I don't mean fish and chips or fast food . I mean the dried, tinned or bottled food. The sort of stuff we are surrounded by now.
Mine were Batchelors dried chicken and noodle soup, Dairylea cheese triangles and St Ivel lactic cheese.
XX Jeannine
Mine were Vesta chow mein and paella. We met a chap a while ago who used to drive the big containers that held the stuff and he said that you wouldn't have eaten it had you seen the state of them. What the hell when you're seventeen and you are hungry ;D
ooh, yes, vesta paella, thought they were great, then..remember my mum using gravy browning, can't remember the name, came in a tin? ;D
Quote from: Jeannine on June 02, 2010, 08:41:17
I don't mean fish and chips or fast food . I mean the dried, tinned or bottled food. The sort of stuff we are surrounded by now.
Mine were Batchelors dried chicken and noodle soup, Dairylea cheese triangles and St Ivel lactic cheese.
XX Jeannine
Probably tinned peas. We had dried egg too as it was wartime.
Pickled dodo.
Do farley's rusks count? Growing up in the 70's it was all Convenience food wasn't it or was that just my mum ;) Not knowed for her cooking bless her ;D
Don't know about the earliest, but Pot Noodles spring to mind.
Me and my mate always used to eat them as kids when we played at each other's houses.
Beef & Tomato was my favourite. His was Chicken & Mushoom.
POM, that ghastly mashed potatoe, one day when we had been flooded out YUKKKKKKKK. ;D ;D ;D
custard powder and chivers jelly , I still buy custard powder :)
The only convenience foods I ever remember seeing in the house were Bird's Custard, Bisto gravy powder and Oxo cubes. (Thinking about it, apart from Lea & Perrins and Branston Pickle, they were probably the only ones that had been invented!)
But my father did have two allotments and a garden full of chickens!
Does fish and chips count. Had them about once a week out of the newspaper, no clean liner in those days - they tasted better then. ;D
I also liked those vesta curries and particularly the risotto one. Used to take them on camping trips. I like it so much that I was very disappointed when I had my first real risotto.
I too instatly though of Vesta chow mein when I read the opening post,they seemed so exotic.
I actually bought one a few years ago to see if they were as I remembered...oh my it was vile though I do still love crispy noodles.
I find it funny that my Mum used to make her own yoghurt and sprout her own seeds,both of which are becoming very fashionable again....Its all one big circle.
My earliest memories are of luncheon meat, spam, corned beef, treacle pudding in a tin, rice pudding. Yuk :P
Did love those Vesta curries though, and my Mum used to make a mean fish pie with a tin of tuna and a tin of bachelors condensed mushroom soup. I think its the MSG that makes it taste so nice!
Got to be either frozen mixed vegetables or pizza bases. Does artic roll count?
;D
Ok, so I was a victim of Vesta Curries as well, followed by Angel Delight mmmmm, how many e numbers in that lot?!
Frey Bentos steak and kidney pie in a tin.
goblins irish stew
mushy peas
fray bentos as mentioned
micro chips
Mum used to buy Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney Pie sometimes or Halls of Broxburn Mince Round.
;D
Oh dear, it seems I missed out on the Vesta curries stuff.. never got one of those. I did get tinned rice pudding once, I remember telling Mum it was better than hers..oh eck.
Burdalls gravy salt came in a tin, went rock hard if the damp got to it.
My husband still likes Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies, thinks that's how they should be..
Treacle pudding in a tin..oh that brings back a memory, hubby left one on to boil,fell asleep, the pan ran dry, fumes all over the kitchen and killed the parrot called Knickers, I was on night duty and got the info later.
POM also brings back a memory, just a couple of years ago a neighbour was drooling over the memory of it, I bought a dried one fron Costco which was a powder not a flake and she was overjoyed!!
Anybody remember National health wartime orange juice, concentrated. You had to have a baby to get it, my Mum used to swap something with a neighbour to get it for me,, I used to drink it concentrated when she wasn't looking. Very similar to the concentrated frozen stuff here, I still taste it concentrated.
Going back to fish and chips... we had fish by names in Hull and the cheap fish was called cutfish,,which meant anything which was cheap in the market that day.My friends thought we were posh cos my Dad always insisted in buying haddock. Patties in those old days were made from POM and the left over cold fish from the day before. How did we survive.
Off my own subject really but remember what we used instead of toilet paper, we had a neighbour who cut hers so neat, then came the flat packs, and rolls, crisp and scratchy, Izal or something, then my Dad came gome with samples of the new stuff,soft and white..my Mum said it was a waste to use it on your bums!!
Can you still buy canned potato salad, and the posher one that had peas added to it?
Remember when mayo was only used by the posh, we all had salad cream.
What about local stuff that was not packaged but pre cooked for you. Store bought baking etc was a real treat.
I used to love the home catered weddings .
XX Jeannine
Birds Custard powder and Greens caramel pudding which we had for pudding on Sunday. I liked helping to make that as I liked to lick the caramel sauce sachet ;D
Green's Lemon Meringue Pie, but you still had to make the pastry I think. Oh yes, and supply the egg ???
A bit like packs of batter mix that say 'just add milk and an egg'. ??? ???
For me frozen sausages, they came in little plasic tubes, I did not read the instructions, that said remove outer covering, :-[I wondered why they did not brown like other sausage. ;D
June.
I too remember the Vesta curries and noodles with crispy fried bits, my mum used to do them as a treat lunch for herself if my dad was away on business!
The first ones I really remember buying myself and mourn the passing of were Birds Eye mousses, which came in a small rectangular waxed paper box....there were only three flavours, strawberry, lemon and chocolate, and I loved them all!They were only sold like that for a year or two then morphed into 'Supermousses' which came in a tub and had a weird red sauce .... ???
Vesta meals came in when we were in our teens- remember taking them camping. Chicken supreme was my favourite!
I guess spam and fish fingers were regulars when we were younger, and yes, custard powder (didnt know there was any other way to make custard!)
QuoteAngel Delight mmmmm
Ooh yess! When I left home my party special was a 'cheesecake' made with crushed chocolate digestives, 2 packets of butterscotch angel delight made up double-thickness, with Baileys instead of milk, and topped with chocolate and/or mandarin segments :)
I remember being given really awful dripping with fat battered spam fritters at school when I started & being sick all day long :-X :'( :o
At home we had the Vesta meals, I wouldnt touch one with a barge pole now but they did seem so sophisticated back then,lol. Tinned corned beef mixed into instant mashed potato was another nasty meal & tinned hotdogs :P
I do remember really liking the pre-made sponge flan bases my mum used to fill with tinned fruit & cover with Quick-Gel.....anyone else remember them?
I remember the NHS orange juice, Jeannine; it was lovely.
Pauline, here I can get frozen orange juice, I could never find it in the UK, comes in a container about the size of a small tin of peas and it diluted with w times water..but neat it is exactly like the NHS juice.
I remember getting into trouble with the lemon meringue pie, I used to nick the little gelatine capsule that had the lemon flavour in it, stick a pin hole in it and lick it. When Mum came to make the pie there was no flavourings, it took her awhile to catch on though.
I also remember cooking the plastic covered sausages and serving them, never figured out how the plastic didn't melt. Same as cooking a chicken with the bits in a plastic bag inside I guess.. did that too when I was young.
Funny about the custard powder.. When the Pudding Club members meet they will only have Birds custard powder too.. not for them custard cooked the long old fashioned way.
I too remember the Goblin stew, had big potato chunks in it.
Does anyone remember the Birds Eys frozen fresh cream sponge cakes,, wow where they ever light.
XX Jeannine
Vesta beef curry for me
by the way just two valleys over from me are located the Pot Noddle mines in a place called Newbridge
When I was a child I loved KELLOGS RISE N SHINE. It was a powdered orange juice drink. I remember we got a sample through the letter box. You used to get alot of samples in the 70's . My mum bought it for me after that sample and I remember feeling slightly posh drinking my glass of so called fresh orange juice with my cornflakes. ;D I wonder what I would think of Rise n Shine today.
Duke
Would powdered egg be considered a convenience food, I remember we had a big tin of it in the pantry and I used to take a teaspoon and scoop it out to eat. It used to clog my mouth but I really liked it. My mum would have killed me if she knew what I was doing as it was a precious commodity in our household when eggs were hard to get.
Quote from: Jeannine on June 03, 2010, 20:41:25
Does anyone remember the Birds Eys frozen fresh cream sponge cakes,, wow where they ever light.
XX Jeannine
/quote]
Oh yes. And they were really quite nice. Unlike their counterpart, the Arctic Roll, yeuk.
valmarg
Not much in the way of convenience food in our house. Dad was a greengrocer and he grew a lot of his veg.
I do remember the frozen fresh cream sponges though, and tinned fruit and carnation milk on a winter Sunday for tea.
Probably birds custard for us we had a take away once a week which was either fish (skate wing or middle) and chips, spice burger and chips or a Chinese :) we ate a mediteranian diet lots of spaghetti bol etc I remember after we moved to the uk going to the geek run grosser to find garlic :)
Remember the frozed cream cake and the rise and shine drink as well as frozen oj ;)
Baked beans (not the Heinz variety) and even then only as an occasional treat.
Between Dad's gardening ability and mum's baking/pickling/jamming abilities convenience food barely made it into the house.
CC
Thanks for the advice goodlife, I will leave the seaweed stuff on the garden centres shelves.
for mash get SMASH!
Farleys Rusks, and I still eat them by the packet :o
Birds Instant Whip - my mum wouldn't get Angle Delight because it only made half a pint - never enough to go round 6 of us.
Camp coffee, Fray bentos corned beef, Vimto( Vomito, the entirely fruitless cordial), chicken noodle soup in packets - I still use Maggi, lots of MSG - yum.
Ha! Bird's Topping, aka Bird's Dropping in our house.
Quote from: campanula on June 06, 2010, 20:30:27
Birds Instant Whip - my mum wouldn't get Angle Delight because it only made half a pint - never enough to go round 6 of us.
Camp coffee, Fray bentos corned beef, Vimto( Vomito, the entirely fruitless cordial), chicken noodle soup in packets - I still use Maggi, lots of MSG - yum.
Hmm yes I forgot about the Angels delight, pocket money day - a Beano with a pack of that stuff watered down so it went as far as I could make it!,. ended up like soup.
Self raising flour!
You didn`t have to add bicarb and cream of tartar in the correct proportions. What idleness! ;D
Harriets 3 months today which means she start weaning in 4 weeks so have been stocking up. I suppose rusks, premade baby purée count as conveniance foods ;)
I too remember the NHS Orange Juice, although I wasn't as struck on it. Liked malt extract, which was also given to mothers with small children. "Radio Malt" was the brand, IIRC.
When I was a lad my family certainly used Birds Custard powder (didn't everybody?) but few other convenience foods, except processed cheese like Dairylea and Primula.
But then my old dad got a job with messrs Birds Eye. I guess there was a staff discount, especially for new products, because he came home with all sorts of frozen convenience foods, and treats including the cream sponge cakes, arctic roll, eclairs, and mousse, as mentioned by others on this thread.
One of my favourite things was Birds Eye Chicken Rissoles. They had a particularly savoury yummy taste, quite addictive to a growing boy. Sadly they didn't sell them for long. After a while I guess they must have changed chicken suppliers, because the rissoles suddenly started to have bits of grit in them, and we realised that the magic ingredient was chicken gizzards. Nowadays of course "salade de gesiers" is a treat to be enjoyed on trips to France, but back then we viewed such offal with revulsion. Shame.
One of the odder frozen convenience foods was Instant Omelet, which was frozen beaten eggs in a carton. You thawed it out, shook the carton, poured the contents into a pre-heated greased pan, added the filling, et voila! An omelet in only twice the time, trouble, and expense of using fresh eggs.
Oh Melbourne, you have brought back a memory.. Cod Liver oil and malt , I had the blend as a child and loved it, find the odd jar of malt exract over the years in health food stores but never with the cod liver oil added. I used to have it on toast..I had to eat my Haliborange vitamins first though. I also remember getting the oil capsules before they brought out Haliborange. Football shaped and rugby ball shaped gelatine filled things, I think one was cod liver oil and the other halibut liver oil.
I also remember having vitamin drops put on my food, disgusting stuff called Abidex, try as she might Mum couldn't disguise it, I still remember the smell.. I eventually went on hunger strike and she let me off!!
I remember the omlette too, and ones made fro dried egg. ind you I still do use dry egg.
Cambourne, baby foofd in jars is amost a must, banana went down well and chocolate pudding, prunes came in useful now and again ..watch the diapers for the last two though!!
Melbourne I LOVED Bird's Eye Rissoles :)