Food From Your Youth

[paulchapo]

When I was little and had had a tooth or two out, and my mouth was too sore to eat proper food, my mother would make me a bowl of warm milk, with lumps of white bread soaked it it, with sugar to sweeten it. She called it "pobs", a word I never heard since. Also a crushed banana with the "top of the milk" and sugar on it.
Probably rotted what teeth I had left, but I loved it. But then folk had sugar on everything - corn flakes, porridge and in tea & coffee as well. The thought of coffee or tea with sugar in makes my stomach turn now.

There's something similar to "pobs" though in a poem by the 19thC dialect poet Samuel Laycock, describing the woes of feeding a new-born babe when unemployment in the cotton industry was rife:
"Th'art welcome, little bonny brid
Bud shouldn't ha' come just when tha did.
Times are bad.
We're short of pobbies for our Joe
But that of course tha didn't know
Did tha, lad?"
Poverty was real among the factory workers. A most touching bit of verse.
Pobs must be a dialect word.

I remember pobs, my dad made it for me and my sister a couple of times. Looking back to him having it as a kid it was probably a cheap way to fill them up. Banana butties we used to have too.

 

[bluetonium]

Birds hot lemon crunch pudding
Brown sauce butties
Hot Bovril, preferably at Maine Road

I also remember getting a can of something like fizzy milk once. Came in a, I think, plastic can with an undulating bottom which I think we're supposed to resemble a cow's udders.

 

[Barcon]

Vinegar butties. Sugar butties for afters.

 

[idahoblues]

Vinegar butties. Sugar butties for afters.

You forgot the chips with the vinegar

 

[Barcon]

You forgot the chips with the vinegar

Chips were for the posh people.

 

[idahoblues]

Chips were for the posh people.

So was bread and vinegar

 

[paulchapo]

Condensed milk-yuk
Cornflakes covered in chocolate-yum
Pineapple upside down cake-yum

Conny onny we used to call it on the ships we only got fresh milk in port and it lasted five minutes. We used to bash Conny onny down with water for our cornflakes, it was vile looking back I remember long life milk coming along it was a game changer for us onboard. Talking of milk we used to have sterilised milk until we got a fridge at home, perhaps it lasted longer?

 

[idahoblues]

Spam fritters at school
Cold really lumpy mashed potatoes
Served with over boiled cabbage

 

[Big mals fedora]

Conny onny we used to call it on the ships we only got fresh milk in port and it lasted five minutes. We used to bash Conny onny down with water for our cornflakes, it was vile looking back I remember long life milk coming along it was a game changer for us onboard. Talking of milk we used to have sterilised milk until we got a fridge at home, perhaps it lasted longer?

Yeh stera was rank. If we were nicking milk off doorsteps, no one ever took the stera!!

 

[Barcon]

You forgot the chips with the vinegar

We made our own vinegar by nicking old bottles of babycham from the back of the pubs and sieving out the wasps.