{"id":6681,"date":"2012-09-26T15:57:15","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T15:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/?p=6681"},"modified":"2012-09-26T15:57:15","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T15:57:15","slug":"childhood-food-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/?p=6681","title":{"rendered":"Childhood Food Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading an article by Anne Widdicombe about her childhood food memories and as I spent a weekend with my brothers recently I thought I would collect some food memories from them.<\/p>\n<p>Like a lot of childhood things the food on the table was taken for granted.<br \/>\nOur mother was Irish, I remember her telling me that food rationing didn\u2019t happen in Dublin and she and her family never ate anything out of a can.<br \/>\nOf course when she came over to England that all changed!<\/p>\n<p>On Friday we always had fish of some kind but our favourite was her tuna fish pie.<br \/>\nI still make it some times as does one of the brothers.<\/p>\n<p><em>Take a can of tuna in oil, mum used to drain the oil into the bin! I use the oil to make the sauce. Empty the fish into the bottom of a pie dish breaking it up a little. Cook some frozen peas for a few minutes, drain and add them to the dish.  Make a white sauce and pour it over the fish &#038; peas.  Cook some carrot slices and put them over the top of the sauce, cover with lovely creamy mashed potato and put it in the oven until bubbling and golden.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Soup: always tomato; from a can. My favourite was  Cream of Mushroom but I could only have it when I was poorly.<br \/>\nActually I loved mushrooms but we were never allowed them, they were too expensive.<br \/>\nIrish stew with pearl barley of course. Mum had a huge brown earthenware pot that she put everything in and then cooked the stew in the oven.<br \/>\nThen there was her lovely hot pot that she cooked on top of the stove. She discovered something else that came in a can. Now this is something I will make if one of the brothers comes over because it reminds us all of our childhood, and the boys all love it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cut up potato and carrot into large chunks, and onions into quarters. Tip them all into a pan of water; add salt and bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer until the potatoes are cooked. Drain off the water and while the pan is still hot add a tin of Marks and Spencer\u2019s Stewed Steak in Gravy. It had to be Marks &#038; Spencer\u2019s she said because it had no fat! (She would add that in a moment.) Stir everything around to break up the potato a little and heat the meat through. Add a huge slice of butter (this was the days before we had cholesterol don\u2019t forget!) and serve with bread and butter.<\/em><br \/>\nStill gorgeous, if you\u2019re not veggy and can ignore the health of your arteries for a while.<\/p>\n<p>Junket, what was that??? Dad used to make it.<br \/>\nI remember the tablets but no recollection of any ingredients or method. None of the brothers can remember anything about it. Perhaps it was a bad dream?<\/p>\n<p>I expect someone will tell me? <\/p>\n<p>I bet you were wondering what picture I would put with this post? I saw this whilst looking for something and it brought back a memory for me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/cabbage.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/cabbage.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"cabbage\" width=\"500\"class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6686\" srcset=\"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/cabbage.jpg 1512w, https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/cabbage-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/cabbage-1024x731.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1512px) 100vw, 1512px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Strong green cabbage! Not everybody&#8217;s cup of tea but I absolutely adore it.  Many years ago I spent a lot of time driving up and down the motorway to stay with my mother during the week while she had a long spell of poor health. My youngest brother did every weekend. We used to pass each other on a Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p>In the week Mum &#038; I lived on ready meals from M&#038;S and I used to buy, among other vegetables, ready sliced mixed strong greens every day because they are fabulous and good for you and I never bought such a luxury for my self (the ready sliced bit not the greens!).<br \/>\nBy about Thursday Mum would say to me &#8220;When are you going home Miriam?&#8221; I would tell her, very gently, &#8220;On Friday afternoon Mum&#8221;<br \/>\nWith a beautiful twinkle in her eye she would say.&#8221;Good, then I can have something other than cabbage with my meal&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Do you have childhood food memories?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading an article by Anne Widdicombe about her childhood food memories and as I spent a weekend with my brothers recently I thought I would collect some food memories from them. Like a lot of childhood things the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/?p=6681\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-true-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6681"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6691,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6681\/revisions\/6691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miriamrogers.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}