Food (part1)

When I talk about the food we used to eat in the fifties, it fits in well with one of the stories that the newspapers are suddenly making much of lately. It definitely provides a contrast. When I was a child, "Thou shalt not leave the food on your plate" had the force of the eleventh commandment and I knew that I had to do my best to finish my meals. Indeed, if I dared to leave so much as a crust of bread or a solitary brussel sprout on my plate, I was told to think of all the starving children in Africa. My unspoken retort "They are welcome to it." would mostly remain unspoken as I would contemplate the logistics of sending the sloppy, unwanted remains of my dinner all the wayto Africa. At quite a young age, I decided that that particular operation was not worth the trouble, and I proceeded to pay as much atttention to it as the old chestnut, "Eat up your greens dear, they will make your eyes sparkle" Years later I tried that tactic out on my grandson, then aged four or five. When he had dutifully finished his cabbage, he blinked his wide eyes at me and asked in all innocence, "Are my eyes sparkling now Nana?"
For Sunday dinner, at least when we had visitors, we would eat in the living-room cum my grandmother's bedroom. The one huge flap of the highly-polished mahogony table would usually be up anyway, either for my jigsaw puzzles or my grandmother's sewing. When visitors came, all traces of these activitieswould be swept out of sight, and on a pristine white table-cloth, the best dinner service would be laid. Perhaps I should say the remains of the dinner service that my Grandmother had received as a wedding present in the early years of the nineteenth century, in Edwardian times, in fact. But one by one, over the years, the serving dishes and the soup tureen had got broken, until all that was left were the dinner plates and a couple of gravy-boats. Even the glaze on the plates was all cracked due to the family habit of putting them in the oven to warm, and often forgetting them until they were too hot to hold without a teacloth or an oven glove.
We usually had a Sunday roast of some description. I can see andalmost smell the aroma from the joints of pork even now. It would be covered in delicious crackling and served up with home-made apple sauce and Paxo sage and onion stuffing. Joints of beef would be expertly carved into wafer-thin slices with a knife as sharp as a samurai sword. They had been sharpened to perfection on a rectangular bit of stone which, even then, was wearing a bit thin in the middle because of all the use it had had over the years. A small dish of bright-yellow strong English mustard was always on the table when beef was served , and you would ladle out thecontents with a tiny spoon. Brown, continental mustards had not yet found their way to British tables, and neither had all the spices and herbs that we use today. Salt and pepper were the only condiments we had, and they were sprinkled liberally on everything. No-one had heard that salt was bad for you. My grandmother always used to keep a small pepper-pot in her handbag though. "Just in case..." she would explain. But she would never say in case of what.
As for cooking herbs, a small pot of mint on our kitchen window-sill would hang precariously to life, even when most of its foliage was picked to make mint sauce for the leg or shoulderof lamb
we weregoing to have that Sunday. First of all, it all had to be chopped impossibly fine and mixed with a teaspoonful of caster sugar. Then vinegar would be poured ove itand itwould be left to mature for at least twenty-four hours. We didn't use mint for anything else though. We had never heard of mint tea for example.
My grandmother did love her cup of tea. At least five times a day she would sit down and sip the steaming brown liquid in utter contentment. In fact, I can hardly recall her drinking anything else at all. Tea bags still lay in the future, back in the fifties. Instead, tea was purchased in small packets about the size and shape of a box of After-Eight mints. There were all sorts of makes, like Lyons, Tetley's and PG Tips, and prices. I cannot remember tea being rationed, but I suppose it must have been. But as it definitely belonged to the necessities of London life, and was not a mere luxury, I should imagine they took it off rationing as early as possible.
My mother loved her cup of tea too. Indeed, at the office where she worked as a typist, the tea lady was an extremely important person.
Even I, as quite a small child was taught to enjoy tea, sweet, milky and not too hot, served up in a white enamel mug. It was back then that I began a habit, which I have never been able to wean myself from, namely dunking my biscuit in my tea. And worse still , that socially questionable practice was handed down to my children, and now my grandchildren. Even if they have not got a cup of tea of their own, they ask if they can dunk their biscuits in mine. What can I say!
The biscuit barrel was always kept on top of the radio in the kitchen. It was literally a barrel-shaped container, with wood-effect on the outside, and china inside. The shiny metal lid was not at all air-tight, but just rested loosely on top, ensuring that the contents would be stale by the end of the week. Not that the biscuits often lasted that long, although we only had one packet a week, and I wasonly allowed a couple a day. It was only when I was ill or absent, that it was really put to the test. I can remember custard creams and chocolate wholemeals, as digestives were called then, being the height of luxury, but usually we just had bog-standard rich tea or shortcake. Really the british biscuit has not changed much since the fifties. That is a nice thought.