“Making do” …… rationing … cooking … and that lost world of 1946

I often return to L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go Between with its story of class, romance and redemption, made more memorable for me by that line from the book, “The past is a different place, they do things differently there”.

The universal and compulsory identity card, 1950

All of which is a lead into a series of reflections on those immediate post war years, when Britain was adjusting to peace but was still surrounded by the effects of those six years of conflict.

It was there in the ruined buildings and bombsites, to the vestiges of wartime control from identity cards, to rationing.

But walking hand in hand with that weariness and the prevailing “make do and mend” there was an optimism which was there in the creation of the Welfare State, The New Look and the Festival of Britain.

And it all seems to come together with a series of information leaflets from the Ministry of Food which were part informative, and part designed to promote heathy eating with the hard realities that food was still in short supply and many necessities as well as luxuries were still rationed.

The leaflets were issued each month during the late 1940s and were compiled into the “’ABC of Cookery’ [which gives] suggestions and methods of cooking and preparing food”.

What's left in the Larder, 1946

They covered every aspect of the sourcing preparing and cooking of meals advocating healthy and nutritious food.  Here could be found “a plan for meals for children”, “Cooking for one” foraging in the countryside and how best to use the fat ration.

At which point there will be those who mutter “nanny state” but it is as well to remember that for many families the war had interrupted family life and in particular the routine of cooking with many civilians eating in office and factory canteens or in subsidised public restaurants while evacuation had ripped many children out of the home.

Hedgerow Harvest, 1946

So, the Ministry of Food’s leaflets aimed to plug the gap of knowledge and in some cases promote what ever food was available.  

One of my favourites was the 1946 “Hedgerow Harvest” issued in the July of that year with the simple message that “there is a wealth of wild foods in our hedgerows and fields for those who are within reach of the countryside [and which] should not be wasted”.

It chimed in with advice from the The British Gas Council with approval of the Ministry of Agriculture focused on “Jam Making & Fruit Bottling”.  Over the years I have done my own experiments in these post war food suggestions including orange curd Pearl Barley Milk Pudding.

And today I have turned to their offer from December 1946 and “What’s left in the Larder” which explored using “Stale Bread” and using up left over fish which could be turned into a curry, using an onion, small carrot, curry powder, and flour to which you added a pint of stock, some vinegar, chutney, two tablespoons of sultanas and the flaked fish.

Using up stuff, 1946

Pearl Barley puddings, 1946

Now whether it was because rice was scare or just a culinary sign of the times, the curry was to be served with mashed potatoes.

But then just under twenty years later and mother regularly made a meat curry with sultanas and served it up with mash.

So looking through the leaflets there is indeed much that echoes that L.P. Hatley observation of the gulf between now then and now.

Of course, the canny cook has never forgotten that there is a place for yesterday’s leftovers in today’s meals, whether it be taking slices of old bread and rubbing them with a mix of garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, or my own teatime fall back which added some end of date salad, the last of the double cream with mushrooms and a newly cooked plate chickpeas, paprika, onions and tomato sauce.

And tonight I will finish off the chickpeas with what ever I can find in the fridge which needs using up.

Location; the kitchen and sometime in the 1940s

Pictures; selections from Ministry of Food leaflets, 1946 and my leftovers, 2026, and an identity card, 1950, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

My left overs, 2026

* "The past is a different place, they do things differently there", The Go Between, L.P. Hatley, 1953

Walking the Greek iskands .... in the company of Gigantes

The art of cooking for one is pretty much the same as cooking for two or for a family.

Keep it simple, use the best ingredients you can source and have an eye on how the leftovers can used for another meal.

Which brings me to two staple and favourites which are Gigantes and green beans.

Both pretty much cook themselves and just require to be cooked in a tomato sauce.

Now my Wikipedia tells me that Gigantes “is a Greek dish of large white beans baked in a tomato sauce and may be served as a main dish or as a meze”.* 

I first came across them in Greece forty years ago and they remain one of my go to choices when ever I am on the islands.

At home I regularly make them using the humble butter bean which are cooked gently with tomatoes, olive oil, onion and some garlic and a mix of herbs.  

And it makes sense to cook them along with that other dish which use green beans which are made in much the same way as the Gigantes.

Both can be served along side each other with bread and a selection of dips.

I prefer them slightly warm, but they are just as nice when cold.

Variations of both can be found in an arc around the Mediterranean and are essentially peasant food.

Today I ate them with some green leaves, salad and fried potatoes which was a variation on the other day when I made some mashed potatoes, onions and peas.

Leaving me to use what was left of the two in a curry or with some pasta.

Perhaps not exactly how a Greek grandmother or Italian nonna would dish up, but well within that tradition of using up what was in the kitchen.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; from the kitchen to the plate, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Gigantes plaki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantes_plaki

When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012

Stories from a century and a bit of making what we eat ….....…

 The story of what we eat and what we are sold to eat over the last 126 years has seen regular fads and fashions dominated by diets, “healthy living” options along with the not so healthy, and increasingly dominated by processed foods, global trade and the power of advertising.

Instant food, The Golden Egg, 1966

It is a topic I keep returning to. *

And at 76 I guess like many of my generation I have seen the lot.  From the end of war time rationing and seasonal food, to the abundance and variety on offer, which brings with it a reliance on the quick ready meal and the quest for the new and different.

No more the excitement of the first strawberries or new potatoes of the year, nor the easy and familiar foods of my childhood and that of my parents.

And in the process, we seem ever more distanced from the field and the fun of taking raw ingredients and turning them into something we enjoy and above all knowing exactly what went into the meal.

Green beans slowly cooking in tomato sauce, 2026

At which point it is important to introduce the caveat that this is against the backdrop that we live in a part of the developed world, where famine and food shortages are not at present a reality. 

But some processed foods do creep into my kitchen whether it be cheese or ready-made pastry.  The first in all its rich diversity is something I would miss, while I confess shop bought pastry does make life easier.  But there I think I draw the line.

Yesterday I wrote about “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available”. **

And today I want to develop that theme and in particular the starting point of what is available.

Spicey vegetables, cracked wheat and mint, 2026

It was the TV chef Keith Floyd that happy and at times irreverent man of food who brought it home to me that you don’t start with the cookbook but instead focus on what you see on the market stall or in the supermarket.

Now back in the 1980s I was just beginning to be serious about cooking and on the night before the next meal I would pour over a heap of cookbooks make a choice and carefully record the ingredients dismissing Keith Floyd’s advice.

But the following day I would find that some of those vital parts were not available and others were decidedly sad looking.

By contrast the Floyd approach not only meant you came away with the best that was fresh, but it offered up the challenge of what can I do with a pile of white beans, the freshest of the fresh green beans and the newly arrived on offer Greek halloumi?

And while all the books can offer up well tested ideas there remains no substitute for a big chunk of experimentation guided by that simple of all advice, what if I mix this with that?

Gigantes, with feata cheese, 2026

The Greeks do gigantes which is just white beans cooked slowly in a rich tomato sauce to which I add a bit of paprika dribble with olive oil and eat warm or cold. 

And along the same lines using those freshest of fresh green beans I add a heap of slowly cooking tomatoes with plenty of healthy-looking basil leaves.

Fried halloumi, and salad, 2026

Both can be starters or when combined with some fried halloumi, a portion of rice or cracked wheat you have a wonderful main dish.

And then there is the humble potato which I have been known to cook adding some avocado to create a plate of green mash which will go nicely with salad and spicy roasted cauliflower.

None of them take long to prepare and make.  In the process you know what has got into them and if you do want to add salt, sugar or anything else it’s down to you to judge the quantity.

But I draw the line at tofu and polenta, both of which I have cooked, cooked again and cooked again and despite variations in the method and what I add to the stuff I remain unconvinced.

What all of these meals from gigantes, avocada mash, and green beans have in common is that they don’t take long to make, and you are the arbiter of the quantities of addiatives.  

Added to which most of them cost little to buy, combine and cook.

Pictures; The Golden Egg menu, Andy Robertson, 1966, and stuff I cook and eat, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Avocado and potato mash, peas cucumber, sliced tomato and peas, 2026

*Food History, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Food%20History

**Stories from a Greek table and that food advice, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/07/stories-from-greek-table-and-that-food.html

Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out from the Piraeus, bound for the islands,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate were simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small, the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled juice bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer was pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives I replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of  cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Ignoring Eric ….

It does seem pretty much a given that any conversation about vegetarian food draws down a torrent of unsolicited, banal, and even hostile comments.

As if the very act of eschewing meat and fish is a threat to civilization and a direct affront to bacon lovers everywhere.

At its mildest it focuses on flatulence but ascends though the assertion that “it isn’t natural”, to visions of Armageddon with the end of all cows, pigs, and chickens from the face of the earth, and the collapse of  the entire world economy .

Nor does this wail of abuse have to be precipitated by the debate.  

It is enough on a slow news day for someone to launch into a diatribe, usually at the end of a day cataloguing their dried worm collection.

Now do they feel threatened, embarrassed or just have not thought much beyond their plate of meat and two veg?

On my part I don’t evangelise I just prefer not to eat something that had a face, and so if Eric wants to enjoy a steak, preceded by a prawn cocktail with a little side dish of fried sweet bread and black pudding that’s his choice.  Trouble is Eric and his pals won’t leave me to make my own choice.

And here I have to say this isn’t a crusade, it’s just another history post, and with that in mind it is worth remembering that all through history humanity has not eaten that much meat, which in most cases was not by choice, but was restrained by lack of money and the cost of meat.  Afterall then and now it takes a considerable amount of grass, and cereal to feed an animal.

So while aristocrats might employ chefs to come up with ever more sophisticated plates of meat and fish, the men and women who grew the food in the fields ate variations of porridge, and veg.

Always remember while the Norman overlords ate pork, their English serfs raised pig.

As a result, most of the world’s cuisines were heavily orientated toward meatless dishes and reflected a more imaginative approach to what makes a meal.

Yesterday with some fine-looking tomatoes and green beans which had to be used up I cooked a simple starter.

And varied the meal the following day by leaving out the green beans but adding olives, capers and bit of garlic to a plate of linguine.  Pretty much made in the time it took the pasta to cook.

Simple and quick.

And so, starts a series on historic meals without meat.

Pictures;  Dishes to brass off Eric, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Sugar sandwiches …. fruit salad ….. and carnation ……. food for the Gods

Well, while the young me thought I was in very heaven with sugar sandwiches I have to admit I never served them to my three when they were growing up.

The National Loaf, 1944

Nor do I think a bowl of tinned fruit with the obligatory splash of carnation milk would have been appreciated by any of them, but they were the backdrop to living in southeast London in the early 1950s.

To be fair I have yet to come across anyone else who ate sugar sandwiches.  The most common alternative I am told by friends was apple or banana sandwiches and I must admit apple did feature as alternative to sugar for me and my sisters.

They were quick to make, offered up that mix of sweetness and energy but even then, there was the drawback that the sugar granules crunched against your teeth and got lodged in the gaps created by the dentist.  I have still got those gaps from being an adolescent when Mr Guppy judged that as a boy, I would never be bothered about the appearance of my mouth.

But mercifully for my teeth there were also the savoury sandwiches, made with Pecks fish and meat paste and those magnificent dripping sandwiches.

In retrospect dripping sandwiches must have been a heart attack in waiting.  As veggie for over 40 years I shudder, but there was something magic on that mix of fat and salt and if you were lucky the dark brown liquid which lurked at the bottom of the pot.

But this is not a cry against what some would see as poor parenting or an attempt to outdo Eric down the road for the most deprived up bringing it was just part of our diet, and vied with healthy and nourishing soups, roasts and stews. 

I guess it was a throw back to mum’s childhood in the early 1930s when with granddad part of the millions of unemployed they were forced to apply for the Means Test which judged an application for help against what in the house could be sold to raise funds.

Fruit cocktail, 2025

The post war prosperity made that dark time a distant memory, but which always sat just below the surface and would occasionally surface.

Leaving aside the poverty aspect it was also a matter of “we did things differently back then”.

I never thought it odd that we would be served a pudding of spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar or that a delicacy in our house was chunks of corned beef dipped in batter and deep fried.

They were just what we ate and even now when me and my sisters get together we smile at the deep-fried corned beef which we nicknamed Dr Who’s because of the outlandish shapes the batter formed which reminded us of the monsters he confronted.

And then there was olive oil, bought in small bottles from the chemist and used on ear wax, or rubbing into the hair when mum had to use the knit comb.

Carnation, 2025

That said in the early 1950s the solution for me and my friends was that brutal haircut which left you looking like a recruit in a boot camp.

I must have other food memories but they as yet haven't tumbled out.

Against this since my mid 20s I have embraced cooking, leaving the procesed stuff behind and mastering a heap of dishes including the humble pasty.

But what is fascinating is just how quickly, the sugar and apple sandwiches and the medicinal application of olive oil vanished under the growing prosperity and commercialism of the late 1950s.  

So, in a few short years traditional puddings were replaced by such offerings as Angel Delight, and Arctic Roll, and baked fish by fish fingers and that staple which was Birds Eye burgers. And coming up fast there were those boil in the bag Vesta curries and Chow Mien.

And somewhere along the way we lost the Sunday treat of tinned fruit and carnation.

Me own efforts, 2026

Location; somewhere in the 1950s

Pictures, The Co-op National Loaf, 1944, Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald, 1944, the alternative, the home made pasty, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and fruit salad and Carnation courtesy of Morrisons

When the larder is your history book ……..

History comes in many shapes and sizes, and I have been thinking of many of those recipes I have picked up over the years which offer stories from the past.

Italian pie, 2025

And here I don’t mean those elegant, sophisticated offerings from swish, shiny and very expensive cookbooks, but the simple ones which are best just described as “leftovers”.

A device for mincing, 2020

We all have them, passed down from parents and grandparents when prosperity was what someone else enjoyed

They were the leftovers made from the Sunday roast and repurposed for another day.  Or bits left in the larder which got overlooked but were perfectly OK to eat.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember the metal mincer which attached to the kitchen table and was used to grind remanets of the meat joint to make mince, rissoles or the forerunner of the burger.

In our house could be added “the soup”.  

It had no other name, was always just the soup and might on any occasion consist of cooked or raw vegetables mixed with pearl barley or lentils and flavoured with whatever stock was to hand with the option of a dollop of some kind of meat.  It was the dustbin meal and on occasion was even bulked out with the odd few Yorkshire puddings.

"The soup", 2024

Today many of these meals have had a makeover and in the hands of distinguished and not so distinguished chefs have become elaborate presentations.  

So, that humble dish of cooked cabbage and potato fried in the pan gains a posh name and a heap of posh ingredients, but for me will always just be bubble and squeak. 

What most of the original dishes have in common is their simplicity, and of course the leftovers.  

One of my favourites is what we call Italian pie. 

I guess because two of the ingredients are home made tomato sauce and mozzarella to which you add potatoes. 

The potatoes don’t have to be leftovers but will usually be the few that are have been overlooked in the larder.  

And all you do is cook, slice and layer the potatoes with the cheese, and top with the sauce and leave in the oven till it looks golden and the inside is a gooey mass of flavour.

The curry that began as something else, 2026

Most of these leftover dishes are impromptu and because you may never have the exact same bunch of combined ingredients, the offering is unique and more so because if you are like me, may well have forgotten what you added to it.

Mushroom creamed curry, 2026

In our house we often had mince with onions, potaoes and peas.  

But the final dish depended on which of our parents made it.  

So, in the hands of dad the meat was cooked in a thck cornflour sauce, which sat on the plate almost challenging you to cut into it, while mum's was lighter and came with gravy sauce.

Many of them will date back deep into the past and reflect what most of us would have eaten, long before processed food, the freezer, or the fridge and long before the use of canned food.

Now I fully accept that none of this is much of an original idea, but I think it still stands and might encourage people to look at what they been handed down and just how far back into the past those dishes go and indeed how far they have crossed frontiers.

For now, I will close with that Sunday meal of curry which began life as mushrooms gently cooked with cream and served with pasta.

Or the last of the green beans, a handful of tomatoes and some linguine which became a shared meal on Tuesday night.

Beans, tomatos, linguine,and fetta cheese

Location; our house

Pictures, left overs I have known, 2026,from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chris Payne’s mincer, 2020

Porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum

Now I have to say over the decades porridge has never really shaken my tree.

Today I had porridge, 2026

Like our dad my go to breakfast was and is toast left to cool and eaten with lashings of butter and ginger marmalade*.

During the 1970s I flirted with muesli bought from The Eighth Day on Oxford Road and enlivened with various nuts and dried fruit.

But I am a child of the 1950s and this wonder dish was supplanted by a return to toast which has remained breakfast for the last five decades, opening me up to that accusation of being far too adventurous.

Lately I have broken out, eaten avocado on toast with salad and last month started on porridge which was less out of a preference and more because there was a heap of oats left over and I was always brought up not to waste food.

And so began the adventure.

Father always maintained you ate it with salt not sugar, a harp back to our Scottish past where they do things differently.

That was never going to happen; however much the spirits of our ancestors from the east Highlands might stir and rage.

 I cook it in water with the addition of sugar, bananas and blueberries with a dash of cream at the end, making it a tad fattening, outrageously indulgent and fully acceptable for a man heading towards his 77th birthday. 

Historically the oats version has been eaten for at least 5,000 years as evidenced from the bodies of long dead Neolithic bog bodies found in Central Europe and Scandinavia.  So, am I not arguing with them, although I doubt they put all the sweet stuff in.

Yesterday I had ginger marmalade, 2026

But Dad with his buttered toast flew in the face of this collective, cultural and gastronomic history and I must confess that porridge remains just one of the breakfasts I dip into, sitting beside the said toast, as well as croissants and those super healthy avocados.

Of course there are other breakfasts available.

Sugar Puffs, 1958

Over the years I have done a multitude of veggie breakfsts, but long ago went off eggs and have now moved away from pretend sausages, which makes the veggie breakfast limited.

Those of us born in the first half the last century might sill embrace those sugary cereals but alas they no longer come with the occasional free gift.

Surgar Puffs variously went for the detective set which vied with small coloured racing cars, and those divers which with the addition of a small quanity of baking powder could be dropped into a fish bowl and sent out bubbles replcating the oxygen bubbles of a real diver.

But we didn't have a fish bowl and when the diver was dropped into the sink he never consented to blow bubbles.

Back in the 1940s the Ministry of Food was keen on advocating a substantial breakfast.  

In 1946 in their leaflet number 33 on Suggestions for Breakfast along with porridge were ideas using "National or Wholemeal Bread for potato puffs, cheese and vegetable cutlets, fried cheese sandwiches, potato fadge with fried bacon, fried herrings and poached kippers". 

Everday breakfasts, 1946

Leaving me just to reflect its all a rather silly indulgent post prompted really by a Facebook chum who had also tried a bowl of porridge with bananas and blue berries.

Pilchards, grilled, pilchards fried ... but always pilchards, 1946

He wasn’t impressed but perhaps it was all in the mix.  

After painful failures I discovered the best combination was one-part oats to two parts water, slow cooking, heaps of stirring and that dash of cream.

And I rather think I will stick with it after the bag of oats is finished.

So, porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum.

And if the chum is online and has read the story maybe he will pass judgement on Fried Pilcards on Fried Bread.

We shall see.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; a bowl of Andrew’s porridge, an empty jar of Ginger Preserve, 2026, and a box of Sugar Puffs, 1958, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Suggestions for Breakfast, Leaflet 33, the ABC of Cooking, issued by the Ministry of Food, 1946

*And yes it was never ginger maramalde but ginger preserve, but back then that was what we called it, oblivious to the fact that marmlade "is a sweet, tangy fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water". Marmalade, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmalade

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 161 .... avocado, sweetcorn, mango and a dollop of Vesta curry

 The continuing story  of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Five foods on the plate, 1948

I wonder how many of these would have featured in the diet of Joe and Mary Ann during their time in the house.

To be fair they were here for just under 60 years and as Britain’s eating habits changed during the 20th century, they may have encountered all five.

But I wonder because by 1970 I had only come across peas and beetroot. True as kids we did get pasta, but it came served with milk and sugar and was a treat, so I guess it doesn’t count.

Mango, 2022

And me, and Joe and Mary Ann won’t be unusual in the absence of peppers, pasta and sweetcorn.

In my case I can remember the first time I came across sweetcorn, pasta, mangoes and even curry.  It was as a student in 1970 that I first had sweetcorn, and a good few more years before I ate pizza, and pasta and not till the 1990s that mango and avocado featured on my plate.

As for curry, in the late 1960s that was courtesy of Vesta Curry, that mix of rice, dehydrated chopped beef and vegetables in a spiced curry sauce.  The boil in the bag rice was cooked while the “other” bits were added to water in a saucepan and simmered away for about fifteen minutes.

Mum replicated this with a home-based mince version which was heavy on raisons, light on the curry powder and came with heaps of rice.

The pizza you make at home, 2024

My first experience of an authentic curry would wait until I was a student in the 70s and went for the three course businessmen’s meals which most Asian and Chinese restaurants offered up at lunchtimes for the staggering price of just three shillings, [15p].

Avocado, 2022

Even more exotic were the salads from the Ceylon Tea Centre in St Peter’s Square, where cold spiced rice vied with bowls of diced fruit, shredded carrot and portions of peppers, peas and meats which were oceans away from the plates of tomato, cucumber on limp green lettuce of my youth.

Leaving the delights of  pizza and pasta to the Bella Napolli on Kennedy Street in the mid 1970s.

Now there is a point to all this which is less a nostalgic trip and more a reflection of just how fast our eating habits changed, under the impact of raising living standards, the push to processed foods aided by advertising, supermarkets  and the hunt for new products from the world’s cuisines to which can be added the fridge and home freezer.

All of which made it possible to move away from the daily trip to the grocer, the butcher, the fishmonger and green grocer, to shopping for the week, secure in the knowledge that it would remain fresh  and allow you to offer up more “interesting” meals along with the quick convenience foods like fish fingers, and that amazing invention of the TV dinner.

Pasta and borlotti, 2023

Mum discovered TV dinners in the mid-1960s ....all you wanted for a roast meal or fish supper in a tin tray which you heated in the oven. They were expensive, tasted awful but mum liked the idea of novelty.

Happily, it was a passing fad and we returned to deep fried corn beef in batter, plates of peeled Italian tomatoes and bacon which vied with potato pancakes and potted beef and fish sandwiches.  To which I can say other sandwiches were available of which sugar, apple and banana ones were popular.

But our Elizabeth reminded me of a whole set of meals that mother made from scratch from soused herring, heaps of pies and puddings and cakes to die for.

That said sweetcorn, mango and avocado were not on the list and nor I suspect would they have walked through the door when Joe and Mary Ann lived here.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; five foods on the plate, Meta Givern’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, 1948, Chicago, Mango fruits – single and halved, and Ivar Leidus, 2022, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: w:en: Creative Commons, You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work and pizza and pasta dishes, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The simple pasta .... with tomato sauce, 2021

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

English Olive Oil .....The Food Programme ...... on the wireless .... today

I belong to that generation whose first experience of olive oil came from a small bottle bought at the chemist and used to moisten a nit comb used to search for the dreaded "things" alive in my hair.  

That said a friend confided that her mother used it as sun tan lotion.

Either way olive oil was not something to be spread on salads or as part of cooking in our house.

I came late to this wonder green/amber oil and embraced it with the enthusiasm a drowning man grabs a lump of wood in storm tossed sea.

All of which is an introduction to English Olive Oil, The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4 today.*

"With the price of olive oil soaring in the shops after drought disrupted production in Spain, Leyla Kazim looks into the English farms planting olive groves in the hope of bottling their own oil. 

She meets a farmer in Essex who explains that English growing conditions are more suitable than you might think and discovers a producer in Cornwall who has already started pressing his own extra virgin olive oil. So will olive oil from Essex or Cornwall become the new English sparkling wine?

Dan Saladino reports from Sicily where hotter conditions due to climate change are presenting new challenges for growers. 

Food historian Dr Annie Gray debunks some of the myths around olive oil consumption in England and Leyla learns the correct way to approach an oil-tasting from one of the country’s biggest suppliers.

Produced by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol".

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; One from Italy, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*English Olive Oil, The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f00z

Birthdays, cook books and a television series .............. watching the years go by in Lausanne Road

Toys I knew ........... the Dinky petrol tanker, 1956

Today was  my birthday, not that there is anything particularly remarkable about that, after all they come round every year and at 75 there are fewer ahead of me than behind.

But surrounded by the cards and the texts and other electronic messages I got to thinking about birthdays I have known.

The first thing to say is that we didn't go in for parties back in the 1950s in Lausanne Road although I am not quite sure why.

Hornby Doublo railway carriages, 1958

My very earliest birthdays would have been during the last stages of rationing after the war.

So while bread and flour came off ration in 1948 followed by canned and dried fruit, chocolate, biscuits, treacle, syrup jellies and mincemeat the year after it would be 1953 before sugar was de-rationed.

But I suspect the truth is we just didn’t do birthday parties.

Instead you got your cards a few presents and that was it.  They were still magical and the run up to the day was exciting but there was none of the hype that surrounded the birthdays of my kids.

Toy boxes I received, 1958-60

They and their friends had themed parties which might have been football, swimming or an adventure playground followed by the meal which became more sophisticated as they grew older, until parties were something they did in a pub with friends usually after we had gone to bed.

In Lausanne Road the parties we did have were strictly family affairs and I can think of only one which involved having some friends around and that points up the simple fact that we rarely had anyone who wasn’t family in the house.

I am not sure how typical that was but I can’t remember my parents ever entertaining.

The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book, 1972

Meals were family affairs and if someone did call they never outstayed their welcome, restricting themselves to no more than two cups of tea and would be gone long before Dad came home from work.

The dinner party and the more casual impromptu fry up after a night in the pub would not come for me until I was in my twenties, married and a long way from home.

By then the height of a sophisticated evening would be the prawn cocktail, followed by the cheese fondue and black forest gateau accompanied by a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower.

And there was nothing wrong with that, they were fun evenings some of which were quite memorable and all the more because they were the first stab at being grown up.

I still have a few of the old cook books which have stayed the course and can still be guaranteed to offer up something interesting.

That said my copy of the Galloping Gourmet was lost a long time ago but by then it was much stained with food, had lost vital pages and was as much a history book as any of the comic annuals I got for my birthday.

The Complete Galloping Gourmet Cookbook, 1972

So much so that I have tracked a copy down and ordered it up from Texas.

Its arrival was a reminder of the disastrous baked salmon dish from 1974 which stands in my memory alongside the Dinky petrol tanker that I got as a present on the birth of my twin sisters.

I had just had my ninth birthday party and it seemed a pretty neat way of celebrating their arrival.

Nothing as momentous came my way today but I did call up some old clips of the Galloping Gourmet  demonstrating that cooking can be fun.

Pictures; Dinky petrol tanker and train carriages, courtesy of Ken Jaggers, http://www.jaggers-heritage.com/ cover of the St Michael All colour Cookery Book Jeni Wright, 1974 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and The complete galloping gourmet cookbook, Graham Kerr 1972 soon to arrive from Texas