Childhood dinners that made your heart sink?

[Harveypuss]

A lighthearted post!

Do you remember any childhood meals, that when you asked your mum (or dad) "what's for dinner?", their answer made your heart sink?!

Mine was Lamb's hearts. My Mum cooked these often, presumably it was a culinary delight and was probably cheap, but I hated them (this was back in the late 70s so you ate what was given or went hungry). I don't know what she did with them, but they were as tough as old boots and really chewy. I'm sure offal like that is probably quite delicious in some top-end restaurant but dear Mum didn't cook it like that! I'm in my 50s now and I've only just told her I hated that meal. She was mortified!

We have this with our son now, aged 17. He hates pasta and when we have a family pasta meal, I cook him something different. He's off to Uni next year, so don't know how he's going to manage as I'm told all students live of pasta as it's really cheap...!

What was your least favourite childhood meal...?

I wonder how many on this thread had parents who, like mine, grew up during wartime/post-war rationing? My theory is that once rationing ended, they were grateful for any decent-sized portions of meat so didn't really care how it was cooked.

@FinallyFluid

I'm laughing at that description, that's exactly what they were like!

Savoury Mince. It was always boiled, chewy and grey mince stirred through watery bisto gravy. I didn't eat veg as a child and it was served with mash, carrots and peas. So that I didn't starve, my mum used to serve mine on a slice of bread which obviously went wet. Oh it was grim.

I actually make a version of it myself now, but I fry and drain the mince, cook it with some garlic and some herbs, make a proper stock based gravy. Use it as a pie filling or sometimes I do serve with mash but for DH and the children because I still loathe mash! It always brings back memories because DH moos up the gravy with a slice of bread but I'm assuming that's because it's nice!

My mum also used to make tinned chicken supreme regularly. Chicken in a bland white sauce served on white rice. Urgh.

My Gran, god love her, used to cook the life out of everything. So much so that I grew up thinking I didn't like pork or beef. I do, I just didn't like them cooked so much they were bone dry. She also used to fry fish fingers in lard for us not envy!!

I was a child of the 80s so I think the fashion for offal has passed my by, thank goodness!

Liver.

Bonne Femme (a disgusting baked fish dish with a white sauce with horrible black flecks).

Chops.

Oh and my mum also used to make sausage casserole but wouldn't brown the sausages first, she put them raw into the slow cooker. So they'd be cooked, but turned to mush and you'd have a nice thick oil slick on top of the casserole.

My mother's idea of a "casserole" was interesting. It involved upending old bags of frozen veg into a saucepan, followed by a tin of beans, some bisto granules, maybe tinned tomatoes, the worst frozen diced meat with thick veins of translucent connective tissue running through it, lumps of gristle the size of walnuts, no seasoning of any kind. Boiled to fuck - long enough to utterly muller the vegetables and vulcanise the meat but not long enough to render it chewable.

The real depths of despair came when she didn't have any frozen diced gristle, so used tinned meatballs instead. I am actually terrified of tinned meatballs. I remember once she brought the casserole to the table, and when she took the lid off the steam belched out and I gagged on the stench, then when the steam cleared all the meatballs bobbed to the top like evil little turds. I burst into tears and got sent to bed.

Some very interesting and amusing responses on here! Seems we all have a horrendous food memory or two from our childhoods. Funny how these things stay with you, isn't it?. Looks like offal in particular, is a painful memory, especially liver, though one poster mentioned Lamb's brains - yuk & yuk, I didn't realise that was even a thing, bleugh! .

Many of you mention vegetables too. I do recall my grandmother (over)cooking all her vegetables in a pressure cooker so they all ended up as one soggy mush and everything tasted the same! I have learned over the years that I like my vegetables nice and crunchy.

I think we're more fortunate now, living in less frugal times perhaps, where good quality food/meat is readily available to most. I never buy offal and have never offered it to my teens. I just know they wouldn't eat it, so it would be a waste of time. Even my cats turned their nose up at liver when I offered it to them once!

Thanks for all your responses and giving me a good laugh! I'm off to cook chicken risotto for dinner shortly, with good quality chicken breasts, herbs, wine etc and if I say so myself, my risotto is rather nice!

My dad's concoctions, mostly - tinned steak in Dolmio being a common one, or these horrible tinned burgers by Goblin that he used to eat when he went camping and had inexplicably fond memories of.

My mum's speciality is putting chunks of apple in spaghetti bolognese. I mean - seriously. Why. I've asked her and she says it's nice. It isn't nice.

Oh. Also: pizza cooked on the same tray (in the oven) as a lamb burger. I hated lamb. Absolute fucking vom. There's a reason why you don't get many lamb pizzas, and that reason is that it's rank.

Huge chunks of braising steak, boiled (old) potatoes (huge plain halves of plain potato) and some sort of over boiled veg.
Turkey and pepper pie, pork and pepper suet pudding. God I could go on. I can’t eat a pepper to this day.
Late 70’s again. Grim.

Stuffed marrow... I was vege and the options/recipes back then weren’t as good as today, but my DM would always make such an effort I can’t complain, but my god it tasted like watery mush

Yellow fish boiled potatoes and butter beans. Was bloody awful

A big lump of rubbery liver with bacon. I ate the bacon though and I remember that although it was a rasher it had bone in the rind, you never see that now.

@Arbadacarba

I wonder how many on this thread had parents who, like mine, grew up during wartime/post-war rationing? My theory is that once rationing ended, they were grateful for any decent-sized portions of meat so didn't really care how it was cooked.

Nah, my grandparents could both cook.

Liver, tongue, boil in the bag rubbish with tinned veg

My stepfather used to make 'spag bol' with these huge sacks of cheap TVP they bought at Kwik Save, I have no idea how he achieved it, but we would always be served an ENORMOUS portion, a plate of spaghetti that you could easily use as a frisbee - it was one lump - topped with this greasy, stinking mush swimming in violently orange oil that stained the spaghetti and congealed into grease spots at the side of the plate. Peas in it that had been boiled grey. My sister used to cry over that dinner.

Liver and onions. It was always a big lump and you could still see the veins!

Watery stew with bits of limp, fatty bacon and celery.

@sadpapercourtesan

My mother's idea of a "casserole" was interesting. It involved upending old bags of frozen veg into a saucepan, followed by a tin of beans, some bisto granules, maybe tinned tomatoes, the worst frozen diced meat with thick veins of translucent connective tissue running through it, lumps of gristle the size of walnuts, no seasoning of any kind. Boiled to fuck - long enough to utterly muller the vegetables and vulcanise the meat but not long enough to render it chewable.

The real depths of despair came when she didn't have any frozen diced gristle, so used tinned meatballs instead. I am actually terrified of tinned meatballs. I remember once she brought the casserole to the table, and when she took the lid off the steam belched out and I gagged on the stench, then when the steam cleared all the meatballs bobbed to the top like evil little turds. I burst into tears and got sent to bed.

🤣This tale is funny , could just picture it . I think surveys have shown among Boomers , the amount of family money set aside for food was low . They wanted t.v 's , cars etc . My parents worked full time so had little interest in how the food got to the plate . We do now spend more £ on food than ever before . Don't ask your own kids what makes their heart sink (my signature dish) 🤦‍♀️

Sausage and mash. I love it now but my parents couldn't really cook so their version was burnt sausage and lumpy mash.

Also they did a watery mince-and-onions-thing which was fairly grotesque too.

Mince and Tattie’s from the pressure cooker which I used to drown in ketchup- can still remember the taste 🤢 and also liver and bacon.

I actually feel quite grateful for my hippy, vegetarian parents now. When I was a child of course I hated the wholemeal bread, rice and pasta, bean curries and lentil bakes but to be served it now I'd love it (all except the wholemeal pasta which shouldn't exist)

Smoked haddock 🤢
Macaroni cheese
Tripe in milk 🤮
Boiled mince with boiled potatoes, grey and gristle
Brussel sprouts reduced to boiled slime.....

@Harveypuss

Some very interesting and amusing responses on here! Seems we all have a horrendous food memory or two from our childhoods. Funny how these things stay with you, isn't it?. Looks like offal in particular, is a painful memory, especially liver, though one poster mentioned Lamb's brains - yuk & yuk, I didn't realise that was even a thing, bleugh! .

Many of you mention vegetables too. I do recall my grandmother (over)cooking all her vegetables in a pressure cooker so they all ended up as one soggy mush and everything tasted the same! I have learned over the years that I like my vegetables nice and crunchy.

I think we're more fortunate now, living in less frugal times perhaps, where good quality food/meat is readily available to most. I never buy offal and have never offered it to my teens. I just know they wouldn't eat it, so it would be a waste of time. Even my cats turned their nose up at liver when I offered it to them once!

Thanks for all your responses and giving me a good laugh! I'm off to cook chicken risotto for dinner shortly, with good quality chicken breasts, herbs, wine etc and if I say so myself, my risotto is rather nice!

Not just lambs brains...but lambs brain sandwiches (with salad cream).

I am SO glad others are horrified. My DM used to get irritated at how fussy I was.

Liver (or as my sister and I called it….leather) and onions
Tripe and onions
Pigs trotters
Minced beef stew (how she made minced beef grey I’ll never know)
Ham curry - don’t ask, I have no idea why, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should
Bread pudding - horrible brown concrete slab of nastiness
Bless her, I taught myself to cook from the age of 18, thank the lord for cook books!

Tinned ham, surrounded by disgusting yellow jelly.
Chicken croquettes.
Tuna 'casserole': tinned tuna mixed with cream of mushroom soup and topped with crisps.
If it didn't come out of a tin or a packet, we didn't eat it.

My mother hated cooking and it showed. I used to think how lucky my brother's future wife would be as she would never hear "but that's not how my mum cooked it" as a complaint.