Bygone Days

[Bound2Please]

 

Charlie

[addicted]

The amount of changes we have seen in our lifetime in just about every area of our lives, not just  food, have to amount  more than any previous generation has had to cope with. What a wonderful lot we are to have taken all this stuff in our stride and of course lots of us on this forum seem to have grandchildren who make wonderful translators of every day life if things really  need qualifying, a small bit of help and advice and off we go again getting on with it. I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back..

 

Carole

[grendel]

many years ago in the 70's my mother had to spend a few days in hospital. thus my father took over the cooking for the duration. being an ex naval type he had been around the world and knew about foreign food.

He cooked us a curry one night, it consisted of a tin of minced beef, a tin of mixed veg, and a tin of rice pudding. all mixed in a saucepan and heated up.

It didnt contain any spices, or curry powder.

To this day my sister and I remember this meal, and to this day we constantly remind my dad of his culinary expertise.

[ranworthbreeze]

Hi Grendel,

I bet that meal was special with the addition of rice pudding

Regards

Alan

[addicted]

2 hours ago, grendel said:

many years ago in the 70's my mother had to spend a few days in hospital. thus my father took over the cooking for the duration. being an ex naval type he had been around the world and knew about foreign food.

He cooked us a curry one night, it consisted of a tin of minced beef, a tin of mixed veg, and a tin of rice pudding. all mixed in a saucepan and heated up.

It didnt contain any spices, or curry powder.

To this day my sister and I remember this meal, and to this day we constantly remind my dad of his culinary expertise.

That sounds truly appalling.  No wonder you and your sister have never forgotten it!  Surprising really, as I've always found ex naval bods to be very clued  up on the domestic front.

 

 

Carole

[JennyMorgan]

8 minutes ago, addicted said:

That sounds truly appalling.  No wonder you and your sister have never forgotten it!  Surprising really, as I've always found ex naval bods to be very clued  up on the domestic front.

 

 

Carole

Pongos are no better. Years ago I was involved in moving small boats at the Kiel Yacht Club in Germany. My crews generally consisted of serving personnel, more often than not squadies and they always turned up with ration packs. Those guys might have been trained to kill but they hadn't been trained to use their rations. Yours truly generally ended up teaching them how to mix up Mash, dried potato. No, you don't add cold water, read the instructions, use hot water. No, don't add water to taste and then heat up the resultant mess, you'll have a burned on mess in your mess tin. As for processed meat, those guys had no idea, urggh. Fry it, tastes great, boil the life out of it, terrible! 

[tjg1677]

9 hours ago, addicted said:

That sounds truly appalling.  No wonder you and your sister have never forgotten it!  Surprising really, as I've always found ex naval bods to be very clued  up on the domestic front

Most domesticated ( culinary wise ) ex naval bods, with the exception of course of the chefs and stewards, were the stokers. First thing we were taught to do as a baby stoker during the middle watch was how to do jacket taties on the fuel pumps or main engine throttle casing. Once more advanced a boiler room stoker could make the most delicious pot mess ( stew )  imaginable using the nearest steam drain, never been able to reproduce that taste since - delicious. 

The middle watch on deck often used to send down their most junior member to the boiler room with a big pot of soup to be heated for the lads on deck, using said steam drain. One day a rather gobby junior came down the B/R demanding to heat up his gallon or so of soup, this upset the killick of the watch, so he got his own back by directing the lad to put his pot under the vacuum breaker for the evaps, of course the contents vanished in seconds as they were sucked into the evap. The lad was then told to go next door to the engine room and ask the watch chief for his heated soup, a very long wait as the evaps had long since turned eight pints of finest naffi cream of tomato into distilled water, needless to say we didnt see hin down the boiler room again !

Bit off topic i know but couldnt resist telling that one.

Trev

[Timbo]

Yup Uncle Albert ex stoker dab hand at pot mess. It was he who taught me how to cook a full roast chicken dinner over an open fire with only tin foil for cooking utensils. That included a steamed pudding although I preferred to make the pudding in the lid of the billy can heating the water for the washing up. Tasted better somehow. 

When International Harvester went on strike in the 1970`s the local BBC showed footage of the picket line. At the back, over the obligatory fire in an oil drum is Uncle Albert cooking a steady supply of Full English.

[grendel]

All I can say was my dad was in charge of acquiring the mess stores- never for the cooking of, his bookkeeping was so good that he always had plenty of funds left for christmas parties, he had everything down to a fine art including how many slices of toast a pot of jam would cover. his bookkeeping has always been faultless, I think they gave him that task to avoid suffering his cooking.