1980's recession food

gleep

Poundies and scaillions with mince and gravy for dinner- - simple but feckin brilliant!

Rasberry ripple Ice cream wafer for dessert!

We always had dessert, do people still eat a dessert every day? I never do now, is it just me

gleep

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I used to get jelly make in a horrible orange rabbit shaped mould. Like this
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Mine was a big red spaceship! Had it forever!

Sir Gallagher

Rissoles... Havent had one in years!

TeletextPear

Corned beef sandwiches - with the kind of corned beef that came from a can and you had to slice up yourself, blech!
Or the squeez orange cans of concentrate that you had to mix into a big jug of water, they were considered fancy back in my day
Frosties, chomps and smiley bars were big back then too, or any of the postman pat, fruit salad, blackjack, etc, sweets

kowloon

TeletextPear wrote: »

Or the squeez orange cans of concentrate that you had to mix into a big jug of water, they were considered fancy back in my day

It would make a lot of sense to bring back proper OJ concentrate. I don't mean squash, I mean the stuff they use to make fresh Orange Juice that they sell from the fridge. I'd buy it, a lot less crap to ferry back from the shop.

kerash

rubadub wrote: »

I used to get jelly make in a horrible orange rabbit shaped mould. Like this

We had one like this in red :P

Mimojo

Ah this thread brings back the memories!

Ya we had pound (spuds with scallions) for months when scallions were plentiful. Also potato cakes as it was the only thing my dad could make! I also remember having a lot of packet soup, vegetable I think.

Does anyone remember the waffery things, with marshmallow in the middle with a layer of chocolate on top?

Loved smiley bars too, they dont make them anymore. And penny sweets with fried eggs, jelly babies and the horrible ones with the wrappers! And angel delight - was that actually nice? And strawberries in a can with icecream.

JOJOC123

I remember Gramby burgers (I think thats how its spelt) - my mother to this day says she could never stomach them again, she'd rather starve.

olaola

xzanti wrote: »

I remember eating a lot of tinned fruit aswel for snacks and deserts etc.. usually with a scoop of icecream.. Wasn't all that bad back then

My Dad is still a big man for having some tinned peaches & ice cream for dessert. Always an assortment of 'Lustre' tinned fruit in their cupboards at home. For impromtu dessert!

Cherrycoke

Tinned meat balls in onion gravy... a bit like dog food

and that boil in the bag, Dunnes Stores, chicken curry & rice!!!

lala stone

Cherrycoke wrote: »

and that boil in the bag, Dunnes Stores, chicken curry & rice!!!

ahem.... still eating those

Mimojo

I spotted Angel Delight in Tesco the other day so said Id but a packet for old time sake...it is AWFUL!

foodaholic

meatballs in curry sauce, loved them. cant get them anymore
ohh and the KVI chicken pies

sickle

i remember having egg & chips alot, and chip sambos....mmmm.
gammon steaks too, haven't had one of them in years!

wobblyknees

Sunblest cornflakes.
Orange 'squash'.
Potatoes.
Gammon Steaks.
Eggs.
Peas.
Luncheon meat.
Cheese slices.
Smash.
Bread and jam.

Little Alex

Thanks for all the ideas!

I'm currently going through a phase of trying out all that old 80s junk food again.

irishbird wrote: »

findus crispy pancakes and angel delight

I think the Findus factory was destroyed by fire last year and they closed down. Do you remember the French Bread Pizzas they used to make? They weren't bad at all.

rubadub wrote: »

Those cheapo small pizzas, still have them in tesco both frozen & fresh. They are about 6" across and used to be in stacks of 10, cheese & tomato.

They were great. I used to microwave them because oven baking took way too long. :eek: Gonna get some of them soon.

smiley girl wrote: »

Flapjacks. Oh yum, haven't had them in years but I used to love them!

There's a great recipe for them here: Cooking club - Week 1

Dyflin wrote: »

Fray Bentos type pies, now there's something I haven't had since the 80s.

They are really manky!

xzanti wrote: »

I remember eating a lot of tinned fruit aswel for snacks and deserts etc.. usually with a scoop of icecream.. Wasn't all that bad back then

Oh yeah! Knickerbocker Glory.

lala stone wrote: »

Mince meat with that massive red bottle of Candy red sauce!!! Not exactly a proper bolognese!

My Mam still insists on buying it. Must be a nostalgia thing because I think it's originally a 50s/60s sauce.

Chicken Run wrote: »

Vesta Curry as a special and exotic treat.

Still available if you know where to look. Bought some recently in a shop on Moore St.

TeletextPear wrote: »

Corned beef sandwiches - with the kind of corned beef that came from a can and you had to slice up yourself, blech!
Or the squeez orange cans of concentrate that you had to mix into a big jug of water, they were considered fancy back in my day
Frosties, chomps and smiley bars were big back then too, or any of the postman pat, fruit salad, blackjack, etc, sweets

Oh, that Sqeez diluteable wan't the best. I think it can still be found in some shops. Used to love Blackjacks and Fruit Salads... 10p mixes!

JOJOC123 wrote: »

I remember Gramby burgers (I think thats how its spelt) - my mother to this day says she could never stomach them again, she'd rather starve.

Yeah, Granby Burgers. They're still available aswell.

A couple of other things I tried recently were Heinz Toast Toppers (absolutely dreadful), Angel Delight (not too bad), Heinz Potato Salad (in a tin can -awful), Heinz Sandwich Spread (not bad), Knorr Quick Lunch Spaghetti Bolognese (used to absolutely love it, but no longer) and Arctic Roll (delicious).

A few more I'm going to try out are Birds Eye Potato Waffles, one of those Heinz tinned pudding things, Super Mousse and Calvita.

mikemac1

Lets give this a bump

Angel Delight or Jelly and Icecream.
Vienetta was something you saw maybe once a year, that's for rich people

Kandee ketchup, came in a huge bottle. Truely a recession product, if you bought Kandee it's because Heinz was too expensive.
It was an awful product, worst on the market but it was the cheapest

Farleys Rusks, not just for young chidren. Kids of all ages could have them
Beef, turnip, cabbage and potatos ridiculously overcooked and served with hot cup gravy. I got potatoes every single day as a child, mashed, boiled or homemade chips.
Pasta? That's for them eye-talians. It was potatoes in the macs household, nothing adventurous

I was close to school and came home for dinner at middday.
Some call that meal lunch, was always dinner to me. That was the biggest meal of the day

I don't remember Mi-wadi back then, it wasn't the market leader
It was Ki-ora

I grew up on a farm and we got milk straight from the farm, no pasteurization here I tell ya. That's probably illegal nowadays
The milk was still warm by the time I got it home
Warm milk, bluh

Microwaves were new back then, actually this might have been early nineties.
And local centers ran night classes on how to work them, hard to believe.
Some had hundreds of functions but I only knew the basic timer, that's all I needed

Schools served milk from the local creamery. This was very cheap, parents paid a small bit per term, not sure if it was subsidized
If you were first to school on a cold morning you brought in the frozen milk, good times

petethebrick

Would start the day with cereal and get the toy inside if it was a new packet and none of my siblings and already claimed it. Had to put sugar on Corn flakes etc then but don't nowadays as they come with it substantially pre-added

Turkey slice sandwiches or Chicken spread (Yuck!) sandwiches and some sort of bar (Classic, 54321 etc) for my lunchbox. My sandwiches were often thrown in the bin as I rushed off to play football

Crispy pancakes
Breakfast slices (Perfectly rectangular strips of bacon)
Billy meat
Stew
Packet soup
The small pizzas - usually grilled as faster
Cheap frozen burgers in bun with processed cheese - could eat a million of these

I used to go mad for baguettes and other fancy bread when we went camping in France as you couldn't get any of that back in Ireland

petethebrick

PS Did that many of you really have Smash as kids???

My mum would at least not have fed us that evil crap - isn't it more expensive than real potatoes anyway??

Melendez

This post has been deleted.

emeraldstar

petethebrick wrote: »

Would start the day with cereal and get the toy inside if it was a new packet and none of my siblings and already claimed it. Had to put sugar on Corn flakes etc then but don't nowadays as they come with it substantially pre-added

I'm sure the sugar content was pretty similar then.

petethebrick wrote: »

Chicken spread

Jesus :eek:

petethebrick wrote: »

The small pizzas - usually grilled as faster

And always, always accompanied by Micro Chips. How we loved those in our house – especially the crinkley variety. Typical weekend tea.

emeraldstar

petethebrick wrote: »

PS Did that many of you really have Smash as kids???

My mum would at least not have fed us that evil crap - isn't it more expensive than real potatoes anyway??

I never tasted it, but my sister went to boarding school and she said that was all they served. Ick.

quaalude

Bird's Appeal powdered orange "juice" drink - me and my brother loved it - the bit at the bottom that hadn't dissolved properly was the nicest!

We didn't really have sweets in our house when we were kids (neither did most of my friends - probably because of expense rather than health reasons), so my mother would improvise when we wanted "something nice" occasionally - we used to get a square of unmade jelly, straight from the packet. We called it "neat jelly"!

See also: eating a spoon full of hot chocolate powder, as there was no milk in the house.

So good then, unthinkable now!

emeraldstar

quaalude wrote: »

See also: eating a spoon full of hot chocolate powder, as there was no milk in the house.

So good then, unthinkable now!

Why? It still tastes as good

quaalude

emeraldstar wrote: »

Why? It still tastes as good

Heh, yeah - probably! It's not like now I never run out of milk now! Gonna try it when I next want a treat, see how it holds up!

carolinespring

We did have the dreaded Angel Delight and dream topping always with tinned fruit. The odd time HP banana ice cream, yum!

We only had soft drinks at Christmas and Easter and didn't get a lot of seets and never the cola bottle, black jack typy as my parents worried about our teeth. Late 30's and got my first filling a short while ago so that bit paided off!!!

Dinners always had potatoes of some kindn never chipped. We only got them once in a while from the chip shop (2-3 times a year max) massive treat.

I remember a lot of beef stew, shepherds pies, chops, bacon,very over cooked roass, chickens, sausages, liver (yuck) Pork fillet if we went to newry as it never seems to be in the local shops

Bread seemed to be always homemade. Soda and brown. Lots of veg and we always had a lot of fruit.

Cornflakes or Porridge the only cereals. I remember having boiled eggs for breakfast a lot as a kids with brown bread and a whole orange cut up. It was only when we became teenagers that we had orange juice.

Tinned peas, beans, pasta hoops and awful tinned carrots.

I also remember my brother loving this awful orange coloured cheese spread in a jar called cheese whizz, god, it was rank.

Cooked ham and turkey slices always seemed to be in the fridge as well.

Both Mum and Dad baked so daily bread, buns weekly and also a apple tart.

So in fairness to my parents we didnt eat a lot of junk or sweet things, my brother has no fillings. everything was homemade with no jars of sauce and a fairly healthy diet. Lots of milk, eggs, lean (over cooked) meat and tons Of (over cooked) veg and fruit.

I remember looking at American tv shows and the food always looked so exciting and amazing and I wanted to have milk in cartons and not the bottles, pizza seems amazing and life woud be wonderful if we had it, as for Chinese totally unheard of!

livinsane

Pork onion and tomato slices for lunch - and you would ask for the slices to be cut thinly.

Davidth88

Grew up in London.

So most was Sainsbury's own brand only .


The things that stick in the mind are

Angel Delight ( or rather Sainsbury's own brand one )
Someone mentioned the breakfast slices , these were sort of re-formed bacon, quite spicy .
lots and lots of veg. Often 3 veg with a meal.
Cornflakes ( again Sainsbury own brand )

milk was delivered so we never seemed to run short , we also got as a treat once a week the ' gold top ' which was the Channel Islands milk , anyone else remember the cream on the top of the milk ? It used to make your cornflakes stick together .

spurious

'Boil in the bag' ham - about three inches in diameter - mmm delish and no waste.

Everything cooked in a pressure cooker, the squeal of which as the steam escaped was the signal to come in.

On special occasions, a Bird's Trifle, with multicoloured sprinkles on the Dream Topping top layer spreading their fake-o colouring into each other.

Some sort of powdered milk stuff for when we ran out and there wasn't even enough in the end of the bottle to do the 'lash a bit of water into it' trick. Can't remember what it was called. It came in a blue packet.

Carnation evaporated milk when we didn't even have Dream Topping. Sickly sweet 'thick' tasting.

grey_so_what

Spurious - I'm laughing here at the pressure cooker - my sister got one in the 70's as a wedding present and the mad steam rising from the nob thing on the lid used to terrify me!!....and she used to make Moussaka in a biscuit tin!...she thought she was very posh!!!

Chops and onion and spud with lashings of gravy
Egg and chips
Trifle from the box (Sunday)
Steepy peas on a Sunday ("diluted" on the Saturday night with the mystery
white tablet)