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...?

Tripe
Steak & Kidney Pudding
Liver

@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!

I’d forgotten about my mum and her incessant use of her bloody pressure cooker, dangerous thing it was too! She thought it was wonderful, Christ knows what she would think now of the Ninja Foodi Max, no need to watch it constantly, waiting for the sodding thing to explode! Only for it to be opened, and the contents to be spewed forth, why oh why did she cook everything including cabbage for three hours? And all cooked in the pressure cooker!

Faggots and mash.

Any milk puddings, yuk.

@AlfonsoTheTerrible

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.

That bloody hideous ham, surrounded by thick yellow jelly, used to be in a sort of ham shape, always in Christmas food hampers, as if it was a special treat! And those Christmas food hampers, they were straight out of a 70s sitcom, my mum used to hide the Christmas hamper food when it arrived, it used to get locked up in a certain cupboard only my mum had the key to, as if the hamper was to be savoured! The contents were hideous, I remember the horrible marzipan fruits, they were the nicest thing in the hamper!

My mum's home grown gritty spinach.
I like liver, oddly.

My mum was a good cook so I ate everything and cleared my plate. That's why I'm fat now!!

@Zakana Olde Oak ham? I don't mind it, but I always scrape the jelly off.

My Mom was an excellent, and adventurous cook. So no entire meal filled me with horror. What really, really did was turnip mashed with carrots. Vile. Disgusting. Made me gag. 🤢

My dsis used to hate boil-in-a-bag fish, which we used to have every Tuesday. (DM - working mum in the 60s, liked to have a routine)
She used to wake up in the morning and her heart would sink "Oh no, it's Tuesday"
I, on the other hand, ate everything. Still do.

My heart would sink when we got home from school and the big casserole dish was out. Stew/Casserole just rubbish.

The food itself was fine but I hate meat and veg meals, especially bloody casserole.

Dublin coddle is truly disgusting. Just the smell of it makes me gag. Tripe cooked in milk and onions pure shite. Pigs heart and any liver truly disgusting.

Oh, my mum's slow-cooked stews. She'd do them with leftover chicken, cut into bits about the size of a cigarette filter, that she cooked for 8 hours or so with whatever veg she had, including peppers (which don't really need 8 hours...). You had to chew these small pieces of meat for entire minutes. It was a fucking travesty.

Some fuck awful casserole thing my dad started cooking that had frankfurters in it.

Vegetable pies.

Oooh the cod in parsley/butter sauce 🤢🤢 boil in the bag crap!

Also findus crispy pancakes and Birdseye turkey drummers-vile texture!!

My favourite meal was a hot pot with breast of lamb...absolutely lovely it! In face I've requested it next week when we can go round for tea!

Another favourite is corned beef scallops..more of a fritter really! Sliced potato, filled with a slice of corned beef, battered and shallow fried! Served with mixed pickles! (The jar with pickled cauliflower in!).

I think I'll make both these dishes next week!

Pork steaks or fillets or whatever it this they are classed. Cheey and leathery and dry, grim. Put me off pork for years. Until I realised pork could be different

[quote sueelleker]@Zakana Olde Oak ham? I don't mind it, but I always scrape the jelly off.[/quote]
That’s the bugger, I still can’t bear it now, even the smell of it turns my stomach, my DH loves it, that’s because his mum could cook and enjoyed cooking (and his family were wealthy and ate real food)!

@YourCakesAreShit

Oh, my mum's slow-cooked stews. She'd do them with leftover chicken, cut into bits about the size of a cigarette filter, that she cooked for 8 hours or so with whatever veg she had, including peppers (which don't really need 8 hours...). You had to chew these small pieces of meat for entire minutes. It was a fucking travesty.

In my old mum’s stew, it could have been a cigarette butt rather than chicken, you never knew! It all looked and tasted the same as every other meal, and seeing as she used to smoke like a train when she was cooking, you never really knew what you might get!

Potatoes, bacon and onion. Think sliced potatoes not parboiled so they had a really weird texture, slimy onion, and bacon with the fat all congealing on the surface. Dear god, my DM is generally a good cook, but that always made me want to heave

Just asked my DS (nearly 20) and he's said cottage pie and risotto . I was expecting him to say cottage pie as he always groaned when I made that . He's added that he likes them both now so whether that's changing tastes or that he prefers his own cooking .

My DCs love cottage pie, but as a DC I hated it, I used to think it was too chewy (daft!).

Liver sausage
Tongue
Turkey mince
All the above we ate a lot of because they were so cheap and we didn’t have much money. I don’t eat any of it now, ever.

Also my mum’s gravy and roast potatoes- both are horrible especially the gravy. Lumpy and too thick and makes me shudder to think about it 🤢

Anything with onion. It used to make me gag and I'd get in trouble if I didn't eat dinner. To this day I hate onions.

My mother was also very very partial to a white bread and (cold) boiled lamb brain sandwich with some salad cream.

It might be because I’ve been a vegetarian for many years but I can’t imagine eating the brain of a lamb!
Look at the little baby lamb, he’s so cute. Now I’m going to eat it’s mind!

Banana sandwiches 🤮 white bread , slapped with margarine and sliced bananas in between. Took them for school packed lunch. By lunch time I would pull out my soggy brown bananas sandwich and my friends would be eating - dairylee cheese sandwiches