Food memories

Share with us your childhood memories of meals - maybe, like Vinny its coming home from Sunday School to Jelly & custard ...........you get the idea.

My dad had an allotment at the back of our house and sometimes what he brought in was past eating really. Once, as part of a salad, we had some mustard that was like small shrubs almost and mum envisaged us sitting round the table with trees on our plates hiding us from each other which didn't please dad.

A regular 'meal' most summers though was rhubarb and custard with a plate of buttered sliced white bread.

Sunday lunch when I was in my early teens was my responsibility after walking the 2 miles home from church. There were 7 of us so it was 3 or 4 tins of beans served with toast and sometimes a small amount of beef if there was any left over from the Saturday joint (which dad ate most of). Quite often I was late as I would go for a walk and a chat with a certain girl from the same church and I would face a hungry gathering when I eventually got home. We did, eventually, end up getting married.

Another Sunday School memory. We would have a Sunday dinner, meat and two/three veg then my brother and I would be packed off to afternoon Sunday School, me clutching a few shillings and a shopping list. After church, I'd drag my brother (2 years younger than me) on a walk to the only shop that was open on a Sunday - a newsagent and sweetshop that, importantly, sold icecream. We didn't even have a fridge at home, a freezer was unheard of - so icecream had to be bought fresh and eaten in a hurry.
We'd buy a block of icecream - my father liked Neapolitan, which was 3 coloured but, if they didn't have that we'd have strawberry & vanilla. The shopkeeper would wrap the icecream in several layers of white paper and my little brother and I would run home as fast as we could before the icecream melted.
Sunday afternoon tea was tinned fruit and icecream. Probably sandwiches of some sort to start with, and fill us up, before the icecream.
Sometimes the tinned fruit was "Fruit cocktail" which always had half a cherry in the tin and, being a polite sort of family, we'd take it in turns to have the cherry. So exciting when I could say "It's my turn for the cherry".
Tins of fruit cocktail, nowadays, still only have half a cherry and, its so tasteless, just a blob of washywashy pink stuff, that I wonder why we thought it was so desirable.
For the record, I don't buy "Fruit Cocktail" now but have been given a few tins in cupboard clearouts!

Embarasing story.My Dad was a railwayman and liked a pint or two.We lived in a railway cottage next to the railway line.He woke up one night wanting to go to the toilet and could hardly stand because he was drunk as a skunk so instead of a long trip downstairs to the outside netty, he opened the bedoom window and peed out the window.
He was talking to his mates the next day, all railwaymen and they wee discussing the weather. The general consensus was that it had been a nice balmy night until one piped up " Aye but thee was a nasty shower as I passed your place with the train last night"

Sory about the above, it wasn't a food memory!

Here's one though, my Dad's supposed mint sauce! Into a small dish with malt vinegar in it, went whatever was available. He had lettuce,spring onion(or nomal diced onion) cucumber and mint, in a very sloppy mix up which he used to ladle onto his dinner. It lasted a long time because none of the rest of the family partook!   "Have some mint sauce son?"..................err no thanks!

Then there was Mam's 'Wet chicken' I can only assume it was boiled chicken, but to give it a bit of flavour she heated up a tin of soup and used that for gravy!

Now you all know whee I get my culinary expretise fom!

I have a few fond food memories from my childhood. One of which was the Sunday lunch most of the time it would be roast chicken. Occasionally other meats. But it would always have Yorkshire pudding and spring greens (when available), carrots & marrow fat peas ( these were the veg I’d eat as a kid) and roasted potatoes. I’d also be in the kitchen to test the gravy just before serving. Because my grandad made the best gravy. I’ve never managed to replicate it. Even though he showed me.

Another food memory was my grandads Welsh rarebit ( as it was known in our house) . This is a recipe I did learn to replicate and I enjoy it on occasion to this day. One of the many things I’m looking forward to making in my new kitchen. I don’t think it is actually rarebit as it has tomatoes and onions in it and I’ve never found a recipe like it. But that’s what it was always called and always will be. Spread it on a piece of toast and back under the grill until it’s bubbling. Just making myself hungry now.

The final food memory is a grilled plaice fillet with bread and butter. I regularly had this when I was ill as a kid, which was often. The reason this is so memorable apart from I really enjoyed it and again still do on occasion ( but only if I’ve caught the fish myself now). Is on 3 separate occasions after eating my plaice. I’ve ended up in A&E having a fish bone removed from my throat (not a pleasant experience).

My mum was a reasonable cook even before we went abroad when I was about five, she improved and was even more adventurous after travelling the world. As youngsters of primary school age, we would have our own choice of birthday cake and mine was usually a chocolate layer sponge. She had two heart shaped sponge tins which were birthday specials. I was very girly and liked heartshaped anything. The cake was light fluffy and not too 'chocolatey' , I'm not into dark choc, and layered with smooth, creamy, chocolate buttercream. I believe I still have those tins in the cupboard somewhere. One birthday things must have gone wrong, the cake turned out dense and soggy, but oh so delicious. I think it might have been a forerunner of brownies. My brother and I would ask for 'soggy cake' but she could never replicate it.

Another one of mum's specials was called chicken cacciatore. A chicken, sweet pepper, tomato one pot dish. We had it regularly for umpteen years. Mum thought it was a favourite of dad's, until some years later dad very plaintively asked whether we might have something other than tomatoey stew. It took him some 10 years to pluck up the courage to say he didn't like it.

We were based in the Orient for many years of my childhood and I have fond memories of exotic ingredients. Huge prawns, wonderful veg, all bought from the bustling market fresh daily. Juicy mangoes, pineapples, mangosteen, rambutan, breadfruit. All probably available here but not a patch on what I remember. One thing we never had the courage to buy in Thailand were huge live bugs tied up with bamboo strips. Their eyes would follow you as you walked past. I'm fairly adventurous with food, but there was a limit.

Came home for school one dinnertime mum was probably in the garden so we helped ourselves to some soup on the Aga and a doorstep of bread and butter. Found out later it was sago.

Came home for school one dinnertime mum was probably in the garden so we helped ourselves to some soup on the Aga and a doorstep of bread and butter. Found  out later it was sago.

I had to google that. I’m still not 100% sure what it’s used for. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make a great soup. Having absolutely no idea, I’m imagining something like wallpaper paste?     .

Not my memory but a similar sort of discussion came up when we were at a friends for a meal . He has vivid memories of being fed a whole boiled onion more than once when he was a child. In later life I think he started to question his mother’s sanity. Once he realised this was not a normal practice   . He also admitted during the same conversation that when he got together with his now wife. He had no idea what the green thing was she’d put on his plate. The green thing was broccoli!