CH food

Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....

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Fjgrogan
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Re: CH food

Post by Fjgrogan »

Fishcakes and tinned tomatoes; tinned spaghetti; cheese macaroni; resurrection pie (leftover peas, beans and spaghetti under a pastry lid); cheesy mashed potato with leftover veg mixed into it; these are what intantly sprung to mind - I am sure there were others. Rice krispies at Sunday tea, I think - surely that can't be right?
Frances Grogan (Haley) 6's 1956 - 62

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Katharine
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Re: CH food

Post by Katharine »

Rice crispies were for Sunday breakfast, Frances. Tea was a piece of cheese, we also had cake then.
Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
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Re: CH food

Post by kerrensimmonds »

CAKE?
I have a sort of recollection of a rectangular tin occupied by some spongy mixture, which we had to cut into linear chunks. Is this what you mean by 'cake'? All of a sudden I had a vision of a victoria sponge...No - I don't think so! But I think that I do recall that the only 'cake' which we enjoyed were people's birthday cakes sent from home, and we only had them if we were one of the six chosen people to join the birthday party..........
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Re: CH food

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

Fjgrogan wrote:Fishcakes and tinned tomatoes; tinned spaghetti; cheese macaroni; resurrection pie (leftover peas, beans and spaghetti under a pastry lid); cheesy mashed potato with leftover veg mixed into it; these are what intantly sprung to mind - I am sure there were others. Rice krispies at Sunday tea, I think - surely that can't be right?
Hertford Fishcakes: a delicately crumbed mélange of bones and black flesh

Hertford tinned tomatoes: always so watery and tasteless

Hertford tinned spaghetti: yellow and watery

Macaroni cheese: this brings back memories of one of the top table gels being on a diet, but desperately wanting to indulge in some Cheese Mac. One of her kindly contemporaries sucked the cheese off the mac so that the calorific count was reduced sufficiently for the remains to be eaten by the dieter.

The only thing that springs to mind as being more repulsive was wringing the grease from breakfast fried bread before spreading it with marmalade.
Katharine
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Re: CH food

Post by Katharine »

Yes Kerren that was cake at Hertford. In 6s it was cut into quarters and then each quarter was cut clinically into 9 slices to get the requisite 36 slices - hmmm this was before mary Verge became number 37 - did someone go without? It came in a variety of shades - plain cream colour, ginger and chocolate. There may have been varieties with fruit in, can't remember!

Convent Egg was another tea time offering and didn't we have that sometimes when they had forgotten to put the eggs in so it was just very sloppy cheese sauce?
Katharine Dobson (Hills) 6.14, 1959 - 1965
Fjgrogan
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Re: CH food

Post by Fjgrogan »

Yes Katharine, you are right about the Rice Krispies. Oh dear, another senior moment - they seem to be coming thick and fast! But there was flapjack too - I am sure I am right about that!
Frances Grogan (Haley) 6's 1956 - 62

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Re: CH food

Post by Angela Woodford »

Katharine wrote: It came in a variety of shades - plain cream colour, ginger and chocolate. There may have been varieties with fruit in, can't remember!
No matter the shade of the cake - it tasted exactly the same! Oh, it was dry.

Every so often, a slab of cake with glacé cherries would appear. I think it was the best. The cherries gave the cake a little moisture. However, I usually would pick out and eat just the cherries...
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Re: CH food

Post by MaryB »

Pilchards in tomato sauce with salad, all arranged in one tin so that what the beetroot juice didn't pollute the pilchards did.....
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Re: CH food

Post by midget »

They made a large quantity of cake mixture at the weekend. Half was baked, to be hacked to bits for Sunday tea, and the rest was steamed to be served with custard for Monday lunch. School buns were a sort of flat rock cake, which was only made edible by a smear of butter or marge.
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Re: CH food

Post by fra828 »

Angel cake- like madeira with a top layer of pink sponge, not as nice as it sounds- it was certainly very dry! That's what I remember about Sunday tea. Later on we wre allowed to make soup. In the days before cuppa soup it was a case of simmering the powder and water for about 20 mins, French onion soup was the favourite for a while, but I always preferred minestrone. The house mugs were well used, and probably gave an extra 'flavour' to the soup!
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Re: CH food

Post by Angela Woodford »

fra828 wrote: The house mugs were well used, and probably gave an extra 'flavour' to the soup!
Absolutely right, fra828!

The melamine mugs , no matter what House colour were stained within, and smelled of a combination of all the drinks they had ever contained. I'm delving into my olfactory memory... wait dear... it's all going misty... and I seem to smell.... an oilcloth! The piles of mugs by a stained urn being skilfully filled from a pile by an urn operator! The mugs were very, very whiffy. :x

Did the teatime mugs go back in baskets to be washed in the main Kitchen? ISTR a dirty divided-up basket in which the mugs were slotted after tea.

I never drank the tea for all my seven Hertford years! Grey, watery, unappealing - just as awful as my mother's stewed dark mahogany brew with globules of fat on the surface....

Enough! Putting the kettle on for some lovely tea, Devon soft water, smashing!
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
midget
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Re: CH food

Post by midget »

I agree about the soft water in Devon, but it leaves a nasty deposit in the washing machine. Admitedly it's better than it was when we first moved here. On one occasion an enter White wash emerged from the machine a delicate shade of rust. That same day Joe filled a glass with water, and asked a water board official to explain the colour. The man had the cheek to go into a long "explanation" that it was really an optical illusion.

AND WE PAY THE HIGHEST WATER RATES IN THE COUNTRY!!!!!!!
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Fjgrogan
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Re: CH food

Post by Fjgrogan »

When we lived in Perth, Western Australia the 'rusty' water turned a beautiful newly handknitted white jumper a rusty colour. My mother took one look and said 'If it has done that to your jumper, just imagine what it is doing to our insides!'
Frances Grogan (Haley) 6's 1956 - 62

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Angela Woodford
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Re: CH food

Post by Angela Woodford »

Eek!

I really love the water here! It's been one of the nicest things about moving to Devon. Every time I'm thirsty and dash to the tap, I feel grateful that the water's so much nicer than it was in Kent; where the heater unit thingy in the immersion tank packed up yearly and would be hauled out grey and encrusted like a relic from the Titanic. The white washing is snowy-white, there are no unpleasant gritty residues visible on black garments, and delicate underpinnings stay delicate much longer. The happiness of blowdrying shinier hair!

Just pouring a top-up of tea -
"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""
midget
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Re: CH food

Post by midget »

I use filtered water for drinking, and also for the steam iron, after a load of gunk came out as i was ironing a white shirt.
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