5 Childhood Food Memories - not another Meme?!

This meme, sent to me by farmgirl, asks for five food-related things you miss from your childhood. I am not sure I really miss all these things, but thinking about each one of them brings back some amusing memories all the same:

1: Spaghetti Bolognese and Chips
For a while, my mother was a single parent and so she had to go out to work. She was a nurse and she worked some strange shifts. Luckily we had lots of great neighbours and one family or another would always volunteer to look after us at those times. I liked going to Mrs Snowdon's house not only because she had two great daughters, Debbie and Kate, the same age as my sister and me, but because she used to make us spaghetti bolagnese with chips. (For chips read 'fries'.) Yes it really is true, Mrs Snowdon would first cover each plate (she had some fancy oval ones, I think) with the chips (fries) and then hide them under the spaghetti. On top of that she would put the sauce. The chips would just peek out from under the pasta whilst getting all soggy from the damp heat. I loved the double carbohydrate combination. Of course, we would go home and beg for a repeat of this dish, but mum would always put her foot down, refuse and insist that pasta and poatotes just don't mix.


2: Milk & Sugar in my Tea
In a very un-English manner, I have been drinking my tea unsweetened and black for almost 20 years now. It was not always so. As I child I preferred it with milk and sugar with the emphasis on sweet. I remember, when I was about eleven, I went away for the weekend with the Girl Guides. I'll never forget, over breakfast one morning, competing with the other girls, to see which of us could put the most sugar in our tea and still drink it. I think I got up to eleven spoonfuls. Oh dear.


3: Make Your Own Sherbet
Talking of sugar - it seems kids have an infinite capacity for it. When we were kids, we loved our Sherbet Dip Dabs and our Sherbet Fountains (excluding the licquorice part), just fine. But the packets were small and they didn't last long enough. We needed a better price/performance ratio. What could we do? Well, instead of spending our precious pocket money on sweets, we would go to the Chemist Shop (Pharmacy) and buy a box of citric acid instead. Back at home we would help ourselves to as much icing (powdered) sugar as we could get away with borrowing from the pantry, and mix it with the acid to make our own giant-sized bags of sherbet. No wonder the British have a reputation for bad teeth.


4: Tipsy Packed Lunches
It's true that the Brits have a reputation for liking a little drink now and then too. But I don't think my mother quite knew, when I asked her if I could make some little individual-sized sherry trifles to take to (high) school as part of my packed lunch, quite how much sherry I used to soak my Boudoir Biscuits in. In fact she would have been absolutely horrified. Looking back, it probably wasn't really that much sherry, not enough to make me in the slightest bit tipsy, but it made me feel a little bit cheeky taking it to school, nevertheless.


5: Skin on the Hot Milk - Eww!
From something I hid from my mother to something I used to like her to hide from me. I loved Ready Brek when I was a kid. For those who don't know - it is a highly processed version of porridge, a hot breakfast cereal that provides kids all over Britain with a warm orange glow as they travel to school on grey, miserable winter mornings. These days you can make it in one go in the microwave without having to worry about hot milk skin. But back in the old days, when I was a young'un, we had to heat the milk in a pan. Not only did I detest the smell, the skin that formed on the top of the milk almost made me physically sick. Thank goodness that my mother dealt with that ugly part of process, delivering me a steaming hot, delicious skin-free bowl of cereal at the breakfast table. Thanks mum!



How this meme works. First I get to tag four more people (none of whom are obligated to take part):

Culinary Fool

Monkey Gland at Jam Faced

Claire at Clea Cuisine (Maybe the meme will go Francais?)

Deccanheffalump at The Cook's Cottage

If you are tagged, here's what you do: Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross-pollination effect.
1. Secrets & Lies
2. Do or Do Not
3. BeautyJoyFood
4. Farmgirl Fare
5. Becks & Posh
Next: select new friends to tag and add to the pollen count.
Then create a post listing your own five food memories.

posted in Food and Blogging and Food Memories and Meme

5 Childhood Food Memories - not another Meme?!