To ask what is the weirdest most bizzare concoction of food ever served to you?

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

I've just mentioned this on another thread and am bored on this miserable rainy afternoon so would love to hear some of yours.

My mum is a terrible cook, but still insists on experimenting with various meals. A few of the things we were served as a child:

Tinned mandarin and vanilla muller yoghurt poured over chicken breasts. The yoghurt curdled.

'Risotto'. This was made by leaving the basmati rice in its water, stirring through tomato purée and throwing some plastic cheese on top.

At Christmas one year she basted the turkey in lime juice, and put pineapple rings on top.

She stirs through primula cheese in a tube into mashed potato.

'Tropical rice'- boiling it in tropical fruit juice or squash.

It's been YEARS since I braved a meal at hers but my brothers tell me not much has changed. Looking back these dishes fasincate and horrify me in equal measures. I made sure I knew what I was doing cooking-wise from quite a young age.

Anyone got any horrors or just plain strange ones to add?

[Sionella]

Being vegetarian, you get some odd things at black tie industry events.

One year I got half a roasted onion served on a bed of baked fucking beans. My boss fell off his chair laughing at how shit my dinner was!

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

That was at a black tie?! That's appalling

[WhooooAmI24601]

DH once made a roast dinner just after we'd first moved in together. His beef was perfect, roast potatoes to die for, garam masala in the gravy that destroyed the whole thing. No idea to this day why he'd done it, he just thought it'd add a special something.

[Livedandlearned]

Wow op your mum has quite an imaginative menu going on there! My ds works at a farm and gets served lunch. He often doesn't know what it is, but will be a combo of pasta, gravy and maybe sausages, or beans. It's as though any carb will be added to a meal whether it goes or not.

[Notsandwiches]

My Mum once made the crumble for an apple crumble using onion bhaji flour. Grim.

[Justmadeperfectflapjacks]

Is your dm called Letitia??

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

Liveandlearned she thinks she'll be the next Heston or Wilky Wonka I reckon

Pasta and gravy...ew.

[Cagliostro]

DH's mum once made him eat a cheesecake made with cheddar.

I was on holiday as a teen when we went to a nice restaurant with a set menu. It had a palate cleanser type thing before the main course. Sorbet. Thyme flavoured sorbet.

Still avoid anything with thyme in now!

[HarrietKettleWasHere]

no, who is Letitia?

[ButtonBoo]

Ex MIL (terrible cook) served us shepherds pie with roast potatoes, parsnips, tinned processed peas...and macaroni cheese.

Not only random but there was a miniscule of meat in the shepherds pie and it had no gravy sauce so it was basically boiled mince. There was lashings of mashed potato. And no bloody cheesy top so maybe that's why we had macaroni cheese with it. But then the random roast potatoes. Parsnips were barely cooked but the tinned processed peas were practically grey.

I may sound incredibly ungrateful but it was so grim

[PovertyJetset]

An old boyfriends mum had lived overseas for years and served up to my very pedestrian palette of mine some great things! Boiled onion with cloves in a white sauce. Yummy, but weird!
Pork medallions with prunes.
Banana and cheese sandwiches

[viques]

Not served to me but I worked with a woman whose lunch EVERYDAY was a small tin of carrots, two slices of processed cheese and some sliced white bread.

I once had banana wrapped in ham served with a cheese sauce, now that was odd.

[StoatofDisarray]

When I was a student, one of my friends invited us round for a Sunday roast. It was a roast chicken. She had basted it in lamb fat and pushed lamb fat under the skin too. It tasted repulsive.

[NotCitrus]

Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, used to be notorious for crap food. The undergrads were made to buy about 80 meal tokens each term, so quite often they'd try to get their money's worth and invite friends along. The first sitting for dinner tried to get everyone in and out within 25 minutes. For a three-course meal.

they didnt really care what was served - mostly leftovers from lunch - and it was mostly flung in the middle of the table, which was a bit better than down your neck. The worst one I recall was fried fish in breadcrumbs, served with cold spaghetti. And nothing else.

Worst at anyone's house was tripe fried with baked beans and not-quite-cooked white rice. I'm not a fan of baked beans or white rice at the best of times, and the furry white tripe...

[ABCFamily]

Gai lan and spaghetti hoops.

[grins]

Angel hair pasta dropped into cold water and heated until it congealed into a solid brain like mass. Sauce made of creme fraiche, curry powder, ham and cheese. Turns out is excellent diet food - two mouthfuls and you lose your appetite. Anyway, reader I married him.....

[CatThiefKeith]

DDad once cooked a curry that required cream in the recipe, but as he didn't have any he thought he would use natural yoghurt.

Except he didn't have any of that either so he used the strawberry yoghurt he did have.

Was grim.

[42andcounting]

Please tell me I'm not the only one thinking primula in mash sounds dirty but lovely

[Mulberry72]

A friend of ours GF invited us over for dinner, saying that she would do us a lovely vegetarian pasta (we're not veggie but more than happy to go meat free).

We arrived to a beautifully set table, music playing etc, she popped her head out of the kitchen and asked if we would like cheese on our pasta to which we replied yes.

She came in with a dish of plain cooked pasta with tinned veg (think peas, carrots, sweet corn) stirred through it with a plastic cheese slice melted on top of it.

I've no idea what she was thinking.

[TheRealPooTroll]

I've had salad with cumin sprinkled on and gravy with fresh orange in from an elderly aunt. She was very proud of both efforts.

[Cagliostro]

Harriet the Letitia question is (I assume!) referring to Letitia Cropley, a character in the first series of Vicar of Dibley, who cooks really random combinations :)

[Tiredbutnotyetretired]

When i was younger i used to dip quavers in coffee, eat jacket potato with tinned mushy peas, dip egg mayo sarnies into left over curry and pour a tin of beans over sliced cucumber.

[grasspigeons]

Noodles with mackerel, tomatoes, peas and a curry sauce. It was on the school menu a few years back. They did it 3 times and ditched it.

[BikeRunSki]

Baked beans and frozen peas (cooked) for Christmas lunch. Served to me by my mother who had somehow forgotten that I was vegetarian. Like I had been for 25 years or so at that point.

[flibberdy]

I'd take primula cheese in mash yum! But 'tropical rice' hehehehehehe

My mum did very very boring meat, potato, veg dishes.
I'm the opposite and love experimenting (but I usually use cookbooks!)