Simple healthy recipies from 1950/60s era

[Rosie34]

My mum has been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. She does not eat much and lacks in vegetable intake, does not eat much fried foods, but does eat lots of sugary processed easy foods. She does not like modern food (foreign, spicy). Most of her home-cooked meals are typical of the 1950s when she grew up.

She gets very confused and upset when presented with so-called healthy recipes given by the NHS because they often have lots of ingredients. Often she has not heard of and many of the ingredients and she know she does not like lots of thing most younger people would consider normal food, think avacardos, bean sprouts, butternut squash and mayonnaise.

So I am looking for some healthy simple, quite bland veg and meat based recipes. She could cook.

 

[Felinia]

My mum was just the same. She made lots of casseroles/stews by putting in carrots, onions, chopped potatoes and something like cubed beef, lamb or diced chicken, baked in gravy and served inevitably with frozen peas! You can get stew packs from a freezer section, so very little work involved and the oven does the work. Left overs can be saved for another day.

 

[Lucyr]

So I am looking for some healthy simple, quite bland veg and meat based recipes. She could cook.

Any type of meat, with veg on the side shouldn’t have much impact on blood sugars. Potato will have more impact on blood sugars.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

My mum has been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. She does not eat much and lacks in vegetable intake, does not eat much fried foods, but does eat lots of sugary processed easy foods. She does not like modern food (foreign, spicy). Most of her home-cooked meals are typical of the 1950s when she grew up.

She gets very confused and upset when presented with so-called healthy recipes given by the NHS because they often have lots of ingredients. Often she has not heard of and many of the ingredients and she know she does not like lots of thing most younger people would consider normal food, think avacardos, bean sprouts, butternut squash and mayonnaise.

So I am looking for some healthy simple, quite bland veg and meat based recipes. She could cook.

My mum used to have fish friday, a lot of soups and stews. chicken, cottage pie, shepherds pie, all simple, all low number of ingredients.
To be fair though, as she got older, Birds Eye took over the food.

 

[Rosie34]

My mum used to have fish friday, a lot of soups and stews. chicken, cottage pie, shepherds pie, all simple, all low number of ingredients.
To be fair though, as she got older, Birds Eye took over the food.

This is essentially the problem. She needs a clear guild to healthy eating, much like what is currently available. But more geared towards someone with her taste in food. Recipes with foods which are not alien to her. She still cooks, but has never been very good at it, so very clear recipes and meal plans.

Every time I try to search the internet my results don't bring up anything appropriate.

 

[Leadinglights]

With prediabetes some modest changes to what she normally eats is probably all that is needed. One thing would be to look at the portion size of meals with high carbohydrate foods, potatoes, 2 instead of 3, rice, half as much, pasta half as much, bread, 1 slice instead of 2. Make up the difference with extra protein and veg or salad. Meat, fish, eggs and cheese are good foundations for meals, they don't need to be complicated. Home made soup is always a good option.
For pudding sugarfree jelly with berries and cream, high protein yoghurt with berries. Go easy on cakes and biscuits, fruit juice and sugary drinks.
The book Carbs and Cals is a good guide to the carb value of a whole range of foods and meals and can enable a better choice.

 

[nonethewiser]

A quick search on net will tell you what meals where like back in 50s 60s, things like stews hotpots mince & tatties roast dinners are few examples.

Parents kept making these nutritios delicious home cooked food for us as a family well into 70s 80s, wife & I continued to feed our children same type of meals.

 

[42istheanswer]

My dad was brought up in 50s/60s on home cooked meals including curries, then again his mother spent some of her childhood living in India...

But yes I would suggest that you look at her current recipes, and substitute other vegetables for some of the potatoes and similar

 

[Drummer]

I make stews in the pressure cooker, just like my mum in the 50s and 60s.
I do cheat a bit and use frozen mixed veges - I get ones without sweetcorn and there are some very low carb ones. I go to Lidl and buy lots of fresh and frozen fish and meats. I get cauliflower and cauliflower/broccoli mixes. I also get frozen stir fry, the Asian and Italian ones, as they seem fairly mild.
I buy swede to use instead of potatoes, cook it in a pressure cooker as that seems to give the best results, then mash it to have with dinner and then fry up next morning to have with bacon or heat it in the oven with cheese.
My cooking is very simple, and could be done from scratch - I do have fresh onion to add a bit to the pan when frying steak, fresh mushrooms too, and it is possible to eat what I think of as fairly normal meals but staying low carb all the time.
If you need recipes for baked goods there is the 'sugarfreelondoner' website which has some really nice buns and cakes, etc. though you might have to order the ingredients on line, particularly at the moment. The supermarket stock seems very erratic.

 

[trophywench]

I was born in 1950. Now let's see, what did my mom cook for us?

Monday, cold leftover meat from Sunday, boiled potatoes and other veg and gravy made with Bisto with leftover pudding from Sunday with freshly made custard - washing day so too much else to do to spend time cooking.
Tuesday, plaice, chips and peas - fresh if in season. She would NOT cook fish on Friday since we were CERTAINLY not Roman Catholic, hence there was absolutely no need for 'that sort of business'.
Wednesday, a chop, either lamb or pork, boiled spuds and other veg, gravy and YAY! cake! cos Wed was baking day.
Thursday, stew made in an earthenware lidded stewpot with lean stewing steak and onions, carrots & parsnips and a shake of pearl barley with unthickened gravy in the oven, dumplings added for the last 20 minutes with jacket spuds, pudding.
Friday, all sorts of possibilities here eg toad in the hole, or corned beef fritters or maybe sausage without the 'hole', pudding.
Saturday, hip bone steak cooked in the oven with sliced onion in water, boiled spuds and veg.
Sunday, roast either sirloin, pork or leg of lamb with appropriate accompaniments therefore only EVER got Yorkshire Pud with beef, sage & onion stuffing and apple sauce hence also apple pie mint sauce with lamb and always roast spuds with all of them. (but never served up crispy)

Of course back then poultry was far too expensive to be able to have it other than at Xmas and on Easter Sunday.

Only quite a lot later did it reach my understanding that a) money was short and b) how intolerant and prejudiced my mother was! Or that fish like haddock and cod were really nice and not every chip shop in Christendom put so much batter on it that the inside steamed really, rather than frying. Or what hard work it must be beating hard margarine into submission to begin with, to make any cake large or small or sponge pudding. The puds were OK - although neither of us really enjoyed the once a week day with a baked milk pudding with the nutmeg on top though we both liked nutmeg, which improved the skin no end, her judgement of the amount of rice was somewhat random and we weren't all that keen on 'frog spawn' (large sago) or 'worms' (macaroni) Yuk. We ate it though we had no other choice basically. If mom didn't know about something - we never tasted it. Only tinned RED salmon in sandwiches. No shellfish. People only ever buy eg tinned pink salmon, tuna or sardines because they are poor.

She did start trying a few different things as we both got a bit older and she invested in an elec mixer. Pastry was never her forte but at least she discovered one day as well as how useful it was for cake, how to make a roux, so cauliflower cheese sometimes was great. After she eventually died my sister and I went into the butchers shop we both grew up with by which time long since the owner Mr P had retired and Brian his apprentice had owned it for ages. Having both greeted him and explained why we were in the vicinity my sis asked him for a piece of roasting beef please and he said immediately that he was afraid he had no sirloin right at this moment and we both burst out laughing and said, No - we both know very well by now that there are much better choices AND that beef needs to be well marbled if you want it to cook properly! (Mom would absolutely never tolerate marbling even when a ruddy butcher explained it, what could he know about cooking anyway, he's just a lad and still repeating what Mr P told him ........ and she'd bet it wasn't him that did the cooking either so he couldn't know such things either, sigh)

Bet you wish you hadn't asked now! Grin!

 

[lizzieK]

I make stews in the pressure cooker, just like my mum in the 50s and 60s.
I do cheat a bit and use frozen mixed veges - I get ones without sweetcorn and there are some very low carb ones. I go to Lidl and buy lots of fresh and frozen fish and meats. I get cauliflower and cauliflower/broccoli mixes. I also get frozen stir fry, the Asian and Italian ones, as they seem fairly mild.
I buy swede to use instead of potatoes, cook it in a pressure cooker as that seems to give the best results, then mash it to have with dinner and then fry up next morning to have with bacon or heat it in the oven with cheese.
My cooking is very simple, and could be done from scratch - I do have fresh onion to add a bit to the pan when frying steak, fresh mushrooms too, and it is possible to eat what I think of as fairly normal meals but staying low carb all the time.
If you need recipes for baked goods there is the 'sugarfreelondoner' website which has some really nice buns and cakes, etc. though you might have to order the ingredients on line, particularly at the moment. The supermarket stock seems very erratic.

Drummer….thanks for those ideas. I like the idea of the swede mash. One thing I do to make veggies look a bit different is broccoli and pea mash. Break small stems of broccoli and boil until tender….add frozen peas when almost done. Drain veg into a bowl, add a knob of butter and whiz together. I use a hand blender.

 

[Ditto]

Tuesday, plaice, chips and peas - fresh if in season. She would NOT cook fish on Friday since we were CERTAINLY not Roman Catholic, hence there was absolutely no need for 'that sort of business'.

So funny. 🙂 If I think of 50s cooking and my Mum it's all tater ash and neck end. Good grief.

 

[Leadinglights]

Drummer….thanks for those ideas. I like the idea of the swede mash. One thing I do to make veggies look a bit different is broccoli and pea mash. Break small stems of broccoli and boil until tender….add frozen peas when almost done. Drain veg into a bowl, add a knob of butter and whiz together. I use a hand blender.

That sounds quite like the Macho peas that you get in Nandos which I have fairly successfully made, cook the peas, roughly blitz half the peas with bit chilli, parsley, mint salt and pepper, butter, heat then add the rest of the peas.
But adding the broccoli would reduce the carbs a bit. Sounds a plan.

 

[barrym]

<snip>
Monday, cold leftover meat from Sunday, boiled potatoes and other veg and gravy made with Bisto ......

Don't forget Monday special - Bubble & Squeak, cold meat and HP sauce!!! Yum.

NB This most definitely is not a keto meal 😉

 

[trophywench]

Nope! Mom didn't do fried stuff except the fish shallow fried in breadcrumbs and the chips on Tuesdays. Fried stuff was not good for us. Plus the HP sauce on the pantry shelf was for dad, not you. (Eg sausage and steak was cooked in the oven)

I got married at 21 and have not only learned to cook a lot of different things since then, but also that I quite like any number of things my mother wouldn't have countenanced ! (prawns and mussels, crab, lobster, foreign muck like pommes dauphinoise, spag, lasagne, properly made mac & cheese, some Chinese, some Indian. And garlic ...)

 

[Deleted member 21371]

Drummer….thanks for those ideas. I like the idea of the swede mash. One thing I do to make veggies look a bit different is broccoli and pea mash. Break small stems of broccoli and boil until tender….add frozen peas when almost done. Drain veg into a bowl, add a knob of butter and whiz together. I use a hand blender.

I like the taste of mashed swede, but it's only about 5g of carbs per 100g less than mashed potatoes.
To be honest carb comparison between potatoes and any similar veg is much of a muchness, unless you eat half a kilo

 

[Inka]

My mum has been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. She does not eat much and lacks in vegetable intake, does not eat much fried foods, but does eat lots of sugary processed easy foods. She does not like modern food (foreign, spicy). Most of her home-cooked meals are typical of the 1950s when she grew up.

She gets very confused and upset when presented with so-called healthy recipes given by the NHS because they often have lots of ingredients. Often she has not heard of and many of the ingredients and she know she does not like lots of thing most younger people would consider normal food, think avacardos, bean sprouts, butternut squash and mayonnaise.

So I am looking for some healthy simple, quite bland veg and meat based recipes. She could cook.

Cutting out the sugary processed foods will help. For meals, she could stick to simple things with reduced amounts of carbs - omelette, poached eggs, chicken, pork chop, etc. All traditional foods but with less carbs, eg instead of having two slices of bread with her omelette, she could have one (or none) and have tomatoes, mushrooms, salad etc, with a sugar-free jelly and a few berries for dessert. Again, with a roast, she can have the meat and veg but should limit the potatoes and other carby accompaniments.

 

[42istheanswer]

@trophywench 's post has reminded me that my mother (also born in the 50s) always made a pudding of some kind for dinner. (And we always had cake of some kind for lunch). I think partly that was because carbohydrates were cheap (we couldn't afford meat every day in the 80s and 90s which is when I was a child, so ate a lot of baked beans and lentil burgers and so on) but if your mother is used to always having a dessert @lizzieK then finding lower carb desserts she enjoys (like berries and yoghurt, or berries and cream if your mum doesn't need to eat low fat as well, or as previously suggested sugar free jelly with cream) might be part of solving the conundrum of her feeling that she has had a "proper" meal which works better for her Diabetes management.

 

[Drummer]

I like the taste of mashed swede, but it's only about 5g of carbs per 100g less than mashed potatoes.
To be honest carb comparison between potatoes and any similar veg is much of a muchness, unless you eat half a kilo

Potato is around 15% and swede is around 3.5%. I find a huge difference.