'Every day we had potatoes in one form or another. If we did not have spuds, we felt that we did not have our dinner.'

'Every day we had potatoes in one form or another. If we did not have spuds, we felt that we did not have our dinner.'

Rosemary describes the food of her childhood and she remembers how she ate three meals a day and potatoes were a big feature of her diet.

Rosemary McCloskey

Trinity College Dublin

1955

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Rosemary McCloskey

Childhood and Early Life

Life Story

Belfast

1950's

We had three meals a day then. There was porridge for breakfast and often when we were at morning Mass, Daddy would buy fresh baps for us on the way home. Every day we had potatoes in one form or another. If we did not have spuds, we felt that we did not have our dinner. We ate local produce like bacon and eggs dipped soda and pancakes as well as potato bread all fried. WE had cabbage, turnip, an odd cauliflower, mashed carrots and parsnip, dried peas which were steeped on Saturday night for Sunday's dinner. There was mince steak, vegetable roll, bacon fried and boiled, chicken, roasted occasionally, but mostly boiled for soup as well as shin soup, which was a regular in the winter and the pot lasted almost three days. We always had a milk pudding dessert during the week, custard with stewed apples or prunes, jelly, tinned fruit and rhubarb when it was in season. There was also cornflour, semolina, farola, tapioca and invariably rice on Fridays. On Sunday it would be trifle or on a rare occasion ice cream. We had carrageen moss a few times too but it was not so popular. Dinner was in the middle of the day and Uncle Paddy used to come with Daddy for it, after Aunt Jeannie got married around 1956.WE had to be on our best behaviour then. Mammy used to have a small flat tin of Nescafe and she would make Uncle Paddy a cup of coffee made on milk, after dinner. We did not get the coffee then. Such changes, when we are drinking cups of water based coffee at every turn about now!The evening meal was our 'tea' and that was around 5.30pm. The table was always set with cups, saucers and plates. A plain tea meant that there was bread and jam, Otherwise there might have been a banana or salad in summer or cooked ham, corned beef and tomatoes. In winter a hot meal would have been the order of the day, with bacon and egg or chips, sausages scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, toast, pancakes etc. We certainly did not starve. We had a wholesome plain menu and thrived on it. Mammy baked at the weekends and we all learned to do so in turn. She, like Mrs Majury, always had to have something in the tins for visitors, until one day I got fed up with this' visitor' business, and told her that we were more important than the visitors and that we would like the cakes ourselves. After that it was harder for her to be sure there was something aside for callers. There was always a packet of biscuits on hand for them. No one would have had all the variety of processed and precooked and packed food, which is available today. Fruit was not very common either. At Christmas we got an apple and an orange in our stockings. Around October/ Halloween there were lots of little local apples called kemps, for sale in the shops as were monkey nuts hazel nuts and walnuts. We loved Halloween. Mammy used to hide coins in the apple tarts for us to find and there was always great excitement as we waited to see who would get them. Apple tarts were gorgeous and we could never get enough of them. In those days, Bramley apples were cheap enough and so they were very often on the menu. Not so today, when they are prohibitively expensive.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)