Did anyone else's mum give them a food nobody you speak to has heard of?

[Rollerbird]

Although with mumsnet I bet others have had 'it:
In my case it's a' treat' of Cabbage Water
Basically when she cooked (boiled) cabbage (which was with a chopped onion, pepper and nutmeg) I could have a cup of the water after (veg stock I suppose)
I did see it as a treat and am drinking some now, remembering her fondly.

We got sod all .. my mother was a terrible cook .. so it was just burnt offerings !!
Even her toast was either burnt or pale .. never anything in between ! .

My Nan used to give us butter butties !?

My mum did eggs with salad cream rather than mayo.
We also had rissoles, but only between Christmas and new year. They were made of left over turkey, boiled potatoes and onions, all put through a mincer that screwed onto the worktop, then made into patties and fried. Served with chips, and bread and butter.

My dad is from South Africa, so he used to cook all sorts of different things for us that my friends hadn't heard of, still does for his DGC actually!

Vetkoek (kind of like hot deep-fried muffins), cabbage bredie (cabbage stew with meat I guess), frikadellen (like burgers), bobotie (mild curry with a banana on top!), to name but a few!

@EastMidsGPs Sounds as though you were given rose-hip syrup. It was full of vitamin C, and was handed out free at children's health clinics. Because oranges were unavailable during WW2, this was how children were kept healthy Older children were paid to gather the rose-hip in autumn (you got a few pennies for every bucket collected) and they were pressed and concentrated to make the syrup.
I can remember having it stirred into rice pudding or a bowl of custard ('pink custard') as it was so very sweet and cloying. It was probably responsible for the decay of thousands of tiny teeth...

@PodgeBod. that's the way I know to make Boxty (although I'm not very good at it, always too heavy). Potato cakes are the ones with mash and flour mixed together and fried in a dry pan, lovely with loads of butter. Also remember the googie egg and pobs (although we didn't call it that). Favourite comfort food from childhood is still baby dinner - mash in the middle and soup surrounding it. Great memories.

My Dad was very fond of a lard sandwich, right to the end of his life... Bread, spread thickly with lard, with a good sprinkling of pepper - yuk..!
On the other hand - bread and dripping (or even better, toast and dripping) - YUM..!!!

Iceberg lettuce sprinkled with lemon juice (ideally jif) and sugar was a massive treat in our house. just eaten alone a leaf at a time.
...delicious madness!

Sydneysider2019
tongue butties? I was born in Russia where tongue is very common and mum would make me tongue sandwiches

My mother was a good cook, and used to do tongue. She'd boil it, skin it, roll it up and let it go cold in a round bowl. So it didn't look like a tongue in the finish - if it had we wouldn't have eaten it Another thing she used to make was stuffed hearts. What kind of hearts they were I have no idea. She drew the line at tripe though.

My MIL made tongue. I found a carrier bag in the fridge once, when I opened an enormous tongue almost fell out. I was so shocked by the sight of it. OH made his own tongue delicacy out of it. No-one in the house would touch it.

My parents buy tongue from the butcher and have tongue sandwiches now. They buy a few when the butcher has them in and freeze.
It’s nice with mustard.

My grandma made amazing brawn. Also mock crab which was a cheese and tomato paste thing.

My Mil also made tongue I remember when the BSE crisis fi ished she sent dh to the butchers a cows tongue is bigger than you think it bloody rank

Also mock crab which was a cheese and tomato paste thing.

Yeah, I can see that would taste like crab

Anyone remember Mulligatawny soup? WTF????

Mil had a press thing for the tongue It was like a vice

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/blogmumjd.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/mock-crab-recipe/amp/

@Herja I think you're talking about pear and apple spread, so yummy! Also available in pear and apricot and pear and raspberry spread...I remember it being in Holland and Barrett's it may still be there, it's definitely available on Amazon.

Yes I remember mock crab! As I recall it consisted of scrambled egg, tomato and grated cheese. Also, the sliced cucumber in vinegar. I can still remember the taste of the concentrated orange juice from the baby clinic. Jelly whisked with evaporated milk, with those little tins of orange segments added in. Another treat was a raw stick of rhubarb from the garden, with sugar in a cup for dipping ;-)

EastMidsGPs

Aah yes the thick orange medicine had codliver oil in it. I'm sure it was Haliborange....a spoon every night before bed when we were growing up til we were about 10...sticky stuff, I used to sneak a sip if mom wasn't around lol

Yes I imagine a cow's tongue is rather large@MrsJayy thinking about it im sure we used to have tongue or maybe my Grandma did I don't think i actually made the connection that it was a actually "tongue" , I think we once had pigs trotters😱

"But then a thread about cabbage water came along and I had found my people!"😂 this is the beauty of mn.

SDTG isn't that funny. To me bubble n squeak is: yesterday's cold roast potatoes, onions, cabbage & whatever other bits of leftovers there were with a bit of beaten egg all muddled up together and fried - usually on a Monday to use up Sunday roast leftovers.

Vampire thriller I've never tried goat and being veggie I've struggled to understand why meat eaters think eating goat, horse etc is any worse than eating cows or pigs. I'm intrigued though what does it taste like? Ditto bone marrow for those mentioning?

"My favourite breakfast as a child was bread and coffee" not quite the same as you had it but French & Italians have various types of bread for breakfast which they dip in milky varieties of coffee. First time I came across it was on a sleepover at a friends who had a French mum who did this. She was a fabulous cook too - pre veggie days had steak at hers once (a birthday meal I think) and it barely saw the pan! Was delicious though served with some kind of creamy sauce.

"not sure if this the way the Germans make it!" It is. If you go to supermarkets it's the Mayo one we're all quite familiar with, but I lived in Germany for several years on & off and potato salad in restaurants & family homes with German wives making was Mayo free but with a vinaigrette style dressing instead.

Genius1308 - on here around Christmas time MUCH debate about Christmas cake with or with cheese!

"I love this thread. It seems like most of our parents didn’t have much money" yes always puzzles me that mn is perceived by some to be mainly used by mc "yummy mummies" my experience on here has been that many mners even if doing "ok" now usually came from more working class origins. Nothing wrong with being of any background of course just weird that the perception seems to be mistaken to me.

"You can see why some of the best traditional dishes from around the world are from traditionally the poorer parts of the world. Paella, risotto, curry, noodles. All cheap and easy to make and adapt with anything." Yes, it's funny how people also mistake what are now perceived to be quite "posh" dishes actually when they originated the ingredients were cheap and accessible to the people who developed the recipes with them (and now I've said that I can't bloody think of any! Risotto maybe? Haggis is something more recently quite snobby scots seem quite fixated on yet very much a 'using up leftovers so they're not wasted' recipe).

"Peasant food" is often more filling and for longer too - which we now have explained scientifically what our forefathers just knew - that certain foods stopped you feeling hungry too soon!

Any reading this thread that haven't already seen I highly recommend the "back in time for..." Series the food ones especially - completely fascinating, some of it vom inducing especially the very old recipes but some sound lush! The historian is fabulous and I think honest when she says whether she liked a dish or not - quite often they look a bit grey and unappetising but apparently taste quite good.

Teacher22 - I love butter beans and recently learned they're called Lima beans - much maligned in many 80's & 90's teen aimed film & tv.

My mum still loved rollmops and pre veggie my chip shop order was cod roe, which was a bit like a naked fish cake really but much more fishy, chips & scraps.

"We used to have one gold top and one silver top daily. We took it in turns to have the gold top "top of the milk" on our cereal. Even the silver top had a "top", I think, but not as creamy as the gold." I hated milk & cream as a kid and avoided wherever possible was often teased & ridiculed - turns out I just didn't like fatty milk! I have skimmed now and love it but...(slowly gets to the bloody point) I STILL can't shake the habit of shaking the milk before I open it in a futile and unnecessary action designed to get rid of the "top of the milk" which I loathed! Dd cracks up laughing every time she sees me doing it!

"Did anyone else get this? DM used to cut the rind/fat off of bacon, put it in a little dish and microwave it. It would crisp up loads and curl up too, I think we called them ‘crispy curlies’ or ‘crispies’. This was a regular snack I was given until I was about 4 or 5 yo, no idea why it stopped!" That sounds like a speedy pork crackling.

You've also made me feel really bloody old by making something microwaveable sound ancient! To me microwaves are still "new fangled"

"My gran used to give me shredded white cabbage with sugar and vinegar mixed in! I loved it. Kind of sweet and sour!" Homemade sauerkraut

"Funny how we were half eating processed shit from a packet and half hanging out with the hippies at the health food shop" and eating full fat, full sugar versions of products that are still around and were actually skinnier and healthier!

Sydneysider2019 - I'm a Scot and I think I said upthread I loved tongue when I was younger. It was very popular here in uk in 70's/80's too. Just had a quick look and even sainsbury still sell it as luncheon meat.

"Brightly coloured hundreds and thousands on the top, their dye slowly colouring the white topping." This reminds me of my joy at introducing my until then very healthily fed dd when we started baking together and I noticed she was a bit disappointed in my admittedly poor decorating skills, so I raided the bakery aisle on next grocery shop of garish 70's baking favourited like the aforementioned hundreds and thousands, sugar strands, chocolate vermicelli, glacé cherries, candied Angelica and...gold and silver balls! Which she refused to believe we're edible until I ate some! We had so much fun baking that time!

"My mother would always sprinkle salt on a cut up apple" omg! That's reminded me - my mum had a Tupperware salt pot taken on picnics - for the boiled eggs and...the tomatoes and cucumber! I haven't even THOUGHT about that in decades!

"This kind of stuff may be useful for post brexit rationing ideas" you jest but a lot are long shelf life, appetising and high cal and have been mentioned frequently on the brexit prep threads.

"Anybody else have a meat called 'hazlet'? It was sold in slices at butchers for sandwiches." Haslet still popular here in Scotland my mum still regularly buys it.

But yea, many things you're better not knowing what they are 😂 reminds me of the highlander scene where we oddly have a Frenchman playing a Scot describing haggis to a Scot playing an Egyptian with an Edinburgh accent 😂😂

My mum tricked my ex (then new husband) into eating haggis because knowing what it was made him reluctant to try, he loved it!

"Anyone remember Mulligatawny soup? WTF????" Also still loved where I am.

I'm so glad that someone came along and gave an opinion on what everyone else on the thread commented.
Reading that was like reading comments from the teacher.

Aaaaaanyway, who's having eggybread for brekkie?

"I love this thread. It seems like most of our parents didn’t have much money" I think it was less necessarily that they were poor than they'd been brought up with a "made do and mend" mentality (certainly the ones who'd been children during and just after WW2).

We were MC but DM still budgeted when she cooked. Sunday roast always morphed into something else on Monday (and possibly Tuesday too). Rissoles were a regular treat meal in my childhood (loved them). DM used to do this mix of mashed up tinned tomatoes and crumbled bread cooked in the oven to have with grilled sausages and mash (and we'd probably have carrots and cabbage too). There was scarcely any food ever wasted.

We were MC but DM still budgeted when she cooked. Sunday roast always morphed into something else on Monday (and possibly Tuesday too)

Cold meat and fried potatoes with veg or salad followed by shepherd's pie or another mince based dish or chicken fricasse. Then the bones were stocked or put in the bin if the neighbour's cat was lucky.

Yes YetAnotherSpartacus. We often had lamb curry (cooked in a massive cast iron Le Creuset) come Tuesday or Wednesday by which time we were all lambed out. It certainly made meal planning easier though!

jelly whisked with evaporated milk, with those little tins of orange segments added in.

Mandarin whip! An aunt used to make it, we thought it was the most sophisticated thing ever. That and pineapple upside down cake. We never had desserts or pudding in our house - my mother would pronounce "We don't like sweet things" so we loved staying with more realistic aunts.