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?

Any kind of offal, my mother was not the best cook but she made me eat it even though she knew I hated it and really made me gag, and mince I could not leave the table until I ate it all, even when it was white with fat as it was cold, and I could not eat it all but I was forced to eat it.

She was not the best at parenting either

I lost all my grandparents and my dear mother by the time I was 10-years-old so I have few memories of them at all.

I do remember that my mother wasn't a great cook because we always ate the same thing: a protein, two canned vegetables and a canned fruit cocktail. I do remember the time she decided to cook cow's tongue tacos. The smell was terrible and I ate plain corn tortillas that day. I still cannot stand it now. Ugh.

My father had a partner shortly after my mother's death who owned a restaurant. They were together for 28 years so we always had restaurant food cooked by her or her cooks. So, I was quite spoiled with excellent food. Her restaurant always appeared in our city's "Best Of" lists. It specialized in Mexican & American food and my favorite was their "huevos rancheros" for breakfast. It is a dish of a lightly fried corn tortilla topped with an over-easy egg covered with a sort of tomato salsa and served with a side of refried beans and mexican rice (has corn and tomatoes).
Yum.

Loved my mum’s macaroni cheese and lasagne.

She also made a good Irish stew and roast dinner.

My Gran lived with us and her mince and doughballs were delicious. I’m really sad that I never fully learned her way of making the doughballs before she died.

Hated anything with mash. Doubly bad if the mash was served in balls with an ice cream scoop. Even now the only way I can tolerate mash is in cottage pie if the top is nice and crispy.

Best - shepherd’s pie with the crunchy browned cheddar cheese on top, sausage pasta. 2 recipes from
Grandma and Mum - stuffed cabbage leaves and the fave pud apple cake
Worst - school mince for its utterly watery horror and textural nasties like bullets/shot and gristle. Findus Crispy Pancakes because they actually made me ill because I’m allergic to mustard. Stew as distinct from stove top casserole, you know the kind where the fat gets skimmed off the top but can’t still be smelt and tasted and which has watery consistency. Worst pud has to be rice pudding just beating pink blanc mange.

Both my parents were adventurous and accomplished cooks.
Wasted on me: favourite food was macaroni cheese with crispy bacon and crutons.
Hated anything with whole peppercorns.

Favourite Spam fritters, fried egg and chips.

I pretty much would eat anything except mince carrot and onion .

Best was salad, which was nothing like an actual salad - hard boiled egg, crisps, bread and butter, hunk of cheese, cold baked beans, maybe a quartered tomato if we were on a health kick .

Worst was liver . I was also not a fan of Irish stew (love it now though).

Worst, anything with plain boiled carrots, can’t bear them even now. I remember decent roasts, but I don’t think mum was much of a cook, even now, when she makes something, it’s often bland and boring. She used to make devilled chicken from the Woman’s Circle magazine, which was really good. She takes all day to knock together a roast, tho, which I just don’t understand. Took me an hour to batch cook for next week this morning. 4 meals.

We used to be given strawberry yoghurt with digestives as dessert, although one time, she made an amazing lemon meringue pie.

Best - spa bol or roast dinner.
Worst - so many😂- liver and bacon casserole( smelly and texture of chalk) curry that she used to out hard boiled eggs in, rasins and coconut. Savoury pancakes - she use to fill a whole Pyrex dish with pancakes filled with prawns and veg in a creamy sauce, then cover in cheese and bake in the oven. Something we named cannon ball soup - veg soup with this huge dumpling thing but was as heavy as rock.
There was more.
Thankfully she is a much better cook now

My mum made the very best curries via madhur jaffries early books

Dad made awesome cottage pies, corned beef hash, stew

Nanny Did amazing stews, ham egg and chips, ham salad, traditional puddings

Food was the only constant in a child hood of serious abuse by a non family member so I have found memories. Also explains why I’m a fat git

Unfortunately my mum was a terrible cook and just about everything she made was awful, think roast potatoes - she'd slice the potatoes, shove them in a deep tray with raw sausages and about half a pound of lard then leave them in the oven for two to three hours. The sausages would be rock hard and you had to chase them round the plate in the grease to try and eat them.
She could manage pastry for mince pies at Christmas.

My mum was an excellent cook and even better at baking. She could bake without weighing stuff and it always worked. She even made her own sweets - toffee, fudge, coconut ice, truffles.
I loved her (calves) liver and onions with bacon and fried potatoes. Her apple crumble was perfection. She excelled at cakes and biscuits. We had home made soup every single day; my favourite was rice and kidney or lentil but I hated the sludge at the bottom of potato soup. We even had home made bread. She could turn her hand to anything.
I vividly recall seeing a whole ox tongue simmering in a pan and from that moment on I could never eat tongue again even though I really liked it up to that point.
We were never forced to eat anything we didn't like although impeccable table manners were obligatory.
After we all left home she lived on Birds Eye crispy pancakes and ate food straight out of the pan.

Child of the 70s/80s/

Best: "Cheesy Leeks" - basically whole cooked leeks, wrapped in ham lined up in a lasagne dish and covered in cheese sauce and baked in the oven. Heaven. So sad my kids didn't like this dish when i replicated it.

Worst: Anything involving red meat - roast lamb, beef stew etc. Also never really liked the spectacularly 70s pudding of a sliced banana in a bowl of milk.

"OP your post made me feel all warm and fuzzy, thanks for writing it! You really get a sense of your granny's love and effort."

I'm glad that came across @Sunnysidegold. I adored my grandma - it's been nearly ten years since she died and I still miss her every day.

I often cook mince filled pancakes covered in cheese sauce!

My mother was a terrible cook; not her fault as she had never been taught at home or school and had been brought up on post-war rationing. Worst was boiled gammon with white sauce - makes me retch thinking about it. But almost everything was dreadful. I can't think of a single meal I looked forward to! The flip side of that was that I learned to cook early.

The worst meal was Saturday lunch: smoked sausage, hot sauerkraut and mash. The best was probably a roast. My Gran used to make an amazing steak and kidney pudding.

My worst was fish pie - don’t know why cause I love it now

Favourite was my Nonna’s version of Italian wedding soup, I have fond memories of sitting on the kitchen side watching her make it for spwacial occasions, i tried for years to follow online versions and it never tasted like hers, she refused to give me her recipe no matter how much I asked, when cleaning out her home after she passed 8 years ago, my father found an envelope in the bottom of a kitchen draw addressed to me, it was the recipe all written out in her handwriting. I have laminated it so it never fades / gets damaged and it is made for all family events...my dad says it is just like having her with us

@Thecazelets my mother was a very good cook, but I really disliked the boiled bacon with broad beans and parsley sauce she made occasionally when we were very young. Favourites: she made some fantastic curries - lamb, chicken - excellent roasts, she was great at pastry and her apple pie was a thing of wonder.

My Mum and my Nan made food I loved. Never particularly healthy...sometimes I'd get tinned meatballs but I loved them! Loved when my mum made Proper chip pan chips and eggs! So unhealthy but my absolute fave...we'd have it with buttered white bread too

I also used to love her Shepards pies as she'd put baked beans in!

My worst was 'ham and egg salad'...usually when Wimbledon was on. Or sweet and sour chicken the uncle bens one. Still don't like sweet and sour! We did always have uncle bens korma too lol.

Best - Mum’s homemade pizza
Worst - liver & onions

Favourite - curried lentils and rice

Least liked - rice quiche

(I'm in my 20s and British. ...Though we were quite poor and my mum was a vegetarian - Rose Elliot has a lot to answer for! -Also, who pours eggs over rice and calls it a quiche?!)

1. Lamb cutlets, lamb chops, roast lamb
2. Liver
3. Bubble and Squeak
4. Anything with custard
5. Hot milk
6. Semolina
7. Bread and Butter Pudding
8. Peas
9. Stew with or without dumplings

Fish pie at school was aweful, but they did an amazing beef casserole and iced gingerbread sponge yummy

At home my mum & dad both cooked, mum made superb omelette and fabulous roast, lasagna back in the early 80s when it wasn’t popular and certainly not available to but ready made.

My mums best friend made the best ever egg and chips, they were such a treat

Best - roast dinner cooked by my dad when my mum worked on Sundays. I also fondly remember the new innovation that was a jar of dolmio, as it meant my mum could now cook a nice spaghetti Bolognese!
Worst - most of my mum's cooking, she was keen on over boiled veg and cremated meat. She couldn't stand cooking though so we ate a lot of freezer food. The time she tried to make soup is a family legend but I don't think I actually got to taste it as even my mum thought it was too disgusting to eat.