What were your favourite and least favourite meals as a child?

[GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal]

My mum was a single parent and worked full-time, long hours, so for most of my childhood I ate most of my meals at my grandparents house. My grandma was a wonderful cook - as an adult who's fully responsible for the feeding of everyone in my own home, I wish I could back in time and thank her properly for all the time and effort she put in to providing delicious meals that we, ungrateful lot, would scoff up with barely a thank you!

Her Sunday roasts were things of wonder. She made fantastic steak and kidney pies. Her cakes and puddings were the best I've ever tasted - I'd give a lot of money to taste a lemon meringue pie like she made. But our favourite meal, the one we all loved best of all - was egg and chips. It was always offered apologetically - "it's only egg and chips I'm afraid" - as she clearly regarded it as a "cheat" meal on her part, barely classed it as cooking. God knows why, as it took plenty of effort! Proper chips - she blanched them and double fried them decades before celebrity chefs started telling us to! - cooked in beef dripping she'd saved from Sunday lunch, a perfectly fried over-easy egg, and plenty of white bread with lots of butter (marg wouldn't have been given house room!). A sprinkling of salt over the top and a puddle of ketchup to dip the chips in - heaven on a plate, I can almost taste it!

However, she ruined steak every time she cooked it. Our hearts would sink whenever she announced - with great pleasure, obviously regarding it as a real treat - that it was steak for dinner. Bless her, she would spend a lot of money on the most expensive cuts of the best steak, and then cook it TO DEATH!! She firmly believed undercooked meat would kill you, and would cook them till they were the size of postage stamps and the taste and texture of boot leather. This was not merely well-done, you understand - it was cremated. I was 15 before I had steak in a restaurant and realised I liked it.

How about you all? Any childhood meals remembered particularly fondly or otherwise?

Very occasionally my mum would make a stuffed rolled lambs belly dish that was incredible.
For more regular meals I loved stewed steak in Yorkshire pudding with peas the best.

My grandmother was a pastry wonder and her onion quiche amazing. I'd give anything to be able to recreate that or her shortbread.

Oh and worst anything with mash, still can't eat it.

Best - moussaka in indecision terracotta pots. Or spare ribs and rice.
Worst - liver and bacon casserole and tuna pasta - bork!

Worst: Irish stew with cheap, sinewy, fatty beef. No amount if cooking would have softened that.

Best: salt and pepper chicken in pittas with chips from the deep fat frier (can't say I recall any salad)

And since you ask, TheMemoryLingers, we just didn't have much money so cheap beef was what we got.

Best - any roast. My mum cooks amazing roasts! Always with a home made pudding like bread & butter pudding or rice pudding. Yum.
Worst - two contenders here. She used to buy the most awful sausages and I hated them. Also anything made with left over beef or lamb. We always had cottage pie or shepherds pie on a Monday after roast beef or lamb and I hate the taste of reheated meat. Happy to have it cold so a salad would have been great but mum was of the opinion that you had to have one hot meal a day.

We weren't allowed to leave the table until we had eaten everything on our plates! Thank goodness for the dog

Favourite was pork chops or noodles with a fried egg

Least favourite jacket potato or tuna pasta bake

Favourite - heinz spaghetti

Least favourite - heinz macaroni

Beginning to think my parents were really lazy

Favourite - chicken thighs cooked in a sweet mango curry gravy (sounds odd but tasted amazing)

Worst - most things cooked with the contents of the organic veg box my mum signed us up for. She just didn't know how to cook any of it. Still can't eat celeriac, and I'm not sure what she used to kale but it was like trying to chew your way through a carrier bag

Best - mum's macaroni cheese 😋
Worst - anything with meat. Hated it, made me feel sick & had stomach cramps afterwards. Became a vegetarian in teens.

I was so lucky, mum was a SAHM, loved cooking and was awesome at it
Best - rissoles - meat from Sunday roast chopped up and made into meatballs that were fried until crispy with bread sauce, mash and peas
Worst - stew and dumplings - I begged for mum not to bulk out the meat with pearl barley 😖 telling her "it's 1986 it's not the war!". Still hate those horrible bouncy squeaky things! And we could have played cricket with the dumplings!

Least favourite - liver or braising steak casserole (really fatty meat, watery tasteless gravy)

Favourite - tinned ham or luncheon meat, chips in beef dripping and Heinz spaghetti with bread and butter.

My mum wasn't a bad cook but she didn't enjoy it! My dad was often working away in different countries and worked long hours with a 1 hour commute when he was home so didn't get the opportunity to cook a lot.
My favourites were Macaroni cheese (made with tomato soup instead of milk, it's amazing), pork chops with white wine and mushroom sauce and scotch broth that my dad used to make on a weekend sometimes.
Least favourites were anything with liver or kidney and corned beef hash (that we seemed to have weekly, I would just go hungry those nights rather than eat it).

Favourites, chip day so chips beans and something like fish fingers which I use to mash together with ketchup. Also like when she did fish in batter with rice, sweet and sour sauce and a pineapple ring.

Hated Wednesday as that was mince day and she often made lasagne. Only found out years later that lasagne is really nice - when it includes the bechamel sauce. I also loved roast beef on a Sunday especially if it was followed by a pie on Monday.

My favourites were everything my mum cooked. Things like cheesy leek crumble, cheese and vegetable pie and macaroni cheese were the best. I do love cheesy things. Also sweet fruit crumble with banana in it, OMYum. She ALWAYS followed a recipe.

My worst was the things my Dad made up. He was an experimental cook who never followed recipes. Sometimes the outcomes were edible, but often not so much. He was always very eager, but NEVER followed a recipe.

I think I'm the best of both of them in the kitchen. I tend to use recipes as a baseline, and know the flavours that go well together, but am not afraid to experiment a bit to keep things interesting. Unfortunately my kids are only interested in what they sell in the Freezer Aisle but I'm trying to get them involved more. I know there favourite meal is Roast Dinner, which is a tradition we have developed as a family and not one that comes from my upbringing.

Best, my mum's curried oxtail, followed by her braised steak.
Can't think of a worst, was a greedy child

I loved most of my Mum’s and Granny’s cooking.

Mum’s egg and chips was also my big favourite!

She also did amazing roast dinners, curries (I was a 1980s kid and my Mum bought Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks and worked her way through every recipe), the best bolognese sauce ever (bacon added at the beginning, cooked slowly for hours - I still make it her way now) and lovely fried chicken which was a massive treat in our house.

My granny died many years ago, but I can still taste her stew and dumplings and her apple pie. I’d be so happy when I came home from school and those were on the menu.

The worst was my granny’s Irish stew (I hate the smell and taste of lamb). Bleurgh.

My mum was very much a meat and two veg cook when I was growing up and my dad preferred to cook things like curries, neither of which I particularly enjoyed as a young child. Mum was a natural at baking though; she made a great meat and potato pie which was one of my favourites and also an amazing jam roly poly which we'd always have with custard on a Sunday ☺️ I'm the exact opposite and completely rubbish at baking, so really do miss those days sometimes!

Least,carrots and parsnip with potatoes and fried mince steak. It's my mum's favourite dinner but used to make me gag 😣
Favourite, Birds Eye cod balls, (shape, not
actual bollocks ) , chips deep fried in lard/dripping, fried egg and white bread and butter.

Best:
Pancakes.
Worst:
Anything with mashed potato. That was the other 364 days a year.

Favourite - most things (I was a dustbin and mum was a brilliant cook) - apart from
Mum’s sweet and sour pork (barf)

Best: Mums spag bol.
Worst: Mums left over spag bol turned into chillie con carne.

Fave: liver & onions (yes, really) or gammon & chips
Least fave: corned beef hash or mum's watery cauliflower cheese

My Dad used to do all the cooking which now seems unusual for those days (70s/80s). I used to love his shepherd's pie and spag bol, he even made me meatless ones when I became veggie in my teens. Bless him.
I hated roast dinner, bleurgh.

Loved my mother’s cheese pie. It contained about a kilo of cheese and a billion calories.
Hated fish in any form. Fish has never once passed my lips since I was five.