The first cut is the deepest.

I wrote last time that some cuts had to be made to the text and recipes had to be left on the publishing equivalent of "the cutting room floor". I thought I would share one with you and in the true spirit of healthy schools nowadays this one should be good for you. Now you know why I cut this from a book about 60's and 70's school dinners!

Fruit cocktail

The keeping healthy message for us seemed to rely on the nit nurse scaring head lice into submission and swimming teachers digging their nails into feet to check for a verruca. To my knowledge no one has died from either nits or veruccas although I admit both would be rather horrible ways to go.

Occasional visits from the optician made sure that all short sighted boys looked like Joe 90 and myopic girls had pink or clear plastic NHS frames. No stereotyping there then! The dentists brought their mirror and a glass of pink disinfectant. A swirl and a wipe with a paper towel and the mirror was good to go for the next patient. One year we were presented with a free beaker, toothbrush and tube of toothpaste as we left the medical room. Product placement was alive and well in the Seventies too.

Our school meals were high in calories as I have said before but we used the calories up. We did get lots of fruit and plenty of vegetables. Carbohydrates filled any remaining gaps in our digestive tract and the milk kept our bones and teeth strong. Strangely the seemingly healthiest pudding was syrup laden and almost certainly unnaturally coloured. The amount of preservatives per spoonful we consumed should have embalmed us from the colon outwards. This version is however a healthy one! Looking at the ingredients in this fruit cocktail made me realise just how life has changed for us all since the late sixties. Ingredients my children take for granted such as kiwis, mango and even pomegranate were virtually unheard of. The most exotic part of this cocktail were the cherries and you absolutely only got those when the pudding was out of a tin.

Ingredients
1 red apple chopped
1 green apple chopped,
1 orange peeled and chopped,
1 pear peeled and chopped,
1 banana peeled and chopped,
Red and green grapes halved,
Juice of half a lemon,
Sugar to sweeten if needed,
Custard to serve.

How to …….
1. Squeeze the lemon juice into a large bowl. This will stop the fruits from discolouring before they are eaten.
2. Peel and chop all the fruits as appropriate and place into the bowl turning them over in the juice as you go. Taste and sweeten as you see fit. You can use honey if you prefer this as a sweetener.
3. If all this is too much effort then open a tin of fruit cocktail for the complete retro effect.
4. Serve with cold custard or ice cream.