Meals from G.E.C… you won’t starve!

I seem to have a bit of a theme going on the changes in our eating habits over the recent past; the only thing that hasn’t changed is people’s desire to have decent, interesting, well-cooked food, which has an orignal take on traditional recipe. new methods of cooking, for example the microwave, new ingredients now available from all across the world, new ideas of what is healthy in a balanced diet, new thoughts on luxury food! Some of the luxury food now offered in expensive restaurants is what would have been everyday items, cheaper cuts of meat and offal, for example.

I was looking again at the G.E.C. cookery book, and happened to glance at the menu suggestions in the back. Although this book was published at the beginning of the sixties, in many ways it inherited thoughts on meals and food from an earlier time when people worked harder physically, whether at their employment, or in their homes with domestic chores and in their gardens without the labour-saving gadgets we now have, and when fewer people had cars and would walk or cycle everywhere. Fewer people had central heating or even heating in every room, there was little double glazing, or cavity wall insulation, so being colder there was a greater need for hearty meals, and calories to replace those used keeping warm.

Have a look at some examples of these menus, and see what you think about the amount of carbs they have, and the amount of calories you would consume if you ate one:

1. beef steak and kidney pudding, jacket potatoes, carrots, followed by rice pudding
2. lamb casserole, jacket potatoes, barley flake or rice pudding and casserole of dried figs
3. beef and vegetables with dumplings, jacket potatoes
4. lamb or pork chops, jacket potatoes, casseroled onions, apple bread and butter pudding

It was suggested that the vegetables would be improved by ½ ounce of butter, margarine or dripping, and most of them would be served with a white or parsley sauce. The jacket potatoes would be served with butter, and the casseroled fruit served with custard or maybe evaporated milk.

I am sure everything would have been tasty and well-cooked, and certainly very economical, but I doubt if many people would eat a meal like this today… or maybe they would!!!