Saturday 3 January 2015

BURNT RISSOLES AND OTHER COOL FOODs FROM MY SEVENTIES YOUTH

Scoop's Titbits post sent me straight back to my parent's house in the Seventies and for some reason I got to thinking about what we ate back then. Some was delicious and some completely gross!

Breakfast:
  1. Toast Toppers - slimy mush of meat and beige material of unknown origin. Oddly I loved it!
  2. Pop Tarts - not Pan's People, these were toastable flat oblongs full of fruit or chocolate. Delicious!
  3. Rise and Shine - powdered orange drink straight from the chemistry lab. Tasted like medicine. Yuk!
  4. Ready Brek - central heating for kids. One of my all time fave foodstuffs and one I'd take to Mars. Yum!
  5. Puffa Puffa Rice - the world's greatest cereal. When it was discontinued the Dark Ages began again.
  6. Egg bread - slices of white bread dipped in battered eggs and fried. Fried bread wearing sunglasses. Super soldier.Yes!

Lunch/ Dinner:
  1. Big Soup - man-sized chunks of muscle in ectoplasm. Big Gloop is a better name. Still available in petrol stations and other man stores.
  2. Luncheon Meat - actually constructed for lunchtimes. Pale pressed flesh. Peek Frean, Fray Bentos and Spam became popular forenames as a result. Fry the whole slab and voila, Sunday roast!
  3. Crispy Pancakes - another of my faves. Like little sand dunes stuffed with a white hot plasma of goodness. Breadcrumbs for teenagers.

Tea:
  1. Vesta Chow Mein/ Chop Suey/ Beef Curry and Paella. The dried food of the Gods and all that would ever be needed for inter-galactic travel. Frying the Chow Mein crispy noodles was character building.
  2. Lobster Bisque Canned Soup - utterly disgusting fishy fluid from the soup top-shelf for adults only. Only ever tried once by anyone. Try to go to a happy place straight after if you can!
  3. Brains Faggots - easily the best name for a foodstuff ever. Delicious meat balls made of brains and sticks.
  4. Rissoles - a distant cousin of the burger and utterly scrumptious. There would have been Rissole King if it weren't for an unfortunate similarity to the word ar*ehole!
  5. Marrowfat peas - peas made in a petri dish. Pumped with growth hormones. Never mess with a marrowfat. Shed their skins every two hours.
  6. Coronation chicken - the saddest excuse for a curry ever created. Bread laughed when spread with this sh*te.
  7. Irish Stew - everything a young man needed in a can. Big Soup grown up. My bro called it the medicine!
  8. Tripe and Pickled Onions - My dad's fave and what he'll be scoffing in Heaven right now! Like Kidneys, deviled or otherwise, Offal.
  9. Liver Butties - guts of the Gods. The greatest sandwich of all time. Northern caviar. Organ soul.
  10. Glasswort - pickled seaweed from the Lancashire coast. Aka samphire. A taste of the Ocean floor.
  11. Finny Haddock - jaundiced slab served with aneamic spuds. Aka yellow fish. Punishment on Fridays. Not to be confused with Fanny Craddock, pioneering TV cook who wore scary red lipstick.

Supper:
  1. Bread and milk - buttered slices of white bread boiled in milk and doused in sugar. Ambrosia. 'Nuff said. Nothing else for Supper required.


Puddings:
  1. Instant Whip - fruit flavoured space blancmange - the best milk pudding since Mars Bonfire. To die for.
  2. Arctic Roll - a golden sponge tube lined with jam and filled with vanilla ice cream. Made tubes interesting forever.

Posh food served in Pubs:
  1. Chicken in a basket - fried chicken and chips served in a plastic basket. KFC couldn't fail after this!
  2. Ploughman's Lunch - bread, cheese and Branston pickle. Never ever saw a single ploughman in a pub.


Posh food served in Bistros [a small posh evening cafe that served Mateus wine from baskets]:
  1. Cock au Van - chicken in a van.
  2. Chicken Chasseur - chicken in a chasseur,
  3. Beef Bourguignon - beef in a bourguignon.
  4. Duck a l'Orange - duck in an orange. The bill would often make you choke.

Ah, those were the days! What old foodstuffs do you recall readers?

2 comments:

  1. Heh, Ready Brek... I remember the TV commercials in the early eighties (when a student in Kent) showing school kids glowing with warmth. And visiting the advertising agency that made them, where they freely admitted there was little or no nutritional value in the stuff, "but at least it helped kids get some milk and sugar inside them"... :)

    Best -- Paul

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  2. ha ha, nice memory Paul. I loved Ready Brek and still do, Its still available. My older brothers called it Reggae Brek 'cos they were cooler than me!

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