[Growster...]

Cottage cheese is about as basic as you can get - I love it!

Love the idea of a scrubbed deal table, a huge cottage loaf and lots of strawberry jam...

My mum always made strawberry and gooseberry jam, as it never set otherwise! Certo wasn't around then!

[Goosegirl]

Imagine your typical childhood image of a granny and that was Hilda. Grey hair in a bun, rosy cheeks, round glasses and skin like porcelain. Always up with the lark and busy making, baking, cooking, you name it. I remember sitting at that table helping her prepare some runner beans and I felt like a little child again. Will find out about cheese 'cos she may well have made that too.

[Aunt Sally]

Imagine your typical childhood image of a granny and that was Hilda. Grey hair in a bun, rosy cheeks, round glasses and skin like porcelain…

And wearing a wrap around piny.

[Goosegirl]

Absolutely!

[mrs bouquet]

I think I always remember having cheese, but it must have been better than the "Strong Cheddar" my daughter bought me from a supermarket, it is like tasteless rubber.  I don't know what to do with it now    Mrs Bouquet

[wighty]

The apron that granny wore always had a 'bib' with a frill round it. (Or so I remember. )     My grandma's was a pink or red colour, I was 12 when she passed so it was a long time ago.  I remember she had one Senior  Service cigarette a day, after the evening meal from the packet in the drawer at the end of the formica table.  The cottage only had an outside toilet, and she did their washing in a boiler, and I loved playing with the mangle which could be  attached to the side.  They had chickens at the end of the garden, and as I spent time down there with them, that's why I caught chicken pox!

[Goosegirl]

Bet you didn't stick your finger in the mangle like I did once. 

[Growster...]

Now!

Caton's in Lancashire - so what sort of cheese was around back then?

Were any of these around during rationing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_cheese

[wighty]

Don't worry, I tried putting quite a few things through the mangle (most of which I shouldn't, including fingers), it was the most magical thing ever invented, or so I thought at the time.  There was a row of sheds going down the garden, the first had the toilet and boiler and mangle in, next was the wood store, then Grandad's tool shed, then the garden tool shed and lastly a tin shed that he put his scooter in.   

[Goosegirl]

Now!

Caton's in Lancashire - so what sort of cheese was around back then?

Were any of these around during rationing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_cheese

I was born in Crewe so we may have had a form of Cheshire cheese.

[Growster...]

Haaaah!

Watch this film and read the notes! Great history lesson here!

https://www.forces.net/military-life/food/cheese-essential-item-ww2-propaganda#:~:text=During%20the%20Second%20World%20War,time%20of%20extreme%20food%20shortage.

[JayG]

Alas, can't deliver any memories on the subject of post war cheeses - earliest is about 60 years ago when I used to go shopping with my mum in Sainsbury's in Hastings (just off the sea front .)
It wasn't a supermarket in those days - remember the bold gold lettering on the frontage, cheese expertly cut to order with a metal wire, bacon sliced to the thickness of your choice on a pillar box red machine with a seriously dangerous looking spinning metal blade.
Everything was wrapped up in greaseproof paper, to which it stuck like glue (not quite everything was better in the old days.  )

[Aunt Sally]

Yes… I remember the bacon slicer. 

[Growster...]

Alas, can't deliver any memories on the subject of post war cheeses - earliest is about 60 years ago when I used to go shopping with my mum in Sainsbury's in Hastings (just off the sea front .)
It wasn't a supermarket in those days - remember the bold gold lettering on the frontage, cheese expertly cut to order with a metal wire, bacon sliced to the thickness of your choice on a pillar box red machine with a seriously dangerous looking spinning metal blade.
Everything was wrapped up in greaseproof paper, to which it stuck like glue (not quite everything was better in the old days.  )

Ah yes, I remember that Sainsbury's very well! All the meat carcases were strung up along the walls, and each counter served something different! You paid after buying everything at one till, rather like a cupboard! I can still 'smell' the place - it was wonderful, and even had chairs at each counter! The huge Woolworths was a few yards away, opposite where the buses parked!

Off topic I know, but do you remember Mozley's Ironmongers opposite Sainsbury's? I was at school with Bill Mozley, who took it on when his dad retired! They also had a branch in Hawkhurst, about a couple of hundred yards away, and they sold literally everything to do with the business! It was their Manager, Peter, who got us our first allotment, and he also got all the business! You'd go in for - say - a packet of seeds, and come out with a wheelbarrow, a gallon of white paint and enough electrical cable to wire the whole village...

We don't 'arf miss them...:0(

[Goosegirl]

I remember shops where your money was put into a little canister which went whizzing up in the clouds somewhere then it came back with your change. The butchers in the market had lots of sawdust around and there were various rabbit, pheasant and other fowl carcases hung up. Our corner shop had a main room where you got your butter in blocks, bread in tissue paper and white sugar in blue paper bags, then you went into a side room to get your boiled ham where the fat had those golden crumbs on it. It was sliced with a total disregard to H&S as was the cutting of the cheese. Growster, your Mozley's sounds like the basis for "Open All Hours."