A bit of history on Beech Road ……

It’s Sunday and so it’s left over day.

Left over Sunday, 2026

One of the joys of growing old is the sheer reservoir of food memories that sit ready to tumble out and become one of those simple meals using the odd items which sit neglected and in need of some attention.

101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921

And while I have embraced that now popular mantra of shop daily and use stuff up, Monday is the start of the week and with that comes the main shopping expedition.

I do smile at that now received knowledge that we should shop everyday and avoid food waste.

As if these twin guides to life are new, and were not practised by my parents, grandparents and a whole legion of Simpson’s, Hall’s, and Bux’s back into the distant past.

Online shopping, the power of the supermarket and the fridge and freezer have rather pushed the daily trip to the local shops into the background.

And well with in living memory here on Beech Road there were three butchers, two grocers, a greengrocer and a fresh fish shop.  

These were replicated in some of the side streets right across what became known as old Chorlton or the old village, names which distinguished us it from the newer community which sprang from the 1880s around the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads.

101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921

119 Beech Road, 1979

Back then when no one possessed a fridge or freezer there was a necessity in buying your food every day.

Now with money tight it makes sense to buy smaller amounts and avoid the two for one offers unless you can use the lot, which is why today I have used up the last of the green beans, cooking them with some olives, and capers in a sauce from the last tomatoes accompanied with pasta.

I have made my own fresh pasta, and fallen back on shop bought fresh pasta, but dried pasta is cheaper, lasts in the store cupboard and doesn’t take much longer to cook.

So that is it, on left over Sunday it is what ever I can find, and for good measure having eaten my way through a heap of fruit what was left was stewed and became that classic 1950s pud.

Left over Sunday, 2026

Location; Left over Sunday

Pictures; 101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921, courtesy of Ian Collier, and 119 Beech Road, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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