h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been watching this over the past few weeks, starting with the 1950s, and now I'm up to 1970 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARb0cZH8CI0 It's been fascinating because (apart from the first six years of the 50s) it's covering the period of my life.

This (the 70s) was the decade that processed and convenience food became the massive industry it is now, and the whole/health food movement took off. I'm very pleased, a little proud, and hopefully not too smug that I rejected that industry from the off, as soon as I could.

I've mentioned before that my mother cooked almost everything from ingredients, not from packets, although we had tinned soups, tinned spaghetti (I didn't know it came any other way until my mid teens), the occasional Green's cake mix, tinned beans (but who doesn't... oh, wait - me, any more), fish fingers and a very small handful of other packaged foods that I can't recall to memory, and in the late 60s/early 70s we were swayed by the allure of Vesta Chicken Supreme, Bird's Angel Delight, boil-in-the-bag fish in sauce, and one or two other convenience foods, because they were a bit exotic.

This coloured my food thinking for the rest of my life and I'm glad of it, because ever since I left home and started cooking for myself, in the mid 70s, I've by and large done it with ingredients, not packets and tins. Even before I left home I was fascinated by the self-sufficiency movement, watched The Good Life avidly as well as programme called A House For the Future which had a huge self-sufficiency element as well as an environmental one, and I bought a first edition of the John Seymour book mentioned in the programme, which I don't have any more - I gave it to a friend when I was leaving the shores of Old Blighty for good. I wish I hadn't done that now (along with a few other things I wish I hadn't jettisoned).

Almost immediately I discovered my first wholefood shop. This one, and it's still going http://8thday.coop/ However, not being a very inventive cook, and in fact not liking to cook very much at all at the time, I really didn't explore the full potential, but I've never looked back and have bought proper food, organic where possible, ever since. I'm also rather proud that I've never bought a Pot Noodle and never set foot in a Bejam, Iceland or any other frozen food shop.

I am rather embarrassed and ashamed though that when McDonalds first came to Britain I ate rather a lot of them from the one that opened up close to where I was living at the time

A few books I *didn't* get rid of before I came to Texas - the Cranks Cookbook and the Neal's Yard Cookbook. I use them both all the time still.

One part of the programme that really stood out for me was a clip of someone, possibly a food writer, definitely a processed food sceptic, saying that we didn't know what the consequences were likely to be of the change from a traditional diet to a technologically-based one (it's at around 45m into the show). Well, we do now. Hyperactive kids, people dying of diseases and ailments related to the chemicals that went into foods, and obesity.

Aside from the food aspect, this programme really has brought home how grim certain aspects of British life were in the 1950s and early 60s, and for some people on into the 70s and 80s, because the lifestyle being portrayed is one of a fairly well-off family who could afford gadgets and appliances at the time, because that's what the programme has to portray. That really wasn't the case for a lot of people, but the point of the programme is to portray how things were changing and improving.

If you can call boil-in-the-bag fish and tinned mince an improvement.

I'm very pleased too that they showed (most of) the Cadbury's Smash advert Well, they had to really, didn't they. There would have been a justifiable outcry if they hadn't included one of Britain's most memorable and much-loved ads at the same time as featuring the product. A little disappointed though that Ben and his Birds Eye Beefburgers didn't get a look-in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UxgevYg7sU

I haven't seen any of this programme but it it's been discussed at great length and in detail on gransnet. Basically, the denizens of gransnet are baby boomers, like me and, if you'll excuse me pointing it out, you, Gosho. And there are a couple who are slightly older.

They all came to the conclusion that the programme makers obviously had no idea what things were like in the 50s or even in the 60s, and didn't seem to have asked anyone who might have actually lived at that time. The ladies on gransnet are all horrified at the impression the programme gives and nobody's family had any of the meals or foodstuffs shown (cold liver and bacon? ), nor did any of their fathers sit at the table in their suits, waiting to be fed.

I asked my mother if she'd watched any of the programmes and she agreed.

However, we do all seem to agree that Angel Delight was a special treat, and, although my mother was ashamed to serve them up (she went back to work when I was about 10), I just loved a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie.

I can't remember the Cadbury's smash advert. Will look it out.

we caught that programme by chance last week and as luck would have it it was the 70s one. ARCTIC ROLL!

I have to say, though, that they could have picked a family with a woman who knows about a bit of cooking? she was useless, and would be useless even now (her husband takes charge of food apparently)

But I thought it was great, especially the power cut and Giles Coren () and his reaction to the tinned mince!!

I think the woman herself, even though she's a lousy cook, which she wouldn't have been if she really had been living at the time, is very good with words and expresses some interesting thoughts. Mind you, it does look as though she's only just been put on this earth. Didn't she see her own mother going through all that?


I had left the UK by 1974 so I didn't really know about Arctic Rolls and stuff, but the Cog au Vin was the sort of thing I'd have cooked back then, too. I wish there was still a men's cook book today which had to describe which part of the oven you cook in. That's what my husband would need if he started to learn to cook, as he had said he would when he retired. (Retire 9 months now and still hasn't even boiled an egg. He would rather go hungry)

Also, I have come up with a theory as to why the meals in that national register are so awful. The type of people who would have volunteered to keep such a log will probably not have been your average houseproud middle class Mum who enjoyed cooking and trying out new things. There was probably some remuneration for their efforts and they may have been the sort of people who go for the cheapest and simplest things available in the shops and don't put a lot of imagination into their menus. You get that type right across the board - scraping together pennies and not putting a lot into enjoying the money they've saved either.

Where do they get all that stuff from? Are there still tins of mince on the shelves? Did they rummage around in an old chest in Iceland to find that packet of cod in butter sauce?

I've enjoyed watching this too, Vesta meals were a great novelty, watching the noodles puff up in a pan of oil! I remembered the powdered orange juice too.

I know one of the places they filmed was the 1960s Tesco recreated for the Goodwood Festival: http://www.tescoplc.com/index.asp?pageid=17&newsid=1056

Does anyone else remember pre conveyor belt supermarket tills that had a wooden tray with a handle pulled by the cashier?

Oh yes - they had those at the Sainsbury's we went to when I was a kid

I too keep wanting to at the pig's ear the wife is making of the cooking and the prep. I'm guessing that she and her husband were born some time in the 60s, which makes them about 10 years younger than me, because they said the 70s house was the first one they have some recognition and memory of, but even so, she must have seen one of the old school tin openers, the ones you jab into the top of the tin and lever around. She didn't have a clue how it worked

And I've also been wondering where they're getting some of those retro packaged foods. Last week, in the 60s episode, they had what looked a lot like Vesta, and in fact when Valentines Warner did a pair of shows called Valentine Warner eats the 60s *he* had packets of Vesta too that looked bona fide because he opened one and cooked it.

I'm guessing they have manufactured some of the food especially.

Sorry, TC, I've met your husband and he's lovely but he (and his parents) should be thoroughly ashamed of his lack of cooking skills.

At the time the Cookbook for Men probably didn't raise any hackles except among readers of Spare Rib, but these days we don't need that rubbish. If people can't cook we need a cookbook for people who can't cook.

I grew up in the 70s (was born in late '63) and my parents must have been weird because my dad, in one of the manliest jobs in the universe (senior NCO in the Household Cavalry in the 70s) used to do the cooking if he got home before my full-time working (in a drawing office) mother. Which was often because she had to get 2 buses from Slough to Windsor and he only had to walk a few hundred yards from the barracks to our quarter.

And it wasn't just packet stuff. We had chinese, Indian, Italian food. We occasionally had a Vesta curry or thing with those puffed up noodles, or frozen burgers and peas, but generally everything was cooked from scratch. Every day. Mind you, we also made our own yoghurt and one summer when there seemed to be a glut of citrus fruits they made a huge batch of home-made orange squash stuff.

In fact I used to be quite shocked to find out that other friends' fathers did absolutely nothing around the house. So maybe my family was odd?

The packaging would be easy, as I said they used the reproduction Tesco at the Goodwood Revival to go shopping.

And Vesta meals themselves do still exist:
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=257550162

- a very apt typo, Coelecanth!

Oh dear! Too early.

The purpose of this programme, however well or badly researched and produced it's been so far, is to show the trends of the time for a whole nation, and they're using one family to convey this. It wouldn't work if the family kept changing from being one where they behaved one way and then suddenly changed to another, so I guess the producers have settled on what they feel is important for each decade to convey the way things were changing by bringing together as many aspects of the way the British cooked and ate, but it seems odd to us because it was unlikely to have all happened like that under one roof. There has to be a suspension of disbelief in that respect.

For instance, I think they said in the 70s episode that the freezer they had delivered would have cost the equivalent of a grand in today's money. Obviously only the well-off would have been able to afford that and it would have been well out of the range of families such as mine, but I still recognise a lot of what's in the programme, in the food, the cooking, the way it was eaten, and in the decor, so it's relevant to trends from across the social spectrum, with a few exceptions.

I think it would have worked better if they'd used a different family for each decade, so that they could have had people who'd had a little experience of, or at least memories of a childhood during, the decades they're showing in each episode. Since the first three episodes have been the ones where it's been almost the sole domain of the wife, it would have been less frustrating if the wife in question had had some knowledge of what she was supposed to be doing.

And if your family was odd Sho, then so was mine because my dad helped out with the cooking a lot, although 'helped' is the important word in that sentence. I don't remember him cooking entire meals. He made fantastic chips

it just seems a bit odd to me that the woman in that family literally couldn't work out that to make chips you have to a) heat up the fat and b) make sure that hot fat covered the chips

We watched the 80s one today. it was great because that was the decade I left school, married and moved into my own place. The food historian lady was really really interesting, I would love to see more of her and hear more of her analysis of our relationship with food, the packaging and the development of ready meals etc.

But the family! I mean, I know I'm a bit of a foodie, and I know that I'm married to a classically trained but... no reaction from them, whereas we were swooning at the idea of having a meal cooked by Anton Mosiman! and Ken Hom!

My mum was in hospital for a while when I was about 9 and my brother was 6. She used to bake a cake of some sort every week. So he had a go at a cherry cake (sort of maderia with glacé cherries). The cherries all sank to the bottom so he called it Pirate Cake and we, and our friends loved it.

I have to agree with you about the chips Sho, and I can't help thinking that while they were filming and editing that scene the producers must have been wondering if they chose the right family for the job (and if that wasn't what was going through their mind then I reckon the BBC didn't choose the right producers for the job).

This isn't actually a confession because I've said it before - I've never made chips, in a chip pan or a fryer, and especially not oven chips. I can probably count on maybe two hands rather than one the number of times since I started cooking for myself that I've done any kind of deep frying at all. I've made Scotch eggs, which were delicious. I made those things I can't recall the name of... oh, billiard eggs, a few weeks ago which TC (I think it was TC) called breadcrumbs coated in breadcrumbs . I might have deep fried breaded chicken drumsticks once.

However, sitting in the pantry I have a box of powder which claims that its contents will, with a few added ingredients, make 100 gulab jamuns And they have to be deep fried.

And the name of the company that maks this wonderful thing? Gits

Ooh, now I'm in a quandary. I bought some sausages yesterday, for bangers and mash, and I also bought a dozen eggs. And one of the best ways to make Scotch eggs is to buy your favourite bangers and use the meat from those to wrap around the boiled eggs.

And now I really want both bangers and mash *and* Scotch eggs, and I don't have enough sausages for both

Maybe you could get by with banger and mash and a scotch egg.

A good suggestion, but it takes more than one banger's worth (or should that be bangers-worth?) of meat to wrap one egg with the right thickness of sausage. You wouldn't think so, but I've fallen foul of that problem before.

Also, 'banger and mash' is a desperately sad concept.

Yeah... that was more my point. Even to my non-British ear, "banger and mash" sounds dissonant.