THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Wendyf]

I remember all of those , except Blue Nun. I remember Blamange dessert from a packet. Was that the same as Angel dessert?
And Meat Mates.

Blancmange powder had to be mixed with hot milk and it set as it cooled down whereas Angel Delight was instant....just whip up with cold milk. Blue Nun was a very popular German Liebfraumilch. Meat Mates you will have to explain!

[Stanley]

Ahh, Blue Nun! I remember when Vera and I reached the stage where things eased and we were getting a glimpse of the sunlit uplands Blue nun or one of those carafes of Californian white wine was the height of sophistication!
Mateus Rosé was a bit too far for us.

[Wendyf]

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I think I still have some of the carafes from the Californian wine... in fact, last week I dug out and scanned this photo of Craig's 5th birthday party to embarrass him on his 40th. The kids juice is in some of those very carafes.

[Cathy]

Meat Mates - from memory it would have been the 1970’s, it came in a box (maybe sachets ) , it was a seasoning with possibly dried diced vegetables and all you had to do was add mince meat and cook.
Tried to find it on the net, but these days only pet food comes up.
Or maybe it was called Meal Mates, anyway today that just brings up Crackers.

[Marilyn]

I recall Vesta meals ( Prawn Curry and Rice a favourite when I was a teenager). “Prawns were nowt but shrimps”!
Then there was a casserole mix you could add to beef or chicken ( can’t recall the name). ( was it a Masterfood thing, Cazza?)
This was before anything Garlic flooded the market, ruining any packet things for me.

[Marilyn]

I think the packet in the box was called “Hot Pot”, but I can’t recall the brand. I still see them in the supermarket, but my tastes have progressed to more natural foods nowadays.

[Marilyn]

Aaah...it was a Continental Brand...I have found it on google.

[Tizer]

Angel Delight arrived in the late sixties and was a quick and easy dessert. Still going strong I think and though I haven't had any for ages the memory of the flavours lingers! It made a change from tinned fruit with evaporated milk.

When Mrs Tiz and me visited my parents in the 70s it was always one or the other of those!

I remember when we lived in Liverpool in the early 70s we used to take a bottle to the off-licence and get it filled with Australian wine from a barrel. Always sweet! Awful sweet wine but the important thing was the cheap alcohol content...how Aussie wine has changed!

[Wendyf]

Same here Tiz, we progressed to home grown, home cooked fresh food in the late 1970's once we got our first cottage in North Wales, home brewed wine and beer too. My parents stayed firmly in the world of convenience food though dessert went posh with the arrival of the Viennetta and After Eight mints in the 80s. To give Mum her due, she couldn't stand for long periods of time spent cooking and baking.
Meals at Mum and Dad's meant the Hostess Trolley was brought into play!

[Tizer]

Do you remember when we all rushed out to the pubs to try our first `chicken in a basket'? I remember my first time - in the Judge Walmsley in Whalley! There's a lot of information about the pub on this web page: LINK and this is the Wikipedia page for the man himself: Judge Walmsley

[Marilyn]

Viennetta...my son LOVES it! It is still special to him.

[Cathy]

I loved Vienetta too.
Remember when we used to have Prawn Cocktails as an entree... Very Posh

[Wendyf]

I loved Vienetta too.
Remember when we used to have Prawn Cocktails as an entree... Very Posh

We always have prawn cocktail for our Xmas dinner starter, you can't beat it!

Berni Inns....

[plaques]

I'm getting a bit suspicious about the quality of prawns that land on our plates. Not that I dislike them but keeping them fresh from kill to customer is a bit iffy. My concern is the water quality that they process them in, far to easy to short cut the water changes and finish up with a degree of contamination that could upset your stomach. Prawns.

[PanBiker]

Glad I don't eat fish or slugs, snails, puppy dogs tails which includes the shrimps, prawns and other sundries.

[Stanley]

Ken's post reminds me of an article I once read about King Prawns and Scampi. It asked the very reasonable question about why the tonnage consumed was about double the world catch. The only ones I trusted were the freshly caught Nephrops that a local fisherman used to bring in the the Old Library at Arisaig when my friends Angela and Allan ran it.
"Nephrops norvegicus, known variously as the Norway lobster, Dublin Bay prawn, langoustine (compare langostino) or scampi, is a slim, orange-pink lobster which grows up to 25 cm (10 in) long, and is "the most important commercial crustacean in Europe".[3] It is now the only extant species in the genus Nephrops, after several other species were moved to the closely related genus Metanephrops. It lives in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean, and parts of the Mediterranean Sea, but is absent from the Baltic Sea and Black Sea. Adults emerge from their burrows at night to feed on worms and fish. "
The hostess trolley. Some friends of mine were great fans. It turned any food into a good imitation of school meals!
Can you remember the aluminium containers that school meals were delivered in in the 1940s?

[Tizer]

Has anyone still got their chicken brick?

[Wendyf]

Never had a chicken brick.

[Tizer]

How did you manage that? I thought everyone had one - if you didn't buy one someone would give you one.

[Wendyf]

[Marilyn]

WTF is a chicken brick?

[PanBiker]

I was going to ask the same, never ever had a school dinner. Always went home and had dinner with mum.

[Cathy]

I can still remember the milk thawing on the radiators at Rainhall Rd School.

[Stanley]

I don't know what a chicken brick is either
At Hope Memorial in the 1940s the school milk was put in the hearth of the big coke fire to thaw. An open fire in a school is, in itself, a Flatley Dryer item!

[Tizer]

The chicken brick was a must have from Habitat many moons ago! LINK