Remembering dinnertime in the 1960s
Kevin Moloney appears with his wife Janetta in the reality TV show Travel Guides. He is a ghost writer and travel and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in more than 30 different publications across the globe.
Mum, of course, was a good cook. From the beginning of time, every boy thinks his mum is the best cook in the world except, maybe, for Cain and Abel who were apparently and literally ‘fed up’ of their mum’s cooking repertoire, which featured apples in every dish. I was no exception. Mum cooked every one of our meals, as did every mum of her day, and she cooked the same sort of food as every other mum of her day did.
There was nothing flash about Mum’s cooking but she always had our meals on the go by the time we arrived home from school. When we were little, we ate our tea at the kitchen table at about five thirty and as we grew older, the meal was served a little later. Like most of the people we knew, we called the evening meal tea, not dinner.
The kitchen table was always set with a tablecloth (sometimes a plastic one), salt and pepper shakers and cutlery. Our plates were a snot-coloured green with ribbing around the edges and most of them were slightly chipped, but that was only the kitchen stuff. We had another set of crockery which was the ‘good’ one and we only brought that out for special occasions like Christmas, when we ate at the big table in the dining room (which was really the lounge room). It had to be a very special occasion for us to get out the ‘good’ plates. They were a wedding present to Mum and Dad. Mum never set the table, it was always a job for one of us kids, and I’d usually make myself scarce around this time. I hated setting the table, it was boring. Eating wasn’t boring though as the food was always good.
Every meal, except breakfast, started with potato – mashed, steamed, fried, boiled, baked, or if Mum was being really adventurous, we had them scalloped. Whichever way they were cooked, there was potato of some sort and I loved potatoes; couldn’t get enough of them. My favourite was mashed and no-one made it like Mum. It was always creamy, buttery, white, fluffy and hot with an extra knob of butter on top which would melt down the side of the white pile like a golden stream of lava down an albino volcano. There was always a large hessian bag of dirt covered potatoes in the cupboard under the sink, next to the string bag of onions, and Mum would buy a new bag every Friday when she went to Dickins’s supermarket at Chadstone. I think we ate more potatoes than the entire population of Dublin.
Dad loved potato too and Mum knew it. She always cooked just a little extra so Dad could have some on a piece of bread after tea was finished. Half way through tea, Dad would always ask Mum, ‘Any more spuds, Duck?’ even though he knew the answer. (Dad used to call Mum, Duck, but I don’t know why, she didn’t look or sound like a duck.) I’d listen for her answer too because just like Dad, I started to develop an unhealthy love for mashed potato sandwiches. I ate anything that Dad ate.
‘There might be some left, I’m not sure,’ she’d tease, knowing full well there was a half a saucepan of white starch left on top of the stove.
We both knew there would be more for later too so we didn’t have to ration the average sized pile of mash that she’d served up on our plates. If a lot of potato was left over, Mum would put it in the fridge and we’d have it fried on toast the next morning. That was the best way to eat potato. The best.
But although I thought I didn’t really need anything else apart from spuds, we were served other things at mealtimes. Mum would cook all sorts of dishes like casseroles, curried sausages, shepherd’s pie, stews, meat loaf, roasts, chops and crumbed cutlets, which were my favourite. Every meal had at least three vegetables placed in little piles on our plates. We never had the same meal twice in one week and Mum had about thirty different meals she could cook from memory. She never had to look up a recipe for meals – she just knew what to do.
Roasts were always cooked in the oven and almost everything else came out of the electric frying pan. That was until we got the Upright Electric Grill, which Mum thought was fantastic because all the fat went ‘in a drip tray instead of your waist’, or so Maggie Tabberer said in the TV commercial. Once we got the Upright Electric Grill, our meals became a feast of charred mixed meats for several months. Chops, sausages, rissoles and steaks all came from the ‘Upright’, as it affectionately became known. The Upright had a permanent and prominent home on the kitchen bench and wasn’t even put away in the cupboard after use. It was such a hit. It was there for breakfast, lunch and tea. We all thought it was a revolution in cooking with its little slide-out crumb tray, lift-out rack and variable heat setting. It was very modern – the sort of thing Samantha Stephens from Bewitched would have had on her kitchen bench.
Mum always (or usually) prepared two courses for tea, the main course and dessert, which we called sweets or pudding. Half way through the main course, just before or after Dad would ask about the leftover spuds, someone would ask the question. ‘What’s for sweets Mum?’ and of course, Mum would reply with the usual ‘You’ll just have to wait to find out.’ Or the old faithful, ‘A wigwam for a goose’s bridle.’ (Still have no idea what that means.)
Knowing there was dessert of some sort to follow was incentive enough to finish off the main course. But missing out on sweets, for any reason, was a disaster.
There was never really a problem in our house with anyone having major dislikes to any food that Mum served. Some of us preferred peas to sprouts and would balk at the thought of cabbage but, generally speaking, there were no real issues. However, as little kids being trained to eat green things like peas and beans, there were a few episodes that kept us sitting at the table for hours. There was a standard language that all parents used to coax kids into eating stuff they didn’t like: ‘You’ll sit there until every mouthful is gone young man,’ or ‘If you don’t eat it now, you’ll have it for breakfast,’ along with ‘Come on, just one more mouthful,’ and ‘I want to see that plate shine.’ Mum and Dad had all the lines.
I’d sit there with half a plate full of green-grey, cold, shrivelled peas, rolling them all over the plate and refusing to put them anywhere near my mouth. There was no potato left to glue them to the fork so it was a matter of eating them unadulterated. I couldn’t think of anything worse. Dad would sit with me at the table and play the cat and mouse game, watching my every move, of which there weren’t many, as I just sat there stubbornly with mouth firmly shut, eyes downcast, arms crossed and feet dangling under my chair. ‘It’s not fair’ would be the only thing I’d say in response to any sort of coaxing from Dad. Even Dad’s aeroplane coming into the hangar stunt didn’t work.
‘Dad, I’m five,’ I’d protest at his desperate attempts to get me to eat the filthy peas. Then I’d go back in to my downcast eyes and dangling feet pose with another ‘It’s not fair’ as I could hear all my sisters in the lounge watching The Beverly Hillbillies and laughing loudly at Jethro’s antics.
Eventually, persistence would win and if I refused long enough, Dad would get bored and eventually give up in despair. I’d always opt for the ‘having it for breakfast’ option because I knew Mum or Dad wouldn’t make me eat the peas next morning; they would have forgotten all about them by then and besides, they had more important things to worry about than making me eat cold peas for breakfast.
The worst part about the pea saga though, was that I missed out on sweets, which was terrible.
Mum made the best baked creamed rice in the free world and that’s what I missed out on. She had an oval Pyrex dish that she’d make the rice in and it always looked, smelt and tasted perfect. The rice was fluffy, creamy and sweet and the top had thin brown skin like a really good suntan, which bubbled and blistered as it cooked in the oven. In the centre of the skin was a stick of cinnamon, which looked like a piece of bark, and it lay there like a little paddle on the top of the rice. As it baked in the oven, I could smell the cinnamon, milk and sugar throughout the entire house. It was the sort of smell that keeps you close to the kitchen so as to breathe in lungfuls of the stuff. The aroma was so enticing and pungent it was just like eating dessert before the main course; the thick scent of the baked creamed rice cooking in the oven was strong enough to eat.
And just as well, as my problem with peas meant I didn’t get to taste it. It wasn’t fair.
It didn’t matter though, it was even better cold, so I got to eat it after school the next day anyway with a dollop of cream, straight from the dish. I didn’t miss out after all, Mum had left more than enough for me. She always did.
While Mum cooked every meal, as we grew a little older, she refused to cook on Sunday nights. Sunday night was ‘scraps’ night and Mum would unashamedly ‘go on strike’. The previous week’s cooking and her careful portion control meant we usually had a fridge full of leftovers which could be reinvented into another meal, or two.
While Mum refused to cook on Sunday nights she was happy to supervise operations in the kitchen. Dad wasn’t allowed in the kitchen unsupervised unless he was just making a cup of tea. Anything he attempted to cook usually ended up with some sort of disaster, like the time he tried to make blackberry jam from blackberries we’d picked on someone’s farm that day. Dad thought he’d help Mum make the jam but decided it was a bit too lumpy after she had removed it from the stove. ‘Few lumps in this, Duck,’ he said to Mum, who had already left the kitchen for a quiet cigarette.
Dad put the hot jam in the blender and turned it on, forgetting that the lid was still sitting on the bench. As he flicked the switch, boiling jam swirled in the blender and spewed out the top, showering the entire kitchen with boiling hot crimson jam. Every surface, including Dad’s face was now covered in little hot red dots.
Mum came back from her break, stood at the kitchen door, looked at the scene of devastation and immediately closed the door behind her as she went back into the lounge with her good friend Peter Stuyvesant. Dad swirled the wettex around the surfaces spreading a thin layer of jam over everything, cursing. ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.’
Mum was less than happy about boiling jam being peppered all over the cupboards, ceiling, walls and windows, so she made Dad paint the entire kitchen the following weekend. He wasn’t impressed at that either and never offered to help with the cooking again. He was much better at building rock gardens.
So, on Sunday nights, under Mum’s supervision, we’d cook. If there weren’t enough leftovers for a meal, we’d have fried bread or waffles or pancakes with lemon juice and sugar. It was all a bit of a treat on Sundays and none of the usual rules applied. We could choose what we wanted to cook and if we just wanted dessert like pancakes or waffles, that was okay. Mum knew exactly what was in the fridge and could do a mental stocktake without even looking. She’d know what could be converted into bubble ’n’ squeak, and what could be turned into rissoles or fritters. There was usually some sort of batter involved in Sunday night’s meal, either sweet or savoury.
On the rare occasion there was absolutely nothing in the fridge, or if Mum was feeling particularly benevolent, we’d all pile in to the Valiant with Dad and head off to the local Chinese restaurant armed with a saucepan and aluminium steamer which would later be filled with fried rice. That was rare, but great! We’d all eat the fried rice once we got home and Mum would order a serve of chicken balls in batter with sweet and sour sauce. We preferred the rice.
All four kids got our basic cooking skills from Sunday nights in the kitchen. It was too late for Dad; as a cook, he was a lost cause and he stuck to making tea and driving to the Chinese, which he irreverently but fondly called the Choong Wah shop. He called every Chinese person Choong Wah.
In fact, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese – they were all Choong Wah!
Sunday nights were better than any other night as we were allowed to eat our fantastic creations on our laps in the lounge room in front of the TV because Disneyland was on. This was a real treat – not having to sit at the table to eat.
Mum sat in her chair, doing the crossword or knitting jumpers while we cooked in the kitchen, making all sorts of mess. We’d bring her meal into her and she’d eat it on her lap as we all sat in a semicircle around the TV, totally engrossed in Tomorrowland, filling our faces with questionable food and waiting on an appraisal of the meal we’d created for ourselves and Mum.
She’d always finish her meal by saying, ‘Well, that’s the best meal I’ve had all week,’ even though she may have just feasted on fried Camp Pie in waffle batter with tinned peaches and beetroot.
This is an extract from The Last Australian Childhood by Kevin Moloney, New Holland Publishers RRP $29.99, available from all good bookstores or online.