What meal made your heart sink as a child

Fray Bentos pie from a tin. Simultaneously burnt and raw.

Salmon en croute. From a shop. I'm sure it's lovely but when it's served every time you go home then it's really not.

Mince and tatties - Scotland's other national dish. Every single Thursday throughout my childhood. Disgusting.

Poor quality meat generally but my grandma used to make my dads favourite dish -boiled liver and bacon with onions wrapped in boiled pastry and watery gravy. Actually he hated it too but didn't have to heart to tell her so we all had to suffer it

TheLovelyBoots Thu 06-Nov-14 12:40:36

MEATLOAF.

Would that be the food or the singer? 'cos he's pretty depressing as well. sorry about that

On another note, did anyone see the perfectly horrible desserts on Masterchef Professionals last night? Now those were heartsink on a plate if ever I saw it. I don't often feel sorry for the judges on those shows but I did pity them there. Coconut jelly, WTF was he thinking...?

MEATLOAF.

Not me but my mum - she grew up in a farming community and when it came to pig-killing season they would have full pigs'-liver fry-ups for breakfast. As a teenager (not) waking up on a cold Irish winter's morning, she used to retch at the smell.

Cheese on toast was particularly grim at home too. Now, I know you're all thinking: how?

My mum would put a slice of cheese (sometimes a Kraft cheese slice) on top of a slice of cheap, plastic, white bread and put it in the microwave. There was no toasting involved. You'd be presented with greasy, melted cheese the temperature of the centre of the earth on top of the world's chewiest bread on a plastic plate that was too hot to touch. I was at university before I realised that other people had toast in cheese on toast.

Salad was also grim. A mix of lettuce, cucumber, tomato and picked beetroot with salad cream stirred through. The colour alone was alarming enough. My mother professes to love this and eats it a lot. The sight of it makes me feel ill.

My mother was not (and is not) a good cook. Neither of my grandmothers were either. They also have/had dreadful ideas about what tastes nice, which made everything much worse.

42and counting -- we had the dreaded stuffed marrow too! It was so watery and had the worst texture.

I feel a bit mean talking about my mum's cooking, as she was on a tight budget, but she used to make the most godawful mushroom and pearl barley soup thing. It was very grey and sad looking, and the texture of pearl barley put my teeth on edge. It has taken many years to get over my mushroom phobia thanks to that dish.

Greasy mince and watery carrots.
Boiled bacon with bisto gravy and parsley sauce.
The only 2 school dinners that stick in my mind. There'd be a roomful of children quietly sobbing over their plates.

Anything with courgettes! Dad grew them in the garden, so they were cooked in any number of ways and served with every meal when in season, and I hated them.

On one occasion, he missed one for a few days, so when he eventually picked it, it was massive. When I saw it cooked and on the table, I suspiciously asked "Is that courgette?"

My mum smugly answered "No! It's marrow!"

I decided I hated marrow as well.

No idea if I actually do hate marrow as I haven't been able to bring myself to try one.

Baked marrow, stuffed with pale looking mince & tied back together with string to bake in the oven. No other ingredients apart from marrow and mince. Bland, smelly, awful, but a cheap meal when skint(marrow out of the garden). Dreaded it!

Gammon Steak! Salty, rubbery pigs arse!

A celebration Sunday or party dish...Warm salt tongue with raisin sauce!!!

For me it was shepherd's pie (with baked beans in it... why?) or fish pie (which I love now... but this version had yellow smoked haddock, hard boiled eggs and, inexplicably, a tin of plum tomatoes in it).

I also hated casseroles and most gravy-based dishes - meat loaf, pie, roast, etc. I still don't love them but they can be good if done properly.

I did however LOVE (and still do) cod in parsley sauce, Birds instant semolina (bought some the other day for the first time in years and it's still amazing) and sardines on toast.

We were quite lucky that my parents were reasonably adventurous with food and we were (eventually) had Thai curries, fajitas, pesto pasta, hummus etc a good decade before they became mainstream dishes.

At school - the "choppy" - don't know why it was called that, I think it was similar to a spam fritter, coated in bright orange bread crumbs, and triangle shaped. Served with an ice cream scoop of school mashed potato, and mixed veg cut into cubes

At home, corned beef hash.

I made a spam fritter a few months ago, I had a dribble of batter left after something else and there was a wedge of Spam in the fridge. It was greasy and disgusting.....and absolutely delish! I would never serve them to the kids but honestly, it was gorgeous!

Oh and we had spam because the kids tried it on WWII day and loved it, "one man's meat is another man's poison" :o

Moroccan lamb.

It's hard to put my finger on it- my mum is an incredible cook, so it stands to reason the lamb was good, too.
I think it was the way the gravy leaked into the couscous and made it go all funny.
Or the way the house smelled of Moroccan Lamb for days after.

I don't like my food to touch, and I hate smelling my food after I've eaten it. Shudder.

I'd forgotten about pork chops. They were awful. Lamb chops were pretty bad too but at least you could put mint sauce on them. I'm actually feeling queasy writing this.

Spam fritters. I was alone in my hatred of them, my brothers still see them as a massive treat.

And mince and mash. Not the mince and mash with onion gravy and veggies, the mince and mash that we would get on a Friday evening once in a while when money was short and all mum could afford until dad brought his pay packet home was the mince, which was cooked with nothing else but an oxo cube. I never went hungry........... but I don't miss the 70's

Liver and onions. Boak.

at Ham Pipes! Nearly as appetizing as Fanny Craddock's Banana Candles

Lots of people saying their mums are great cooks and wondering how, this being so, they managed to served up all this awful stuff - think the answer is the 80s/90s food revolution! Our mothers have come on a massive journey food wise, much more radical than the one we are on.

I was a little kid in the 70s. We had reconstituted frozen "turkey roll" for sunday lunch (why?why?why? Surely a normal roasting joint would have been nicer!), arctic roll for pudding, angel delight, a very yummy but bizarre supper called "ham pipes" (slippy ham rolled into a pipe with cottage cheese inside, served with new pots and 1970s salad; round lettuce, cucumber, tomato, boiled egg and salad cream!). Mum used to eat small tins of weight watchers soup for her lunch and if it was someone's birthday they bought, as a treat, a glass bottle of Del Monte concentrated orange juice.

My little sister was a kid in the 80s. By that time my mother had cottoned on to the food revolution. The days of reconstituted meat and arctic roll were OVER. We were now a wholefood and pulses eating family! Her wholemeal loaves were good for making walls out of. She made nut roasts, we ate wholewheat pasta (aargh!) and even fresh tagiatelle with a kind of gloopy tomato and lentil (lentil??! who puts lentils with pasta?) sauce. But her piece de resistance was gloopy green lentil curry with, you guessed it, a hard boiled egg sitting on top.

By the 90s though she had worked through this phase and she had settled down pretty much into the excellent "modern european cook with a sideline in ethnic tagines and curries" that she now is.

Bless you mother, all is forgiven.

Boiled bacon and cabbage

Liver and onions. My mum used to give it to us so we wouldn't be deficient in iron (and I think my dad liked it). I still hate liver...