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How things have moved on for the better

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How things have moved on for the better

Postby cherrytree » Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:34 pm

As a much needed distraction from tidying the bedroom , I looked at my four folders of the Cordon Bleu CookeryCourse circa 1970. If anyone had any doubts about how cooking and food had improved over the years then a quick glance at these booklets would ensure they changed their minds.
Quite disgusting over decorated brown looking food. Recipes for pizza all cooked in a flan tin and about 4cm deep. Duck recipes cooked in a brown sludge and ‘ party food’ that was an unenviable mess of brown stodge. No wonder Britain had such a dire reputation for food.
I may have written about this before , but from Delia onwards our attitude to food and cooking has changed out of all recognition and very much for the better.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:50 pm

The pizza thing is always a bit surprising
I remember all sorts of recipes often based on scone dough or even suet pastry but Pizza Express opened in 1965 and Pizza Hut in about 1970 selling actual Italian or Italian-American pizza so the people writing Cordon Bleu recipes would have had access to them, and might well have been to Italy holiday

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Earthmaiden » Mon Nov 16, 2020 3:48 pm

I think that availability of foods from around the world, greater ethnic diversity, going out to eat more, women's lib and TV cookery along with greater travel opportunities have made the real differences.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby cherrytree » Mon Nov 16, 2020 5:59 pm

And even expressions like women’s lib which was part of the era are mercifully heard no more. It’s certainly not a perfect culinary world, but a whole lot better than before. I cannot imagine my Coop near me selling garlic in 1970 for instance! :tongueout

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:56 pm

There’s a sign up in my local Iceland celebrating their 50th anniversary

It was actually Bejam for the first decade or so but in the second half of the 70s I lived near the one on Caledonian Road, North London when they were still quite rare

Oh the exotica! :lol:
Not only Florida orange juice but frozen lime juice concentrate, in the days when limes seemed to be available for about 3 weeks of the year.
Frozen tropical fruit salad from Thailand!
Weird vegetable mixtures! Lamb burgers and actual quarter pounder beef burgers not just the Birds Eye tiddlers! Frozen cheesecake with blueberry topping! Cranberries!

And - drum roll - Black Forest Cakes that listed over like the tower of Pisa on every buffet!

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Pepper Pig » Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:00 pm

And when they were Bejam they mainly sold freezers and fridge freezers which were quite a new thing.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Stokey Sue » Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:04 pm

We had a fridge freezer then, not from Bejam
Nice big fridge with a freezer on top that, as I remember it, wasn’t much bigger than the glove box in the car

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby herbidacious » Mon Nov 16, 2020 7:49 pm

My parents bought a massive chest freezer from Iceland in the mid 70s. Quite abreast with or even ahead of the times for them (late to get a microwave. Very very late to get a video recorder), but it was bought primarily ( I think) so that they could buy whole animal carcasses in one go - which was more economical. Twice a year we all had to suck the air out of blooded plastic (Lakeland) bags of dead flesh. The purchase may also have been prompted by her having to spend a length of time in hospital, and obviously my father was incapable of cooking or preparing dinner for us so she prepped it all before she went in.
My mother got rid of it about 4 years ago, but only because she couldn't manage it anymore. I am sure I said, it was full of newspaper and apples from trees that had been cut down in the early-mid 80s.
The replacement upright (that's pianos, really, isn't it, not freezers...) already needs replacing, really.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Hickybank » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:27 pm

Pepper Pig wrote:And when they were Bejam they mainly sold freezers and fridge freezers which were quite a new thing.

We bought our first freezer from bejam, after 40 years it was still running when we changed it, best freezer ever.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby jeral » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:49 pm

Yeah, they don't build 'em like that any more. My "new" simple under counter fridge a year or so ago (£300), being eco friendly, gets super cold, switches off and becomes ambient room temp before it switches on again. Saving energy is not the first and foremost priority for a fridge methinks.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Hickybank » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:57 pm

jeral wrote:Yeah, they don't build 'em like that any more. My "new" simple under counter fridge a year or so ago (£300), being eco friendly, gets super cold, switches off and becomes ambient room temp before it switches on again. Saving energy is not the first and foremost priority for a fridge methinks.

My thoughts precisely, the bejam one was cavernous compared with my new one

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby karadekoolaid » Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:36 am

And thank goodness they have, Cherrytree!
I´m not a great meat - eater; in fact, I´d say I´m 90% vegetarian. The 70s were DIRE if you didn´t enjoy meat and two veg. I think I went through university on cheese & onion baps and takeaway Madras Potatoes.
I´ve just had a look at an old book from then. There´s a recipe for "Cauliflower with Chutney", which involves boiling the cauli and adorning it with a "chutney" made of ketchup, sugar and chile powder.OMG. As the ad tells us " You´ve come a long way, baby!" :gonzo
I´m not quite sure, but I don´t even think McDonald´s was in the UK in the 70s - it was "Wimpy Burgers". Delicious slices of shoe leather dressed up with sickly ketchup and a gluey bun.
The transformation of food in the UK over the past 40 years has been absolutely apocalyptic, even though I´ve only been there briefly. I´d not be at all surprised if someone told me you can now eat food from any country in the entire world over there. Great! I applaud the move!
And I also applaud those British chefs who are serving traditional, British food - maybe with a few twists -but spectacularly cooked.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Badger's Mate » Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:30 am

Delicious slices of shoe leather dressed up with sickly ketchup and a gluey bun.


As a teenager I thought Wimpy bars were great; the curly frankfurters, tartare sauce, all sorts of glamourous things. Some caffs had the big plastic tomatoes...

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby PatsyMFagan » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:26 am

Pepper Pig wrote:And when they were Bejam they mainly sold freezers and fridge freezers which were quite a new thing.


I bought my chest freezer from Iceland/Bejam just after I moved into this house 20 years ago and years before that I am almost certain I bought my first ever microwave from there too .. it was a monstrous brown thing and the door slid upwards, rather than opening outwards .. :o

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby mistakened » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:51 am

I remember a branch of Iceland opening in our little shopping centre. There was a special offer, a free frozen gateau if you spent £20 (those were the days). A couple of nuns were there, I do not know how much they spent but they did ask for two gateaux, they got them. I mentioned this to a Catholic colleague, she said that they must have been Irish nuns, only they would have the nerve :o

Moira

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Pepper Pig » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:54 am

KK. MCDonald’s opened over here in 1974. I can remember taking my OH’s son to the one at Trafalgar Square whilst OH played in the RAF Band as the Christmas Tree was unveiled and lit.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby scullion » Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:11 pm

karadekoolaid wrote: The 70s were DIRE if you didn´t enjoy meat and two veg.

not for me, i went to a vegetarian school - with italian cooks.
the town where i grew up was quite alternative. 22 churches and no pubs.

karadekoolaid wrote:I´m not quite sure, but I don´t even think McDonald´s was in the UK in the 70s

yes, woolwich 1974 was the first. a chap i was at college with was a fan of mcdonalds and told me of his 'pilgrimage' when they opened. the first i went to was the one on the strand in 77/78 and the only thing i could eat was the apple pie.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby karadekoolaid » Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:21 pm

Woolwich?
Wow, I didn´t know that, Scully. At that time I was still at Goldsmith´s College in New Cross, so I wasn´t far away. It´s quite possible I paid them a visit.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby Earthmaiden » Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:51 pm

I think this proves the point I was making about the time it takes for innovative food to seep down to provincial towns! Our first Macdonalds didn't open until 1983. I remember the day as DD was playing in a youth orchestra in the same shopping centre. The queues were massive.

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Re: How things have moved on for the better

Postby aero280 » Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:05 pm

My niece left school at an early age and went to the Macdonald’s “university” in East Finchley for a few weeks. When she “graduated” she went back to live at home and worked as one of the managers at the 24 hr Macdonalds at Gatwick Airport.

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