AMANA SIDE BY SIDE REFRIGERATOR TROUBLESHOOTING

image above: Unlocated. Butcher's Hanging Meat Display.E.1900s.

The photograph below shows the carcasses of a local Bristol butcher (name & location unknown).

It was probably taken in early 1900 and shows the freshly butchered animals made ready for sale at Christmas.

For many of the poorer families fresh meat was something they could only rarely afford so they would save up to treat themselves at Christmas.

The Victorians valued good cooking and food. However, there were great differences between what the rich and poorer people ate. The rich ate a tremendous amount and wasted even more.

This wastage was at a time when a large proportion of the population were living on bread, dripping, vegetables and tea. The diet of the very poor was terrible. The unemployed, and others with little money, survived on little more than potato parings, rotten vegetable refuse and scraps.

For the destitute, hunger often forced them to seek a place in the workhouse where a diet of potatoes, cheese, bread and gruel was provided.

In Victorian times butchers would hang their carcasses in a prominent place to to entice people into their shops.

Whereas now we eat meat within a few days of the animal being slaughtered, then it was the custom to let the meat "hang" for several days or longer.

This was said to improve the flavour.

What's for Dinner ?

Everything in the 1950s was better, right? Everyone knew their neighbours. You could leave your bike unchained and no one would nick it. Food was more wholesome. Those were the salad days... Well, the boiled potato days, anyway. Those were the golden days before prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps, fast food, ready meals and grazing sullied the good old British diet, and the obesity epidemic took hold.

Due to the economic strain of the Second World War, food was rationed in Britain from 1940 until 1954. As tough as these times were, rationing meant people were forced to follow a lower fat, lower sugar diet. They stayed slimmer as a result and had lower rates of heart disease.

Each person was limited to the following per week: 2oz of sweets - equivalent to one bar of Dairy Milk 2oz cheese - two matchboxsized pieces of Cheddar Approx 540g meat - roughly two chicken breasts and one small steak, meaning many meals had to be meat-free Sugar, jam, biscuits, eggs, cooking fat and dairy products were also strictly rationed.

More than half of all adults in the UK are now overweight or obese. And obesity among children leapt by 25 per cent between 1995 and 2002. The Government is in despair. There have been calls to put a tax on junk food, to ban it from schools, to restrict the advertising of less healthy foods to children and even to put warning labels on food.

Much of what we eat is a part of our culture and it's strongly influenced by the types of foods we can grow locally. So meat and dairy products, bread and potatoes continue to be important even if, for some of us, they now tend to be in the form of hamburgers and frozen chips rather than the traditional roast beef and boiled potatoes.

Although the main components of the British diet haven't changed, what has changed is how we put them together and what we add to them.

The main constituents are still basically bread, milk, meat and potatoes. But it's still relatively low in fruit and veg and we're eating less fish now than we did in the 1940s and 1950s.

Here is a more detailed look at some of the changes in our eating habits that have taken place since the early 1950s: During the Second World War people were encouraged to drink milk because of its high nutritional value, and this was particularly important for children. Our high consumption of milk continued until the mid-1970s, but since then we've been drinking less milk.

This is partly because other drinks, and particularly soft drinks, have become more popular. But the good news is that we're now choosing more skimmed and semi-skimmed milk than whole milk.

While we're eating about the same amount of cheese and cream as we used to, yoghurt has been increasing in popularity since it became available in the 1970s.

The number of eggs we eat peaked in the mid-60s and has been declining since. We now eat less than half the number of eggs we ate in the mid 1950s and 1960s.

When the Queen was crowned in 1953, food rationing was still in force, supermarkets were unheard of, and fish and chips were our undisputed national dish. How things have changed. But is our diet more healthy now than it was then?

The 60s were also the period when the British began their long-held love affair with shopping, as supermarkets and shopping centres were built. For many this transformed the weekly shop. But for some, there simply wasn't the money to go on a spending spree.

The 1960s is renowned for being a decade of change, with different foods and cooking habits being introduced into the kitchen.

As people started to take the first package holidays, inspiration wa

I'm all for ethnic food, but this is ridiculous :-) Found in the freezer section of the Warrrington Sainsburys.

According to my mother - who is from London - it's not a patch on the real thing. But I guess someone noticed there's a fair few London accents floating around here. Wouldn't mind if they started stocking Saveloys...

(note to those who might not know what I'm on about - Pie and Mash is a traditional Cockney dish mainly distinguished from the northern version by the herby "liquor". According to my Mum it's made with the water from boiling eels)