60's , 70's , 80's Picnic Hamper : Help Needed

[KudzD]

Im creating a Picnic Hamper for a University set brief for the supermarket Marks and Spencer. My idea is to design a hamper that contains popular foods/ drinks from the 60's , 70's and 80's to make you remember about those times and re live them. So I'm asking you for foods and drinks you remember from any of those decades myself i was born in the 90's.

I Have attached a picture of packaging concepts I have designed to give you a sense of what Im doing.

Thanks

[KudzD]

Hi everybody Thank you for the comments I have been reading each single one , sorry haven't had time too reply to all your comments , they have been great and revealed to me some things I did not think about its appreciated

I'll let you know once I have completed the project!

many thanks

KudzD

[Theresa]

For the 60s and 70s, ham and crisp sandwiches on white bread. You also need generous quantities of sand in it for extra texture and true authenticity.

[Chatsworth]

Picnics were one of the few times we'd get a proper chocolate biscuit (penguin, etc) as opposed to boring home-made biscuits.

Cheese and chutney sandwiches. An old piece of Christmas cake wrapped in a paper serviette.

Wrinkly apples and satsumas.

[Harters]

Yep, it was always Penguins or Jacobs Orange Club for the picnic bikkie. I suspect it was much to do with the very strong advertising campaigns both had.

[PhilD]

John what about the caramel finger? And what about "sandwich speead" an especally vile delicacy.

I was quite lucky as my mum was a good cook who had studied and done her City & Guilds exams and therefore we had gourmet fare on our family picnics in the '70's Coronation Chicken was a regular, or chicken in homemade BBQ sauce, quiches were also pretty common as well as homemade pate. I tend to disagree about not carrying lots of stuff and keeping things cool. Roadside picnics were common and so the cool-box (homemade) and icebags were in common use

[Harters]

"Sandwich spread" never figured for us - I know the crap you mean - always looked and smelled like vomit!

[gembellina]

In the 80s, our picnics always had scotch eggs, cocktail sausages, and those four-cornered pots of dips - something like thousand island, cheese and onion, sour cream and chive, and something else... and choc-ices, but then I was only 5.

[Harters]

Delia Smith comes to the rescue in the form of her picnics chapter in the Complete Cookery Course. Published in 1978, there aren't too many actual recipes - although she does mention Scotch eggs and Spanish tortilla. And how could I have forgotten quiche - possible *the* picnic food of the 70/80s - then as now, I'd probably have bought it from Marks & Sparks rather than make one (cos real men don't make quiche)

[cathodetube]

Oh yeah, quiche. Hate it when cold. Spanish tortilla would have been extremely avant garde.

[Harters]

Nah, tortilla would have been well OK in the 80s. Lots of Spanish holidays by then.

[cathodetube]

Maybe in the Eighties, but not the Seventies.

[MoGa]

Spanish tortilla was only found in places with Mediterranean clientele. What was available everywhere was the ubiquitous "Spanish Omelet" a classic where eggs were mixed with whatever vegetables were plugging up the sink.

Don't forget that almost all sandwiches in the 70s and 80s were coated in margarine or butter, even the coronation chicken and tuna mayo. When buying sandwiches in the city in the late 80s I always ended up holding up the queue as the sandwich makers would need to get bread out of the bag to accommodate my fussy no margarine and mayo request. My recollection of how things developed is that it was Pret a Manger which broke the buttered everything mindset.
People may have been going to Spain in the 80s but few were interested in Spanish food - the same person who'd be peeling away the streaks of fat from a good jamon (none of the decent jamon or chorizo could be imported into England legally at that time) would feel extremely sophisticated eating parma ham wrapped around melon slices.

[MoGa]

A few more:
70s : stuffed loaves and homity pie (this pie was the closest thing in England to a real Spanish tortilla before it became widely known in the 90s)
80s : 3 vegetable terrine, ciabatta ('invented' 1982, available widely in UK from 1985), a bottle of beaujolais nouveau

[Harters]

Our recollections of tortilla and homity pie must be different, MoGa. In case of the latter, I'd have the view it has never been popular picnic food.

[MoGa]

I guess I knew a lot of people who were sick of sausage meat back then:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2011/...

[cathodetube]

Hi KudzD,

Are you looking solely for British food remembrances? I was here in the Seventies and remember, like Harters said, pork pies, sausage rolls, hb eggs and sandwiches. Sandwiches could be paste ones, like Shipham, which is still available, egg and cress, boiled ham and perhaps some piccalilli, cheese and onion, cheese and chutney like Branston or Panyan (no longer available). Definitely also flasks of tea and coffee, probably instant coffee or Camp Coffee.

I remember going to Marks and Spencer with an auntie to collect food for a picnic in Yorkshire and she bought some delicious chocolate pudding type (like blancmange) things with whipped cream on the top. They also did caramel ones. They were in clear yoghurt type containers. They were the highlight of the picnic for me.

If you had a sophisticated picnic it could include pate and french bread. Earthenware bowls of pate could be bought from the deli counter in supermarkets then.

For pudding you might get some Jamaica Ginger Cake or Madeira Cake.

[Harters]

Interesting time period for food in Britain. It was only during the 60s and, more so, early 70s that we started to travel abroad for holidays and this affected what we ate and, of course, what shops sold.

So, in the early period, picnics would be about sandwiches, sausage rolls, pork pies - classic British food and traditional. But you also need to remember that car ownership was nowhere near as common as it is now. It meant picnics were not vast feasts as you'd be carrying it on the bus or train.

By the mid 70s, M & S was firmly positioned as a retailer of quality food and it may be well worth your while researching magazines and newspapers for the period to see what they were advertising. That could be a suitable tag for your brief.

On a personal note, a picnic is not a picnic unless it includes a hard boiled egg.

[zuriga1]

Off topic a bit, but in America a picnic always had to include deviled eggs, but we always were a bit fancy.

My husband who remembers many a picnic in those eras says they always had tea in a thermos.. also a chicken leg.

[mr_gimlet]

... and lashings of ginger beer

[rkscher]

i can remember picnics since the late 1940s, so i lived through the period you are concerned about. this was the time before picnics became celebrations of sophisticated food. and the technology was primitive - your basic picnic basket probably did not come with plates/utensils/etc., or if it did, it was plastic. food: simple stuff that could withstand a trip in a not-always-air-conditioned car. cold chicken, sandwiches, cold cuts, probably nothing with mayo (who wanted potato salad baked in the sun?), perhaps a thermos of iced tea. a box of cookies for dessert, maybe a pound cake that could withstand the trip, and heat. i like the marketing idea, but remember - simple, uncomplicated, unsophisticated. good luck!