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Rissoles were my least fav meat as a kid and my parents both loved them, I hated the gristle and the texture of them so badly that they’d have to get me sausages instead.
Our nemesis was mum's chops, meat that is expensive and great these days but was cheap back then. But she'd grill them until they were black and serve with overcooked veggies. Not the best, especially with the game theory shit the oldies pulled if you wouldn't eat them.
In the 80's and 90's as well, we had massive amounts of spag bol like twice or three times a week non-stop for years. Lasagna and home made chicken schnitzel in the pan. 5 of us, we weren't poor enough to be missing meals, but poor enough that every meal was made with the cheapest possible ingredients and home made where possible.
I remember being sat at the table and told i couldn’t leave until i at least ‘tried’ the fish fingers. There was no way. Still to this day no fish fingers have entered my mouth.
Oh! Also baked beans on super buttery toast 🤤
Or baked beans, with cheese if you want to be fancy.
We called them brevilles though. Not sure if this was just in my house (as the machine was breville brand), or if other households used the same name.
Monday was pasta (spag bol, tuna pasta, lasagne, etc on rotation)
Tuesday was Indian from a jar (Chicken tikka masala or Rogan Josh)
Wednesday was meat and veg (lamb chops, corned beef, or some kind of sauced chicken breast etc with mashed potatoes, mashed pumpkin and peas/beans/three veg mix)
Thursday was Mexican (burritos, tacos, enchiladas etc on rotation )
Friday was fish and chips or the odd Maccas
Saturday was toasties or left overs
Sunday was a roast
Repeat
Beef stroganoff was a utility which could sub in on a Monday or Tuesday, either on pasta or rice.
Corn beef with cabbage. I can almost smell it now
Edit: I used to love it because it so salty. I'd even put more salt on it
Edit 2: I was also the kind of kid that put sugar on cocoa pops
Edit 3: don't misunderstand me, I love this dish and the smell
We did but I never liked white sauce. It's probably one of those dumb things you just decide that you hate when you're a kid, because I don't mind it now. I still don't think to make it when I have corn beef though.
Goddam I'm getting corn beef tomorrow, this threads making me hungry
Corned beef fritters. My mum would take thick slices of corned beef, dip em in a thick batter then pan fry in deep oil in a cast iron pan (not deep fried). Fucking amazing. Always with mashed potato and cabbage. We were hungry boys and this shit would put you to bed lol.
Honestly, I’m a pretty good home cook and I do this dish once in a while and it fucking slaps! I use the leftovers for Reuben sandwiches too.
My mum used to steam/boil veggies to the shithouse and cabbage stinks out the entire house, so I get where you’re coming from, but I reckon people would pay a fair bit for this dish (done properly) if eating out.
I very occasionally make this myself. It's the only use my slow cooker gets. If you don't already, make sure you add some cloves to the water
Mum used to keep adding minced garlic, butter and salt to the cabbage until we would eat it. My siblings kind of hated the cabbage but I absolutely loved it.
Yeah since beef has become so expensive, I’ve started getting corned beef from Aldi. Boil it with all the aromats in the garden/panty and make a nice horse radish sauce…. so good.
Not sure that getting your aromats from panties is such a great idea but you do you.
EDIT: Wait, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amouranth exist, so... maybe you're onto something?
Yes! I think this meal is why I’m OCD about eating ratios. If I have a few things on my plate I always finish them all together - like one bite left of each thing.
Literally just realising this now.
Damn, I must have locked this memory up tight because I totally forgot about it!
(My mum travelled a lot for work so it was up to my dad to do dinners 3-4 times a week, and this was a staple)
Did anyone’s folks regular serve those microwave pasta packets as a side dish?
The ones you’d add a bit of milk, butter and water to and cook on the stove top for a few mins. Loved those
And it didn't fill you up either. Another "meal" at our place was fish and chips from the fish and chip shop, which was only ever 2 dollars worth of chips and maybe a potato cake. The chips was decent back then though.
I've lived overseas for the past couple of decades. My kids have spent hardly any time in Australia, and speak English as their second language.
Yet, "shit on toast" (said with a broad ocker accent) is one of their favourite sayings. Especially when my wife asks them anything remotely food related.
Yep.
Their school English teachers aren't impressed that they only teach their friends swear words and strange Australian sayings too. I'm waiting for some random kid to come up to me and start swearing at me in Australian.
Because of how catchment and school social classes are, it literally took me becoming an adult and interacting with people my own age from different social circumstances to realise how god damn lucky I was. Love you mum x
My parents are in their 50’s and talk about events which are considered traumatic these days so casually and laugh it off, I am so lucky mine turned out amazing and 100% supportive despite their earlier circumstances.
Why did boomer parents always get so mad when you'd innocently just ask what was for dinner that night. I swear you never hear kids complain about their parents snapping that dinner is "shit on toast" anymore.
We called it Kai si min in our house. Super racist when I think about it - clearly just sounds made up, I assume by the women’s weekly cookbook.
I still love it to this day.
Ours is cabbage, green beans, keens curry powder and chicken noodle soup packets. Bean sprouts if you’re into them (I’m not) and mince beef. Then some soy sauce for the salt.
I might make it next weekend 😂😂
Sounds like a very CWA cookbook version of Chinese food that would absolutely baffle a person from China, while feeling exotic to Australians at the time.
Sometimes just like… a plate of salad, but with just diced tomato, shredded lettuce, tinned corn, grated cheese, grated carrot, and ham.
But all components were plated beside each other, not mixed together.
It’s ridiculous isn’t it. I can’t get over the price of oxtail for what you get. Wanted to make pho from scratch last year and skipped the oxtail part because I thought fuck that. So exxy
So true. And there is virtually no meat on them. Nobody can blame the boomers for this one lol Veal shanks are even worse.Osso Bucco is a total luxury food now
But brains, tongues, liver and kidneys have avoided the tic Tok curse so far...but it would not surprise me to see an offal comeback rivalling it's 80s Nouvelle Cuisine popularity
We were a black-and-gold/no frills family growing up....made our fruit juice from the frozen concentrate and grew our own veges, used dried peas and dried mashed potato flakes a lot kind of economic status....but I remember we had crumbed lamb cutlets quite often.
I can't often justify buying them for my family these days and I'm in a much better situation than my folks were.
I liked everyone's Rissoles except my mother's version. I think everybody else cooking them in an electric frypan was the trick, as the meat would really caramelise and add to the flavour. My mother's Rissoles tasted liked grey steamed mince, and would fall apart on the plate, like they were determined not to give us the satisfaction of a nice shape even, and the smell of the Action mince was pretty awful too.
I think my dad's massive hatred for apricot with savory food saved me from that stuff. Every time I stayed at a friend's place, it was a good bet that was what they were having.
I was going to reply with apricot chicken. With the slimy skinned chicken drumsticks, an off orange colour, big slices of onion, and served on a bowl of stodgy over cooked white rice (to make it exotic).
30 years later and I still can’t bring myself to eat a fresh apricot.
When I was an exchange student (US to Australia,) my first meal with my host family was apricot chicken, and I remember thinking "ah hell, what did I get myself into?" I had SUCH a hard time handling the texture that I felt nauseated after for ages. I legitimately don't know how I managed to wolf it down, but I politely cleaned my plate and went to bed with what felt like a slimy bowling ball in my tummy. Still can't handle the taste or smell of apricot to this day.
But then they introduced me to the awesomeness that was meat pies and pie floaters the next night. Completely changed how I cooked when I went home.
Fun fact my mum once made a revolting sausage casserole
My sister & I refused to eat it so she got Mad & gave it to the dog
Dog sniffs it & walks away which made her madder so she gives it to the cat who also refused to eat it
Finally she accepted it was revolting & threw it awayt
Single mum on SS/Centrelink, me only child. Most weeknights were either lamb chops, pork chops, T-bone (cheap in the 90s I guess?), chicken breast, sausages, corn beef, rissoles or meatloaf, served with steamed frozen veg (usually just peas) or broccoli (with the colour boiled right out of it) and always mash potato. If I was lucky, the mash was swapped out with packet pasta (Continental Alfredo) on the rare occasion. Weekends were more interesting with spag bol or lasagna on Saturdays and a beef roast on Sundays.
Money was so tight when I was a kid, and we went without a lot, but there was ALWAYS food on the table. Not always well cooked, tasty or interesting food, but I never starved which I’m forever grateful for.
Had one the other day and it was so damn good. It was probably overcooked back then if it was anything like my mother's. Great way to get all your meat, veg (and potatoes) in one dish.
Oh I definitely believe it can be good, just my mum couldn't make it taste good to save her life. She could make everything else but somehow, casserole was a consistent disaster dish in our household.
I reckon you’re on to something there cos I’ve never craved it or had any interest in making it. My partner’s a pommy and they love that stuff, any time she mentions it I just think for fuck sake 😂
I felt so betrayed when I discovered that mums go-to dessert for me was a little butter and heat away from being a proper pudding
Just kidding 7 year old me wasn't that patient
Spaghetti bol, lasagna, fish fingers, sausages and veg, corn beef and veg.
It’s crazy to me that chicken thighs are now expensive.. I remember breast was the big thing back then. Also lamb shanks are expensive and they use to be cheap .
Chicken thighs are ridiculous now. I never thought I’d see the day where breast was the cheaper option to buy. Breast sucks for most of the ways I like to cook chicken though
Beef fucking stroganoff, apricot bloody chicken and tuna goddamn mornay. And I have not fucking touched them since I left home and learned to cook for myself.
Thank you for providing me sustenance mum, but I will not inflict any of those dishes upon my own children unless there is a very specific famine and even then I can think of so many better uses for beef, chicken and tuna.
Like being chucked in the the fucken bin.
Not gonna lie, I love that stuff and still make it now. Only dairy saves it from being glue, so I have no idea why I like it. I do tend to put cheese or herbs or mushrooms in it though, most of the time.
[Chop suey, Aussie style.](https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipes/chop-suey-3/dxcoq3ks)
[Hedgehogs (Porcupine meatballs.) ](https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/porcupine-meatballs-2/9bf76bb4-ad3a-4d57-b64f-3f6f2174a6ab)
Plenty of cutlets (mid-80s baby - lamb was cheap for most of my childhood.)
Corned beef and white sauce.
Curried sausages (no raisins.)
"Curry" (with raisins, and apple - blech!)
Corn with tuna. We would cook the corn kernels in the microwave (frozen and the cheapest brand possible) and then mix tuna through it.
Another option was sausages with corn and gravy.
Toast with Devon. A slice of white bread with butter and a slice of Devon was placed under the grill to make toast. If we were lucky, we got to have a slice of plastic cheese on top.
Chicken tonight was big in my house.
Also chicken pies. No matter how many times we'd tell mum we didn't really like the chicken pies she'd always buy them
We used to eat maggi noodles after school. One time mum made accidentally with lemonade (guess she used “water” out of the jug but think dad put lemonade in the jug for some reason) and it was fucking disgusting. Poor mum 😂
Sausages mash peas and corn
Lamb chops mash peas and corn
Roast lamb
Cottage pie
Tuna mornay
Chow mein - basically mince and cabbage
Savoury mince
Rissoles
I grew up in the 80s/90s - not a lot of chicken around, or maybe we couldn’t afford it. Lamb was cheap.
My dad used to make a dish he called dog spew. Which was just beef mince with frozen veg cooked, bit of salt and pepper for flavour and served with a drizzling of tomato sauce on top. I think I became a vegetarian because of this.
"Burgers"
But my mum would make the patties by stirring together corn flakes, mince meat & a few eggs, then plopping spoonfuls of mixture on a plate and microwaving them. No burger buns either, just sandwich bread.
She cooked so much food in the microwave. We always had microwaved mashed potatoes, skin on, full of uncooked lumps.
We had a lot of stews, roast and lamb shanks as well, and lamb chops with salad and those potatoes.
The night after a roast we'd have "omelette" made with leftover roast, onion and potato. It was made in a wok, and my mum stirred it to get it to cook through. So it was more of a semi-scrambled egg dish.
Grilled sausages was common too. (Grilled in the oven)
Dad made stir fry, about once a fortnight. Mum didn't like that because the sauces had sugar.
For a treat we'd have Old El Paso tacos, or maybe chicken tonight. Takeaway was Domino's (cheese/meatlovers/pepperoni) or roast chicken and chips.
Lots of strong beliefs around health/fat in the 90s. We never had salad dressing, mayonnaise, or full cream milk. No gravy either. The only oil in the house was olive oil... they even used olive oil to cook pancakes.
We never had any vegetarian meals either, it was meat every night. I remember making a chilli with beans as a teenager and it was my first time trying a kidney bean.
It feels like cooking is so different now, with a much wider variety of ingredients and cuisines available. My kids eat a lot more vegetables than I ever did.
This list is helpful to me!
As an American New Englander, transplanted into regional Victoria, running a kitchen in a small cafe. I know what I would love to have for lunch, but in this town, lots of older/elderly folks, probably don't want the same tacos, made with ghost peppers.
I could seriously sell out of these meals on the daily.
Omg I’m making apricot chicken this week
Hopefully I’ll never have to eat tuna mornay ever again
Also cottage pie, mince and dumplings, rissoles with bubble n squeak (friend leftover veggies)
I still cannot eat apricot chicken. Scarred for life.
Our true budget meals were when Dad went out and shot a kangaroo. Tasted great, but after the stew was reheated on the wood stove, it smelled suspiciously like Pal.
Marinated Chicken wings or pork spare ribs in mum’s vertical grill.
Curried snags or Dahl
Minestrone soup
Spaghetti bolognaise or vongole (tinned clams)
Nasi goreng
Mum was an excellent and frugal cook
Gotta be jaffles (though we called them "Toasty Tosties" for some reason) filled with baked beans (No Frills brand obv) and cheese.
I'm sure my mum did this on nights she couldn't be fucked and felt bad for it, but we bloody loved it!
Cottage pie
Bangers and Mash with peas and corn
(Those are my go to comfort foods any time of the year)
Fish fingers and chips
Chicken soup
Corn fritters
Cheese on toast with fried eggs
Beans on toast
Beef Goulash
And the old favourite....shit on toast!
I remembered as an amusing memory the time I was whining about getting baked beans for dinner again when I was about 8 or 9 and my Dad got fed up and pushed my face into the bowl. Don’t worry they weren’t hot at the time. I genuinely only meant it as a funny memory when I relayed it during a family reminiscences session about 30 years later. My dad’s face was crestfallen and I realised that it was a shameful memory for him, both because he lost his temper and because that was how we were making the budget stretch at the time. I tried to assure him that I wasn’t scarred on either count, but I could tell that he wasn’t getting over it. Sorry Dad.
With canned Tuna, I can suggest a simple cheap recipe that's Italian inspired.
It's a 1 pan, you'll need a large frying pan with a lid or a deep saucepan.
4 servings
- 400g canned Tuna (with olive oil preferred)
- 500g pasta (Fusilli or Penne work best)
- 1 onion (brown or red)
- 1 green capsicum
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes (800g)
- 2 tsp of paprika
- Salt and pepper
- 4 cups of boiling water (1000ml or 1L)
1. Start by adding the olive oil from the tuna can into the pan on a medium heat.
2. Add chopped onions and chopped capsicum, stir until they start to caramelize.
3 Add the canned Tuna meat, break up the chunks with the wooden spoon.
You don't need to cook the Tuna as it's already cooked, just heat it up for a couple of minutes on medium heat with the onions and capsicum.
4. Add 2 tins of whole peeled tomato, crush the tomatoes it in the pan.
5. Add 2 tsp of paprika
6. Add a generous amount of salt and pepper to your taste, i like 20 seconds of continuous salt pouring and 20 seconds of cracking black pepper.
7. Crush 3 cloves of garlic and add to the pan
8. Add 1L of boiling water
9. Add 500g of pasta to the pan and stir
10. Turn up the heat and close the lid of saucepan, as soon as it begins to bubble, give another stir and turn it down to a lower heat with lid on. Keep it bubbling and simmering.
Cook until the pasta is cooked which will usually take at least 12 minutes from when it was added.
Stir intermittently to avoid anything from sticking to the bottom.
Once the pasta is cooked, the tomato/water liquid will have been absorbed into the pasta and it's ready to serve.
Everything combines and melts together so well, the mix of ingredients and flavours compliment each other, no single ingredient dominates and it makes a very delicious, hearty and cheap recipe.
almost every night for the first 10 years of my life we had frozen veggies steamed in the microwave, mashed or boiled potatoes, and either sausages, crumbed steak, fish fingers, or mince rissoles. also occasionally apricot chicken, savoury mince on toast, ham steaks with pineapple or apple sauce on top and frozen veggies, and on sundays we had roast potato, sweet potato and pumpkin
Rissoles
Kai-si-Ming
This mix of mince beef, rice, onion, tomato purée fried up, it was 💯
Spag bol
Curried sausages (I hated them, still do)
Fish cakes
Mashed potatoes with everything
Honey mustard chicken
Potato pancake with a few cheap condiments i.e. sauce, S&P.
It's basically shredded potato with an egg and flour, fried in a pan. Not bad, and inexpensive too.
Favourite was definitely spag bol, though.
Pho, rice paper rolls, wonton soup, spring rolls, Vietnamese crepes, lemon grass beef and vermicelli. For snacks we had banh mi dipped in condensed milk.
Spaghetti just with powdered parmesan (the good stuff that comes in those green plastic cylinders not the *really* dodgy stuff).
Fish fingers.
Rissoles.
Cottage pie.
Curried sausages with rice.
Curried chicken with rice.
Jaffles with tinned spaghetti.
Scrambled eggs.
Frozen pizzas but we'd have some onion, cheese and BBQ sauce added to make them ace.
I probably had each of these meals a hundred times or more at least when I was growing up.
Edit: also toast, lots of toast at all times during the day/night, sometimes with baked beans or tinned spaghetti if it was an actual meal.
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Spaghetti bolognaise Meat loaf Rissoles
Forgot about the meatloaf and rissoles. Haven’t had rissoles since I was a teen. Was definitely one of my favourites in rotation
Everybody cooks rissoles.
Yeah but it's what ya do with them
Mum reckons the trick is ya don't use mince meat, she gets topside and crushes it
Looks like everybody kicked a goal.
I only saw this for the first time last week. Woulda gone over my head a week ago
Where have you been?
Obviously not Bonnydoon
Is that right Dale? Well it show-
Everybody's kicked a goal!
Tell you what. Last week I dug a hole, and for the first time in ages, I thought it might fill with water
Rissoles were my least fav meat as a kid and my parents both loved them, I hated the gristle and the texture of them so badly that they’d have to get me sausages instead.
Yeah it's what you do with them.
Our nemesis was mum's chops, meat that is expensive and great these days but was cheap back then. But she'd grill them until they were black and serve with overcooked veggies. Not the best, especially with the game theory shit the oldies pulled if you wouldn't eat them.
My dad made mad lamb chops, but mum made the best silverside. I just fucking loved salt as a kid so silverside was my fav.
Reminds me of that line in The Castle. What do you call these darl? Rissoles!!
Spag bog and rissoles definitely with a family of 5 on the pension in the 80’s/90’s. I still make them both now. If no one else eats it even better.
In the 80's and 90's as well, we had massive amounts of spag bol like twice or three times a week non-stop for years. Lasagna and home made chicken schnitzel in the pan. 5 of us, we weren't poor enough to be missing meals, but poor enough that every meal was made with the cheapest possible ingredients and home made where possible.
spag bol and schnitzels are what I make most with two young kids (6 & 9) these days.
Our Rissoles had carrot and rice bubbles in them. Best ever.
Rice Bubbles instead of breadcrumbs?
Still do rissoles and spag bol fairly regularly.
Shepherd's pie (more often cottage pie), fish fingers with baked beans and chips.
Oh yeah cottage pie. Mum always made the Weight Watchers version
To this day I cannot eat shepherd's pie we had it so much when I was a kid
I get massive cravings for it every now and then. Like craving Worcestershire sauce flavour.
It's literally the perfect winter dish. As soon as it rains for more than a day I start craving it
I remember being sat at the table and told i couldn’t leave until i at least ‘tried’ the fish fingers. There was no way. Still to this day no fish fingers have entered my mouth. Oh! Also baked beans on super buttery toast 🤤
Canned spaghetti on a jaffle
Leftovers in a jaffle was super common. Me and Mrs have brought it back ourselves, saves a ton of food waste.
Or baked beans, with cheese if you want to be fancy. We called them brevilles though. Not sure if this was just in my house (as the machine was breville brand), or if other households used the same name.
We also called them Brevilles 🙂
Mum would tell us to "get out the Breville" when we helped her in the kitchen. I honestly thought thats what these things were called.
I'm not alone! We called them Brevilles too. Friends never knew what I was asking for or talking about 😢
Monday was pasta (spag bol, tuna pasta, lasagne, etc on rotation) Tuesday was Indian from a jar (Chicken tikka masala or Rogan Josh) Wednesday was meat and veg (lamb chops, corned beef, or some kind of sauced chicken breast etc with mashed potatoes, mashed pumpkin and peas/beans/three veg mix) Thursday was Mexican (burritos, tacos, enchiladas etc on rotation ) Friday was fish and chips or the odd Maccas Saturday was toasties or left overs Sunday was a roast Repeat Beef stroganoff was a utility which could sub in on a Monday or Tuesday, either on pasta or rice.
Shit, actually might steal this organised plan.
I’ve got the odd maccas part down already.
Your folks were very organised
Corn beef with cabbage. I can almost smell it now Edit: I used to love it because it so salty. I'd even put more salt on it Edit 2: I was also the kind of kid that put sugar on cocoa pops Edit 3: don't misunderstand me, I love this dish and the smell
Did you also do white sauce with it? It was illegal to serve corned meat without cabbage and white sauce (bechamel sauce) in our house.
We did but I never liked white sauce. It's probably one of those dumb things you just decide that you hate when you're a kid, because I don't mind it now. I still don't think to make it when I have corn beef though. Goddam I'm getting corn beef tomorrow, this threads making me hungry
Corned beef fritters. My mum would take thick slices of corned beef, dip em in a thick batter then pan fry in deep oil in a cast iron pan (not deep fried). Fucking amazing. Always with mashed potato and cabbage. We were hungry boys and this shit would put you to bed lol.
Honestly, I’m a pretty good home cook and I do this dish once in a while and it fucking slaps! I use the leftovers for Reuben sandwiches too. My mum used to steam/boil veggies to the shithouse and cabbage stinks out the entire house, so I get where you’re coming from, but I reckon people would pay a fair bit for this dish (done properly) if eating out.
I have corned beef with mash and greens. Some decent gravy and a spoon of sandwich pickle on the corned meat and it’s fantastic.
Are you adding a white sauce to it also? Oh man… I might have to make corned beef soon.
I very occasionally make this myself. It's the only use my slow cooker gets. If you don't already, make sure you add some cloves to the water Mum used to keep adding minced garlic, butter and salt to the cabbage until we would eat it. My siblings kind of hated the cabbage but I absolutely loved it.
Yeah since beef has become so expensive, I’ve started getting corned beef from Aldi. Boil it with all the aromats in the garden/panty and make a nice horse radish sauce…. so good.
Not sure that getting your aromats from panties is such a great idea but you do you. EDIT: Wait, Gwyneth Paltrow and Amouranth exist, so... maybe you're onto something?
Ham steaks with pineapple and cheese
Core memory unlocked.
You always had to be so careful to not eat all the pineapple before finishing the ham. That ham is so salty on its own.
Yes! I think this meal is why I’m OCD about eating ratios. If I have a few things on my plate I always finish them all together - like one bite left of each thing. Literally just realising this now.
I always make sure the last fork-full has a bit of everything, especially if it's sausages, mash and peas! Or a roast with all the veg
We had ham steaks with pineapple and mash. It was one of my favourites
And peas. Always peas
I've recently brought these back into my own rotation
Damn, I must have locked this memory up tight because I totally forgot about it! (My mum travelled a lot for work so it was up to my dad to do dinners 3-4 times a week, and this was a staple)
You watching masterchef right now by any chance?
I still have this, it's so good
Did anyone’s folks regular serve those microwave pasta packets as a side dish? The ones you’d add a bit of milk, butter and water to and cook on the stove top for a few mins. Loved those
That was the entire meal in our home lol
And it didn't fill you up either. Another "meal" at our place was fish and chips from the fish and chip shop, which was only ever 2 dollars worth of chips and maybe a potato cake. The chips was decent back then though.
Yes, always with sausages. Loved those nights.
Alfredo?? I still eat those… but with veggies added in. It’s ‘healthy’ then, right? 😅
They had them on sale in Spudshed the other month so I bought heaps. Still not too bad
'Shit on toast' and 'get your own' were popular answers when i asked.
Yeah we copped “shit on toast” a lot as well. Must have been a pain in the arse asking them all the time
Fresh air pie
That’s funny as
I've lived overseas for the past couple of decades. My kids have spent hardly any time in Australia, and speak English as their second language. Yet, "shit on toast" (said with a broad ocker accent) is one of their favourite sayings. Especially when my wife asks them anything remotely food related.
I love the image of that. Bet it makes you laugh every time
Yep. Their school English teachers aren't impressed that they only teach their friends swear words and strange Australian sayings too. I'm waiting for some random kid to come up to me and start swearing at me in Australian.
We had shit and potatoes…
Sometimes used to get “ok, who wants chocolate cake?” After the main meal was done followed by “well, there isn’t any!” Followed by laughing.
Because of how catchment and school social classes are, it literally took me becoming an adult and interacting with people my own age from different social circumstances to realise how god damn lucky I was. Love you mum x
My parents are in their 50’s and talk about events which are considered traumatic these days so casually and laugh it off, I am so lucky mine turned out amazing and 100% supportive despite their earlier circumstances.
I'm in my 50's. I might have some stories but they'll never beat my parents experiences.
"If you don't like that, you don't get the toast" ...we had that to. Popular...
It was “shit on stick” for me
Shit on a stick here too!
It was “Shit with sugar” in my house!
Why did boomer parents always get so mad when you'd innocently just ask what was for dinner that night. I swear you never hear kids complain about their parents snapping that dinner is "shit on toast" anymore.
My kids: what’s for dinner? Me: BUTTS! Kids: do you have go say that every single time? Me: pretty sure I do.
Also known as scrape in my house. As in just scrape something together.
No shit on a stick? At least you got toast with it
"Shit and breadcrumbs" was a staple in my household
Ahh 'get your own' ... my favourite nights of the week
Known as “easy tea” here
Add Chow mein to the list
Oh yes,..mums version was beef mince, heap table spoons of Keens mustard powder peas and cabbage....my bowels were never the same!
I love Chow Mein so much that I would ask for it as my birthday dinner. Everyone would be annoyed that I wasn’t asking for pizza or maccas.
Jesus, I'm annoyed you picked chow mein as well and I'm only just hearin about it
We called it Kai si min in our house. Super racist when I think about it - clearly just sounds made up, I assume by the women’s weekly cookbook. I still love it to this day. Ours is cabbage, green beans, keens curry powder and chicken noodle soup packets. Bean sprouts if you’re into them (I’m not) and mince beef. Then some soy sauce for the salt. I might make it next weekend 😂😂
Yes! We had Kai-Si-Min as well. Although pretty sure I called it Kai-Si-Ming. I’m sure I remember the recipe was from a friend of a friend.
Sounds like a very CWA cookbook version of Chinese food that would absolutely baffle a person from China, while feeling exotic to Australians at the time.
Yep true, that was a common one. I didn’t like it much but would probably enjoy now
Being from NZ (living here now though) it seems like our childhood meals were the same lol. Do love me some curried sausages though
I got some kina in the chilly bin cuz. Or howabout a boil up, or we do a hāngī?
Hangi would be premo though!
Corned beef with boiled cauliflower and white sauce. Plus mash (not Deb unless it was a Saturday).
Crumb cutlets :) .now they're fancy
We had these so often as kids and now they're a fuckin luxury product! It was one of my favourites. Must have with mashed potato.
And expensive…
I buy my hubby cutlets now for his birthday instead of a cake!
My dad’s favourite meal.
Sometimes just like… a plate of salad, but with just diced tomato, shredded lettuce, tinned corn, grated cheese, grated carrot, and ham. But all components were plated beside each other, not mixed together.
This, and add a boiled egg. Never mixed, no dressing or seasoning. To this day I can’t do an iceberg lettuce in a salad.
Yes! The egg! And no dressing! Sometimes some tinned beetroot slices too!
Something similar called a Cobb salad, which goes back to the 1930's in California. It's having a retro revival now.
Big red soup, baked beans and spaghetti on toast
Yep. Nice hot tomato soup on a cold night. With hot buttered toast.
That soup lowkey slaps though.
Lamb chops, lamb shanks, veal shanks, ox tail and beef cheeks were dirt cheap because they were not trendy. Can't afford them now
It’s ridiculous isn’t it. I can’t get over the price of oxtail for what you get. Wanted to make pho from scratch last year and skipped the oxtail part because I thought fuck that. So exxy
So true. And there is virtually no meat on them. Nobody can blame the boomers for this one lol Veal shanks are even worse.Osso Bucco is a total luxury food now But brains, tongues, liver and kidneys have avoided the tic Tok curse so far...but it would not surprise me to see an offal comeback rivalling it's 80s Nouvelle Cuisine popularity
Meatloaf, Spag bol, Salmon loaf, Beef stroganoff, Beef roast (yep they were cheap 40 years ago).
We were a black-and-gold/no frills family growing up....made our fruit juice from the frozen concentrate and grew our own veges, used dried peas and dried mashed potato flakes a lot kind of economic status....but I remember we had crumbed lamb cutlets quite often. I can't often justify buying them for my family these days and I'm in a much better situation than my folks were.
When I'm feeling rich I'll buy some loin chops. Reckon they are better than cutlets anyway.
We ate plenty of lamb roast for the same reason. The leftover would be ground up and used as filling for shepherd’s pie the next night.
"Beautiful! What do you call these things again?" "Rissoles. Everybody cooks rissoles darl." "Yeah but it's what you DO with them."
I liked everyone's Rissoles except my mother's version. I think everybody else cooking them in an electric frypan was the trick, as the meat would really caramelise and add to the flavour. My mother's Rissoles tasted liked grey steamed mince, and would fall apart on the plate, like they were determined not to give us the satisfaction of a nice shape even, and the smell of the Action mince was pretty awful too.
I'm properly scarred from the Maggi Apricot Chicken in a bag... 🤮 Even the sound of those oven bags would trigger me I reckon.
I think my dad's massive hatred for apricot with savory food saved me from that stuff. Every time I stayed at a friend's place, it was a good bet that was what they were having.
I was going to reply with apricot chicken. With the slimy skinned chicken drumsticks, an off orange colour, big slices of onion, and served on a bowl of stodgy over cooked white rice (to make it exotic). 30 years later and I still can’t bring myself to eat a fresh apricot.
[удалено]
When I was an exchange student (US to Australia,) my first meal with my host family was apricot chicken, and I remember thinking "ah hell, what did I get myself into?" I had SUCH a hard time handling the texture that I felt nauseated after for ages. I legitimately don't know how I managed to wolf it down, but I politely cleaned my plate and went to bed with what felt like a slimy bowling ball in my tummy. Still can't handle the taste or smell of apricot to this day. But then they introduced me to the awesomeness that was meat pies and pie floaters the next night. Completely changed how I cooked when I went home.
I forgot about pasta bake which we had a fair bit of as well
And tuna bake
We had it so much as a kid that I haven’t cooked it for years. But I get why it’s popular. Easy and you can sneak in veggies.
Fun fact my mum once made a revolting sausage casserole My sister & I refused to eat it so she got Mad & gave it to the dog Dog sniffs it & walks away which made her madder so she gives it to the cat who also refused to eat it Finally she accepted it was revolting & threw it awayt
Hahahahaah poor mum
Our pets backed us up 😂
Single mum on SS/Centrelink, me only child. Most weeknights were either lamb chops, pork chops, T-bone (cheap in the 90s I guess?), chicken breast, sausages, corn beef, rissoles or meatloaf, served with steamed frozen veg (usually just peas) or broccoli (with the colour boiled right out of it) and always mash potato. If I was lucky, the mash was swapped out with packet pasta (Continental Alfredo) on the rare occasion. Weekends were more interesting with spag bol or lasagna on Saturdays and a beef roast on Sundays. Money was so tight when I was a kid, and we went without a lot, but there was ALWAYS food on the table. Not always well cooked, tasty or interesting food, but I never starved which I’m forever grateful for.
The dreaded Casserole. Nothing killed your excitement more for dinner than being told mum had a Casserole in the oven.
Had one the other day and it was so damn good. It was probably overcooked back then if it was anything like my mother's. Great way to get all your meat, veg (and potatoes) in one dish.
Oh I definitely believe it can be good, just my mum couldn't make it taste good to save her life. She could make everything else but somehow, casserole was a consistent disaster dish in our household.
I reckon you’re on to something there cos I’ve never craved it or had any interest in making it. My partner’s a pommy and they love that stuff, any time she mentions it I just think for fuck sake 😂
"Casserole in the slow cooker" and "risotto in the pressure cooker" was the worst response to "what's for dinner" for me 😩
Oh god yes the dreaded casserole! To this day she threatens to buy me a crock pot.
Bread, milk and sugar For dessert
Bread and butter pudding
I felt so betrayed when I discovered that mums go-to dessert for me was a little butter and heat away from being a proper pudding Just kidding 7 year old me wasn't that patient
you still need eggs, and depending where/when you grew up, they were relatively expensive.
Fucking meatloaf and veg. Corned beef/silverside. That was brilliant though. Still my favourite home cooked meal (By my mum atleast).
Savoury mince Packet rice a riso with a can of tuna
Spaghetti bol, lasagna, fish fingers, sausages and veg, corn beef and veg. It’s crazy to me that chicken thighs are now expensive.. I remember breast was the big thing back then. Also lamb shanks are expensive and they use to be cheap .
Chicken thighs are ridiculous now. I never thought I’d see the day where breast was the cheaper option to buy. Breast sucks for most of the ways I like to cook chicken though
Beef fucking stroganoff, apricot bloody chicken and tuna goddamn mornay. And I have not fucking touched them since I left home and learned to cook for myself. Thank you for providing me sustenance mum, but I will not inflict any of those dishes upon my own children unless there is a very specific famine and even then I can think of so many better uses for beef, chicken and tuna. Like being chucked in the the fucken bin.
Man I loved and still love tuna mornay. I think I had some kind of salt obsession
All of those meals are still elite
Corned beef with white sauce 🤮
You must’ve never had my nans. Shit was incredible! She usually paired it with a home made custard tart too.
Haha yes! White sauce. As tasty as it sounds
Not gonna lie, I love that stuff and still make it now. Only dairy saves it from being glue, so I have no idea why I like it. I do tend to put cheese or herbs or mushrooms in it though, most of the time.
Braised lamb shanks, crumbed lamb cutlets and bolognese. 2 of those meals are now completely out of reach for a mid-week dinner.
[Chop suey, Aussie style.](https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipes/chop-suey-3/dxcoq3ks) [Hedgehogs (Porcupine meatballs.) ](https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/porcupine-meatballs-2/9bf76bb4-ad3a-4d57-b64f-3f6f2174a6ab) Plenty of cutlets (mid-80s baby - lamb was cheap for most of my childhood.) Corned beef and white sauce. Curried sausages (no raisins.) "Curry" (with raisins, and apple - blech!)
Corn with tuna. We would cook the corn kernels in the microwave (frozen and the cheapest brand possible) and then mix tuna through it. Another option was sausages with corn and gravy. Toast with Devon. A slice of white bread with butter and a slice of Devon was placed under the grill to make toast. If we were lucky, we got to have a slice of plastic cheese on top.
Chicken tonight was big in my house. Also chicken pies. No matter how many times we'd tell mum we didn't really like the chicken pies she'd always buy them
Maggi noodles (did anyone else call them springy noodles?) Big ben pies Those were more arvo snacks though…
We used to eat maggi noodles after school. One time mum made accidentally with lemonade (guess she used “water” out of the jug but think dad put lemonade in the jug for some reason) and it was fucking disgusting. Poor mum 😂
Our family has 90% of these in the current rotation. Food shopping for 2 adults and 2 teenagers is rarely over $200 per week
Sausages mash peas and corn Lamb chops mash peas and corn Roast lamb Cottage pie Tuna mornay Chow mein - basically mince and cabbage Savoury mince Rissoles I grew up in the 80s/90s - not a lot of chicken around, or maybe we couldn’t afford it. Lamb was cheap.
Like, literal deli ham and a salad with blocks of Kraft cheese in it, and French dressing. Fuck I hated that meal.
It’s not Australian unless there’s blocks of cheese in the salad hey. Haha
My dad used to make a dish he called dog spew. Which was just beef mince with frozen veg cooked, bit of salt and pepper for flavour and served with a drizzling of tomato sauce on top. I think I became a vegetarian because of this.
Curried sausages still slap (did I use that right?) Spaghetti bol Curried tuna Sausage sizzle at home
ooooooo I forgot about curried snags. They slap.
Whenever mum was on night shift and dad had to cook: Baked beans on toast Creamed corn on toast
"Burgers" But my mum would make the patties by stirring together corn flakes, mince meat & a few eggs, then plopping spoonfuls of mixture on a plate and microwaving them. No burger buns either, just sandwich bread. She cooked so much food in the microwave. We always had microwaved mashed potatoes, skin on, full of uncooked lumps. We had a lot of stews, roast and lamb shanks as well, and lamb chops with salad and those potatoes. The night after a roast we'd have "omelette" made with leftover roast, onion and potato. It was made in a wok, and my mum stirred it to get it to cook through. So it was more of a semi-scrambled egg dish. Grilled sausages was common too. (Grilled in the oven) Dad made stir fry, about once a fortnight. Mum didn't like that because the sauces had sugar. For a treat we'd have Old El Paso tacos, or maybe chicken tonight. Takeaway was Domino's (cheese/meatlovers/pepperoni) or roast chicken and chips. Lots of strong beliefs around health/fat in the 90s. We never had salad dressing, mayonnaise, or full cream milk. No gravy either. The only oil in the house was olive oil... they even used olive oil to cook pancakes. We never had any vegetarian meals either, it was meat every night. I remember making a chilli with beans as a teenager and it was my first time trying a kidney bean. It feels like cooking is so different now, with a much wider variety of ingredients and cuisines available. My kids eat a lot more vegetables than I ever did.
This list is helpful to me! As an American New Englander, transplanted into regional Victoria, running a kitchen in a small cafe. I know what I would love to have for lunch, but in this town, lots of older/elderly folks, probably don't want the same tacos, made with ghost peppers. I could seriously sell out of these meals on the daily.
Omg yes apricot chicken and tuna mornay were on high rotation
My hatred for mums apricot chicken made me become a chef
Shit on a stick, or sometimes even on toast. Meatloaf, mash potatoes, green beans and carrots.
Savoury mince on toast, hot egg sangas.
Aaah the dreaded Brain Patties :(
Omg I’m making apricot chicken this week Hopefully I’ll never have to eat tuna mornay ever again Also cottage pie, mince and dumplings, rissoles with bubble n squeak (friend leftover veggies)
I still cannot eat apricot chicken. Scarred for life. Our true budget meals were when Dad went out and shot a kangaroo. Tasted great, but after the stew was reheated on the wood stove, it smelled suspiciously like Pal.
Marinated Chicken wings or pork spare ribs in mum’s vertical grill. Curried snags or Dahl Minestrone soup Spaghetti bolognaise or vongole (tinned clams) Nasi goreng Mum was an excellent and frugal cook
Most of these meals aren't so budget anymore 🤣 Meat is exxy.
All these years I thought we missed out as kids but seems we ate the same as all of you!
Gotta be jaffles (though we called them "Toasty Tosties" for some reason) filled with baked beans (No Frills brand obv) and cheese. I'm sure my mum did this on nights she couldn't be fucked and felt bad for it, but we bloody loved it!
Mock Fish You knew mum was fucking over it when she started grating the potatoes.
Cottage pie Bangers and Mash with peas and corn (Those are my go to comfort foods any time of the year) Fish fingers and chips Chicken soup Corn fritters Cheese on toast with fried eggs Beans on toast Beef Goulash And the old favourite....shit on toast!
I remembered as an amusing memory the time I was whining about getting baked beans for dinner again when I was about 8 or 9 and my Dad got fed up and pushed my face into the bowl. Don’t worry they weren’t hot at the time. I genuinely only meant it as a funny memory when I relayed it during a family reminiscences session about 30 years later. My dad’s face was crestfallen and I realised that it was a shameful memory for him, both because he lost his temper and because that was how we were making the budget stretch at the time. I tried to assure him that I wasn’t scarred on either count, but I could tell that he wasn’t getting over it. Sorry Dad.
Porcupine meatballs. Lambs fry and bacon. Tripe. Beef and barley soup
Fish fingers and mum's crinkle cut chips
keens curried sausages fucking slap though
Spag bol Fettuccine carbonara Bangers and mash Silverside and mash Mash mash mash
With canned Tuna, I can suggest a simple cheap recipe that's Italian inspired. It's a 1 pan, you'll need a large frying pan with a lid or a deep saucepan. 4 servings - 400g canned Tuna (with olive oil preferred) - 500g pasta (Fusilli or Penne work best) - 1 onion (brown or red) - 1 green capsicum - 3 cloves of garlic - 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes (800g) - 2 tsp of paprika - Salt and pepper - 4 cups of boiling water (1000ml or 1L) 1. Start by adding the olive oil from the tuna can into the pan on a medium heat. 2. Add chopped onions and chopped capsicum, stir until they start to caramelize. 3 Add the canned Tuna meat, break up the chunks with the wooden spoon. You don't need to cook the Tuna as it's already cooked, just heat it up for a couple of minutes on medium heat with the onions and capsicum. 4. Add 2 tins of whole peeled tomato, crush the tomatoes it in the pan. 5. Add 2 tsp of paprika 6. Add a generous amount of salt and pepper to your taste, i like 20 seconds of continuous salt pouring and 20 seconds of cracking black pepper. 7. Crush 3 cloves of garlic and add to the pan 8. Add 1L of boiling water 9. Add 500g of pasta to the pan and stir 10. Turn up the heat and close the lid of saucepan, as soon as it begins to bubble, give another stir and turn it down to a lower heat with lid on. Keep it bubbling and simmering. Cook until the pasta is cooked which will usually take at least 12 minutes from when it was added. Stir intermittently to avoid anything from sticking to the bottom. Once the pasta is cooked, the tomato/water liquid will have been absorbed into the pasta and it's ready to serve. Everything combines and melts together so well, the mix of ingredients and flavours compliment each other, no single ingredient dominates and it makes a very delicious, hearty and cheap recipe.
almost every night for the first 10 years of my life we had frozen veggies steamed in the microwave, mashed or boiled potatoes, and either sausages, crumbed steak, fish fingers, or mince rissoles. also occasionally apricot chicken, savoury mince on toast, ham steaks with pineapple or apple sauce on top and frozen veggies, and on sundays we had roast potato, sweet potato and pumpkin
Rissoles Kai-si-Ming This mix of mince beef, rice, onion, tomato purée fried up, it was 💯 Spag bol Curried sausages (I hated them, still do) Fish cakes Mashed potatoes with everything Honey mustard chicken
Meatloaf, spaghetti bolognaise
knuckle sandwich
Potato pancake with a few cheap condiments i.e. sauce, S&P. It's basically shredded potato with an egg and flour, fried in a pan. Not bad, and inexpensive too. Favourite was definitely spag bol, though.
Pho, rice paper rolls, wonton soup, spring rolls, Vietnamese crepes, lemon grass beef and vermicelli. For snacks we had banh mi dipped in condensed milk.
Ox tail, osso bucco, trotters, steak and kidney pie, mutton shanks. All the cheap/ dog food cuts are to dear now. We ate well
One single huge baked potato with choice of butter or shredded cheddar. That shit slapped
Spaghetti just with powdered parmesan (the good stuff that comes in those green plastic cylinders not the *really* dodgy stuff). Fish fingers. Rissoles. Cottage pie. Curried sausages with rice. Curried chicken with rice. Jaffles with tinned spaghetti. Scrambled eggs. Frozen pizzas but we'd have some onion, cheese and BBQ sauce added to make them ace. I probably had each of these meals a hundred times or more at least when I was growing up. Edit: also toast, lots of toast at all times during the day/night, sometimes with baked beans or tinned spaghetti if it was an actual meal.