Growing up in New Zealand, in the 60s, was pretty cool. The stuff we ate back then, is the stuff most people won’t touch with an electrified cattle prod anymore. We ate brains (which I hated), tripe (still a fav), liver, tongue, and kidneys. We baked, cooked, broiled, and preserved all manner of things. We used to put milk bottles at the gate each night, with money in them, for the milkman. Imagine doing that nowadays! In the summer, we would go to the beach for our holidays and eat ice creams, fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, sweets, sweets and more sweet. We rode our push bikes everywhere, and never wore sunscreen. We got up at the crack of dawn to play with the kids in our street, returning only when the sun went down. It was great. Today is great too, but I wanted to share some recipes from that time, the recipes that are cemented in my brain when I think about my childhood. No, perhaps not the tripe in white sauce, or the liver with onions, even the tongue sandwiches. Cos while they were delicious, it’s not the flavour du jour anymore. However, I’m going to make each recipe before I post it, because they are from a long time ago now. I need to make sure I can still make them, before I share them, and that they are as good as I remember. I’ll just warn you, the early years are all about sweet things (and Star Trek, and the boy next door, and trying to look like Farrah Fawcett). So standby, and get those sugar packets out from the back of the cupboard…