Episode 2, Sheffield 1969-1978 Dinner parties 2 and 3

 Context again, personal, historical and gastronomical!

We returned from Nassau as mum and dad decided that, however interesting a time they’d been having, my brother and I were 7 and 5, and needed to be going to school in the UK. 

So dad took a job with a civil engineering company in Sheffield, working on Hallamshire Hospital. We started out renting a house while mum and dad decided where to live (so no dinner parties at that point) and then we moved into the second house to be built in a new development in Ecclesall, Silverdale Close. Gradually, the houses got built past us and around us, and gradually new people moved in, and mum and dad began making friends and entertaining again for both business and pleasure. 

To start with, mum and dad and their friends would pool the younger children at one house, with the older teenagers babysitting us, and the adults would enjoy dinner next door. Later on, as we grew older and hopefully more sensible, we’d still be ‘babysat’ but the parents would go further afield. Mum actually set up a babysitting ‘pool’ where their friends could ask for so many hours of baby sitting, or bank hours babysitting for other families…spreading the load!

We also finally had the space to be able to fit birthday parties (mum catering, obviously) and have friends over.

When we had been living in Nassau, we’d rented a house which was fully furnished and it came with a freezer…when we moved into the house in Ecclesall, mum and dad bought their first freezer, a huge chest one. Dad remembers, however, that there weren’t any packets of peas, or pre-packaged meat, or ready meals for the freezer at the beginning, so you’d buy food and put it in yourself, or cook a meal and put it in to freeze yourself. They bought half a pig from the butcher, packaged up into the various cuts, and mum would freeze it. Dad still has the freezer now, still going well!

Mum also bought the Good Housekeeping freezer book, and for about a year, most meals came from this book. Some sound a bit weird and wonderful, and didn’t make it into the repeated firm favourites list, but some have been incorporated into family traditions, and into my repertoire as well. 

Food popular at that time: spaghetti Bolognese, cheese and pineapple on sticks (watch this space…I love it!) Smash, and quiche! Drinks: Harvey Wallbanger, Tequila Sunrise, Mateus Rose, Babycham.

Some interesting events: 1970… the first Glastonbury festival happened and the Beatles broke up. 1971…the end of free school milk. 1972…Mastermind broadcast for the first time. 1973…Pink Floyd releases Dark Side of the Moon. 1974…ABBA wins the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo.  1975…Monty Python and the Holy Grail released. 1976…first commercial Concorde flight takes off, and heatwave and drought. 1977…Silver Jubilee celebrations, and Star Wars shown in the UK. 1978…the world’s first test tube baby born.