Back to the 50's


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Four points about the programme:

1. the woman had no cooking experience. A 50s woman woiuld have been taught in school and by her mother. She should have had a bit of advice before attempting to cook ration food.

2. I can't believe that people of their age had never seen nor used a can opener like that one before. I think it was a bit of exaggerated fumbling especially for the telly.

3. The school kids turned their noses up at the sight of the school dinner. The way they did it in a co-ordinated manner looks like they were given a cue. Note that they ate all the food after the nose turning bit!

4. In our house, along with everyone else I knew, we had to wait for dad to get home so that we could all sit down to our tea together. Non of the "Dad eats alone" as claimed by the programme.

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Here's a photo of me and my Grandma circa 1950

Liver and onions? I hated it when I was a child but can't get enough now. Meals in the fifties? Stew, egg and chips, sausage and mash, anything my mum could get cheap. And sweets were still ration

Banjo, my thoughts almost exactly. But I have been left there even longer - we stopped coming up to Nottingham regularly when my elderly parents finally moved to live with us in East Anglia in 1981.

I bought some Bisto for the first time in many years, it doesn't taste like the Bisto of years back, I took the contents list off the side of the packet, and ordered them, minus the caramel colouring, and can make a better gravy mix than Bisto does.

For years I've been making my own gravy from stock, and baked flour. I bake plain flour until it starts turn brown. If I used straight flour the gravy tastes floury.

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I have always been very proud of my gravy. I do use some bisto, but ONLY as a coloured thickener. The same as I would otherwise use cornflour. Sometimes both. Gravy needs to be made from a PROPER STOCK,, which Bisto is NOT. Bisto has no taste.

Yesterday the wife made gravy with nothing but bisto granules (we had run out of powder and the shop only had granules). It was awful.

She's a great cook, but dreadful at gravy, but that's because she does not understand... she likes her food very dry.

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It's impossible to make gravy without the stock, anyone who disputes this can compare real gravy to none stock "sauce" as that's what it is without stock.

I stopped using corn flour a long time back, my gravy tastes better using baked flour as a thickener. I now use Potato starch, wheat starch and onion powder as the thickeners, makes delicious gravy when added to the meat stock.

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Mum always used gravy salt and Bisto plus the meat juices or boiled potato water sometimes.

Over here we use Maggi rich gravy mix, it's in a commercial size package of 2 kg but tastes bloody great especially on fresh chips with a bread roll and butter.

Went into a cafe once and had chips and gravy, the gravy was so good I asked what they used and that's how I got onto Maggi.

And checking the label as I always do nowadays there are no nasties or preservatives etc in it.

I'm allergic to msg flavour enhancers so have to watch for this.

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108 Rosetta Road, we had no hot water till Sept 1962 then when I signed my indentures for the gas board, I could get an Ascot over sink water heater for mum at a discount and fit it myself. Mind you I was still wiping my backside on last nights Evening Post. One vivid memory was the smell of the paraffin lamp in the outside loo in a winter to stop it freezing.

I can rememebr Rosetta Road and a lot of people around there from when we had a shop on Nottingham Road............

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108 Rosetta Road, we had no hot water till Sept 1962 then when I signed my indentures for the gas board, I could get an Ascot over sink water heater for mum at a discount and fit it myself. Mind you I was still wiping my backside on last nights Evening Post. One vivid memory was the smell of the paraffin lamp in the outside loo in a winter to stop it freezing.

I've got very much the same memory from the Medders, we did have soft bog-roll though. When we went to my Grans on Commercial Rd in Bulwell, I remember all the toilets were together in a line, a bit of a traipse across the other side of a big yard. Newspaper was the wipe of choice there though, I only went the once!

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As a comedy it nearly made it, as a serious program no way.

He would have to be a bank manager or other professional to live in a house like that.

#48 Banjo never had crow but grey squirrel is very nice like a cross between chicken and rabbit. Small of course so you need a few of them but as they are classed as a pest that's not a problem.

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Hey Banjo, "waarrapend" to Gravox?? Wasn't as good as Bisto, but it made a reasonable substitute.

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#57 Blondie I left Rosetta Road in 1964, where was your shop?

It was on Nottingham Road, we took it over in 1986 after Gordon Ingham left,modernised it and put in a butchery( my hubby was a butcher at Cinderhill for years) - we were there 10 years....was a hairdresses after we left...........

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The family certainly enjoyed their week in the 60s didn't they! I reckon the kids now know why we all rave about that particular decade.

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In the 70s programme tonight I noticed the comment that pubs were still allowed to refuse to serve women on their own. I did not know such a rule existed!

I remember the power cuts in 1972. I was a student doing my postgraduate teacher training year and living on the 19th floor of the hall of residence. Climbing the stairs was a challenge as you had to keep count of the floors. It was often too dark to see numbers painted on the wall. A better idea was to stay in the bar until the lights came on again!

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I have recorded it to watch after the invasion has gone away on Saturday.

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Just a reminder that "Back To... " is the 80s tonight BBC 2 8pm. It includes gadgets sych as microwaves and also pre-packed sandwiches and new foods that invaded the supermarkets.

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