General Chat

Lots of memories that overlap on here and remind me of 'oh yes we did that too'. I am sure I now remember that our chicken (before we had turkeys) was a Capon, although Dad raised chickens for a while he never killed them himself. The local butcher always did that. (I guess he was paid for the job). We too had dates, Dad loved them.

I was interested to find out, when our eldest Grandson married, the family he married into in the 90s had a boxing day tradition. they have a family lunch on boxing day but everyone has to take all their vegetable left overs to the house holding the lunch that year and a huge bubble and squeak is concocted and cooked as part of a cold meat lunch. We went once and it was great fun and tasty too.

I was a war baby too and I can remember ration books but my better memories of Christmas are through the fifties. It was always special to have a chicken on Xmas Day, so a change from the usual Sunday roast beef or, more often, lamb which was our favourite. This was always followed by Xmas pud and custard. For late afternoon tea (around 6 pm) Mum would prepare a light salmon salad with thickly buttered bread or buttered tuffies. (Rolls, but Mum always called them tuffies and I still do occasionally so it may be the Liverpool version.) There was always a home-made Christmas cake and, depending how hungry we were there was canned fruit and cream.

I have really fond memories of Boxing Days.

We had moved by the fifties so most of our rellies were far away but Dad had a cousin a few miles away and while Dad had lost his Mum at the age of five, his cousin had lost his Dad early too so they had become close and spent a lot of time together when they were young. We children were all of similar age to Dad's cousin's children and we always enjoyed spending the afternoon of Boxing Day together, taking it in turns each year. Tea was always the same in both houses - salad (almost always salmon or ham), slices of thickly buttered bread or buttered buns (rolls, but in those days they were often called buns locally), and always a home-made trifle.

We would entertain each other and play games.

I have a tape made by Dad's cousin in the fifties of Mum playing the piano and Dad singing. We can all be heard in the background. I had no idea of its existence until my Aunt (Dad's cousin's wife) died and my cousin (as close as a first cousin to me) popped in one evening and gave me a cassette of one of our Boxing Day afternoon's entertainment. His Dad had made it on one of the old round tapes and my cousin had managed to transfer it onto a 'modern' cassette. I am lucky to have it - such a wonderful and thoughtful gesture.

He also gave me copies of all of the information that his Mum had gathered about my Norfolk ancestors which eventually started me on to family history research.

My cousin and I see other often and I am friendly with his wife who is also distantly related to me on another side - through my Lancashire ancestors - something we only discovered a couple of years ago from a chance remark when we were travelling together to one of our local museums. Who knew!

When I was little after WW2 there was still rationing and I still have my Ration Book. Money was short then and my parents' back garden had no lawn, it was all for growing vegetables, so we would have home grown brussels, carrots, parsnips and our own potatoes, mashed and roasted. I seem to remember we would have a Cockerel or a Capon which were considered more flavoursome and bigger than chicken. Mum would make the stuffing which I would be given to mix and we might have yorkshire puds too, but no bread sauce then or pigs in blankets. We usually had a steamed pudding with custard as my parents didn't like dried fruit. I would have Vimto in a wine glass and my parents would drink Port. We had crackers and wore our hats and would play cards or Dominoes after. We never visited family or had them come to us. Mind you my parents had 8 and 7 siblings and were the youngest, so my first cousins numbered over 60! Our Christmas Cake would be a chocolate Yule Log and we would have salmon sandwiches and fruit trifle with cream on top. (another job for me stirring the jelly till it dissolved). Mum would buy petit fours those fruit shapes in marzipan and the fruit slices. Also sugared almonds but no Turkish delight, figs or dates. There would be tangerines in that thin fawn tissue paper. After I was aged 7 they would buy a couple of Turkeys early in the year to raise for Christmas. They were like pets and would follow me around the garden and up the lane! Dad would have to dispatch them in the bathroom and mum would pluck and gut them. I never did know who the second one was for! Boxing Day was usually hotted up Turkey slices in leftover gravy and leftover veg mashed with the remaining mashed potato and fried and browned like bubble and squeak. I can't remember mum throwing much food away and they didn't have a fridge till I was a teenager. I don't know where she stored everything in the small pantry and kitchen that was usual then.

We always had a box of dates. Although it said EAT ME on the lid, no-one ever did!

Newberry Fruits, and Clarnico Peppermint Creams.

We never had turkey, usually a leg of Pork, that lasted days.

My Mum was very easy with the dinner, as she was a cook. Nothing was ever measured, no timings as such, she just KNEW when it was right.

I dont know exactly how she did it, but my dinners never ever taste the same as hers.

Reading through all of your memories has reminded me of the things we did eat after xmas lunch in the afternoon. I remember the orange & lemon slices and my dad always had to have a box of newberry fruits which noone got offered.He had the box to himself!!

We always had a bowl of nuts and yes it was almost obligatory to sit with the waste paper bin and crack walnuts, hazelnuts and the dreaded brazil which were indeed hard to crack.oh and yes a long slim box of figs or dates with the plastic fork..lol

Xmas day tea was a light affair, Always tinned salmon, sliced beetroot, ham or tongue(yeeuk) pickled onions and a cheeseboard(not a lettuce in sight). Grandma would always make a strawberry mousse with jelly & evaporated milk and of course tinned apricots or peaches.

The after eights were never handed out until after 8, grandma was a stickler for that.I also remember my mum making a risotto with white rice, peas & sweetcorn and a white sauce to mix it. She would slice 2 boiled eggs to put on top.

I loved the thick icing and marzipan too.

Yes i do have happy memories of xmas and nobody dared moan. Mum said on xmas eve when she forgot the xmas pudding one year, well we shall do without and have tinned fruit, no fuss made.

Happy times

Florence in the hebrides

I’d forgotten about nuts, but of course they were not part of lunch. Brazil’s, hazelnuts and walnuts.
Dad always had to have one of those boxes of sticky dates.

Homemade Christmas cake with thick marzipan and thick icing - yummy

I was a pre ww2 baby

We always had roast chicken for Christmas dinner

Chicken was a luxury post the war

Mum would buy a dozen day old chicks at Easter and they were in a chicken run in the back garden
Fed on the boiled potatoe peelings mixed with some sort of chicken meal

Out of 12 maybe six would survive


Mum selected two for Christmas.one for us and one for her brother next door as a gift

Dad had the awful task of killing them a week before Christmas and they hung upside down outside the kitchen door . You had to give a wide berth in the dark when you made a visit to the lavvy


One year youngest brother ,born 1945 ,said he wasn’t eating chicken as the bird had been his friend ! Mum said nooo it’s not chicken it’s rabbit so he was ok will eat it

All sounds very callous now but then food was rationed and they did what they had too to feed the family of seven kids

Mum made the Christmas pudding a couple of weeks before and we all had a stir and a wish

They were steamed in pudding basins in a huge cast iron saucepan type thing

They had 8 hours at the start then 4 hours on Christmas Day

Were beautiful.very moist,very rich and great with custard

She would keep one too for New Year’s Day dinner which would a Sunday roast type regardless of what day it fell on


Mum was a great cook .never weighed anything was always by eye and feeling

She had been in domestic service as a teen and worked her way to being a cook general at a boys boarding school where she was a live in

We had turkey, Dad used to pick it up, it was in a cardboard box surrounded by wood shavings. Left to defrost in the garage. Lots of veg, mostly home-grown, stuffing and always a dish of sausage meat, cooked separately. Christmas pudding, which I've never been fond of as an adult. We sometimes went to an aunt at teatime/evening, party games, sandwiches, Christmas cake, jelly and ice cream!

Always had - dish of Brazil nuts, there was always one nobody could crack, Turkish Delight in a wooden box, tangerines, After Eights. And plenty of booze, plus a bottle of Advocaat!

We never had a starter. Just Turkey, sprouts and roast potatoes followed by the flaming pud. I can't remember if we had sausages or not.

My most abiding memory is of Mum, every year hating each and every chestnut she had to cook, peel and turn into stuffing.

yes Yuk Maggie. did anyone but my Dad actually like them?

'New Berry Fruits' we always had a box of 'New Berry Fruits'! YUK.

Yes, my early memories of Christmas are a sort of mixture of Sylvias and Gwyn's Born in 1940 so mid WW11, We had a large chicken ( a few years raised by my Dad in a pen in the garden. Fresh veg grown in the garden, roast potatoes, stuffing, no pigs in blankets though, Christmas pudding or mince pies. No money in the pudding though. probably with evaporated milk.

We had tangerines in the afternoon, nuts when they became available, Had to let Mum have the brazils because they were her favourites. There was turkish Delight and orange and lemon slices but I never liked either of those, I remember a tin (small) containing toffees in my stocking. Tea was cake and mince pies. Fruit cake made by Mum and decorated by Dad, mince pies made by Mum and, because neither my Mum or sister liked fruit cake, my Mum always made a walnut cake, a recipe I use to this day.

Boxing day we had all Mum'd sisters and brothers and wives and husbands that were available for a big tea/supper of cold meats (tongue and ham and salad followed by trifles and tinned fruit and the rest of the cakes. Mum would lay the table and decorate it in our fairly big kitchen diner and light candles.

I remember the black currant but only my Dad had a sherry Mum was T Total always, as I got into my teens I was allowed a babycham!! Mum had pinneapple juice.

And I remember the removal vans with the students hanging off the back ready to leap off to deliver parcels which would be wrapped in brown paper and ties with string.

Christmas food started at breakfast time, when I was a child.
Each January / February Mum always made marmalade with Seville oranges to last until the next year, but for Christmas Day, we opened a jar of Roses lime marmalade. This was spread on freshly cut bread with butter.

Christmas dinner was usually just immediate family, my parents and I plus my brother and sister.
No starter for us. We never had turkey. Our Christmas meat was a large chicken, which had lived on my grandparents' land in Wales. Grandmother would prepare it and 'dress' it ready for the table, then parcel it up and post it to us in Hampshire.
On Christmas Eve, my sister and I would wait outside our house for a furniture lorry to arrive. That is what Royal Mail used for parcel post at that time and still used for many years, certainly into 1960s, when I worked on the Christmas post, when in 6th form.
The chicken always arrived.
With the chicken, we ate parsley and thyme stuffing. Mum considered sage and onion stuffing was only 'correct' with pork, so we had to go along with her choice. I think she made the stuffing from breadcrumbs and herbs from the garden. We had roast potatoes and parsnips Brussels sprouts and carrots.
Afterwards we had homemade Christmas pudding, which we children had helped to prepare in the previous weeks. We would help weigh out dried fruit or grate carrot to help with sweetness ( a legacy left over from wartime rationing) All members of the family would have a stir of the pudding mixture before it was steamed for many hours and water ran down the kitchen windows and walls.
On Christmas Day, when the pudding was steamed again to heat before serving, Mum would wrap 5 sixpences in greaseproof paper and insert them at equal spaces round the pudding, so that we all got a prize, when it was served with custard.
We had crackers on the table, which were pulled before we ate and paper hats were worn, throughout our meal.
The adults drank a small glass of port and the children had similar glasses containing blackcurrant cordial, so that it looked the same.
Dinner was always about 1 pm.

During the afternoon, we might eat tangerines, which came wrapped in tissue paper printed with colourful pictures on it.
Dates would be available, in a long box with a wooden fork.
Dad might have dried figs and there was also Turkish Delight, which came in a box made of very thin wood. A box of jelly sweet orange and lemon slices completed the treats for us.
At Tea time we had homemade Christmas cake, which we children might have helped decorate with a snow scene and appropriate figures.

My parents always did their best to make the day special for us and so I have many happy memories of those times.

EVERY year my Nan would forget to do the gravy and every year she'd rush to open a tin of cream of chicken soup to use!! We'd have the chicken and small sausages the usual veg for the main meal. Trifle and cake etc was available. then in the evening other relatives would turn up and it was a salad dinner....and of course December wasn't the time for salad so the tomatoes were always horrid :-)
Always more than enough to feed an army and we'd all crowd around a small table with different size chairs to sit on.

Yes Sylvia, you are right about cold meat slicing a lot thinner. I do remember that because on Boxing day we either had mums family, her sister bro etc or we went to one of theirs for another dinner. But it was cold turkey, or beef or maybe pork. It was thin so it stretched round to sometimes feed 12 or 14 and us children got one roast potato and a scoop of mashed potato and also our plate was smaller than the adults.

But I never felt deprived and never went hungry.
I forgot about the xmas cake. Yes we always had that about 4pm and a mince pie.

Its funny this year because I always cook the turkey on xmas eve and prepare the veg etc but this year daughter has stated that she is incharge of the veg and doing the pigs in blankets. Its really lovely as in 27 years, it has always been left to me to do everything.We do make a good team. i must have trained her well.

Florence in the hebrides

Florence .................

very thought provoking!

I'm older than you, my childhood began during WW2, when meat was rationed (also for a couple of years after the war was over), fruit from overseas almost never occurred, and veggie choice was limited. You filled up on potatoes!

My parents were both born before WW1, and were old enough to be well aware of what was happening then as both left school at age 12 during the war, and were young marrieds during the Great Depression. Both called for tightening the belt and make food stretch.

I'm certain that those two events, plus WW2, had a great deal to do with how they lived, and raised my brother and I even into the 1960s. My brother was born in 1929, so we were very much single children in one sense as he was so much older than I was. We had quite different upbringings. He left school at 14 and started work before I even went to Nursery School.

We never had a turkey at Christmas, it was always roast chicken with sage and onion stuffing, boiled or roast potatoes, sprouts, tinned fruit or very rarely Christmas pudding, and a Christmas cake in mid-afternoon.

We never had a starter, and all food was cooked from scratch by my mother.

The meal never varied, even after my brother married and had children ........ one chicken had to stretch to feed everyone.

I never felt that I was deprived ........ even though we never had a hot roast on Sunday until I went to university at age 19. Mum always bought the beef or (rarely) lamb on Friday, cooked it on Saturday evening, and we ate it cold for Sunday lunch .............. because thinner slices could be cut when cold and the roast went further.

The first time I had turkey for Christmas was in 1967, after we married.

I have been thinking about when i was around 9 or 10 and what we had for our xmas day lunch/dinner compared to today.

Well we had a starter which was always either a tin of cream of chicken soup or cream of tomato. No prawn cocktail and smoked salmon then.

Main lunch was a full roast turkey dinner with the usual roast potatoes, sprouts carrots, & peas, sage & onion stuffing and gravy.

Desert was traditional xmas pudding steamed in a pan of water with either cream or ice cream or tinned fruit.

That menu was pretty much repeated every year for many years.

The veg we had was whatever veg was in season.

With the lorries blocked from travelling to France, supermarkets are saying they will be short on some fresh salad items and citrus fruits. No doubt this will cause people to panic if they cant buy a lettuce!

We have had this discussion before about how years ago we ate veg and fruit that was in season and yes we did not have the access we have today to more exotic items from far flung places.

We really do not need to have a food shortage as the warehouses are fully stocked with tins and dried foods. I personally think we all need to rethink the way we shop and eat.I do try wherever possible to buy fruit & veg from the uk. Strawberries from Turkey at this time of year are tasteless and expensive so I refuse to buy them.

I know 50 years ago etc, we did not have access to some of the more exotic fruits and yes i guess we have got used to having them in the last say 15 years but it is annoying me greatly hearing people moan because they cant get this or that.

Im sure on here, not one of us will or do go hungry. Yes of course some of us struggle and are on tight budgets , myself included but we all get a meal of
something everyday.

So if you shop in the next 2 days and cant get this or that, think of something else to have instead.There is always an alternative.

Personally i think many people over buy their groceries at this time of year and far too much food is wasted either because we over estimate when we cook or food in the fridge expires and we throw it away.

Also i think the portions we had when we were younger were much smaller than today because our parents had less money to spend and therefore cooked only the amount they needed to feed the family.
My mother would count the number of potatoes...ie 2 per person x4 so 8 is all she cooked!

Florence in the hebrides