On my mind...memories of my childhood

In my last 2 posts I've started relating childhood memories as I look back over my 60 years. I link some of my blog posts to my Facebook account so I tend to get more comments there than on the actual blog.
I wrote how my parents grew vegetables and fruit and how my mother made jams, pickles and other preserves...it was just everyday life for them. She also made mine and her clothes and mended everything from underwear to sheets and curtains. One of my 'old' school friends made this comment:-

Sadly after my dad died, his beloved garden became overgrown

Valerie wrote: ‘Great blog Maria – interesting to look at the school photos- overweight kids almost didn’t exist. When I think back on what we ate – never ate out or had takeaway, never had fried food, deep fryers didn’t exist. We never ate pizza – didn’t know what it was. Never ate rice or Asian food or heard of stir frying. Never ate pasta – lasagne or ravaioli. Had never heard of risotto. From memory seemed to live on lamb chops and 3 veg. Life has changed so much in in our 60 years.’

Unlike Val, I did eat pasta; it was one of my favourite meals as a child. Pasta sauce simmmering on the stove would fill the house with amazing aromas. We also had 'peasant' style soups and casseroles filled with lots of homegrown vegetables. Another favourite meal was my dad's version of eggplant parmigiano with plump, purple eggplants, tomatoes and cheese on top of the layers. We also ate Greek style dishes as my father worked for a Greek family. I discovered pizza when it was served as one of the many courses at a cousin's wedding in 1963.

My mother, being Australian, did cook meals that  were 'English' in style but we ate them on Sunday nights if dad was working. He found such food lacking taste as herbs and spices were not used very much, let alone garlic and he wouldn't eat such food!

A family picnic in 1965; my mother made a 'mountain' of sandwiches (Aussie style) and we had the left-overs toasted for a few days after; little was wasted in those days.

Mostly I took Aussie style lunches to school (vegemite, peanut paste, tomato, cheese, egg and lettuce sandwiches) but sometimes I would take leftovers from our Italian style meals much to my school mates disgust! Having friends around to play could be a problem if my dad was home. He'd offer them Italian style food which was very strange to them!  (Some friends would suddenly need to go home when faced with strong cheeses and sundried tomatoes!) It's lovely all these years later to know that such foods are eaten and enjoyed by a large percentage of Australians and I'm no longer considered strange because of what I eat!