Tilly Farrell same! I got recommended her videos some weeks ago and all of them have such a lovely vibe to them. And the cat is so cute. I think her name is Banksy (?).
You guys, thanks so much for being so kind-I am SO glad you enjoyed the vlogs, I will be posting tomorrow at 5pm, so you all again at 5 hahah. Have a lovely evening x
Interesting how Grace mentions how healthy that generation is/was. Nan is an example to some degree, still being with us at 91 years old! Impressive! Wishing her many more healthy years!
A very simple answer to the 1950s generation being healthy was because: Sugar was rationed They didn't snack Didn't eat very late in the day/night They were physically more active
And I just wonder if the snacking isn't the largest part of our obesity problem. Even regardless of calories, we eat almost constantly, and a lot of it mindlessly in front of a television or computer. Add to that the rest, especially the fact that the snacking is often processed food (aka sugar, even if it's potato chips) and bam.
DenaInWyo Eating too often is part of the reason people develop insulin resistance, which increases fat storage. Dr Jason Fung explains it very well in his books (or on his videos or blog)
@Tuk Tuk I completely agree with this. While watching this video I was like "so... What's special about this?" because this is how most people here eat haha
I loved the BBC series "Back in time for dinner" where a family 'lived' through each decade in the 20th century and ate the foods and saw how things changed and progressed, even family life. I found it really interesting. So much has changed even from the '90s, it's crazy!
I remember seeing an episode of that, I think it was the 1960s or 70s one. I really want to watch them all, but apparently they're not available online! How frustrating :(
Moomin I think she meant specifically chemical processing, i.e. additives, artificial flavouring and colouring, injecting water into meat, etc. I’ve been making a massive effort to cut all those out, and I really do feel better for it.
Albert Giesbrecht You don’t see them much in the UK now, although I don’t think they’re banned (I’d need to check). But I know a lot of US food is still chock full of it. 😔
@@Melissa.Garrett We don't get too many of them in Australia either at the moment, although since 2018 the government changed the food labelling laws so manufacturers do not have to list them specifically any more and just have them included as fat content. A lot of people aren't happy about this as it most probably means the trans fat content of things will increase.
Yes! You could totally release like an Extended Director's Cut of this and it would get views! Don't believe the lies that people won't watch RU-vid for more than a few minutes. There are loads of viewers who stick around to watch long videos. If I can't finish a video in one sitting, I paude it and finish it later, as I would with DVR, Netflix, etc.
I am a child of the 1950s from the USA. Thank you for posting these. I grew up on a farm so we had an abundance of food and a great variety. I didn’t appreciate it back then and was considered a picky eater. Nowadays I feel bad for turning up my nose at my Mother’s wonderful meals. I was not catered to, my Dad would tell me , you will eat when you get hungry enough. Our meals were called breakfast, dinner and supper.
Even though I was born and raised in the US, my mother was from the UK, so the food style was very English. She had come here after the war...and the continuation of rationing was a big part of her decision to come live with her father and invoke her US citizenship status. This video really brings back childhood memories. Now I adored porridge (with salt and butter, of course) - so that was our go to breakfast...or the toast, or the soft boiled egg and toast, or beans and toast or fried bread with bacon and eggs. Yes, I recognize most of your dishes. The meat, carb (either potatoes or white rice) and two veg - one green, one red or yellow was the mainstay design of every dinner - which moved to the evening because that’s when everyone was home from work or school. No snacks - but there was a bit of chocolate and mum never failed to tell us how lucky we were to have so much food. I have a photo of her from the immediate post war years and she was painfully thin - after coming to the US she gained about 10 pounds and gained a nice slim figure. I never tasted soda until I was 5 or six. I didn’t discover crisps until I was a teenager and the only cold cereal that showed up in the house was either weetabix or shredded wheat - but it was only for emergencies. For suggestions, perhaps ‘scotch collops’ made with burger and canned mushroom soup, or ‘chicken a la king’ which was made from bits from chicken wings (after they’d been used for soup or stock) in a cream sauce. Yes, ‘recycling foods’ was a big thing...boiled potatoes became mashed potatoes and on the third day became potato cakes when combined with an egg and perhaps a bit of mixed veg. Thanks for taking me back to my childhood😌
It has been an absolutely pleasure looking and watching a person like you, going back to the basic and healthy eating of the 1950s. I was born 1945 and remember a lot of the meals. My mother rarely bought cake, always made her own. Used to cook in the coal oven and a camping stove (for frying). I was aged 11 when my dad bought my Mum an oven, and a little fridge. We always had Sunday Dinner, Dad always cut the meat, however small it was. Always Yorkshire puddings/suet crust was served first with gravy. This I was told to fill you up before the meat and vegetable. As you said, rice pudding was a very popular afters, or a piece of Mums cake. All the fancy crisps, frozen vegetables, exotic fruits , pre packed, ready meals, I never saw them as a child. The first frozen I remember was Birds eye peas, and fish fingers. My Father used to catch a lot of fish so would never have them in the house.As children we were a lot more healthier, played games outside rode our bikes, played marbles etc. Not many people had telephones, so we communicated more, not like the children of today on their I pads etc. We might have gone a lot more forward in some things, I think we have gone backwards when it comes to our healthy eating, and in lots of cases our social well-being. Keep the good work up. Margaret Churchill x
You should do this again but doing a week or a few days of each decade from 1910 to 1990. You're extremely good at these factual videos x NB : The 50's dinner party would be such a great video, you could all wear 50's style clothes etc.
What a contrast to my 50's food experience . I m a "baby boomer ", with no rationing .We had meat every day,plenty of cookies,ice cream but we played outside.
why not cuisines of different countires, like rice is the staple carb in asia in comparison to bread over here. and came meat seems to be popualr dish in the middle east.
What I really like about this video is how involved your grandparents were , I know sharing this history with you meant a lot to them and it was nice to see.
I grew up with my grandma (born 1921). I remember her eating butterd toast, buttered saltines, or saltines with sliced cheese. Also buttered toast with chocolate milk. Odds are growing up she more then likely just had toast and milk. But what makes her life a little different from others is she grew up on a farm. Sorry don't know what was grown on the farm, but everywhere she lived there was always a garden. I remember our neighbors had green and purple grapes. She would made grape juice from them. My mom still has food she canned in the early 2000s.
My gran would eat toast with liver sausage or beans on toast for lunch every day with her cup of tea. Even if she wasn’t home she ate the same thing every day. It was something she had done since she was a child, fillling, quick and inexpensive.
My friend's great grandad only just died. He was living on his own & doing everything for himself, including cooking, up until the end. He was 100 yrs old. I believe development of many additives (some subsequently banned) to food after WW2 contributes to the rising illnesses, especially those in the young. That, together with plastic & other chemicals that leak into food chain is concerning. In early 70s, Dr Richard Mackarness did food allergy testing & found link with food additives & psychiatric illness. Govts known for decades but put Corporates & profit before people & health. Love that this young woman is so interested & enthusiastic about learning from the past & savvy enough to have this channel. A great future beckons! Brava!
pamla motown just so you’re aware, a link doesn’t necessarily mean causation. this is often studied to correlate illnesses to risks scientifically, however i do agree that the use of additives and chemicals nowadays is insane
The monotonous diet was well entrenched in Ireland until quite recently. Fun fact the Irish invented flavoured crisps. Tayto crisps were the first to patent the process. All flavoured crisps/chips are produced under license.
Grew up having Tayto crisp sandwiches (as did all my friends) Tayto are the best ! I may be biased, being Irish, but they really are a taste of my childhood 😊
My Grandmother emmigrated from England to America in 1919, she taught me to love a good cup of tea. And growing up, we usually had toast and tea for breakfast, or cereal. I had eggs once in a while, that was exotic back in the 60s. Now I know why!
my granparents includign my parents and now me and one day my grandchildren we all ahve toast that had butter spread first then grilled until medium brown. this for us is toast hwoever you need a gas grill not a toaster. Sayign tha tif im in a rush i would sayu i eat toaster toast but if im in a rush i dotn eat.
Grace you honestly inspire me ✨ Because of you, I’m no longer afraid of food. I don’t avoid snacks that I’m craving or beat myself up when I do have them. I’ve also become so much more comfortable in my own skin. I don’t wear makeup unless it’s a special occasion (even when I have a break out 🙈). Thank you for just being you! Because you inspire me to be me!
I absolutely love your "I eat a X diet" videos especially history focused ones . Your wartime and army ones were the first videos of yours I found and I've been hooked ever since 😂 You're so lighthearted yet considerate and funny
Peter Mitchell. No no no! No one EVER even wanted to not eat all their meat! It was, and still is (as it should be in this throwaway world) ‘Eat all your VEGETABLES, or there’ll be no pudding’.
My uncles have a very rural life (they live on top of a mountain) and the way they eat hasn’t changed in generations. For breakfast they have coffee and bread soaked in milk. They eat potatoes and/or rye bread at every meal. They basically live off bread, potato, cured ham and chorizo, milk and cheese, some game if they hunted and home-grown vegetables - lettuce, tomato, Swiss chard, onion, etc. They do snack if they get hungry between meals, but they snack on some of the foods listed above. For example, they eat some bread with cheese or cured chorizo or a piece of fruit. Once a saw my uncle eat a tomato like you would eat an apple (by taking bites off of it). He had the tomato in one hand and a salt shaker in the other one. He sprinkled salt on it before every bite 😂 I thought it was a weird snack
Im so shocked that most of what they ate was sugar, bread and butter and they were the healthiest generation of all time. Maybe it's because of the portions? They ate fairly little compared to how we gorge ourselves nowadays. Very interesting topic, I would love to learn more about it.
Definitely it's because of the portions. Plus: Butter is actually much healthier than all the fats used nowadays in processed foods. The fact with the sugar is that when u try to eat marmalade or jam u can't eat a lot of them. While nowadays we are given small portions of sugar in almost everything we buy. I think that back then people used to be more physically active.
@@djmazz1100 have you ever looked into nutrition and the health of the nation in different decades? Nobody gave a crap about glucose spikes. Hardly anyone was obese the way so much of our population is now.
@@eccremocarpusscaber5159 It’s cause they burned 3x the calories. Just driving: no power seats, no power windows, push the clutch, shift the gear, no power breaks, no power steering!
I made them today for Christmas. Boil them until quite soft, drain the water and transfer into an oven pan. Pour small amount of Olive oil on top of each potato, put in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes. Then take out! Simple really. Enjoy!
Absolutely fantastic job of researching and bringing the 1950s to life! You ARE a food historian and I so appreciate how you explained the sociopolitical context of food in the past. Really enjoyed this video (I'm an American who grew up in the 1950s USA); you provided good information which could, in the future, be used in videos to compare the British vs US experience. You are so articulate and charming; awesome communicator. Please, more videos of this type. Thank you!
I'm another American who grew up in the 1950's in the USA... and the experience was similar in many ways. Meat & 2 (boiled) veg was standard, some pickled vegetables, Saturday lunch was soup (leftovers made into soup) and no snacking - there was nothing to snack on in the house, no chips, cookies, cake, or other sweets... there would be some homemade cookies or special Sunday desserts, weekday dessert included jello.. and a January young-people's party would be to have a "taffy pull" and everyone could take home what they had made. Food was never tossed out, it would be eaten up completely before the next round would be cooked. Your video was great!
Me too. But I don't think there were rationing in America during the 50's at all. And the biggest meal was definitely dinner, except on Sunday. Of course we didn't have tea time & accompanying tea time foods. If we had a after school snack, it was PB&J or dry cereal, maybe crackers. Mid 1950's saw frozen TV dinners hit the markets in America.
I'm from India, Bangalore. I have heard stories from both my grannies who suffered during war time how food was rasion. They had only 1 or 2 meals max one meal was millets with yogurt and the army used to supply limited butter, jam, condensed milk or milk powder and coffee. Many from my family worked for british army and madras regiment. We had british rule till 1946 so it would have been the same here. nice efforts keep up the work :)
Now that is the most I teresting comment I've read this year. In Britain we are not taught about other countries suffering rationing via the British government. That is something I would love to hear more about Thank you very much!
@@tweetiepie551 if you were part of the empire you were expected to support the war effort. I'm Australian and have heard many stories about rationing. Petrol, house materials, fabric were rationed. Food was scarce, but with our weather I think we fared better with growing your own veg in the cities. Australia was bombed by the Japanese.
@@tweetiepie551During British Rule, Britain was also responsible for diverting many essential food items (like tea, sugar and rice which were produced in British colonies like India) away from Indians and sent them to the British instead (e.g.: Winston Churchill's policies directly caused the Bengal Famine in which millions of Indians died). Not only did other countries suffer but they suffered because of British colonisation. It's really sad that this side of history is never taught and so many people have forgotten the suffering of the colonised people and nations.
I was a little girl in the 1950s, and remember the food vividly (especially at my primary school - let's not even think about that!). You would have almost definitely had custard with your jam roly-poly (made with Bird's Custard Powder, not an egg in sight!), or perhaps evaporated milk. Whisked evaporated milk mixed with jelly was a popular Sunday pudding, or jelly and custard (yuck!). Incidentally, your rice pudding was far too solid - it should be much runnier, sort of texture of yogurt. Today's Muller Rice is about right, although it was proper sugar, not those ghastly artificial sweeteners! A relatively well-off family would have had a cooked breakfast every day - an egg, or even bacon and eggs, or bacon with fried bread.... perhaps a tomato with it. You (or your Dad) would have grown vegetables in the back garden, if you had one, or possibly in an allotment if you didn't. Runner beans were popular, alongside cabbage. You would have eaten offal, too - liver and bacon, perhaps steak and kidney; stews were popular as you could use really cheap cuts of meat. Roast meat was served on Sunday, then you had it cold on Monday, and perhaps minced on Tuesday in shepherd's pie (you only had a scrap of meat - one slice, probably, and filled up on potatoes and vegetables).
Spot on. We had egg and chips every Saturday, Dad always made what he called "poor mans pickles" just a chopped raw onion to go with it!!! You had to be well off for bacon and egg, a weekend treat for us. Salad was served in summer and only ever comprised lettuce, cucumber, tomoato and something from a tin!. Sunday Afternoon Tea with aged aunt was bread and butter, tinned fruit and evap.
Annabel Smyth. No wonder you loathe rice pudding. Yours is utterly appalling! It’s solid stodge! Dreadful. USE MORE MILK. NEVER EVER use water in it. It is a rounded tablespoon of ‘PUDDING rice’ to half a pint of milk. I always use double that just for myself. For a similar taste, try a tin of Ambrosia Rice Pudding. And Ambrosia Devon Custard is a good substitute for today’s ‘on the perpetual go’ people. Don’t know why it’s called Devon by Ambrosia because it’s nothing to do with Devon county, it’s country wide.
Reminds me of my childhood. Having grown up with my parents who lived on rations when they were younger. I thought it was me who called it a dippy egg lol. My mum and dad always had cake after tea. Other things they made were liver and onion gravy with oxo and potatoes. I’m 47 now and still cook a lot like that for my son, with the addition of pasta and rice dishes. We had neither when I was young. Attic roll! Omg. My aunt served it with Carnation milk. We ate veg from the garden. It all changed when the freezer shops opened. I’m from Scotland, living in Australia. My dads favourite was always breaded fish, chips and cauliflower cheese as the years went by. We always had lentil or leek and potato soup, then a roast dinner on a Sunday, then a home made pudding like apple crumble, apple sponge or baked rice, yes pineapple upside down cake or pear flan.always had a cooked breakfast on a Sunday, bacon, egg, sausage, black pudding,, or white pudding, potato scones.and sometimes chicken livers. The rest of the week it was cereal or toast. Supper was toast or cereal, sometimes with pilchards with tomato sauce. My dad always dipped his roll in the lard from the frying pan on a bacon roll. Friday night dinner was bacon and beans on a roll. We were lucky to get a chocolate or ice cream from the ice-cream van and eventually fizzy drinks. I often ate a banana for dinner. Their diet changed for the worse over the years. They lived until they were 85 and 87, passed within a year of each other. My mum smoked until she was 80. She had dementia for her last 4 years. My dad had dementia for 2. My dad worked and ate a cooked meal at lunch time in the canteen and became over weight eventually. He also suffered badly with arthritis. Mum was fine. Dad had cancer and heart disease. He never smoked but did smoke my mums secondhand indoor smoke. Mum never had cancer. She gre up for 4 years of her life with her sister during the war as she was evacuated to the country away from Edinburgh. My dad stayed and had to go into the bom shelter (tin curved shed) during the blackouts, half the night before going to school the next day to write on his slate. I had a great childhood and wouldn’t change a thing about it. We never moved, had lots of friends around. We knew all of the neighbours. Always celebrated new year with them. With shortbread, fruit cake. Chipolatas on cocktail sticks. Egg mayo sandwiches. I’m still in touch with those kids on fb. Now I’m raising a 12 year old on my own. It’s like a different world, but I try to keep some of it alive. FYI. I’m still very slim, always stuck to the small portions while my 2 sisters and brother gained a lot of weight and are now morbidly obese from their rich diet and large portions when they left home. Hope you enjoyed. I loved the video, thanks for the memories ❤️
Millennial’s get such an unfavorable opinion (at least in USA)this is proof of how thoughtful and interesting they are. My 3 sons are millennials and they also show great interest in our past present and future thank you for the reminder of how my generation “X” and the prior need to just listen and be just as curious as they are. You’ve have a new subscriber! Looking forward to going through your videos.
just realised I had been fed a 50's diet at boarding school in the 60's and early 70's! What a fun video. thank you. Now I understand why I love jelly and custard...
@@Grackle you should watch The Supersizers Eat the '50's. As well as more info, I believe you'll be able to find the food historian, and/or nutritionist they had. I know that Mary Berry is in it! Look up a recipe for rumaki, a classic 1950 party dish.
I still have my mum's "good housekeeping" book from the 50s.. it's great. 100s of recipes, adverts of all kitchen equipment and ladies doing cooking in beautiful clothes 😄.. I Have a look if I'm ever unsure of how to cook something now and I'm 57 lol x
i was a teenager in the 50's and we ate much more than this, rice pudding was cooked in the oven often with sultanas. large cooked brekkie, a proper cooked dinner with meat and gravy. fruit tarts, pancakes, custard. and i must say we were not well off.
@@gillwil we ate white bread,the only brown bread was called 'Hovis", a small dark brown loaf. there was a jingle on the radio. "Home James , and don't spare the Horses we have Hovis bread for tea". you didn't have to be "Posh", just like this particular bread.
I come from the North of England and everyone I knew had a main meal in the evening, called tea. I don't think we owned a toast rack! Everyone made scones and apple pies.
Pam Jordan We brought out a toast rack for special days - rarely. Probably parent's wedding present in silverplate - needed polishing. We had a few silver things like that "too precious to use every day". Now I live in the US (Yorkshire lass) someone gave me a toast rack. I use it when guests come to stay. Americans often ask where they can buy one - answer Amazon.
When I was at school history lessons were deadly. I gained an interest only after I finished school, so it's always good to see someone so young be so enthusiastic to learn about the past, and be keen to pass that knowledge on. Keep up the good work.
Don’t forget our dinner plates were so much smaller! One day, in the 60’s, the local supermarket started giving away loyalty tokens and “normal-for-today-but-huge-for-then” dinner plates arrived.... and we started to fill them with more food and all got fat! 😁
thank you for making this! i learned so much about another way of life and i respect your dedication to authenticity while understanding that you can't know exactly what it was like back then. i still feel like you researched extensively and really gave us a feel for what it was like to make the most of what you had in the past. this video belongs in a museum because it preserves not only a unique culture of necessity, but it makes such a culture accessible to the modern age. genius work, truly.
Being born in 1949 this was my diet. Dad was in the RN and was away a lot but I remember him coming home from Canada with a Betty Crocker cake mix. Amazing! It really was a different time being just post war but I don't ever remember being fed up with the food my Mum dished up. Chicken was a real treat and beef was very common and cheap. Monday was always mince, made either from the beef joint or Shepherds Pie from leftover lamb. Nothing was ever wasted.
This reminds me of living in a remote west coast Canadian island in the winter. In the summer the island was abundant in food naturally and the ferries came often with groceries aside from that. In the winter, ferries came once a week and if it was storming during ferry day, it wouldn’t come and out groceries wouldn’t be stocked
so refreshing to see someone ACTUALLY passionate about the topic they're filming about. not just about the filming of a youtube video.. I am genuinely also very interested in this topic, especially what you talked about at the end - I would love to get an authentic comparison of people and their diets and metabolisms back in the day and now.. Plus the other things too, but I just find the every day life things so interesting...
Fascinating stuff. I could listen to you do more on the subject. 1950s always fascinated me and to learn about from a UK standpoint is so interesting. Please do more and tell you Nanny and grandpop thanks. Cheers!
Just found this channel tonight! What a treat!! Took me back to my childhood. I’m from the US and my grandparents ate somewhat the same. But my grandmother had a beautiful garden. My grandfather word in fruit orchards. So there were always home canned foods. What glorious time! So much better than today’s busy and unhappy people 😕
I was born in 1948 and during the 1950's till 1953 everything was still on ration. All our food was fresh and not processed. Breakfast was porridge and toast generally using margarine and occasionally butter followed by a cup of tea brewed in a tea pot, once a week if we were lucky we would have bacon and egg and nearly always fish on a Friday. Plenty of green vegetables like fresh cabbage was a staple as well as carrots and potatoes, any leftovers were used to make bubble and squeek. Chicken was expensive to buy so we only had it on special occasions or once a month as a Sunday dinner, any leftovers from the chicken would be used in a stew. Tripe and onions was also a meal sometimes, it was cheap to buy from a butchers and made a filling meal. Lamb or beef was cheaper to buy than chicken and any leftovers from those meats would be used to make sandwiches or again used in a stew or broth of some sort. My grandfather used to grow his own vegetables and had a greenhouse for growing tomatoes and cucumber, he also grew his own fruit like gooseberries and apples. We were never short of fresh food and we were a lot healthier then than today.
Brilliant; as a 1946 baby boomer who remembers rationing, I just loved this. With the chicken - most interesting. My aunt in the East End would "queue for hours once a week" for what was called a "fowl" [not sure if available these days]. This was a large chicken which would be used to make a chicken soup, simmering half the bird with all the giblets, carrot, onion, stock, and then cooked vermicili added before serving - followed by chopped liver [basically a pate, using pan-fried chicken liver and onion, hard-boiled eggs chopped in, served on bread); the simmered half of the bird then roasted (a deliciousness hard to describe), with roast pots, and all the local seasonal veg,. The other half of the bird would be roasted mid-week. This served a family of five twice with a full dinner, and possibly a sandwich or two. Kosher fare and absolutely beautiful when well made, also economical. The Florence Greenberg cookery books refer! A culinary saint!
Omg I was JUST thinking last night that your ww2 diet video was so good and these history diets are my favourites then today there’s another one what a blessing
I think it’s important to note that the meal plan is in a cookbook for people who are looking for options. Poor families didn’t have the luxury to try new recipes that may not turn out, or to even get the cookbook.
not watched the part about the fillet o fish but im going to take a guess and say is it that the fillet o fish is too small and overpriced leaving you craving about ten more? because when i was 10 i could eat four at a time and i have never been overweight.
I was literally talking to my nana about going on a post war diet, so I’ll definitely watch your video about that. Anyways my Nana watched this and she said as a teenager in the 1950sthis is exactly what she used to eat. She said she always had toast every day for breakfast 😂. Also you are the most underrated channel ever and keep doing what you’re doing
I remember eating these meals as a child. We also had rabbit, tripe and onions, stuffed heart using sage and onion stuffing and lots of home grown vegetables. Dripping on toast washed down with hot cocoa was a late night treat. I never remember being hungry.
Found your channel recently and I'm so addicted, I'm British so its even better I can barely find any good British youtubers but your amazing and so damn creative, loved this video!
First time to your channel and this was really fun to see. I’m glad you took the time to research and I’m sure your grandparents were glad to share. My grandparents were German immigrants her in the US and the stories they shared were so similar. Fruit was rare. My grandad told me once that they would sneak in a steal oranges from a pile. The company would pour motor oil on them rather than give them away. They would dig through them to find the best ones and wash them off. Strange how fast we have changed.
I don't usually like these food challenge videos because they're just an excuse for people to eat junk knowing it'll rake in the views but I value your videos SO much because you actually take the time to educate yourself and your audience in a way that is entertaining and relatable. I need to find a fitnessy/health twist with a similar style to try for my channel!
Hi lass, very interesting! I'm a grandma from the US, now in England. SOME NOTES: People planned for, stretched, and used up leftover bits as much as possible. Let's looks at that menu at the 8:54 mark: * Some of Monday dinner's cold meat + Tuesday dinner's potatoes --> Tuesday supper's Cornish Pasty (ditto Potato Soup leftover from dinner). * They wouldn't have _bought_ fish cakes. Tuesday dinner's Stuffed Haddock --> Wednesday's breakfast of modestly-sized Fish Cakes. Any stuffing, leftover potato et cetera stretched the meagre amount of fish. * Crumbs from slicing loaves of bread were saved and dried, used to coat, thicken, or bulk up dishes. Whisk one small egg with a spoonful of water, dip the shaped fish cake into the egg mixture, then press both sides of the fish cake onto the plate of bread crumbs to cover. Bread crumbs added both texture and -- you guessed it -- bulk. *Thursday breakfast's Potato Slices were Wednesday dinners Baked Sliced Potatoes, sizzled up after the Grilled Bacon, both for flavour and to maximise usage of the bit of pan fat. * Leftover cooking fats were always clarified and saved as drippings. Whilst marg on bread isn't a tasty as butter, after the war years of drippings on dry wholemeal bread, it was a step up. (I don't know about the UK, but when margarine was introduced in the US, the dairy industry lobbied Congress, and for years, it wasn't allowed to be coloured yellow. My grandma says later it was sold with a bit of food dye, so the consumers could colour it themselves!)
its called hypovolemia.low volume blood causing low blood pressure and consequently not enoug sugar to go around. I had a stint of liek 6 months where i woud crash five six times a day to suoer low blood sugar. I mean hopistal level low. Couldnt figure out why. i would eat sugar jam and measure and then have to urinate and then back down to below normal levels in 1hour. kidneys woukldnt reabsorb the water or the sugar. turns out i needed salt. hyponatremia. you can eat and eat and eat and nothing will give you enerygy. but a little bit of salt and suddenly your like popeye.
Very well researched and very well presented,vmy parents live through the war and rationing, I was born in 1963 and we were brought up in a similar way we had meat and two veg everyday and fish on a Friday, I think it was much better diet than children today at 56 I have no health issues whatsoever , and as my parents said during the war there were no obese children , well done
my memories from the late 1950s/early 1960s was that the food my mum cooked was horrible! LOTS of milk puddings - Rice or Tapioca or semolina - yuk yuk yuk. And mince meat - boiled in water with a stock cube- no onion, no seasoning, no thickening for the 'gravy'. Maybe my mum just couldn't cook! Oh- and fried Liver - pig's or lamb's liver- fried in lard, sometimes with bacon, often on it's own. We also had Oxtail soup or stewed neck of lamb ( a VERY cheap cut- there was virtually no meat on it!) Vegetables for Sunday Lunch were all cooked in one big pan- potatoes at the bottom, then carrots, then maybe sprouts on top - and mum liked to eat boiled onion, so that would be in there somewhere too. Cover with cold water, and simmer everything for around 2 hours! The result was waterlogged, tasteless veg. We sometimes had a chicken on Sunday, can't remember any other sort of meat. We didn't have fish and chips, but mum could make brilliant crispy chips and we had eggs with them. Tinned salmon was a Sunday teatime treat when we went to visit my grandparents, with vinegar poured on it. Luckily my Dad made brilliant cakes and puddings, which made up for my Mum's cooking.
I was born in the States in 1952 and even though there was no rationing we ate similar type of make it stretch foods. I actually liked rice pudding but the recipes can vary as every cook has an idea of what rice pudding should taste like. I also like what's called bread pudding over which you can drizzle a sauce which can be as fancy or plain as you please. You are on the right track trying different foods from times gone by.
Thanks for the interesting vid! (Whew, that was a LOT of toast you ate!) From the USA here, grew up in the 1950's, middle class (yeah, we still had a middle class back then). Not so easy on our mothers, because they were the ones who planned and made the meals and kept us healthy! We always had a hot breakfast together as a family, lunch at school (that's funny, I just realized I don't know what my dad did for lunch), a snack after school, dinner at 6PM. Dinner was almost always meat, two vegetables, salad, dessert. Fast food wasn't even around. Portions were smaller. Going out to eat was a treat -- everyone I knew ate at home most of the time. Soda was also a treat -- we might have a glass of ginger ale or a cola if our parents had people over for bridge or something. It was unusual to see really overweight people (especially kids). There was a lot that wasn't so great in the 50's, but I do believe our eating habits were healthier.
I think eating in the UK in the 50’s was very different from how it was in the US, lol. In the US, gelatin dishes and casseroles were all the rage. I’ve seen the weirdest recipes come out of the 1950’s. 😹 People were eating a lot more convenience/prepackaged foods too.
@@JB-vd8bi lol yeah "different". That's the nice word for a recipe that includes lime gelatin, celery, and black olives! 😂 (seriously it's real, check out the 1950s housewife experiment from the blog Jen But Never Jenn)
I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country and we were still eating 1950s food in the 1970s. That's when I grew up with such weird Jello concoctions and casseroles
Fascinating! I’m American, born in 1953. We did have rationing and such, but our diet was very different from England’s, and I can’t say it was necessarily healthy, but maybe so. By the time I was old enough to eat like my parents, the white flour and sugar had taken over the American diet, and I was in the generation that was raised on processed foods. Love your video! I wish you had made the frames longer when posting those firsthand accounts because there wasn’t enough time to read them through. But I am now a new subscriber!
Did they 'not snack' because they: always ate breakfast, had elevenses, then had tea between the midday and evening meals? It was just more structured.
I was born in 1956 and grew up with three meals a day - breakfast, dinner (the main meal at lunchtime) and tea or high tea. Tea was never a hot meal; usually bread and butter with salad or some kind of sandwich spread, plus homemade cake. High tea was hot and needed a knife and fork to eat it eg baked beans or spaghetti on toast. That was it. I don't know anyone who had elevenses and if you ate a normal sized tea you didn't eat supper as well.
sounds like a lot of eating thats why they didnt snack. i eat one meal a day and im 11 stone and mostly muscle. I have all my 1600 calories in one sitting usually six toast six eggs and some veg n junk. my body makes the most out of it and if i eat twice a day is tar tputting fat on. yh thats right one meal a day and below the recommebded dailt intake and im still better off than most energy wise. Obviously i wont be running any marathons on this meal plan. but weights every day. I also do a reguar 1000 squats, 1000 knee highs and 1000 butt kicks in an hour so yh one meal is more than adequate.
Such an interesting video! I love how you’ve researched it before jumping in and how you’ve gotten personal anecdote from your grandparents. Love your channel ❤️
LOL! That reminded me of "Wor - sester - sister - soster - shire sauce", which was a silly way my mum and nan used to say it sometimes to be funny. We all knew how to say it properly and usually did but a lot of people would say it that way as a joke when I was a kid. I think it may have come from some comedian originally.
This was very interesting. Thank you! I grew up in the 60s/70s in a family that was only half English so our puddings were not like the English ones, and we did have access to fruit and more sugar, but it was still limited. One of our puddings was "Rote Kruetze" which people still eat. When folk made raspberry syrup or other berry syrup, there was usually some juice and flavour left in the leftover fibres so this would be combined with sago and sugar and made into pudding. Or we had dumplings with a sort of custard, apple sauce, bottled fruit. All the fruit was grown in the garden and as kids we would go with my mother to forage for blackberries or bilberries. By then chicken was a "Sunday" meat, and we ate it almost beak to tail, eg next day the carcass was stripped for meat for stew, and then the bones were boiled to make broth. I remember my mum boiling some maybe pig or beef bones till they were so soft she handed me one and let me eat it. Sounds awful but it was ok, and I was getting the benefit of amazing nutrients in the bone marrow. We also ate more of the animal - not the waste that happens now - liver, kidneys, heart - and it was fine (and contains more nutrition than the muscle meat). We couldn't afford nice steaks, so my mum would use mincemeat mixed with breadcrumbs (she didn't waste stale bread), and egg to make a meat loaf or rissoles. Meat was never packed in plastic, but wrapped in wax paper. Cakes and sweets were only on Sundays. We ate a lot of home-grown vegetables and when our mum was cutting up a cabbage or cauliflower, we kids would fight for the hearts to munch on as a treat. Dental problems did grow during that decade because sugar had become much more available than in the 50s, however, portions were smaller. Coke bottles were smaller. Coffee/tea was drunk in cups, not great big buckets, and it wasn't made with vast amounts of milk. It was made with water with a dash of milk. One of the things I'm aware of is that there were far fewer cases of obesity. We also had our dinner at lunch time, and bread and cheese at around 6 in the evening, and yes, in the 60s, fish and chip Fridays were a treat, enjoyed not at lunch time but in the evening along with a Hammer Horror film on the telly. We DID have asparagus, but only probably because my mother was from the continent and traditionally they grew it. Quite a lot of families, by the way, in the 50s, had veg gardens or allotments and grew some of what they ate. A great way of getting more recipes is to ask mums and grans whether their mums and grans have any recipe books. Lots of people kept their own with cut out recipes from mags of the time, or hand-written ones. I have my grandmother's recipe book that probably dates back to early 1930s Germany, written in a script that most modern Germans even can't read, and with cut outs from the magazines of the time. Fortunately my mum taught me enough for me to decipher some of the book. I bet that somewhere in the attics of some of your family and friends are some treasurehouses of yesteryear recipe books, some of which will have unique family recipes.... Lovely video.
In other parts of Europe they have dinner at lunch time. I’m frommpoland and I was really confused with the eating patterns in the UK 😋. 13 years later eat all day every day
Earlier today I was thinking about how often I'm disappointed by new channels / videos the algorithm recommends to me, and then your channel came across my recommended list. So, so so love these videos. You are a star. Keep up the good work!
I love "Dippy Eggs!" We call them that in my family...it's a very Pennsylvania term. Although we put in pan and cook until white and is firm and yolk is runny.
My Mother was born in 1935, I was born in 1975. My childhood diet was very 1950’s as this is when my Mum learned to cook and keep a home. Mum made everything from scratch and nothing was wasted. She had an allotment in our garden and taught us how to grow vegetables. We ate every meal at the table and could not get down until everyone had finished. Leaving food was not an option even when it was liver and onions which I hated. We always had a pudding which was usually a home made fruit pie/ crumble and custard or a steamed jam pudding. For breakfast, on a school day, we always had porridge and on the weekends we had a boiled egg with soldiers. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had this upbringing. I look at the rubbish children eat now and it makes me sad. We never had crisps or chocolate in the house in fact, the kitchen was off limits unless we were helping Mum make cakes.
I love how curious you are! These kind of videos really make you think about how lucky we are nowadays and how everything is taken for granted! Love you ❣️
As an American anglophile, I really love and appreciate this series! Learning about day-to-day life in the past always makes history come alive for me. More of these, please! Further in the past, or future! Also: It's "Wooster-shrr" "oo" as in book.
My family are all Scottish/Irish. My grandparents had porridge every morning, made with salt ( yuk) and with a dod of jam. Left over porridge was poared into a drawer lined with grease proof paper. For a snack you could cut a slice lol. I also remember my mum saying they had bread and dripping often. It was always much tastier if the bacon had been fried in it. Mince and tatties was also a favourite, packed with veg like carrot, turnip and peas. Leftover mince was made into stovies ( leftover mince cooked up with onions and tatties till it resembles a dry type stew) which are yummy. My gran also cooked tripe( sheep’s stomach yuk), sheep’s head ( potted heid) and there was always a huge pot of soup on the go packed with veg and barley and any leftover meat. My dad’s large family were very lucky in the war and post war years as my grandad kept chickens, pigs and ducks and they had a huge garden where they grew all their own fruit and veg. They were always very well fed. Sadly that wasn’t always the case with other families. My dad always remembered a friend of his who had never had an egg until he stayed for tea at my grans. The friend said that his dad had an egg every day because he was a miner and needed more to eat than them. His mum frequently went without food to ensure her husband and kids were fed 😥 Women had to be really inventive with the ingredients they had and try to stretch any meat they had by supplementing stews by adding bran, , oats and veg to bulk it up. Also by adding dough balls( dumplings) or scones to stews. The majority of their meals were tatties, veg and plenty bread. They always had soup with copious amounts of bread at every tea time. My dad used to make us fried onions and left over tatties cooked in bacon fat very yummy. How times have changed eh lol.
I was born in Canada in 1960, 15 years post rationing. My mom was born in 1928 and was very conscious of ensuring that everything was used (at least once) and food was never wasted...ever. She had a large garden and she canned most of the veg that came from it with the exception of lettuce and potato. She canned chicken as well. They purchased 1/2 a pig and 1/2 beef every year and she packaged up the meat to save the cost. We had a very large deep freezer. She and Dad made our sausage and she rendered her own lard. She made bread from scratch as well as all her baking. Our main meal of the day was supper, not lunch, though all meals were made by her. Breakfast for Dad always involved eggs (long story related to betting back to base after night bombing Germany and getting eggs) but us kids got varied breakfast often involving cold cereals or oatmeal porridge (still love it) with lots of brown sugar and milk. Lunch was nearly always soup and sandwiches, though she would vary that from time to time. All her soups were made from homemade stock and either canned or frozen veg she'd put up in fall. She also made a mean "empty the fridge" soup where any leftovers that were in danger of becoming a tad aged and nearly spoiled as is were put to use yet again in soup. Supper was our main meal and nearly always involved a meat of some sort, potatoes and at least two veg as she wanted us to have a healthy balance to our meals and veg was less expensive than meat. She grew up in the "Dirty 30s" so called because of the massive drought on the prairies and the Great Depression. She was very economical and fed a family of 4 kids extremely well. I try to follow her example of not letting leftovers go to waste and having a microwave has helped a lot with that. There are, however, some leftovers I refuse to eat thanks to her economy. Her version of goulash (a Hungarian stew) was a nightmare.
I’ve subscribed after watching you for the first time. I love your passion for exploration, your sense of fun & you are a very nice person. Have fun doing the 1950’s party for your friends! 💕
Were eggs not still rationed in the early 1950s in the UK? In the US, especially in the farming communities, we ate basically the same thing over and over, but we had plenty of it. We grew it, we canned it, we froze it, we grew our meat. One pig, and one bull a year. We rendered our own fat. We grew animal feed. AND....we grew cotton, which we worked in during the spring, early summer and fall. School was dismissed for 3 weeks yearly for cotton picking. So we were repetitive with our food, but there was plenty of it and until about 1958 we never ate out.
I understand that rationing went on for several years after the end of World War II - in fact it was slightly worse after the war. This was part of the reason the Labour Party was voted out in 1951 - they got the blame for it.
Shirley Drake eggs were rationed...but you could give up your ration and keep chickens in the garden...my Grandparents did this ...in London...he kept bantam chickens...so they had eggs daily.
I wondered about being able to keep a few chickens in the back yard, or garden, as the Brits call it. One egg a week would be pretty easy to give up in order to have fresh eggs daily. I have often thought about how that strict rationing could be made easier. Rabbits were one way, then there were pig clubs. Chickens out back seemed a logical thing to me. I was shocked when I learned just how strict the English ration was.
I was born in 1951 in the south eastern region of the US. (Tennessee) We had potato chips when I was a kid. Dad was a WWII veteran. If you have seen the American movie from years back with Sally Field, Norma Rae, the movie is about the company My Dad worked for. It’s really quite interesting but too much to write here. Mama planned our meals for the week and shopped accordingly. She said she went for groceries many times with $5. Anyway, you’re videos are very addicting. This one took me back in time...here are the things we had in the 50s typically: meat loaf, pork chops, we had breakfast for supper about once a week, fried chicken or chicken ‘n dumplings, which is one of my favorite foods still, fried potatoes, green beans, corn, okra, salad, jello with fruit in it, banana pudding was a favorite. Spaghetti, fish (my parents and some of their friends went to the lake a lot so that’s when we had fish. Brownies were amazing but they don’t taste like they did back then. They were chewy. Corn flakes was the cereal we had and I remember Grandma always has Sugar Smacks. Keep up the good work. I am of English descent (Yorkshire I think) but I struggle with some of your words. You talk quite fast..or maybe I’m too old to keep up. 😂 later! 🥕🍅🇺🇸
Great channel. I was born in 1958 in Tunbridge Wells and we had quite a choice. Lots of shell fish. Sardines on toast..surprise! Mushrooms in cream sauce on toast. We had lots of soup, and bacon, and porridge, and rice pudding...surprise! We had a teaspoon of rose hip syrup and malted something on a teaspoon which tasted nice. We had chickens, who had eggs of course, and our own vegetables, so fresh veg every day. And fruit, loganberries, gooseberries, Raspberry's, blackberry's, apples, plums. My Mum made a lot of jam and pickles. England invented crisps but we only had the salt packet kind until the mid sixties. Then we had prawn and salt and vinegar. Baked beans were a kids staple food, and Reddy Break and Cornflakes and Rice Krispies. , Soon after came Frostiest and Sugarpuffs. We used to get our coffee from a shop that had a huge, mega, size of a car, grinder which everyone lined up down the street for, and we had loose tea only in a teapot with a cozy on it. Oh yes and after watching our favorite (mostly American) comedy shows, the kids went to bed at six pm and got up at 6am. I have lots more memories, so just let me know if you want more! God bless. Jayne.🙂
I think sit down breakfasts were for the weekends - at least for working class people. My dad used to have two cigarettes and a cup of tea for breakfast before work.
I really enjoyed your video. Talking of never wasting food reminded me that if I didn't finish dinner (I hated peas!), I would get the remains reheated and served up again for the next meal! As an adult, I used to tease my mum about that, but it was how things were. Rationing was part of it but also many people were not nearly as well off financially as they were in later years, so they really would not waste anything.
I LOVE how much research you put into your vids, can you please do a meal time vid with your grandparents where they talk about the war/50s? WOULD BE CLASS, peacccce✌🏻 Edit: and obvs eat 1950s food with them etc. Make a day of it!!! Oh my word pls
This is by far my favourite "series" Grackle has done. I love the chill family homely vibes along with the history lessons. I'd lap this up if she did it for every decade of the 1900s and 2000-2010 even
You’re a breath of fresh air, sweetheart!😘💕 I’m from Scotland, but I’ve done a couple of stints in England too (Air Force Brat), and I have to say that your 1950’s diet was far more English than Scots. There never really has been a ‘United Kingdom,’ as all four countries, and even the same-country locations vary widely in preferences and traditions. Where the English ate a lot of cakes and pastries, in Scotland people were more likely to eat griddle cakes (miniature pancakes) and/or scones. There was free (government) milk at school recess, and school dinners (the main meal of the day) with pudding (hot custard) poured over a square of some kind of unsweetened fruit crumble. We ate a lot of ‘gathered’ food, such as mussels, whelks, brambles, and gooseberries etc, and our parents sent us out to steal apples from nearby orchards🙄, potatoes from farmer’s fields, and we were sent out to fish and hunt (mostly rabbits) for suppers. We also gathered coal that had fallen from railroad cars, and there was always a fair amount at the side of the tracks. I could go on for hours about food alone - haggis, slice, mashed up carrots and turnips, and the tablespoonful of peas served with an egg and chips at tea time (supper). My mother would buy A quarter pound of butter a week, but that was safe for my dad. We kids were given margarine or ‘dropping’ (the same as your grandpa had), but my mother would salt ours, and it tasted good. Bread WAS rationed in our house - everything was until the seventies, but I left home in 1971 and lived (alone) and worked in London for a couple of years, but that’s another story! I stumbled upon your channel by accident, and I’m so glad I did! I thorough enjoyed my visit. Subscribed!😃💃💃💃 Love and All Good Things, Jesse.🌹 www.jesseleighbrackstone.com
The majority of primary children at school went home for dinner - the dinner break was from 12.15 to 1.45 to enable children to get back to school in time (school ended at 4.25pm). I walked a quarter of a mile to and from school twice a day.
Bobbi Lekhmus, absolutely! People certainly didn't spend the kind of time sitting around that they do now. (Well, I should say the people I knew, at least.) No computers, of course, but even television wasn't something that consumed multiple hours every day. In the summer, kids were outside -- playing games, going to the playground, riding bikes -- on nice days our mothers saw us at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but the rest of the time we were gone! I'm still surprised at the number of overweight kids we have now (and adults, too).
The worst thing about growing up in the 1940s/1950s was realising in the 1960s that you didn't notice the rationing because your Mum had gone without to make sure you had your fill. My Mum was a saint in many ways and thinking that people today would want her imprisoned for smacking my arse gives me the horrors.
