir ? "

mr B

[mr B]

And I'm a useless, witless sucker born in 1996, with nothing to do but meander to a poncy (ha!) college and sit around waiting for the next railway event, looking out the window and sighing at all these idiotic kids and their damned mobile phones.....

poor blackout to young to remember frozen jubbly's

mr B

[52D]

And Cresta pop mr B, and my favourite Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup poured over vanilla ice cream.

[Postman Prat]

Delrosa was also very nice when a spoonful was put in the middle of your rice pudding at school. Turned the whole piudding pink.

This thread is making me a) nostalgic and b) hungry.

We often have Butter Beans, by the way