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Needless to say, if clothing was very basic, the same applied to food. The only time our family ever ate out was on the annual
day trip to Blackpool, where we enjoyed the fish and chips, peas, bread and butter and cup of tea at Pablo's on the seafront.
I remember Dad being mortified at my lack of manners when I made a chip sandwich in public. Well, we didn't eat out often
enough for me to know that such a practice was socially unacceptable! Fish and chips were pretty cheap back then, and were
usually bought as takeaway from the local fish 'ole.
In later years, when affluence almost caught up with us, we spent a week in a holiday village at Reighton Gap, perched
on a cliff top between Filey and Bridlington on the north Yorkshire coast. Near the centre of this village was the fish shop,
and as a convenience to its customers, flew a flag from its roof when it was open, and they made sure we all knew the motto,
"When the flag is flying the fish are frying". I remember my mother going off her face (playing pop, as we called
it back then) at having to pay 10d for fish and chips there, when they cost 6d at home! Even cheaper than the fish were the
fishcakes that were sold only in Bradford, with towns just a few miles away never even knowing what proper fishcakes were.
While people in other towns ate fishcakes made of mashed potato and flaked boiled fish, our delicacies were made of a thin
slice of fish sandwiched between 2 thin slices of potato, dipped in batter and deep fried. The adults had fish and chips,
we kids had cake and chips, with scraps (bits of cooked batter) on, to fill any empty corners. I guess I was brainwashed,
as for years I was convinced that I didn't like fish except in cakes!
Bread was always eaten with fish and chips, as it was cheaper than extra chips. The fish shops in England never gave
us the vast amount of chips we get over here. I guess because there were no hordes of hungry seagulls in Bradford that needed
feeding.
In fact, bread was eaten with most meals as a filler, with the exception of the Sunday Dinner. This was the main meal
of the week, and was eaten between noon and 1pm on Sundays, while listening to Two Way Family Favourites on the wireless,
a programme where people requested songs to be played for loved ones in the armed forces in Germany, and vice versa. We didn't
have any family in the Army, but we always enjoyed the programme.
Everyone except Mum went to church on Sunday mornings, not so much for religious purposes as to get them out from Mum's
hair while she prepared the feast in peace and quiet. Husbands without kids went to potter around in the garden or to the
pub for a beer to keep out of the way. It was a rare man who overstayed his welcome in the pub at that time of the week,
as no-one wanted to be late for the Sunday Dinner. One husband went down the garden to pull up a cabbage for Sunday Dinner,
and fell dead of a heart attack. A friend asked later, "Goodness gracious! What did you do", upon which the wife
answered, "Well, we had to open a tin of peas!"
As an entrée (we just called it starters) we had slabs of Yorkshire pudding smothered in gravy. Following that (on the
same plate) we had the main course, meat (usually beef, though we often had Yorkshire Pudding with roast lamb or pork, whichever
was cheapest that week), roast or mashed potatoes, and whatever veges were in season (Bird's Eye frozen foods were far into
the future, though the occasional tin of peas made its appearance). This was always followed by dessert, usually a big rice
pudding, very thick, and it could be cut into slices. Sometimes as a great treat (and I'm not saying this in a flash of sarcasm)
we'd have leftover Yorkshire pudding for dessert with golden syrup poured over it. Yum! Bliss! Heaven!
Yorkshire Pudding was a very successful economy measure, as by the time we'd filled up on that very cheap delicacy, we
needed less of the more expensive meat and veges! Then of course we had to leave room for dessert, so quite a small joint
of beef was enough to feed our family of seven.
Afterwards, we kids were shuffled off to Sunday school so that our fathers could settle down in their favourite armchairs
in front of the fire to fall asleep over the Sunday newspapers.
No doubt if we'd been brought up in Australia our staple food would have been Vegemite sandwiches, but the English equivalent,
Marmite, never caught on to the same extent as Vegemite, so our staple food was bread and jam or, even better, bread and dripping.
Dripping was the leftover fat from the roasting meat. This was quite a delicacy in Yorkshire, and even to this day you can
buy dripping teacakes ("Plenty of brown juice please!") from the local baker's shop. God, how I miss those!
Another favourite item was the potted beef (a meat spread), which could be bought by the quarter pound from the grocer,
cheap and tasty and nutritious, a must in sandwiches. On the gourmet side was the potted salmon, also sold loose. I don't
pretend to guess at how much (if any) salmon it contained, but it was totally delicious, and not much dearer than the potted
beef. Feeling bereft at the lack of potted meat in Australia, I have since found a recipe for it and make it frequently,
though I have never found anyone who knows how to make the real potted salmon. Anyone reading this who does have the recipe,
that was a cry from the heart.
Home cooking was the go back then, because of the expense of bought items, and in our house Wednesday was baking day.
Mum would make lots of fairy cakes, which we called buns. She'd make up a basic mixture then divide it into 3 parts, and
add cocoa to one part, mixed fruit to a second and vanilla or coconut to the third. Wednesdays ensured that Mum was never
alone, as she was usually knee deep in kids waiting for apple peel and cores, and hoping to be the one chosen to scrape out
the bowl. Nothing like the taste of raw bun mix! Naturally this led to the old joke: "Mum, can I scrape the bowl out?"
"No, you can pull the chain like everybody else!" When these buns were cooked they were topped with a variety of
items, icing being the base for hundreds and thousands, coconut or Smarties. Some buns were topped with hot jam then dipped
in coconut. This tradition seems to have died right out, a real loss. We also loved it when Mum made the baked egg custards
with the pastry below and nutmeg on the top. These were so popular that she had to make them in a large roasting tin, and
she never had to throw any away.
Other well loved treats were jam or lemon cheese tarts, apple pies, and an enormous marble slab cake, made by chucking
large spoonfuls of plain and chocolate cake mixture alternately into the roasting tin, then running the blade of a knife a
couple times through it to blend the colours just a little, not to mix them together. Mum's special gift was to make vanilla
slices using cream cracker biscuits instead of pastry, and then topping them with icing and hundreds and thousands. In fact,
I never knew any other way to make these treats until later in life.
Another item we thought was the "real" thing was Mum's Cornish pasties, which instead of the traditional filling,
contained mashed potatoes and onion, mixed with tinned corned beef. To this day, these are the only version of Cornish pasty
that I like. Gourmet stuff indeed!
Mum would also make these into a saucer pie version for Dad to take to work for lunch, and I have revived the tradition,
though I cheat by using ready rolled puff pastry sheets. I excuse this on the grounds that a) my state of health doesn't
allow me to make and roll out pastry, and b) I never had my Mum's light touch, and c) that if ready rolled puff pastry had
been around then, Mum would have used it anyway!
Mum's weekly bake-up was so successful that almost every Wednesday, a mysterious figure referred to as Uncle Willie turned
up to sample the goodies. We never saw him at any other time, and I never found out who he was, but he could have been Dad's
uncle or even great uncle, as he was very old.
Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, Mum made the Christmas cake, together with smaller cakes that she called spice
loaves and small spice buns, all from the basic Christmas cake mixture. We were allowed to eat the buns, and slices of one
of the spice loaves as they were made, but any request for more was inevitably met with "No! Leave some for Christmas."
After Christmas had been and gone, it was always the same: "Come on you lot, eat some of this spice loaf or it'll still
be here next Christmas!"
Of course, even in those depressed times, kids had sweet teeth (that sounds strange in the plural, doesn't it?) which
had to be catered for. This brought a strange phenomenon called "coupons" into the equation. After the end of
the war, many things were still rationed, eggs, butter, meat and sugar among them, so people were issued with books of coupons
which had to be produced, along with the necessary cash, to buy certain things, sweets included.
These ration books could not be replaced when lost or used up, so great care had to be employed in their use. Knowing
that you could only have 2 ounces of sweets for the week meant that a great deal of care went into ensuring that you chose
exactly the right sweets. When the ration of sweets was reached, we made do with little triangular paper bags of mixed sugar
and cocoa, into which we dipped a wet finger to transfer the contents to eagerly waiting mouths. What bliss, but how would
kids nowadays react to being told, "No more Mars Bars, here's a bag of sugar and cocoa."? Badly, I suspect!
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