Vanilla slices on Sundays and does onion really count as a vegetable?

Foodie choices were limited for my first guest, Michael O'Halloran, who grew up in 1970s Ireland. Michael is my husband and he kindly volunteered to be my podcast 'guinea pig' interviewee allowing me to test  my questioning skills and revealing some suprising facts about his life that I wasn't aware off... his secret desires involving hard boiled eggs for example... you will have to listen to find out more!

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Transcript

I remember to this day, I had no idea what to order and I ended up going for a calzone and I was surprised actually, it was quite spicy and quite hot...I was really, I must have been like, red in the face! But I persevered and I ate it and it was great.

Welcome to the what's for dinner show the podcast for people that put food at the center of life. My name is Lynne and my aim is to explore, along with my guests how our food experiences shape our lives as well as our waistlines.

My go to dishes chicken curry, and that used to meet with some raised eyebrows by my parents. My mum would come back with vanilla slices. Fantastic, because there was a brilliant cake shop next to the church. That was a real treat.

Hey, so this is my first ever episode and my guest is well as my husband Michael has kindly volunteered to be my guinea pig interviewee he'll be remembering the culinary pleasures of growing up in Ireland in the 1970s and also telling me why if he could he choose to be a boiled egg. So let's get started.

Tell me a little bit about what dinner time was like at home when you were growing up?
Okay. Well, I grew up in 1970s Ireland. So Ireland back then wasn't renowned for its culinary delights. 70s Ireland was very different to the world we now live in and it was perfectly safe to go out and kick a football around,  lots of kids around.
So when you came home then what would have been on the dinner table?
Yeah, it's very traditional. It would be generally potatoes.
You're joking?!
Ireland in the 1970s? Of course, potatoes! And there would be some peas maybe and a maybe pork chop. Interestingly, you know, we didn't have loads of vegetables. Really, we didn't eat lots of vegetables. The vegetables that we did eat would have been carrot, turnip, peas. I never forget, it was a very funny moment in our household when my dad complained that he had pork chop, mashed potato and gravy but there were no vegetables. And my my mom answered, well, of course there are vegetables, you've got onion in there as well! Yeah, that that became an item of legend!
Well, of course, we're talking about a time where in Ireland and and probably, you know, in the UK as well, we didn't have red peppers and avocados, asparagus spears and tenderstem broccoli.
Yeah that's right. On a Sunday, we'd have  chicken, we'd have roast potatoes, we 'd have gravy, we'd have a piece of meat and carrots. And that was pretty much what we had every Sunday. We never had dessert in the week and it was a lunchtime meal we had, and in the evening, we would just have something lighter. So we always ate a proper meal at lunchtime.
So that was during the week as well as at the weekends?
Yes. Always. And, you know, I remember when my brother for instance, and his wife flipped that to having their main meal in the evening. That was a really, you know, quite a strange thing for us to see and behold because it was such a  ritual for us to have that main meal at lunchtime and then at a lighter meal in the evening.
When you were going to secondary school or even primary school, you would come home for your lunch then?
Every day, even when I went to college when I was 17 I would walk home for lunch.
And was that an unusual thing? Or did most of your pals do the same?
I would say the guys that lived within hitting distance of college  would go home. Yeah. And even at school, you know, I'd walk home with kids that lived in maybe 15 minute walk from school. We would walk back and we would have our lunch. Obviously there was a whole bunch of kids that wouldn't be able to go because they're traveling by bus or whatever and they would have there lunch,  but there wasn't a meal service at the school.
Oh, okay. So there wasn't a kitchen or canteen dining hall that you could go and have lunch?
 There was when I went to college but even then, I could probably count on one hand the number of times that I ate a meal there.
Gosh, that's that's quite unusual I think. I mean, that doesn't resonate with me at all having grown up in England during the same period.
I suppose it was quite surprising for me to find that people eat and different!
So how old were you there when your sister in law, I presume, decided to rock the boat and switch to having a main meal, the family having having a main meal, in the evening?
Probably I would have been about 10.
Right. Okay. So it didn't change any habits in your house?
Oh no! It was still quite an imported concept, I think at that point,
Imported? Imported from the UK?
Yeah.
So when you sat down for your lunchtime meal, would it be the three of you?  You, Your mum and your dad?
Yes.
So your dad came home from work and as well?
Yes.
And how would you describe your mom's cooking?
Pretty basic. You know, we didn't have loads of money, so, my mum was working to a tight budget. But she went out and she, you know, got value for money from what she was purchasing and I didn't feel as if we were ever left short. And so, you know, what we would  have was meat and two veg, one veg, maybe!
No puddings in the week. So a special treat at the weekends?
Yeah.
So what was the go to pudding for Sunday lunch?
The one thing that really sticks in my mind most of all is, because again, I was picky with food, even with puddings, so my mum used to make a trifle, with jelly and custard and so on. And I didn't like jelly. So I wouldn't eat the trifle! But my mum and dad would go to church every Sunday, my mum would come back with vanilla slices because there was a brilliant cake shop next to the church. That was a real treat. Yeah.
So your mum and dad were having the trifle and you were having vanilla slices? So the bakery was open on Sunday then after church?
Yeah.
I guess that makes sense. So so your family go to meals as you say were meat,  two veg, if you count potato as as a veg, peas, gravy and a very traditional pudding after.
I'm trying to think what else we might have had, fish fingers? We never had any had anything spicy until I left home. I tell a lie, I I started going to get a takeaway Chinese, probably when I was maybe 16 or 17, from the one and only Chinese that was in Waterford at the time.
And what was the Chinese choice off the menu?
Oh, my go to dish was chicken curry, which is beautiful. I really love it, a fairly simple Chinese chicken curry is just great. Really good.  And that used to meet with some raised eyebrows by my parents.
So they never had it?
No, no.
So what about fish and chips? Was that a thing in Ireland?
Yeah, absolutely. On very rare occasions I would remember my dad bringing back maybe fish and chips if he'd been out for a couple of drinks or whatever. But again, it wasn't really something that we did, we didn't really do take away, you know, everything was cooked.
We would sometimes go fishing and we would catch mackerel and bring them home and cook them. Likewise, if we went to the beach for the day, we would get on the rocks and we would pick dilisk which is basically seaweed which we would then dry in the back garden. Also we would have had periwinkles which you could collect and we'd boil them up and eat them.
Okay, so you'd go foraging, as they call it nowadays?
Yeah. So we did that. But yeah, takeaways it's not something that was on my radar really at all. One of the things actually which was very odd about me when I was growing up,
is I would never eat bread and butter. I just wouldn't eat it but it is one of the things that I love now of course. I like to think it's because I obviously had a taste for quality bread and butter as opposed to sliced white which didn't  appeal to me.
So you're definitely more of the artisan sourdough kind of guy?
Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that I would never eat... I was quite a picky eater  actually, when when I reflect back...I would never eat beans. So baked beans, for instance, I  wouldn't touch them. Whereas now I love a baked bean!
And what about snack foods did you like?
I was an absolute sweet obsessive. And so yeah, I had a real sweet tooth, if not for desserts, but for actual sweets. So back then we would always have the shop down the road that would serve, you know, the classic quarter ounce from a jar and there would be a whole range of jars so I would be regularly heading towards the sweet shop to get my quarter ounce of sweets!  My favorites were American hard gums.
Oh, yes! And did you get them in a little paper bag?
Yes. Yeah, absolutely,  I love them and wine gums. They were my go to.
Okay, so chewy sweets. I wonder how much four ounces of American hard gums were back in 1976?
I didn't pay an awful lot. It's probably seven pence that's comes to mind. Something like that. yeah, you know, pennies. I'd get a taste for them and be obsessed.
Did you like Tom Thumb's?  Did you ever have those?
No, no, they weren't really the thing for me. I used to like lemon sherbets or cola cubes too.
I can remember my best friend at the time, there was a shop like that about 10 minutes walk from her house so we'd go regularly and they'd weigh them out on the scales and then slide them into a paper bag from a sort of stainless steel scale.
Exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, I was a big fan of those. My first trip abroad was to France as part of a school trip and that obviously gave me a little bit of a sense of how things, you know, can be different.
Yeah. So what kinds of things did you eat? Was this in a this was a hotel or a hostel?
A hostel and you can imagine a whole group of teenage boys...there was lots of rumors about what the meat actually was, whether it was horse or whatever! The next trip that I did abroad was to Luxembourg. I did a six week student exchange when I was nineteen.
Okay, so when you were in college?
Yeah, it was at college. That was interesting, because then I would eat in the evening. It was myself and another guy. We stayed with a lady, you know, it was a bit like a homestay, I suppose.
You moved into her spare room?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. She would cook for us in the evening, she took us under her wing and brought us out with her friends and family. I remember the first meal out with them was to a restaurant in Luxembourg City and it was a pizzeria. It was the first time I'd ever been in a pizzeria, there was no such thing as a pizzeria in Ireland.
So you've never had pizza before?
I'd never had it.
You had been out to restaurants before when you were in Ireland?
I wouldn't say restaurants. I'd perhaps been to, you know, a pub, a hotel or whatever. Yeah, yeah, that type of thing.
Wow. So a pizzeria in Luxembourg is quite exotic!
It was that was like, you know, it was really living the dream then and I remember it to this day, I had no idea what to order. I ended up going for a calzone which was quite out there for my first choice. So I obviously had a bit of something about me in terms of going for something a little bit different! Yeah, pushing the boundaries!  But I was surprised actually, it was quite spicy and quite hot. And I was really, I must have been like, red in the face. But I persevered and I ate it and it was great.
So what about Christmas? Was Christmas a big thing in your house?
We weren't big on turkey. Even now I can hear my mother's voice ringing in my ears, saying I find turkey to dry! So what we would have is a big chickin, but also my mum would cook a ham. The ham was fantastic. I was a big fan of the ham.
So a whole piece of ham and a large chicken? And was there any more vegetable variety on Christmas Day?
There was obviously brussel sprouts, and there would have been peas, carrots. That was probably it, I don't remember any other variation on that really.
And was Christmas or a fun time at home? Or was it a particularly religious time?
I wouldn't say it was particularly religious. My mum was probably the most religious in the house. I think my dad did he best, you know, he obviously did what he needed to do, church going and that. It was nice, actually, because my mum in particular came from quite an extended family and she was the eldest. So on Christmas morning, it was always a great tradition that all of her brothers and sisters and would come to our house and just have a drink, say hello and it was really nice.  Actually, you know, we weren't, it was probably an economic thing, we weren't huge on presents and that sort of thing.  It was more a social time to  come in, have a drink, a bit of a catch up, and then they'd go their own way and they'd have Christmas Day with their families. But for that couple of hours on Christmas morning, it felt like a real, you know, social hub.
So your mum was the oldest?
Yeah.
So how many were there?
There was 11 in total born, but nine  lived to have their own families.  And in those days, you know, we wouldn't go down the supermarket and buy in the beer. We would go to a proper wholesale off license in the back of a pub or whatever and we'd have crates of bottled Guinness and bottles of lager and that's what was served. It was very much, you know, 'go on have a bottle of Guinness or have a short,  have a little whiskey'. That would really only happen at Christmas. 
So going down and getting those crates of beer was a part of Christmas.
Yeah. So like, you know, I knew that it was one of the traditions. I wouldn't say that food was central. It was, I don't mean to sound critical or too critical, but, you know, it was more of a functional thing, I suppose. On a day to day basis it was more of a functional thing. Food was fuel. There was particular occasions Christmas, for instance, where food was more of a central thing but even then my mum wasn't a spectacular cook in any sense. Yeah. And so it was pretty regular fare.
So how do you think your experiences of eating when you were a child impacted on you now? Because it sounds quite a traditional, oft repeated dinnertime experience.
Yeah, I think, you know, while I might not have been surrounded by culinary delights, on a day to day basis, what it actually did was made us close, it made us sit down  - not made us, but we did, we sat down over the food that we shared and we talked about stuff and talked about our days. And, you know, I think that made kind of pretty solid foundations, particularly between me and my parents, but also other members of my family. I've been away for many, many years now, but I still have a connection that's there. It's been a sort of a foundation.
What sort of value do you place on what you eat on a sort of normal day nowadays?
Oh, quite a high value. I suppose I've become more and more aware of the benefits of eating a good, well balanced diet, but also my kids in turn bring learning back to the table so to speak, so that you become more and more aware of what I suppose is  good and perceived as potentially healthy.
So do you think youngsters today have a healthier approach to food?
Yeah, I think they're really tuned in. By the same token, people today are bombarded with all of this info and it's hard.
And eating takeaway, obviously,  is just a normal part of every week for lots of people,
Yes, you don't necessarily need to get out of bed to to eat now.
No, that's true.
if you had to describe yourself as an item of food, what would you choose?
Oh, that's an interesting one, isn't it?
Something sweet, something savory?
A boiled a boiled egg, you know, smooth on the outside but when you when you crack the top, you know, you're not quite sure whether some days you might get a hard one  or a soft one.  But you know, if you add a little bit of salt, it wll be lovely.
Oh, excellent! Okay, thank you.

Now, Michael is going to rejoin me for the Nugget of Knowledge, the part of the show where we deep dive into a foodie topic. It could be the history of a food item, a trending piece of food news, or a current food trend. Who knows?  So what are we discussing on this episode of Nuggets of Knowledge, Michael?
Well, this time around, I thought we'd talk about vitamin D. The sun's just come out and I think it's a topical point of discussion really. I think it'd be nice to know what the benefits are.
Well, it helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body. These nutrients are needed to keep our bones teeth and muscles healthy and a lack of vitamin D can lead to bone deformities such as rickets in children, and a condition called  osteomalicia in adults, which is a disease that weakens bones and can cause them to break more easily. I guess must be related to osteoporosis, which is something that a lot of elderly or older women suffer with. So it is an essential vitamin for human health a nd I know that you are a big fan of the vitamin D supplement.
I am yes, I do actually take vitamin D supplements, I wouldn't say religiously, but pretty regularly.
There are food options for increasing your level of vitamin D. One of them is good old oily fish. I'm not a big fan of oily fish, as you may already know. So for me, the supplement option is a reasonable one because I don't eat a lot of oily fish.
Absolutely. So well, you will be very pleased to know then about what I've discovered as a potential new source of vitamin D and it would be the humble button mushroom! I know you're a big fan of mushrooms. Whilst thinking about vitamin D I discovered that mushrooms have the potential to be the only non-animal, unfortified food source of vitamin D and amazingly a single serving which is 100 grams - apparently about three mushrooms - provides you with enough to meet the UK is daily recommended intake.
Wow, that's impressive.
So, you might be interested to know a little bit of the science?
Okay.
Mushrooms have high concentrations of something called erogsterol spelt E R G O S T E R O L in their cell walls and when their cell walls are exposed to UV radiation, ergosterol becomes Ergocalciferol  which is commonly known as vitamin D. In general, mushrooms in their production are not exposed to UV radiation. As you can imagine, most mushrooms are grown in dark conditions and then harvested.
So does that mean that they lose their benefit?
Absolutely. Well, they don't have sufficient in them to have maximum recommended daily intake. So basically, bog standard mushrooms are grown in the dark, they're picked under a fluorescent light and they're transported in refrigerated lorries. So they've got a very low vitamin D content. But in 2016, Tesco launched a range of vitamin D enhanced mushrooms and they were actively exposed to UV radiation after picking and therefore had enhanced level of the vitamin.
I just didn't know that, they kept that very quite.
Yes, and the weird thing was when I searched online to find out which supermarkets stocked
Vitamin D enhanced mushrooms, there was nothing, you can't really tell whether your mushroom has or hasn't been enhanced. All I could find was a news story about the 2016 launch by Tescos and I also found one story that said Sainsbury's sell them as well. But looking at the supermarket's online stores, there was nothing to indicate that their mushrooms did or did not have enhanced levels of vitamin D.
So they're not shouting about it. Incredible, you'd think their marketing machines would get into gear on that one. Everyone is going to be interested or maybe  you'd call me a vitamin D obsessive as I find it particularly interesting.
Everyone should be interested in it! So basically, if you want to be sure that your mushroom has been enhanced, that it's got lot of vitamin D, you have to check the labeling.
And what about mushrooms that are allowed to kind of roam freely?
Well, interestingly, I was did read a report that seemed to imply that you can expose your mushrooms, excuse me, yourself in the garden. So if you've brought your mushrooms you can put them in the sunshine for probably up to an hour or so before you cook with them and that will increase naturally the vitamin D level. But obviously that's not a practical option for most commercial sellers, so they tend to use a UV pulse  which takes a few seconds to bring the vitamin D levels up to to what they need to be.
So would you recommend that people then expose their mushrooms at home?
Well, you know, I would recommend it I only maybe not in the garden! The other thing is to make sure, and you will like this aswell because I know how fussy you are about best before dates and all that kind of stuff, you do need to eat them when they're fresh and definitely before the best before date on the pack. Otherwise the vitamin D levels, assuming that they've been enhanced, declines.
That's music to my ears.
Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Mushrooms on toast for breakfast anyone?
Well, I didn't know any of that, that's really fascinating and I'm interested in exploring more about this. So next time we go shopping we will be looking at the labels.
I'll see if I can do a record of all the major supermarkets and see which ones are actually selling mushrooms and report back next episode.
I will definitely be looking at mushrooms in a different light.
Brilliant. Before we go I just wanted to flag up some of our favorite mushroom recipes. Okay.
Mmushroom stroganoff. Jamie Oliver's recipe with a splash of bourbon that you then set light to in the pan is delicious and a bit of an event, it's very exciting to make.
Yeah, exactly.
Mushroom soups,  particularly in the winter time. I love portobello mushrooms and obviously they're a great option for a veggie burger.
Yeah, ideal.
Creamy mushroom and spinach pasta, II haven't had that but I thought it sounded quite nice. I might try that one. And of course our old favorite, shop bought mushroom stuffed ravioli, topped with quickly pan fried mushrooms and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.
Mushrooms that have been allowed to stand in the light for a bit?
Yeah, next time we will use them.
That's this episode's Nugget of Knowledge. I hpe you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something and have renewed respect for the humble mushroom.
Well, I'm off to get some mushrooms!
But don't forget to check your labeling.

Wow. Well, thanks for listening to the very first episode of The What's for Dinner Show. It's been quite a journey for me conceiving and creating it, but hopefully it's a good listen. If you enjoyed it, why not check out my other episodes available from whoever provides your podcasts. It's usually Apple, Spotify or Google but other providers are out there. If you follow me, you'll be reminded to listen to future shows and you won't miss a thing. You can also like and follow The What's for Dinner Show on Facebook, or find me as Lynnesfood on Instagram. Thank you to my first ever guest, Michael O'Halloran, for his patience and his willingness to be the show's guinea pig. And a big shout out to Rick Simmons at Varbu for his advice and support. Once again, thank you for listening and do please recommend The What's for Dinner Show to your friends, your family, your work colleagues...really I'd love it if you told anyone and everyone including those you bump into on the street,  meet down the pub, sit next to on the bus. You get the idea.