Fascinating topic, considering we're all foodies these days!
Rationing in the UK finished in 1954. Food when I was a kid depended on what was seasonal and what was locally produced.
When I was 8, we moved into our first house - with a garden . My dad dug the whole thing up (apart from 10 mts of lawn) and planted veg every year. Potatoes, sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, beetroot, parsnips, onions,spring onions, raspberries, redcurrants, lettuce, runner beans. Then a few years later, he built a greenhouse and we had tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
Fresh fruit was strawberries (which we scrumped from an abandoned local farm), which were mostly made into jam; blackberries (which we picked wild in the park), red/blackcurrants (usually gifts from locals), apples and pears from local sources. People would put boxes of cooking apples outside their house, if they had too many, and we'd take maybe 4 or five, to make apple pie or bottled pie filling. I seem to remember we had a "Cold Box" until I was about 10, when we got our first fridge. No freezer, except for a narrow shelf where we made "ice".
My mum was basically vegetarian, except for chicken. Sunday Roast (which was obligatory) was that - even on Christmas Day, although my dad would buy a roast beef or a bit of lamb. Gravy all over the place. Loads of the veg above, plus cheese, which would be Cheddar, Cheshire, Lancashire or Double Gloucester. Every Saturday we had salad for dinner. In the summer, great; in the winter, not so great. As we grew older, we'd have Heinz ravioli or spaghetti, on toast. Never had proper pasta at home, nor anything else vaguely "foreign".
First Chinese: 14 years old. My aunt took me. Sweet and sour chicken.
First pasta dish: 14 years old. Summer Camp in Ramatuelle, Southern France.
First Curry: about 16. Down the pub with some mates and finished up in "The Curry Inn", along the High St.
First Broccoli, artichoke,Spaghetti, Stilton, Camembert, etc: first (and only) year at Oxford. Ate like a pig, 5 times a day.
