Childhood memories.

[Workingman]

This is sparked by what Shaz said on the Kitchen board about porridge.

When at primary school my sis and I used to go round to Gran'ma Maturi's to watch Children's Hour whilst mum went to pick up my brother from special school.

Gran used to make coffee the Italian way, which involved putting loads of grounds in a big pan and boiling it down. When a cuppa was needed it was ladelled into a smaller pan for heating up, but the big pan was boiled every day 'to keep it fresh'!

On Monday the coffee was strong, really strong, but by Friday it was like drinking tar! However, gran used to thin it down for us with cream and loads of brown sugar. It was soo delicious, but God knows what it did to our insides.

[Rodo]

Yuk!

[Workingman]

"Yuk!" I said "Yuk! How very dare you."

Sweet and creamy tar was the height of luxury for a seven yr-old Yorkshire lad in those days.

[Diflower]

Sweet and creamy was how a lot of people liked things I think WM, if they'd lived through the war and all the rationing.
At my granny's there was always an open tin of condensed milk in the pantry, so I could sneak in and have a spoonful if I was really lucky Just as well we only went to stay once or twice a year!
She used to have it in her tea

[pederito1]

Can`t have been all that bad for you WM as you are still alive and presumably not in the first flush of youth. I remember something that was called Turkish Coffee, the spoon would almost stand up in it, Then the arabs who boil it up with sugar and it has to rise up three or four times. Quite nice though.

[Workingman]

Can`t have been all that bad for you WM as you are still alive and presumably not in the first flush of youth.

Absolutely, Ped!...... I haven't even reached it yet.

Di, we always had tins of Ideal milk in the pantry, in the times when they were opened with two triangular holes, one either side of the top. They were for 'pouring over'.

[Aggers]

Di, we always had tins of ideal milk in the pantry, in the times when they were opened with two triangular holes, one either side of the top. They were for 'pouring over'.

Our mother often bought a tin of condensed sweetened milk for me, and punched in the afore-mentioned triangular holes. But they were not for 'pouring over'. They were for sucking out the contents. My mouth waters now just thinking about it. A tin would last me for a couple of days. And I didn't put on weight - obesity hadn't been invented then.

My mother also used to go to the market and buy me what some would call 'rotten' bananas = those with seriously-blackened skins.
Even today I prefer bananas that have dark blotches on the outside, as I consider that is when they are truly ripened and are lovely and sweet. My better-half won't buy them unless the skins are green, and I can't convince her that proper ripe ones are best.

When one gets to my age one shouldn't buy green ones anyway.

[Diflower]

Oh yes Aggers, I just loved that condensed milk, and I was a skinnyminny too
There was a particular fudge that was only ever available at the market, it must have had condensed milk in it but I've never, ever tasted another fudge quite like it.

WM the evaporated milk was quite different, that was for having on tinned peaches or pears, and at my granny's you'd get bread and butter with that

[JoM]

Oh I'd forgotten how we used to have two triangular holes in the top of a tin of milk!

I always remember how when I'd go to tea at my best friend Rob's house, his Mom would dish up tinned fruit and insist we ate bread with it. I never wanted to because it seemed so wrong

[Aggers]

Yes, we always had tinned peaches and evaporated milk for Sunday tea.

The stuff I used to suck out of the tin was, to give it its correct name, Condensed Sweetened Milk, as Frank said.

There are dozens of other things I remember from my childhood - for instance my Mother's medication box and its contents:

Iodine,
Permanganate of potash,
Pink lint,
Germalene
Zinc oxide plaster.
Aspirin,
Frier's Balsam.
Goose grease (for rubbing on your chest for a chest cold},
Senna Pods,
and - yummy yummy - Cod Liver Oil and Malt.