Plus ça change, encore une fois

Looking back at things I’ve previously written, and I come across this, I could have written it fresh today!

I guess like a lot of people at the moment I’m spending more time going through old stuff, sorting and trying to get rid of things no longer needed or wanted – and i guess like a lot of people I’m being sidetracked by what I find and deviate from the plan. I have some box files with labels attached which have faded; some say old photos, so I guessed they were all old photos, but no, in fact one was full of old recipes pulled from magazines and cut from newspapers. Some are mine, some are mum’s, but most are my aunties’, and this from the magazine Woman’s Own, must come from her collection.

This free booklet was given out with the magazine on February 18th, 1967, and it’s very interesting to look through and see how sensible and practical the advice and recipes were for ordinary people. It was a publication from Weight Watchers which was started by an ordinary person, Judith Nidetch in 1963. She had been very overweight and had managed to lose some of those extra pounds by following a ten week dieting plan. However there were aspects to it which she didn’t find helpful and she started what became a business by sharing her dieting ideas with friends. I guess it was that support which everyone needs which made her ideas become so successful, and of course is now a world wide very big business.

The menu suggestions from over fifty years ago don’t seem so vastly different from what any of us might like today – different yes, but not so old fashioned we might not like them.

Here are the suggestions for a week of ‘suppers’ which we would now call dinner or evening meal: