Bad childhood dinners

[driggle]

While eating ham, egg & chips tonight (childhood fav) I was thinking about the dinners I used to have as a child. My mum only cooked things that were frozen, tinned or came out of a packet. One particular meal we had a lot was Birdseye beef in gravy (which you boiled in the bag it came in) with plain pasta bows. At the time I actually enjoyed it but the thought of eating that beef now makes me gag a little. I remember it being chewy but my mum would cook all meat until it had the texture of a shoe, so I didn't know any better!

What childhood dinners did you eat that you couldn't imagine eating now?

Meat with tubes in it

Homepride white wine sauce on chicken was my favourite. My mum was a good cook but that was what I used to request for "special" meals. Poor mum! I can't imagine eating it now

Findus cod in butter sauce ergh boil in the bag hated it then and couldnt even look at stuff like it now, but my mom was a widow so it was eat it or starve

Liver for me too. So grainy and tubey

My mum smoked 40 cigs a day so we never had any money left over for nice food.

Cheap frozen stuff. One Sunday we had sliced pork from the supermarket. There where maggots walking across it.

The only meal I remember that was nice was eggs, chips and beans on a Wednesday.

Dad made a good scouse on a Thursday.

A meal I can remember eating regularly and actually enjoying,was tinned mince and tinned peas. All mixed up together,with bread and butter on the side. The thought of eating any sort of mince now makes me feel slightly queasy. Another one was tinned sardines mixed up with grated cheese and raw onion,piled onto toast and grilled. I didn't like it much then,even less so now. I can actually remember my late DM eating this on occasion,right up until a few months before she died. I remember my DD and DGD were (not envy!)

My mum still makes these grim pork chops! I go home once a year and these insipid things are served up: I look at them on the plate and start weeping internally

Slices of corned beef, lumpy mash and beans 🤢

Pot noodle was always for lunch on a Saturday as mum and dad worked in the morning and it was easy for my older sister to sort. 🤢

Mornay
Smoked cod
Golden syrup dumplings. I always felt so sick after eating them.

Mum is an amazing cook but these three...pick!

My mums pork chops were lovely with chips and an egg

Sausage casserole with grey flaccid sausages that hadn't been browned.
Rock hard liver and bacon.

Pork chops, so dry it was a challenge to chew.
Vegetable thing made in the pressure cooker
Stew/casserole anything
Gammon with slice of pineapple on top (like the pork chops, but with a hint of moisture from the hot pineapple)
Every single primary school dinner, though especially “kitikat pie”

Boiled bacon and cabbage. F*ck you Ireland! Still makes me heave to think of it.

Findus crispy pancakes. Yuk
Chicken supreme? Was sort of a white sauce with lumps in that I assume were the chicken.
My mum did steak canadians I think they were the frozen cheap ones. They stunk the house out and made me feel ill.

I was brought up by my dad, and our Sunday dinner was usually a tin of ratouille or ravioli - in a bowl, with nothing else. The concept of a Sunday roast was completely alien to me until I had one at my first boyfriends house. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

And I'm also having a flashback to tubey liver and mash.

Cauliflower cheese with greenfly in it. And I couldn't bring myself to mention them ...

Sounds grim.
Was it a British thing? Eating pre-packaged food or food that needs minimal cooking?

Things have definetly changed now haven’t they. I haven’t experienced any bad dinners like this - my parents aren’t from the UK though.

We used to have tinned hotdogs in folded slices of cheap white bread with fried onions and tomato sauce as a treat on a Friday night. I used to love it. It was only years later that I discovered that it was because my dad didn’t get his giro (benefit cheque for those too young to know) until Saturday morning and it was all they could afford

Stew of I know not what. The taste of the meat was fine but I hated getting it off the bones.

My mum was decent cook most of the time, but stuffed lambs heart was memorable for all the wrong reasons, also smoked haddock poached in milk which was used to make the sauce, it's the one fish I still cannot eat.

My Gran was a good cook but we weren't that well off. So I would have to eat tripe and onions in a white sauce. Until I refused to eat it any more, it was slimy and revolting.

Another horror was tongue. [as in tongue and ham salad] I realised it was an actual bloody tongue one day when looking in the butchers window. I never ate it again.

I hated tapioca at school. Frog spawn...slimy, slippery and revolting.

Stew. Cooked in a pressure cooker. Hard potatoes, watery gravy, rubbery meat, all tasting of bay leaves. Followed by rice pudding. Also subjected to the pressure cooker treatment. Tasted the same as the stew. From a very early age I was a master of making food disappear from my plate without eating a mouthful.

Faggot stew with boiled sausages and boiled potatoes in it. It was pale and gross and everything looked very undercooked. Surprising for my DM who’s mantra was “if it ain’t burnt, it ain’t cooked”