We went to the pub and had fish and chips

Family Stories, Food, Pubs and and pints... beer, wine and spirits by Lois

We have a visitor and for a treat we went to the pub and had fish and chips and mushy peas. It made me think back to dinners we had when we were children – we very rarely had chips, in fact so rarely I can only think of having fried egg and chips, maybe when things were a bit tight. How did Mum cook them? We didn’t have what people call a chip pan, so maybe she fried them in a frying pan. If there were left over boiled potatoes sometimes they would be sliced up and fried – but chips, actual chips? Maybe we did have them and me not remembering is just a hole in my memory!

I do remember, sometimes for a treat on the way back from swimming club, dad would stop and buy us little bags of chips, and I think we ate them in the car. Again it was very rare and a real treat. Going through my teens – did we have chips at home? We had them at school occasionally and they were  and everyone loved them. The idea was to eat them as quickly as possible so whoever was head of the table and dishing out could whizz up to the dinner ladies in case there were enough for second helpings!

Once I left home and was at Manchester Polytechnic, then that was the time of chips. Either from the college refectory, or at any of the many chippies around, and it was there I first encountered chip muffins/sandwiches/baps/barms – in other words, chips between two slices of bread. When I was sharing a flat with friends there was an actual chip pan – and in those days (gosh, how old I sound) cooking oil wasn’t common and we used lard. I remember in one particularly grotty and gruesome flat, I got up one morning and went into the grim and somewhat filthy and tiny kitchen to find a mouse’s footprints in the set fat in the chip pan. Did that put me off chips? I think probably it did… but I can’t be sure – we were very hard up and hungry students!

When I lived on my own I never cooked chips, but did I sometimes get a bag with fish from the chip shop? I don’t think I did. I’m still not really a chip person – husband enjoys them but these days there’s the convenience of oven chips, or ready-made chips for the air-fryer. So tonight when we went to the pub for fish and chips, I really enjoyed the mushy peas with lots of pepper; I ate most of the fish, but I’m afraid I made somewhat of a poor show with the chips. I think I don’t really like them that much!

My featured image isn’t from tonight’s meal, but was another time in another pub!

12 Comments

  1. Isabel
    Reply

    Hi Lois, think you mean barm, not balm cakes and usually in the past chips were cooked in dripping, not lard in a chip pan. Dripping is beef fat and lard pig fat and was used for making pastry.

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  3. ISABEL LUNN
    Reply

    Hi Lois,

    Think you mean barm, not balm cakes and chips cooked in a chip pan were usually in dripping, not lard. Dripping is beef fat and lard pig fat, used for making pastry.

    Isabel

    Sent via BT Email App

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Andrew Petcher
    Reply

    Chip pans have gone out of fashion, no one has one these days. I remember my Nan had a burnt chip pan full of solidified beef dripping which made the best chips ever. We always had a chip pan, I had one but set fire to it so that put me off home made chips.
    I sometimes find pub fish can be a lottery, if fried in old fat it has an odd and rather unpleasant taste so I generally skip by it on the menu.

    I wrote a post about chips once…

    Chips, Crisps or Fries – How Do You Eat Yours?

    Liked by 1 person

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