TV Show: Back in Time for Dinner

Using the Hola VPN extension, we watch some programs on the computer that would normally be region blocked.  That is, we can shows on the BBC website, shows from Australian television, and the like.  Normally, the interwebs can tell that we don't live in the U.K. nor Australia, but Hola makes it look like we do.  It's pretty great.

While looking for something to watch the other day, I came across Back in Time for Dinner.  The idea is that a middle-class English family is having their home transformed to look like a typical home would throughout the post-war decades in England.  This is a lot of fun to watch, and is of course of interest to this blog.

Though there are some similarities between what they showed in the episode on the 1950s to what is in our cookbook, there are some pretty serious differences as well.  The food that the mother - and only the mother - cooked for the first few days (one day for each decade) was pretty attrocious:  National bread, drippings (rendered fat), boiled potatoes, and cabbage, and that's it.  This due in no small part to post-war rationing.  Even after rationing ended in the middle of the decade, the food wasn't all that great, but at least it would have started to look familiar to our Ladies in Thief River Falls.  For example, for the coronation of the queen, the mother tried to make a fancy gelatin salad that was supposed to look like a crown.  It looked like something straight out of the cook book... even though it was a complete failure.  Sorry, English mother.

It was also interesting in that the crew of the show transformed the ground level of the family's home to look like a home would have sixty years ago.  Instead of an open floor plan, they created a small closed sitting room, a very small formal dining room, and a VERY different kitchen.  The wife had no refrigerator, and instead had a larder - essentially a pantry with marble shelves to keep food slightly cooler.  There were no convenience appliances (until later in the "decade"), so everything was done by hand.  Attached the the sink was a set of rollers for squeezing the water out of washed clothes.  This was something of an indication of how much time the poor woman spent in the room.  Though in the modern iteration of this family, the father did most of the cooking he had instructions to generally keep out of the kitchen.  Instead between cleaning, prep, cooking, and cleaning some more, the seemingly spent almost all of her waking hours in that room.  Considering the poor quality and limited amount of food she had access to for the first few years of the decade, it was a pretty thankless job.  Her family was clearly not a fan of what she spent hours making.  Even once the decade progressed and she was given a few convenience appliances (a mixer, etc), she didn't spend any less time in the kitchen as she prepared meals that were more ambitious and time intensive; something I imagine our Ladies of Zion could probably identify with.

One of the nicest parts of this episode was when some local women from their town who were housewives during the 50s were invited over to watch the coronation on a vintage TV and to have tea and some food.  Though the 50s were clearly a difficult time in the U.K., these old ladies were delighted to be brought back in time to see the house the way it had been transformed, and to see the kitchen in particular.

I am really looking forward to the next episodes as the family explores the food and culture of the next few decades.  I heartily recommend this show.

OH!  Hey!  The first episode is on Youtube.  I tried to embed it, but it's not working for some reason.  Here's the link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDuGNwJ2pCo