Oh my days! This was aired just a month and a half before I was born on 13 April 1973. As a very young child, I can remember my Dad getting a family friend to install a 'town gas' water geyser in our kitchen, because the electricity was turned off so frequently in the mid-70s.....Memories ❤
Not sure if it was 1973 but at one point in the early 1970s during strikes there was a timetable of when our electricity would be turned off. So if that was your only energy and it coincided with a mealtime Mary's newspaper and towel method would have been helpful. People literally did go shopping in stores which had no electricity and were lit with candles.
Pay freezes...and inflation....power cuts...and as they said food prices going up weekly .. and people keep saying things were better before we joined the common market..EU.. They just need to watch this..
@TheRenaissanceman65 another armchair historian. WRONG . Fuel problems in the late 70s were caused by OPEC colluding to increase oil prices which made hugely expensive
I tried this recipe more than once, it's actually really quite nice. Although I used two stock cubes and dissolved them in the cold water and flour because the first time I found that the tomato flavour was a little strong - but I must say it did cost a lot more than 65p LOL (even the equivalent 40 odd years later hehe)
I don't. If a casserole looks a bit anaemic, I just chuck in a tin of baked beans. The sauce enrichens it, and the beans add thickness, texture and flavour.
You are forgetting that tip was for the times we had electrical powercuts every night. We had strikes galore then. And btw, hardly anyone had microwaves, probably not one.
Judith Chalmer and Mary Berry were cute back then. I recall watching Widh You Were Here in 1989s with mum and dad and in those days that program was seen as a bit risqué as they were always showing nudists , which on 1970s was embarrassing for a boy
She meant 65p (pence) which is worth a bit more than 65 cents. I just used the Bank of England inflation calculator, to work out that in 2024, that’s about £6.75 ($8 or $9 US, maybe). If you’re careful, and used store brand ingredients, you could do this meal in England for about £6.75 now. Mary used Heinz soup. Considering that in 1973, many people were on strike and earning less money, perhaps a store brand would have been a wiser choice! I was 4 during most of 1973, and actually although I remember the drought and heatwave in the UK in 75 and 76, which caused a huge water shortage, I don’t remember the power going off every day and everyone cooking on camping stoves.
@@MarkPMus I was 11 in 1973 so remember it clearly. Towns were divided into zones and from memory, I think cuts in my town were divided into 6 blocks of 3 hours ( 6am to 9am , then 9am to noon and so on to midnight) I don’t think there were any cuts through the night. If your zone was scheduled for an evening cut that was the most inconvenient one (6pm to 9pm). As a child I actually quite enjoyed the drama of it and remember playing board games by candlelight and reading with a torch but it was a pain if the cut was 3pm to 6pm because it meant missing children’s television which ran from 4-6.
£6.73 in 2023, according to the inflation calculator. You might be able to cobble together those ingredients for £6-£7 today especially if you use discount supermarkets and store brand soup instead of Heinz.
I thought it would cost more today, but 65p then is the equivalent of £12 I've just checked the prices of these items and the total is only £7.20. Where's that cost of living crisis, then? Food has become cheaper!
