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Hi,

Just for a bit of interest an old school chum kindly sent me the following;

DINNER IN THE FIFTIES



Pasta had not been invented. It was macaroni or spaghetti.

Curry was a surname.
A take-away was a mathematical problem.
Pizza? Sounds like a leaning tower somewhere.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking.
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Chickens didn't have fingers in those days.
None of us had ever heard of yogurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognized food.
'Kebab' was not even a word, never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly muesli was readily available. It was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.



Water came out of the tap.

If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than gasoline for it

they would have become a laughing stock.


The one thing that we never ever had on/at our table in the fifties...was elbows, hats and cell phones!

As a school kid in the fifties I always regarded any food as a luxury feeling forever hungry; there was only one obese lad in our class due to his parents separating then his mother doting on him; the rest of us looked like we were suffering from famine.

Kind regards, Col.

Nowt wrong wi a bit of beef dripping on yer bread and a good helping of suet putting!

I still use a tea pot and proper tea leaves - an every morning ritual for me is to make a pot of tea the proper way with tea leaves, no time for that for the rest of the day so sadly it's a bag in a cup after that.

I wasn't even born in the 50's Col; yet a lot of that applies to my 1960's upbringing.. Not sure about "Chicken fingers" though. I can't say I'd heard of them before reading your post. We had fish fingers though ...

Not so much 50's food but there have been some good cookery programs illustrating food from across the ages. Some of the stuff (not that I can quote a specific example, must be my age ) and I've always fancied knocking some of those recipes up - traditional pork pie was a good one. Full of good fatty pork and aspic - yum!

One of the next things would be salted beef (sailors fare) and many of the pickles they used to preserve vegetables.

Modern food seems tame by comparison!

I don't think I've come across chicken fingers either.
I've got a vague memory of fish fingers being a "new thing" (to us probably), and having them for the first time. Early 60s I'd have thought. I don't remember us having much frozen grub back then, but we didn't have a fridge until about 1963. That was a "Gascold" and I remembered being amazed that there was a flame "in" a fridge!
Most food as I remember it was either prepared fresh, or was tinned. Much like Col's list.
We had a weekly "grocery order" that was delivered in a box by the same chap for years. he still sent my mum a Christmas card for years after he retired and had stopped doing the shop.
I remember having a Vesta chow mein as something new sometime in the early 60s. Exotic!