Oxtail soup, Steak and Kidney Pie, Tapioca Pudding, Sardines

What did they do with the rest of the ox? Why do I get to eat its tail?

Several of the common and everyday foods of my childhood - things I would be served almost every week, like it or not - have all-but disappeared. 

These are many; and include canned oxtail soup, steak and kidney pies, tapioca pudding and tins of sardines. 

I'm not sorry to see the back of any of these. The flavour of oxtail soup always seemed a bit odd to me - with an unpleasant aftertaste. I never could understand why anyone would want to ruin a steak pie with bits of rubbery, urinous, kidney. Tapioca pudding was bland belly-timber. Sardines were okay, as small fish go (certainly better than the vile pilchards) but I never really miss them. 

I classify all of these as wartime foods; which were imposed on British people by the shortages and distortions created by totalitarianism: i.e. the combination of a U-Boat blockade, and the ignorant tyranny of the Ministry of Agriculture. 

I think the bad reputation of British food came from this era. The socialistic national government, then the ruling Labour Part, loved being able to control food production and distribution, and dictating what people could eat. 

The damage to food quantity and quality took many years to repair, indeed rationing was continued for a decade post-war, and the Min of Ag never gave up the reins of power (later enthusiastically embracing the most extreme lunacies of the European Economic Community/ EU). 

This cast a long shadow on the national diet, which extended into the middle 1980s; an attitude that mass institutional food would be to be mediocre, at best; and we ought not to expect otherwise (despite whatever we experienced in other countries). 

The best of English cooking was domestic, in those days; especially roasted meats, baked foods, and puddings. Foreigners seldom experienced this because it was essentially private - and, of course, it depended on the specific woman doing the cooking.  

So I presume that the reason I was fed so much animal offcuts and offal - like ox tails and tongues; hearts, livers, and kidneys - all of which I hated; and flavourless calories such as tapioca and semolina; and little fish in tins - was a communistic mind-set that instinctively regarded food as something that was sustenance and fuel for the proletariat; rather than potentially one of the good things in life. 

And of course the question arises: what was happening to all the good cuts of meat, to the great cuts of an animal's muscles rather than its organs and peripheries? Where was all that going; who was eating all the good stuff?  

As nearly-always with socialism and Leftism generally - the rules and restrictions were for the Little People; not for the communist leaders themselves; most of whom have always self-righteous and hypocritical toffs.

Of course, things have now gone too far the other way. It is boring, wasteful, and life-distorting to regard every meal as An Event; to be planned, discussed, photographed and shared online. 

There is a place for regarding food as routine belly-timber. I am happy enough with that...

Just so long as my belly timber is not offal.