More bloody beans

In addition to the Smoky Bacon Beans I featured in my last post, another of the flavours of beans that Tesco brought out around the same time as Heinz's range were these extraordinary-sounding Bloody Mary Beans.

Eats and cheats in the smokin' seventies

Sorry to bore on about Back in Time for Dinner, but it really is one of the best programmes that has been on television recently, and just seems to get more and more interesting by the episode. The third episode in the series brought the Robshaw family forward to the 1970s, a decade which saw huge changes in the way people shopped, cooked and ate, particularly with the increasing availability of frozen foods and home freezers, and the arrival of all manner of convenience foods to supermarket shelves, such as boil in the bag fish suppers, arctic roll and, of course, the Pot Noodle. 

Rochelle with a very 70s celery jug with a face on it.
We used to have exactly the same one at home.

Having taken on a part-time job like many women at the time did, mum Rochelle found herself freed from the shackles of the kitchen for the first time in their time-travelling experiment - albeit to a minor extent. It was still widely expected at the time that women would come home from work, put a meal on the table, and run the household, creating an increasing feeling of pressure to be able to be a Wonderwoman and do everything. So it seemed like a godsend when, in the early seventies, along came Delia Smith telling women that it was ok to cut corners sometimes. Her book “How to Cheat at Cooking” provided a range of recipes which made use of many of the new ready-made convenience foods on the market to cut down on preparation and cooking times, while fooling dinner guests into thinking that their hosts had spent hours in the kitchen.