Your program falsely suggested everyone went vegetarian in the 40’s. Those of us who can remember our grandmothers in their 40’s kitchens recall a time when variety was not a problem, particularly with homemade breads, pastries and yes – even meat dishes.
By the way, cooks today still use manual meat grinders because they do a better job and one can grind up a whole cow in 30 minutes. Comments like “it took me half the day to just grind the meat” left me more irritated than amused. Such a totally askew picture of the 40’s kitchen, the product of a mother/actress that obviously can’t cook … period. You threw historical accuracy of the 40’s out the window. I can’t wait to see more.īack in Time for Dinner airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. The first instalment of Back in Time for Dinner is surprising and informative and made me appreciate everything I have today. (“Every once in awhile you get a whiff of … urine,” Tristan observes as she pan-fries the morsels.) As for Night One’s dinner? Pan-fried kidneys with celery sauce on toast and boiled potatoes. In between Campus family footage, he narrates what life in Canada is like during those days, from footwear and clothing and hairstyles. Needless to say, Robert is not a fan of his yeast-based bread and “sauce.”īack in Time for Dinner is certainly fun to watch, but it’s a fantastic history lesson too, thanks to Rota. Rather than her usual overflowing grocery carts, Tristan is given a small basket containing her essentials.Īs if being a teen wasn’t tough enough, the Campus kids have to attend school in their period-perfect clothing and eat 1940s lunches. Mom Tristan and her daughters are in charge of keeping the house ship-shape inside and purchasing from a grocery list hemmed in by ration coupons. Instead, sardines and other canned meats are the rules of the day.
No chips, cookies and gummy things for teens Valerie, Jessica and Robert. It was also a different time in snacking. This country was also a major supplier of food to the Allied countries and that meant food rations at home.
It was the time of the Second World War, and Canadians were enlisting to fight overseas. Gone, of course, are modern trappings like big-screen TVs, central heat and—GASP!—the Internet in favour of a fridge-sized radio, an electric stove, icebox and laundry done by hand. on CBC begins in the 1940s with the five-person family arriving to see the interior of their house has been totally transformed to reflect that time period. Thursday’s first of six episodes at 8 p.m.
I’m a sucker for series like this—check out the excellent British series Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm and Wartime Farm on YouTube if you haven’t already—so I was jazzed to see how the Campus family would adapt to old-timey living and the bumps in the road along the way. Starting in the 1940s and landing in the 1990s, their home becomes a time machine as it’s stripped to the studs and transformed into a new decade each week.
That’s not the case for the Campus family, who signed on to Back in Time for Dinner, CBC’s newest documentary series that transports one family back in time to eat, dress and live like Canadians of yesterday. Hosted by TV veteran and all-around nice guy Carlo Rota, Back in Time for Dinner is a social experiment that takes the Campuses—a middle-class suburban family of five from Mississauga, Ont.—and strips away their modern diets and lifestyle to go back in time. I look back on all of that fondly, but I wouldn’t want any of it if offered to me today. Mine was a childhood filled with Cheez Whiz smeared on celery, macaroni loaf sandwiches and copious amounts of Cool Whip on things. I grew up the 1970s, the era of strange casseroles and questionable ingredients suspended in Jello salads.