What meal made your heart sink as a child

Pork chops. never eaten one in my adut life thankfully.

Lentil soup. It was disgusting and I hated it but we always had it towards the end of the month when money was tight. Still gag at the thought of it now.

Runner beans. Mum & Dad used to grow them so when they were in season, it was runner beans every single meal - and then she'd freeze a load, so it would keep us going for months. I can't eat runner beans now at all.

Finally, rainbow trout. Dad got a shit load from somewhere and we had a run of that for every meal too (accompanied by bloody runner beans)!

I loved angel delight too shadow - especially butterscotch

Sorry I've only just discovered this thread, but have a few to add.

Whitebait - the only time I've vomited onto a plate of food.

Sunday roast dinners - all veg done in the pressure cooker, so it all came out tasting the same. Brisket (silverside) roasted until it resembled shoe leather, the Yorkshire puddings were the only edible things on the plate. Ditto steak.

Corned beef heggarty (or Panactly) - took me years to get over the horror and actually try a corned beef pasty.

Cheese and strawberry jam sarnies - no, I have no idea why my mum served them up either. Allegedly my brother liked them, so I should as well .

Finally, I don't think anyone else has mentioned junket? Was I the only 70's child that had to eat it? Angel delight was a gourmet delight after junket.

I was fine with all of the main course school dinner options- I never recall liver thank goodness, it was the puddings tht made my heart sink.

Semolina- looked and tasted like wallpaper paste and the minisule splodge of jam only made it worse. The absolute worst for me was the day when we had shortbread biscuits and strawberry milkshake for pud. You knew it was coming because there were no water tumblers on the table. The milkshake was worse when they substituted banana.

I remember actually crying one time because I was being forced to sit there with synthetic milk getting warmer and biscuit that felt and tasted like sandy gravel and not being allowed a glass of water- because I already had a drink!

An unMumsnetty LOL @ "And oddly hungry" Kate.
Good choice for classics - I always love our food and nostalgia threads :-)

Fish pie made with bony cod, tinned tomatoes, crunchy onions and peas topped with mashed potato. Yuck

Tuna pizza - it all dried out and went crunchy in the oven - bleugh. Even the pizza dough was terrible, like old bread.

Pork chops - grey tough meat

Chicken chassuer (sp?) made with a packet sauce - it was so awful and watery.

Mum tends to substitute things if she hasn't got them in and adds gravy powder to everything including soup. I hate it when she invites us round for tea!!

Is that Potted Heid as in Potted Hough?

I loved hough and still do.

My granny's Fish Tatties!

She'd boil up a cauldron of tatties and as my dad worked in the fish industry at the time, he'd bring her a big bag of it every Friday evening. But this was fish exactly as it came out of the sea, with heads, tails, bones and scales still attached. The whole lot would go in with the tatties and when it was soft, she'd mash it all up together, and that would be our tea

Was the worst meal ever and the only thing that might be as bad was Potted Heid - Yeuch!

I used to spend the summers with my grandparents (in America) and my grandma would serve 'shit on a shingle' or 'SOS' as it was known to me. It's an American military dish that no doubt my grandpa ate when he was in the army in the 50s. As my grandma served it, it's mince in white sauce served on crumpets. I could never even take one bite, and I wasn't a fussy child. I was a really 'good girl' and this one dish is the only thing I ever got in trouble for at their house. I was sent to bed with no dinner every time my grandma made this because I refused to eat. She didn't even serve any vegetables with it that I could pretend to eat a bit. My heart definitely sank when I saw this was for dinner.

I'm not!

I remember when I used to shop at a proper old-fashioned market in Sheffield, and people there would buy strips of tripe from the butcher's stall and eat it there and then with vinegar.

I'll eat almost anything, but the sight of those great folded heaps of boiled white, honeycomb-textured innards was the opposite of appetising.

I'm willing to believe that properly cooked tripe could be nice.

liver !!

Or really dry boiled potatoes ( would it have killed you to mash them mum ! ) fishfingers and peas !! DRY DRY DRY !!

I could never stomach tripe, the look of it in the butchers window made my stomach turn so I have never eaten it. But a friend of mine was given some for lunch by a relative and being polite, ate it. She said it was delicious and according to the relative its a bit like liver in that if it is cooked properly it can be really nice but cooked badly, as it usually is, its revolting.

Not prepared to risk it personally though!

I've never eaten tripe, could never stand the sight of it. Luckily whenever it was on offer at school, there was usually an alternative available - else I'd have gone hungry rather than attempt it.

Semolina was my dessert bugbear. I remember being the last in the dining hall at Infants' school because I couldn't choke it down, and it was cold and even more disgusting by then, I was crying my eyes out. Can't remember the end outcome though!

I actually really like liver - but only lambs' liver. The stuff we used to get at school was pigs' liver, and it was fried to leather toughness - plus it's a much coarser texture in the first place and would go really really gritty. Blech!

My Dad used to have this bizarre medicine for when we were feeling sick, called Fennings Mixture. Iirc, it contained a mixture of nitric (or could have been sulphuric) and hydrochloric acids (among other stuff?) and was beyond disgusting - but it did work in terms of kill or cure - you'd either throw up really quickly or it would settle your stomach. Probably dissolved teeth on the way down though as well!

My Aunt who raised me LOVED boiled bacon, cabbage and potatoes. So we had it twice a week. I do not eat fat, I am allergy to cabbage(and tea?) so I got potatoes . On the theory there was GOOD food which I would not eat.
My husband still thanks god she never tried to teach me to cook. The rest of her food seemed to have come from the same cookbook standard on this thread

Urgh, this thread is turning my stomach..you poor, poor people!

My own contribution is fried eggs, chips and peas. It doesn't sound too bad compared to some on here but I absolutely detested snotty fried eggs and marrow fat peas as a child. Yuck.

My children are fed only nice, fresh home-made dishes which are mostly mediterranean inspired and are NEVER forced to eat food they don't like.

Oh yeah. Olives are vile. Especially those big green ones stuffed with red.

I've never actually eaten one of those because I know I would vomit.

I once broke up with a boyfriend in a restaurant over oysters. He ordered them and insisted that I shared them. I politely refused but he persisted, either in the interests of educating my palate, or sharing a sexy moment.

Probably both.

It got very ugly.

Had school dinners all through primary in the 70s .....

worst offenders were ....

Liver and bacon
Steak and kidney pie (not much steak I'd say)
Tapioca and various other milk puddings (an absolute staple of 70's school dinners unfortunately, with a blob of jam if you were lucky)

Remember headteacher standing over me one time whilst I didn't eat my liver and bacon. I was sat there a long time. But as I recall I won in the end!

I did like most of my dinners though, both at school and at home.
Was a favourite (aged about 5) with the dinner lady who served the greens as I'd always ask for more of that

Urggh! fullpleatherjacket. It did the trick though.

I love butter beans now but I used to hate them as a child. I think it's because I put them in things rather than serving them on the side like my mum used to.

She loved tinned pease pudding, but I've never tasted it because the dull greyish-yellow colour used to revolt me. It's probably okay, I think it's boiled, mashed split peas. I'd like that.

I must have been revolted by yellow food because I've never eaten piccalilli, but I've just looked up the ingredients and I think I'd like it. I happily eat mustard now and sweetcorn, I hated that on sight too.

I used to love sloppy beef pies from the pie and mash shop but refused the green liquor - again, it was the colour. It's just parsley sauce though, so it's probably okay.

I loved going in there and staring at the live eels in the big china sink while we waited. I've never eaten jellied eels though (they look revolting) and used to pick out the jelly in pork pies.

But I was never made to eat anything I didn't want, probably because my mum was fussy, fussier than me. The list of things she refused to eat and the vehemence with which she'd denounce them wasn't annoying, I found it endearing.

I used to think: 'Mum it's just something you don't want to eat, not a perversion.'

Nevertheless, she used to boast to people that I was a 'good' eater, I think I took after my dad, who was a human dustbin and was less fussy than the dog.

My tastes have got broader; I'll eat almost anything now. The exceptions are tripe, though I love this, oysters - like snot, beetroot - muddy, carp, also muddy and I hate the look and texture of coleslaw - it looks like vomit to me.

limited - One of the dinner dragons stood over me and made me eat a dollop of school mash once, grey lumps and all. I was in the process of going down with chicken pox and brought the whole lot back in the plate.

She left me alone after that

YY to butter beans! I meant to add them last night. Beige lumps of weirdly slimy tasting nastiness

Boiled potatoes, pearl barley soup, gristle and butter beans are my food hell - I like everything else.

A particular fave was what we called mixed grill: liver, sausage, bacon in onion gravy - served with mashed carrots and boiled potatoes which were fried in a chip pan.

Liked mushy peas, heart, tapioca and school dinners were fab. We ate a lot of mince, I'm going through a mincetastic revival (ragu, cottage pie, chili).

I'm starving reading this.

olives,and octopus type fish dishes.