I was going over some old diary notes recently and realised I had written down quite a few years ago, a list of all the things we used to eat as kids, and thought I'd share it with you...
Would love to read about your favourite home-made family foods & treats YOUR mum used to make!
1. On cold winter mornings, chunks of stale good bread (not sliced) in a bowl with warm milk and tons of sugar. Bread tasted better then. It was real bread, baked in an old oven.
2. Hot little pancakes with the butter and jam sliding off, eaten as fast as they were cooked.
3. Yes condensed milk straight from the tin. Mum made fudge for us, we sneaked the leftovers.
4. Bread pudding, which was made in a huge tin, consisted of soaked bread, spice, lots of fruit and eggs and sugar, baked slowly it sliced up in shiny squares which we had with custard. Heaven, just pure heaven, I loved Monday as that was wash day and bread pudding day.
5. Apple pies deep spicy and with custard and cream.
6. Caramel apples, home- made ones.
7. Butterfly cakes with a big middle of butter icing.
8. Strawberry shortcakes. A sort of shortbread with cream and strawberries in the middle.
9. Melting moments, little rich biscuits. With a cherry in the middle.
10. Syrup tart. A pastry case, with breadcrumbs, syrup, and grated lemon, baked until the syrup is
golden brown.
11. A savoury treat? Eggy bread, fried bread, with a hole in the middle, and an egg dropped in, then cooked both sides.
12. Lardy cakes from the shops, a soft yeast bun, with a good dose of fat sugar and fruit, rolled like a coffee scroll. The secret is the fat used is lard! Oh my...and they still sell them in South West England.
13. Easter special cake, Simnel cake, a fruit cake with a layer of marzipan baked in the middle, then the top has marzipan, and is finished with little marzipan eggs all round it, dusted in cocoa.
It really is a surprise I don't weight 200 kilos.
If I went through all the treats Mum cooked for the weekend meals and also the savoury pies, stews, casseroles and meat puddings I could be here until doomsday. She really was an amazing whizz in the kitchen, her love of cooking for us as deep as her love for us… How lucky we were.
I read of some people who seem to cook only with canned and packet items, never anything fresh; they then use canned cheese, ready- made scones, in a frozen pack, it seems eating is not a gourmet experience,….. then they also eat it on paper plates with plastic cutlery.
Somehow I will always be glad I was born in war time, as I grew up appreciating real food and a real home, I had known rationing and every meal we had made up for those tough years.
Yet even then my wonderful mother found ways to make treats for us. Magic…. 😊
© 2023 Jacqui Lee
