General Chat

Ann, I have three (different sizes) of those covers with beads as weights but these are made from gauze and decorated with a couple of lines of stitched holly-decorated lines across them. An Oz friend made them for me one Christmas about 35 years ago.

I use them a lot, particularly in the summer even though, one summer a couple of years ago, I bought checked, elasticated, plasticised covers that do the same job.

Joylouise There are still a few prefabs around this area, They look as though they were purchased as many have been modified with ne roof etc. And mostly they still look good from outside. (I have really only seen them from the bus.)

JoyLouise,

We had a meat safe.
My grandfather converted it from our old gas cooker oven and replaced the door centre with fine metal gauze. Our bungalow faced more or less North / south, so the coolest place was in the front garden, just under the main bedroom window. Cheese and bacon would be kept in there too, I recall, but bottles of milk were kept in a bucket of water, where a teacloth would wick water over it to lower the temperature. Once open, the jug of milk would be kept in a cool place and the top covered by a net weighted with glass beads.
No fridge in our family until late 50s. Prior to that, a freshly made jelly would be carefully carried from kitchen to front bedroom windowsill, so that it had more chance to set.
Like you, I can't remember anyone taking food from outside the house.

Vegetables were grown in the back garden and were harvested as needed, so generally no storage problems.

You brought back some lovely memories, Sylvia. :-D

My OH's wonderful mother also had one of those countertop dishwashers around the same time as yours.

I remember the marble slabs - Gran had one and so did Mum, the latter slab being in a proper pantry, shelved, with the marble slab low down along one wall. (Thinking about it now, some designer must have remembered that heat rises and built the pantry accordingly.)

I never knew of anyone else who had a meat safe in the back yard but I'm sure there must have been others. The safes must have worked as I don't recall anyone ever being ill because of badly-stored food. The cupboard under the stairs (as in our Liverpool house) was the place where some hid during air raids but I think the only protection would have been from flying debris.

You'll remember the prefabs, no doubt. My aunt, uncle and cousins lived in one for a few years when I was very young. (My OH's family had one too but that was well before I knew them.). Talk about all mod cons - including a built-in kitchen with a built-in fridge, almost unheard of then. 'Tis such a shame they were not brick-built, but that was the main reason why they were speedily erected all around the country and the reason why they were demolished when the constituents were found to be unsafe.

Food storage has certainly come along a trot!

I can't remember what the cool storage was at the first house we lived in, it was a mill-town Victorian redbrick terrace house, door opening straight on to the street, 2 up and 2 down. There was a basement that I was not allowed to go down intto, so maybe Mum kept stuff down there.

The house we moved to when I was 11 was a much older stone-built double fronted house, 3 rooms down (living, dining/family, and kitchen, all large), 3 bedrooms and a bathroom up. The front door opened into a small-ih hall with the stairs goind straight up directly opposite.

The kitchen at the back was in an added-on brick built addition that stretched the full width of the old house, with the bathroom and a store room above. There was an opening from the inside wall of the kitchen to a pantry under the stairs in the older part of the house. Open shelves on one side and at the back under the low part of it. There was a large marble slab on one shelf where we kept dairy food, while other food that needed a little cooler than the open room eg (some veggies, eggs) were kept on the back shelf. No windows of course, and only a dim light bulb!

Things were kept really cool on that marble slab!

I didn't see a fridge until I moved into digs at university about 1961, and not a dishwasher until I went to OH's house for the first time around 1965 .... his parents had a small counter-top one.

Our previous house (Victorian) had a basement where some earlier owner had built a proper wine cellar, with racks etc. We didn't use it. There was also a pantry, which was always cold and had a marble shelf.

We now live in an upstairs flat, but the stairs (usually on the outside of the house in this part of the world) have been boxed in and there is another door at the top. In the winter when it is very cold (like this year) the space at the bottom of the stairs makes a very useful overflow fridge.

Some of fruit and vegetables are vac packed so they can put dates and bar codes on them, we prefer fresh to frozen and only buy what we need, there is nowhere cold in our house apart from the fridge so there is very little waste.

Yes, Sylvia, our foodstuffs, fruit and vegies come with either a 'use by' or a 'best before' date stamp. There are moves afoot to do away with that for fresh fruit and vegetables because people sticking rigidly to that date stamp has resulted in too much wastage.

I recall my Grandmother having a meat safe in a shaded spot in her backyard in the 1940s-1950s. It was never locked so she was lucky that nothing was ever stolen from it.

Caroline ...... the cold cellar was a good idea.

We have something similar ........... a previous owner built a cupboard with shelves and open shelving against the front wall in our basement. Most is below ground level at that point (and the shelving goes under the front steps!).

The furnace is in the same part of the basement, bt well away from the shelving, and i is always cool back there.

Great wine cellar in the lower part of the cupboard, and cool. We actually keep mainly jams/jellies, cereals and tinned food down there, but OH's homegrown potatoes and kiwi fruit also have a home there.

We tend not to buy veggies and fruit in large quantities, and usually have room in the fridge for them.

The other useful thing that someone did was to build a cupboard at the opposite end of the shelves for storage of out of season clothes.

I have a cold cellar; under the front steps; fresh fruit and veg keeps quite well in there during winter. I even have fresh fruit juice in there.....okay and the odd bottle of wine....

Do your foods have "Use by" date OR "Best before" date???

Our foods are now almost all marked "Best before" date .................. in fact, I don't think I have seen any fresh food, dairy, meats, etc that isn't "Best before". Even the tinned foods I have are "Best before"

That only means that the producer/maker is not guaranteeing the taste/flavour etc after that date.

They're covering their backsides so no-one can complain that (whatever) didn't taste right 5 days after that date ................... it does not mean it's bad as soon as that date has passed.

In fact, most fresh foods will be good for days and days or weeks after "Best before" ................. often depending on how the consumer has stored it.

Mum used to buy a large Webbs lettuce, strip off the outer leaves and steam them a bit along with grated carrot. Season well and sprinkle with grated cheese to serve.

Same here. I just cut off the shoots and any green and discard any that have started to soften. I only peel ones to mash or roast. I peel swede and parsnips, but not young carrots for roasting. Most things like cabbage are fine after a week or two in the fridge if you peel the outer leaves off. As has been said, broccoli, cauli and sprouts don't keep so long. Lettuce keeps well if you cut it with a plastic rather than a metal knife and everything keeps better if the fridge temperature is kept really cold without freezing. Mum never wasted anything so neither do I. I cut up the peeled broccoli stalks (if not tough) and cabbage stalks and use the cauli leaves.

same as grannyfranny really. Green parts of spuds are poisonous - no ifs, no buts. Been a warning out recently about spuds and when not to use ie green, sprouting, wrinkled skin etc. I've planted sprouting ones many times and always had a good crop. Grow em in old patio tubs/bags

I don't go to Tesco but I will check Sainsbury's the next time I go there. I wonder how those that are obsessed with dates will cope, some might not want to decide for themselves :-(

It's either Tesco's or sainsbury's, that have stopped putting a 'use by' date on a lot of their veg.

I don't peel potatoes for roasting, or jackets, of course, nor new potatoes for boiling.
I always peel for mash.
I always peel other root veg, though carrots are ok if you are roasting them. Otherwise they produce a lot of scum when you boil them.

Gwyn with poatoes it depends, some I leave the peel on and some I peel, Always peel for roast though. I can't actually eat the peel of jacket potatoes and it gives me stomach pains. Also depends on the carrots, some I just scrub and some I use the peeler very thinly.

Do you all peel potatoes and carrots?

I remember a domestic science teacher telling us students that some of the best nutrients are just under the skin of these vegetables, so my family were brought up with un-peeled boiled potatoes and carrots that were just scrubbed clean.
I always peeled potatoes for roast potatoes though and would cut out green or sprouting shoots before using the rest of them.

People have become obsessed by dates on food items, in my opinion it is not necessary but is used as a safeguard for shops etc, there is a lot of food waste by households and by what shops, restaurants and the like throw away.