Foods that defined your childhood

Patsy167 · 14-06-2021 12:55pm #1

Had a simple apple tart for the first time in years at the weekend and it took me right back to good memories of having it as a kid.

What are the foods or meals that take you back to your childhood?

Stihl waters · 14-06-2021 12:58pm

Bacon and cabbage with brown sauce and mustard

Comerman · 14-06-2021 1:55pm

Bacon and cabbage with brown sauce or bacon and turnip with red sauce plus a mug of the cooking water

Patsy167 · 14-06-2021 2:05pm

Stihl waters wrote: »

Bacon and cabbage with brown sauce and mustard

Comerman wrote: »

Bacon and cabbage with brown sauce or bacon and turnip with red sauce plus a mug of the cooking water

With floury spuds or baby potatoes?

HeidiHeidi · 14-06-2021 2:07pm

Roast chicken on a Sunday, with marrowfat peas.

Homemade chips on a Tuesday

Lemon meringue pie or Birds trifle after the Sunday lunch

Or homemade apple tart.

Cornflakes and Weetabix mixed together with warm milk for breakfast before school

con747 · 14-06-2021 2:16pm

Irish Stew with the old Brennan's black crusted Batch bread. Could go through a full loaf with a big bowl of it. :pac:

Hodors Appletart · 14-06-2021 2:17pm

crispy pancakes

banie01 · 14-06-2021 2:21pm

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

crispy pancakes

For probably the opposite reason as yourself

I grew up the eldest in a big family and we were quite poor.
Dunnes brand crispy pancakes(findus ones on a good week), sausages and potatoes were a staple diet of my younger years.

I now have a deep and profound hatred for the pancakes.
They remind me of some awful times and honestly being poorer than I'd ever care to be and never will be again.

I fúcking hate them.

Hesh's Umpire · 14-06-2021 2:21pm

Saturday night was "tea dinner".

A big fry up with loads of white bread and cups of tea.

Fish on Friday. In the most inland county in Ireland, Laois, it was either whiting or smoked coley. Those were the options!

honeyjo · 14-06-2021 2:22pm

Smash with bovril mixed through it

Comerman · 14-06-2021 2:24pm

Patsy167 wrote: »

With floury spuds or baby potatoes?

Buttery mash.

tropics001 · 14-06-2021 2:26pm

dunnes stores mini frozen cheese and tomato pizzas. those and cornflakes were basically the only thing i ate until i was 20.

lawred2 · 14-06-2021 2:27pm

Roast lamb

Bacon and cabbage

lawred2 · 14-06-2021 2:28pm

banie01 wrote: »

For probably the opposite reason as yourself

I grew up the eldest in a big family and we were quite poor.
Dunnes brand crispy pancakes(findus ones on a good week), sausages and potatoes were a staple diet of my younger years.

I now have a deep and profound hatred for the pancakes.
They remind me of some awful times and honestly being poorer than I'd ever care to be and never will be again.

I fúcking hate them.

Well they are objectively vile

banie01 · 14-06-2021 2:28pm

lawred2 wrote: »

Well they are objectively vile

There is that too of course

But they honestly raise rage in me :pac:

odyssey06 · 14-06-2021 2:32pm

Sunday dinners...
Roast chicken sitting on a bed of potatoes.
Corned beef mixed up into buttery mash.

Lunches home from school...
Lunches of oxtail soup and ham sandwiches.

Treats and teas...
Seared lamb cutlets.
Chipper chips in sliced bread.
Frozen birdseye beef burgers with a slice of easi singles in sliced bread.
A very rare findus crispy panckes

looksee · 14-06-2021 2:34pm

Meat and potato pie that my auntie used make for us. Cubes of beef topped with large pieces of potato with a pastry lid. I have just realised I have no idea how much the meat and potatoes were separately cooked as of course they would need much more time than the lovely shortcrust pastry, but the whole thing was delicious.

Hello 2D Person Below · 14-06-2021 2:37pm

bee06 · 14-06-2021 2:39pm

Quiche, whenever we went anywhere on a day trip my mom would make a quiche for the picnic.

Mam of 4 · 14-06-2021 2:40pm

Hesh's Umpire wrote: »

Saturday night was "tea dinner".

A big fry up with loads of white bread and cups of tea.

Fish on Friday. In the most inland county in Ireland, Laois, it was either whiting or smoked coley. Those were the options!

Same here , we had a big fry on Saturdays, as the dinner for Sunday would be getting prepared !
Always fish on Friday too , bonus points if someone had caught some fresh trout

honeyjo · 14-06-2021 2:41pm

Quiche reminds me of birthdays as a child. My Mammy would make us a Home baked tea. Quiche, scones and birthday cake. We loved it.
Looking back it was a lot of work for my Mammy.

Shenshen · 14-06-2021 2:43pm

I didn't grow up in Ireland, but my first thought on reading this question was : Miracoli!

For those of you not familiar with it, it was the closest thing we had to ready-made or convenient food. It comes in a cardboard package, which contains :

1 pack of spaghetti (I think it was 200g)
1 sachet of tomato puress
1 sachet of herb and spice mix
1 sachet of fake grated parmesan

To assemble, you boil the spaghetti. Into a separate pot, you squeeze the tomato puree, then fill that empty sachet with water and add that. Then throw in the herbs and spices and bring to a boil. Stir through the cooked spaghetti and you have a lunch for 3 school children!

We had that at least once a week while I was growing up, and I honestly remember it quite fondly. It wasn't fine dining, but it was decent enough for under €1 (converted)

Comerman · 14-06-2021 2:57pm

Tomato soup with a dollop of mash in the middle

looksee · 14-06-2021 3:32pm

odyssey06 wrote: »

Sunday dinners...
Roast chicken sitting on a bed of potatoes.
Corned beef mixed up into buttery mash.

Lunches home from school...
Lunches of oxtail soup and ham sandwiches.

Treats and teas...
Seared lamb cutlets.
Chipper chips in sliced bread.
Frozen birdseye beef burgers with a slice of easi singles in sliced bread.
A very rare findus crispy panckes

I still enjoy that for occasional comfort food, but I like it 'dry fried' so it has a toasty/crispy coating.

looksee · 14-06-2021 3:54pm

Anyone who grew up in the 60s or thereabouts in England will have mixed memories of school dinners. Generally they were pretty good - basic dinner meat/veg/mash. One of the puddings was chocolate concrete - a very hard, chocolate flavoured shortbread served with custard.

And another was chocolate pudding, which was a sweet pastry case with a filling of a kind of stiff chocolate custard which was made with both milk and dried milk, so it was very rich to our unsophisticated palates. If the word got out in the morning that there was chocolate pudding for lunch there would be wild excitement.

Stihl waters · 14-06-2021 6:46pm

Patsy167 wrote: »

With floury spuds or baby potatoes?

Floury spuds obviously, we didnt see baby potatoes until we were in our 20s

Dizzyblonde · 14-06-2021 8:34pm

Findus crispy pancakes, coddle, minced beef with onions and mash like a deconstructed cottage pie. My mother thought it was posh to serve the mash with an ice cream scoop. Roast dinners on Sunday with tinned pears & ice cream for dessert every time until my mother realised the pears were what caused my Monday hives :rolleyes:.

notAMember · 14-06-2021 9:47pm

Angel Delight

I wonder now what on earth it is made of. Maybe I should inflict it on my family

Hodors Appletart · 15-06-2021 9:58am

tins of fruit

overboiled vegetables to within an inch of their life

Doodah7 · 15-06-2021 11:14am

notAMember wrote: »

Angel Delight

I wonder now what on earth it is made of. Maybe I should inflict it on my family

You can still get it and my two love it!!

I vividly remember my mother would make up the chocolate version of it, then slice up a Gateau Chocolate Swiss Roll, put a slice in a bowl and pour over the chocolate Angel Delight. Once set, it was fantastic!!

Black Sheep · 16-06-2021 8:21am

If we had lamb or a piece of roast beef on a Sunday (Both always "well done" sadly) then the remains of that joint went into a huge pot and there was homemade soup when I came home from school for the rest of the week.

There were endless rounds of ham and cheese sandwiches. Galti easy singles when I was younger, and I guess a transition to grated cheese at some point.

Quite a lot of omelettes, often served with thick-cut home made chips. I've tried to replicate the way my mother made both, and it's like one of those mysteries of the universe... I'm possibly a better cook at this stage, but I just can't manage it for some reason.

My dad ate a **** tonne of chops, I feel like they were more of a thing in the 80s than they are now. He'd always have liver in a mixed grill as well?

The steak cut of choice was sirloin, and it would be rendered like absolute leather by cooking it to "well done". The saving grace was that there would be a very good pepper sauce on the side.

Chips were home made, crinkle cut or alphabet chips.

Deserts were usually an apple pie, sometimes if mum was pushing the boat out then a pavalova or a giant trifle full of Harvey's Bristol Cream. For a non-drinking couple they were really intent on lorrying in as much sherry as possible.

Then, in the 90s, I think my mum got kind of convinced by the messaging that it was an aspirational thing to eat pre-prepared meals from some of the supermarkets. Whereas before she cooked everything from scratch, more of that crept in when we were teenagers. I'm sure a factor was that she was completely sick and tired of cooking morning, noon and night. If we were in NI we would always come back with bags of frozen lasagnes and whatnot. Absolute processed crap, but I just don't think there was the same knowledge back then that the cooking she had been doing was vastly superior in every way.

Funnily enough I did try to introduce my own kids to a couple of things I ate as a child. We got a lot of tinned fruit in syrup as a desert, with plain ice cream. This went down reasonably well but not a huge hit. I tried Angel Delight once, and they wouldn't eat it. I also tried to make jelly, and again, wouldn't eat it....?

Foods that defined your childhood

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