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Monday 27 September 2021

Eating in the Fifties

Someone sent me this. Apparently it made them think of me. 


I could add:

  • Instant coffee was black, liquid, came in a square bottle and was something to do with camping.
  • The only wine you had is what you did when told if you don't eat it up now you'll get it for breakfast, dinner and tea until you do.

39 comments:

  1. 5. Our crisps came with plenty of salt. No extra required.

    8. Brown bread was eaten by some but more like people who wanted to be healthy.

    12. Fish did have fingers here, and they were delicious.

    14. I tried to make yoghurt at primary school by leaving a bottle of full cream milk in the sun for a few days, so it must have been around then.

    The rest are exactly as it was here.

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    1. 5. You often got 2 and sometimes as meny as 6 or even more blue twists of salt in a packet of Smiths Crisps.
      8. Brown was often white bread that had been dyed.
      12. Didn't hear of fish fingers until the 60s.
      14. I used to have a yoghurt maker which worked quite well.

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  2. Ooh... spam fritters, tinned fruit with evaporated milk ... yum.

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    1. I still have Carnation on tinned fruit when I can persade Mrs D. to buy them (I'm not allowed to do the shopping).

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  3. I loved this list and blurted out an audible chuckle when I reached number 22. May I suggest an extra three of my own?
    You only had baked potatoes on Bonfire Night - the rest of the year potato was mashed apart from during that very short period of time in the late spring when new potatoes were available.
    Only French people ate garlic which they also reeked of.
    Salad was eaten exclusively in the summer.

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    1. Potatoes - agreed. Garlic - the Welsh too? Salad - you only got it when it grew, otherwise tinned tomatoes.

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    2. Trifle law was good jurisprudence, my boy.

      Marks and Spencer used to do wee fresh cream gooseberry trifles.
      I buy gooseberry yoghurt in Waitrose, Katy Rodgers brand.

      Who makes sherry trifle these days except Elsie Tanner and I hear she moved to Sheffield.
      Haggerty

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  4. Camp coffee!! With the picture in picture recurring label. And crisps came with salt in a twist of blue paper in the bag. Your mom made chips to go with eggs. Or mash. Nothing fancier.

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    1. If you look it up you'll see that the camp coffee label has gone through some interesting changes over the years. I never liked it, though, too bitter.

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    2. There is a story behind Camp Coffee and the soldier who appeared on the label. You are better off not knowing it.
      Haggerty

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    3. Well, it puts new meaning to the word "camp": https://frostysramblings.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/the-gay-hero-of-camp-coffee/

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    4. The chicory flavouring in their bottled concentrate was horrid. Chicory was a Victorian fad.

      My mother (born in 1917) said there was a bottle of Camp Coffee in her mother's larder, though the family drank Co-op Tea.
      In her 90s my mother liked a very weak cup of Nescafe Gold Blend.

      Dudley Moore said he had never drunk coffee until he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, on a scholarship.
      Coffee and jazz were natural partners in the days of restricted alcohol consumption.
      I remember a cafe in Glasgow's West End with its Art Deco fascia:
      The Papingo Coffee & Jazz.

      James Hoffmann has a number of coffee videos, YouTube.
      *Four London Coffee Institutions* (2017) was the first I watched.

      I like Mr Hoffmann's approach, and his films remind me of the vanished coffee houses of Glasgow such as the Kenco, The Alhambra in Waterloo Street (see online photo: *The restaurants that helped Glasgow shake off its pie and beans image in 1960s and 1970s*).

      There was a Kardomah Cafe in Edinburgh, with its signature front design by Sir Misha Black of the Royal College of Art, London.

      I can't remember a Kardomah in Glasgow.
      The Kenco Coffee House was the place to be seen on a Friday + Saturday evening.
      The place to take your girl after seeing Fellini's La Dolce Vita at The Cosmo Cinema in Rose Street (now the Glasgow Film Theatre) which was conceived and run by a brilliant Hungarian intellectual.
      Haggerty

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    5. Online ..
      *Lost Manchester: The Kardomah.
      Jonathan Schofield on a disappeared beauty on Market Street.*

      *Manchester's Lost Restaurants - Kardomah Cafe, Meng and Ecker and more.* Emily Heward. Evening News.

      *The History of Kardomah: Kardomah Leeds Cafe Culture.*

      Haggerty

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  5. Ah, I see we grew up in identical households.

    Meals always eaten at the table. Serviette in your lap. Permission required to leave the table.

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    1. We still do eat at the table for our main meal. We've even had to miss the end of England football matches. It's good to keep up standards.

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    2. This sounds very familiar to me as well, Mary. Table etiquette was required while eating at table, too.

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  6. That's entirely accurate! I especially liked "Healthy food consisted of anything edible."

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    1. And you ate what you were given.

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    2. Cabbage and lettuce with still the livestock in them. Mashed potatoes that seemed grey and never saw a good quantity of butter. God awful puddings, of sperm, sorry semolina or rice ;)

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    3. I quite liked those puddings, especially the frog spawn, or tapioca.

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  7. *Water came out of a tap.*
    I first heard of bottled water from my late elder brother who went to live in Los Angeles. He said there were cafes selling bottles of H20.

    Think of African women who walk for miles to get water, and the water may not even be clean.
    One day there will be water wars.
    The film *Chinatown* was well ahead of its time.

    If only the death squads in the Taliban and Islamic State (or ISIL) gave a moment's thought to clean water, sewage, plumbing.

    If only the Islamic fascists in Batley saw how fortunate they were, living in a country with clean water and sewage, instead of threatening the life of a good teacher and his family.
    Haggerty

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    1. At least water is one of the things we have plenty of in the north - at the moment.

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  8. This is a great list. When I was a child we never had anything as exotic as Tacos or Pizza at home and only rarely in a restaurant. Now we prepare them at home all the time.

    Imagine if we went to the past and shared that not only is water now sold in a bottle but people also buy dirt (potting soil) and now even Oxygen. In some places on the West Coast here there are "Oxygen Bars"! We saw them in Las Vegas.

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    1. It's a brilliant list. It's rare that I post stuff from other sources but this amused me so much. It also shows up our present day wastefulness.

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  9. For all that, I wouldn't go back!

    Mind you, a few years ago my wife did buy a bottle of Evian water in Bristol airport, then didn't drink it till we got to France - where our house is - you guessed it - right beside Evian!!!

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    1. A friend who lives near Dunblane bought a bottle of Highland Spring in Yorkshire. Trouble is that when you are travelling by car or other means, it's often the easiest option.

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  10. Ha! Even in the 70s where I hail from Curry was still a surname! Pasta and pizza were already being eaten, fortunately. Coffee was instant and came out of a canister or glass jar.

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    1. Yes, I think a lot of the things on the list lasted much longer than the fifties.

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    2. And into the 21st Century. I still do not eat pasta, buy yoghurt or regard pizza as real food.

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  11. Just to add that Olive Oil was bought at the chemist and put into your ears!

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    1. Please could you speak up? I've got some olive oil in my ears.

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  12. That took me back to my youth. No 24 'elbows' certainly resonates.

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    1. As mentioned to Mary, above, we still do eat at the table for our main meal and still have the elbow rule at least when eating.

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  13. LOL at Muesli was animal fodder. Things have certainly changed since then.

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    1. That one seems to have amused several people. Mind you, I shouldn't laugh. I've had Shredded Wheat for breakfast for over forty years. My wife says it looks like I', like eating hay stacks.

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  14. This was also Food for thought Tasker (not sure we had such food in those days)

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    1. Not sure we had much food at all when there was rationing - which I can just remember.

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