The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: happygolucky on November 18, 2012, 06:58:35 pm
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After buying some Angle Delight I remembered how much I loved it and it got me thinking, when I first got married in the 70's although I was a reasonable cook, things that I cooked were very simple, I am not sure if I even saw or used peppers in my cooking then, or even ate pasta!!! my weekly food would be similar each week, the good old Sunday roast, then stuff like stews, cottage pies, chops and I did not use instant stuff at all...I had a baking day where I made pies, tarts and cake, then.veg would be front he markets also the meat and the bread delivered by the bread man, stuff you cut yourself. How different things are now!!. Veg from all over the world all year round, same with meat and fish and so many food programmes and internet help......I am amazed at how many things I cook now that I never even thought about years ago!!!!
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Yes Sandy , lots of choice these days . I grew up eating peppers in spag bol and chow fan , and even grew them outside on my veggie plot in the late 60's from seed saved from the peppers we used to eat .
Sadly there are many chemicals on and in food these days .
Pesticides , herbicides , gm , plastics and chems to stop food from going off , anti bacs and hormones in meat etc , it is a nightmare .
Then you hit prepared food ! Bugger me , safer to eat rat poison !
Angels delight , i hate to think what was in that , but i liked it , a bit sickly for me now i think ? .
I tend to eat only eat home grown veg , when poss , and as little meat as poss . I can't afford real meat ie chops etc , just sausages mince etc and who knows wtf the put in that or where it comes from ?.
I did buy a vesta curry a few years ago , We used to have them as a treat when i was a kid , i nearly puked though , yuk how on earth did i eat it when i was younger ?
Todays din dins was some local pork , home made sweet and sour sauce , sweet corn , peas , courgette , onion and egg fried rice , yum , well i liked it .
Oh and the chow fan we had as kids was ;
streaky bacon chopped up , green pepper and onion chopped and lightly fried in butter with button mushrooms , and omlet chopped up , all mixed up and cooked with soy sauce and served on basmati rice .
Ah the good ole days .
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For some strange reason my mum loved Vesta Meals, a bit like the runs in a bag ::) My children used to love Pot noodles, not much better but handy for camping trips.
I really cannot remember cooking with peppers at all until maybe the late 80's ::) Meat is very expensive indeed BUT just go to a supermarket and you can buy 2 million bags of crisps for £1 (slight exageration) Those big tins of chocies for £4-£5 but veg and fruit are soooo expensive......no wonder I am :pig: ::)
I buy anything like meat or fish reduced and freeze it, then I do a mass cook of soups, pies or curries or stews.....we eat cheaply but drink expensivly :innocent:
As for pesticides etc, my father in law (farmer) and my dad (water board inspector) had old tins of all sorts in thier sheds, that wonderful paraquot stuff, Meths, Chloride? then they went and burnt the rubbish so toxic smoke.......are people really going to live longer now we are not allowed to give our animals food scraps, most of us have fridges or freezers, not exposed like we were to deadly chemicals, now we have warnings and sell by dates on everything!!!
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Ah Vesta Meals!!! Isnt it funny that it was sucha treat - probaly the msg. I always used to choose vesta beef risoto or chow mein for my birthday tea!!!!!! They were probably pretty expensive relative to home cooking then. I still have the odd craving!
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Pot Noodles always take me back to my days working in the stables or kennels as a teen. Something hot to thaw me out as it was freezing!! Try and eat them now and they make me heave!
My girls have angel delight about twice a year if I can get away with not making it , I will.
I look back at what Mum fed me as a kid and I'd never let mine eat it, funny really. Although that doesn't include her traditional stews, roasts etc they were fine but I'd question where she sourced her meat
Ten years married and hubby actually said to me a few weeks ago "I think you've sussed how to make perfect roast potatoes now!!" - goes to show doesn't it?
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Vesta meals, yes, we used to have them too. Then there were Fray Bentos meat pies in tins. I bought those when I first got married and we loved them.
I have a cook book from the 70's with nice pictures which I have recently taken too again. A lot of the recipes are very basic like eggs in mayonnaise or chicken with sweetcorn, but its great to reminisce.
Sally
p.s., don't tell anyone but I have a packet of Angel Delight in the cupboard :excited:
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My Dad did all the cooking in the evenings, he was an excellent cook but we still had a Vesta once a week. My Gran did a lot of puddings, she did a lot of suet/ steamed puds which I still love. We always had fresh as my Grandad had an allotment Gran made preserves including medicines and my Dad grew herbs and fruit. After shopping on a Saturday we had a buffet tea,lots of out of the packet sausage rolls, pies and those new crisps called Skips. But Mum would shop locally for good ingredients for main meals. She now sends to Aberdeen from Halifax for her meat as her local butcher is now what she calls a 'stir fry' butcher and does not sell local meat. Even her farm shop sells alligator and kangaroo! I remember going to the local farm for eggs and milk , ordering the turkey etc. I cannot remember anything but Saturday tea food, jellies or vestas out of a packet ( makings yes) Even now if I ate a bag of crisps all I can taste is sugar! Even the kids parties I went to all the food was made. I am trying hard but cant remember ever having an Angel Delight , if we had sweets it was a bun paper full of raisins or cocoa mixed with sugar. I must have lived a very sheltered life! At the end of the week my Dad used to make Bungidins which were clean the fridge out bung it in recpies. I still do Bungidins!
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Seems we all had Vesta meals......ready meals can actually be nice now, we may just buy a ready meal for our Christmas dinner as I usually end up cooking them most years, not last year though as my daughter and son in law cooked!! It was all simple food, I remember Brains frozen faggots, they sounded horrid but were lovely.....an those tinned pies, I remember them when I first got married, my mum used to make her own and they were wonderful, she was a brilliant cook and strangely sometimes she would bring us left overs from the Mental Hospital (sorry about that non PC term) she was a Nurse not an inmate ;) I had a hippy friend who took a fray Bentos pie on a camping holiday to France but brought it back unopened so customs made them open it then and there, they were gutted !! Fish fingers were actually nice then I am sure and those crispy pancake things we had on some occasions, usually Saturday!! I used to make loads of puddings and I was thing then, maybe that's where I am going wrong now!!!! I really notice my store cupboard is so different than when I first married, I would ALWAYS have :- Tinned Ham., Spam, Salmon, Peaches, Carnation tinned milk, Pineapplerings , Jelly lumps, Pie fillings, usually cherry, Ambrosia rice pudding and of course mixed fruit cocktail! I recently bought some Tesco cheapo orange segments ages ago to put into a trifle with other fruits and I was pleasantly surprised how nice they were, that's what made me think of what I used to buy!! How times change!!
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We used to have a Vesta meal on a Saturday - it was a real treat and we thought we were at the cutting edge of cuisine ;D
Findus Crispy pancakes, Bird's Eye mousses in wee tubs, fish fingers - but they were a treat, not a regular thing.
My Mum shopped on a Friday night at the Co-op, and a delivery boy brought the box (one box) of messages to the door (You shop, we drop :thumbsup: ). Fresh stuff was bought daily.
We had tinned peaches the other night with yogurt and they were lovely - at least more reliable than fresh. I bought six tins this month as a standby ;)
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My favourite as a kid was green jelly - that's woodruff flavour in Germany, not lime! And last year Lidl suddenly had woodruff flavour jelly... Had to buy some, just to take me back in time! It's pretty horrible, really, especially as the stuff they had was low calorie, ie with artificial sweeteners. But I still like the flavour.
I think the "worst" food we had was powdered soup - Knorr asparagus, mushroom etc; we usually had that on Saturdays, either with a Frankfurter type sausage in it, or just with bread.
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Wot memories!
yes, dad would go out Saturday night with the next door neighbour, mum and I would have our treat - A Vesta!
Later years, If mum was saving up for her hols it would be egg and chips every teatime, I ended up buying my own food.
I love Angel delight ;D , don't buy it very often, but with some bottled fruit it makes a quick dessert, sometimes I only put half the powder in and it made a lovely thick milk shake.
Hermit - if your mum lives in Halifax there are lots of 'home grown' farm shops etc, at least out Hebden Bridge / Todmorden, much ado about the 'Incredible Edible' in Todmorden. Butcher in Hebden Bridge uses their own or locally sourced meat.
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Thanks but she only goes about on her scooter around Elland now, she is 81.' Her' butcher in Aberdeen really looks after her and his portions are real mansize so she splits most things in two or more. She always has paid premium for good meat. When I am down I go to Tod and HB a lot, love them but they are inaccessible to my Mum, unless she is taken. My sis has a stall on Tod Market and takes her pies and bits but steaks and meats only from her loverboy in Aberdeen! ::) ::)
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[quoteWe had tinned peaches the other night with yogurt and they were lovely - at least more reliable than fresh. I bought six tins this month as a standby (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/Smileys/default/wink.gif) ] I found tinned oranges very nice jn a light syrup so we also bought Peaches and Pears and I always keep some tinned Rhubarb still as its no different to the real stuff in a crumble and unless you have your own its expensive to buy, sugar and cook!!! Just remembered that I loved a bit of dream topping, probably all chemicals but it was nice on a trifle!!
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Oh yes, dream topping, mmm. We used to have something similar at shchool which we called shaving foam ;D
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Brought back so many memories of my youth - Vesta paella was my favourite ;D And we had Frey Bentos steak and kidney pie about every week, oh and I also loved Findus Crispy pancakes too. Don't think I would thank you for any of them now though :-\
Mum also always made lots of home made food too and we always had a roast on a sunday and if it was beef then stovies on monday!
Rosemary I also remember the friday night shop and the cupboards seemed to be full of goodies, not that they really were that full, there was just more food than the day before ;D
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Have our pallets really changed that much? I wonder how I could have a family of 5 with just the co op delivery of shopping or Thursday night big shop (husbands pay day), then the market for veg and meat. I did not have a freezer for years either, after our big shop it was fish and chips from the chippy!!
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You still can't beat fish and chips from the chippy ;D
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not at a £10 for 2 portions :o
i aim at £1/ head/night. and achieve it most nights. however that doesnt include my veg growing, or game. weve eaten for nothing for the last 4days and tonights leftover pheasent stew will be free too!
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There were 7 kids in our family so lots of food . Me and my sister did the shopping every other day . From when i was 11 , 1969 onwards , i had 2 allotments and grew huge amounts of veg . Enough to keep 9 well fed . Most days i lugged my duffle bag back from the lott , full of veg . Some went in the kitchen cupboard and the rest was stored in my shed , i had my own shed from age 10 on .
The home grown veg meant we didn't ever go hungry , and that we could have treats now and then , like the vesta , my favourite was the beef curry one .
Another favourite was stuffed marrow .
The stuffing was mince beef with home grown onion , peas , carrot , swede . This we had with mashed spud , swede , french beans , sprouts , cabbage or whatever else was ready off the lotty or out of the shed .
The marrows , spuds , swede , onions , carrots etc would fill the shed and last through the winter till next years crop .
I gave up the lotties when i was 18 , as i was working 8 till 6 , 6 days a week and had no time to work the plots . We moved to Wales when i was 20 and i started growing veg again .
Home made mince pie was fantastic , could live on that alone , that or cheese flan we had at school . None of my mates liked it , but i did , so got them all to ask for extra helpings and then get them to go back for seconds . This may make some feel a bit sick , but i used to put all that flan in my duffle bag , the very same one i used for the veg , and eat it the rest of the week .
I hate to think what the inside of that bag was like , but that flan was fantastic .
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I so loved school cheese flan, never had any the same since, I loved the tinned tomatos with it too, funny but even though my mum was a great cook I still loved school dinners!!!
I love free food......I hate to see kids off to school with a bag of crisps (as much as I love crisps) but when they are so cheap at the shops as oppose to other breakfast stuff, I can see why!
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Friday night was chippy night . I rarely had fish , my thing was saveloys . As it was my job to go to the chippy to get dinner for the family , i used to get 2 saveloys and a huge bag of scrapings to eat on the way home . Then i had another sav and chips at home .
Friday night was always the night dad went out after the pub shut and got cockles , whelks , winkles , crab and sometimes lobster from the van in the car park .
I can't afford saveloy and chips now , or cockles etc .
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My mum wouldn't have dreamed of serving Vesta meals but I was introduced to them by a boyfriend when I was fifteen.
We always had our dinner in the middle of the day and Dad would come home from work for it. Then we had a cooked tea: beans on toast, egg on toast, salad, etc. On Saturday mornings, Dad would go early to the fish market (I grew up in Hastings which had a thriving fishing industry) and buy fish straight from the fishermen at 'locals' price (it was dearer later in the day when the tourists were about) then bring it home for Mum to clean and gut after she had done a load of washing mainly school uniforms. We'd have them fried with home made chips. The fish was so fresh that one day she'd put it on the draining board and was filling a bowl with water to clean it. One fish jumped into the water.
Tea on Saturday was always sausages and baked beans. On Sunday we had a roast then cold meat and bubble and squeak on Monday when the main wash had been done.
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we had butterscotch angel delight tonight but im the only one who likes it... ;D
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We also had butterscotch angel delight.......funny how much we all seem to remember about food....... :thumbsup:
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I LOVE this thread, its about my favouits subject..food!
I used to have the Vesta prawn curries, but only it I bought them for myself. Mother wouldnt have such a thing in her shopping basket!
Mum was a fantastic cook, she was a great pie maker, she did stews, macaroni cheese was a family favourite, she did it with CHIPS can you believe? One of my personal favourites was a steamed bacon and onion pudding which we had with mash, butter beans and gravy. It was so tasty.
Both of my schools did fantastic dinners. Everything was totally delicious, from mince meat cobler to chocolate cake with chocolate custard at junior school, to fish and chips with a fantastic fresh salad on a friday at senior school. No wonder Im the size I am!!!
Oh and yes WE had butterscotch angel delight. It was called Instant Whip in the old days!
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Mary, wasn't Instant Whip the rival company?
...and what about Cremola Foam, the nearest we ever got to fizzy drinks? :P
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Spam
Condensed milk on a sandwich with sugar sprinkled on the top :o
Birds Instant Trifle
Instant Whip if you couldn't afford Angel Delight (Butterscotch has to be).
Funny, I thought this post was going to be something historical from Tudor times :D
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Funny, I thought this post was going to be something historical from Tudor times :D
Henry VIII must have eaten his fair share of Frey Bentos pies and Angel Delight :roflanim:
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metal pies. omg. forgotten about them!!
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I still have a £1 metal pie in the store cupboard!! I also remember and you can still buy them. exploding sponge stream puds!!!, they went into a pan of boiling water for what seemed like hours, often the pa would boil dry.! now I just micro wave cake mix with jam or golden syrup.. ....My children always wanted me to buy Pop Tarts but I only bought them maybe once, lethal things for mouth burning but OK, then of course toasted sandwhich makers. I loved them, still have one but not much fun to have a single one with a family of 5 all hearty eaters !!! I am not a fan of all the highly sugared cereals but when mine children were little, and me, there was often free toys in them, those submarines were you put baking soda to make them dive..never got the chance as my brother stole them....Do they put toys in cereal now? :roflanim: Stream puds........steam
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You did get toys in cereal until recently - actually they put it in a separate plastic packet (must be health and safety) but I haven't seen a toy for ages, all sensible things you have to send away for now (and collect numerous tokens of course).
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We always had Instant Whip, which you made with one pint of milk (I think Angel Delight used half or three quarters of a pint) and it was shared between five of us. Butterscotch was definitely my favourite.
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Butterscotch Angel Delight - Oh yes!!! :excited: Only ever used to get an eggcupful in a family of six. I really need some, now :yum: .
Does anyone remember liquorice roots as a treat, or is that just me? You didn't actually eat them, just chewed on them to crush the flavour out.
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No lucky lady don't remember them but rhubarb stalks with sugar on I do rememmber :-\
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I remember liquorice roots , they look like twigs and you were left with chewed up wood, not my fave but Rhubard in sugar yes, loved that!!! I am stuffed but did buy Angel Delight after reading this thread again!!......I also remember asking for batter bits from the chippy, they were lovely!!! as for treats they were usualy home made stuff like cake or a stone jar of ginger beer,,,,they got returned but I bet that was better then than it would be now!!!
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Happygolucky do you or anyone else remember byuing fizzy drinks in glass bottles and getting a few pence back when you returned them empty, so if you had enough you got a bottle free - so who said we didn't recycle in those days :innocent:
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I remember liquorice roots. They used to be kept in a big sweet jar in the shop. You chewed them until there wasn't much left. Funny flavour but I loved them.
1 also remember asking for 4 penny worth of chips and crackling which is what we called the batter bits that Sandy is talking about. They were my fav. ;D Of course they were wrapped in real newspaper. Fish and chips doesn't taste quite the same without it.
Sally
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YOu still can return fizzy drink bottles here......we get a load left from men staying but i put them in the bin, my thoughts also went to the amount of waste we have now as opposed to even when I was a young mum in the 70's I would buy shopping once a week with some veg and meat from the market and have one small rubbish bin, now I shop more often and we have 4 bins.....we actualy do not waste much ourself but the guests do and everything seems to be paced, before I had bread delivered with no paper or wrapping, meat in bags, veg in brown bags milk in bottles you washed and put out, pop that also got returned and things like bacon anc cheese also in paper....funny how we seemed to have progressed in one way but stepped back in another, a lot of people had thier own fruit and veg when I was a child, many shared stuff with neighbours and children went of helping to collect the crops...chickens or pigs ate scraps, we had a cafe and a man left a bin for all the left overs, we sold our oil from the chipper too...I even use more washing powerder than I used to...there were no wet wipes just clean cloths etc, no electric gadgets to brush our shoes, teeth bums etc and most people only had one car if that.....they had bikes or used the bus!!!! The one saving grace is we can chat with friends on the net without using any energy...well some!!!
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it was usually instant whip we had.
Asda recently had angel delight type things for kids - sugar free - about 30p+ or offer on at 4 for a £1
I got the butterscotch of course, also got chocolate and strawb to keep OH happy, but they tasted odd.
I remember the licorice twigs. must have had quite a few.
I used to get 'lucky bags' on my way to school, about 6d I think
mum would slice an orange and sprinkle with sugar for dessert.
rhubarb sugar dips - great for teeth ;D
I was just thinking recently about a dried powder orange drink we used to get, add water. anybody remember that? can't find it now.
Can you still get the little boxes of dried soup? mum used to have loads in the cupboard, I think she just liked building with them ;D
There was a grocery van that came round once a week.
and the pop man - corona pop
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I remember those little soup box's they were tiny, and the corona van, when I started working in Glasgow a memeber of staff said to ask the "ginger man" to leave 2 gingers and an Irun bru,,,,I laughed as the "GInger Man" was ginger.......I also remember that orange type sherbert drink, lovely it was in a can but then we also had some bicarb or something that we could put into plain drinks for the fizz!!
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I got the butterscotch of course, also got chocolate and strawb to keep OH happy, but they tasted odd.
That's because "sugar free" means the natural sugar has been replaced by cheaper artificial sweeteners. Yum (not).
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That's Cremola Foam, Sandy.
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Ah yes we used to have a pop man, Benshaws it was . You got money back on the bottles. We also had a bakers van and an onion man! He used to actually ride a bike dressed as a Frenchman selling strings of onions. My Mum would never buy seperate ice creams from the ice cream van , we used to take a bowl and get it filled and share it. Ringtons tea deliveries were once a week then as well! Ahh the good old days.
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Creamola!! I have heard that a few times, I wonder if its still around somewhere?
I also remember the "rag & bone man" I would hide as he scared me to death, strangly along with the man who came to the door with a turban on...its just the unkown as later I fell in love :love: with a local indian boy whos dad was from the American Air force that were stationed localy, anywy, back to food.
We hd all sorts of stuff delivered when I was a child, I loved it when a lady came on her horse pulling a cart with fruit and veg on like a market stall!!! I am not sure if milk men still are around? that sound first thing of the electric milk float and the tinckle of the bottles on the back!!! I am sure cigarettes were sold in single amounts, mum was a smoker! I loved the chocolate ones so copied her with them. I loved lucky bags, strange as the present was not much! and as for chews, still love them.
Christmas time is always a time for traditional foods, the smell of mince pies and stuffing always gets my mouth watering.....arhhhh BISTO!!
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We used to take our old fizzy drink bottles (corona?) back to the chinese take away when we had our monthly chinese meal from there - happy memories of going with my Dad to collect it and swap the bottles for coins. That is until it was in the local rag that cat skins had been found in OUR takeaway's bins - we started having Indian then instead.
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I always remember being hungry when I was wee. I do remember our rag and bone man too Sandy, my mum gave them a load of old clothes etc once and she said I could get 3p for them from the wife sitting in the cart. I remember feeling embarrassed about the 3p because they looked like they had less money than we did and I couldn't look the lady in the eye when I said thank you.