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...?

Heart, kidneys, liver, frozen veg (especially grey broad beans), butter beans, tomato sauce from a packet, jacket potatoes that were cooked for so long that the bottom of them had the consistency of shoe leather, the list is endless...

Boarding school food. Which included:
Stews full of horrible gristly meat
Roast meat that you could only identify by the sauce served with it
Cabbage that we could smell cooking from 10 a.m. onwards
Lumpy porridge
Cottage pie with some sort of revolting meat in, generally known as Kennomeat pie
Horrible, tasteless stodgy macaroni cheese
Salads with slugs in
And, worst of all, Sunday evenings when they liked to give the kitchen staff an easy ride. So it was utterly disgusting spam with foul pickled beetroot or foul vinegary Russian salad.

Looking back, I do wonder what the hell my parents were paying for. It's not like the school exactly overspent on luxuries like adequate heating, either.

Liver! Either at home or school - absolutely vile!

@ProfessionalWeirdo

on my French exchange, my host family served me a meal of whole cooked small birds (with heads and feet), which I gathered was a delicacy. Basically, it looked like burnt sparrows on a plate. I still don't actually know what type of birds they were, but there was no way I could eat them.

I think they were probably ortolans. Eating them has always been controversial, but I'm not even sure if it's still legal now.

A few years ago a friend of mine invited a French friend to stay with them for Christmas. The French girl was visibly horrified when she saw Brussels sprouts on her plate and realised she was expected to eat them. In her halting English, she managed to say "In France, ve serve zees to ze peeegs."

These sound like ortolans www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ortolans-birds-enjoyed-french-delicacy-are-being-eaten-extinction-180972272/

which sound horrendous and as welcome as fish with their heads still attached.

Stew. Specifically beef in ale, even the smell of it now makes me want to vom

Another vote for liver, it was also in the seventies and it was so tough and chewy it would get stuck in my teeth.. I remember one time I spat it into my tissue when my mother wasn’t looking and then later threw it over the fence for the dog next door!!

@Clawdy

Steak and kidney pie. Mum would say "Just leave the pieces of kidney at the side of your plate." But the whole thing tasted of kidney!

Are you my Dad??!

Home made tomato soup

Marmite and cucumber sandwiches. And I like marmite!

I am another liver and bacon - and bacon cooked in same pan as the liver with the rind still on so 'clearing my plate' involved chewy grisly rind. And Banana custard. So wrong.

Mashed potatoes with lumps

Fish fingers. Cabbage avec earwigs (from the garden- they must’ve clung during rinsing and steaming). Boiled carrots- mum never put enough water in and they’d burn. Spaghetti bolognese- I like it now, but my mum’s was grim- globules of congealed orange fat around the edge of the plate (not envy).

Left over slices of cold roast pork, mashed potato, braised vegetable marrow and green tomato chutney

Tripe. My grandma loved it and my great aunt actually had a tripe shop! So I was faced with it quite often as a small child and it was considered far too rude to say you didn't like something.

Liver. Just urgh.

Also kidneys. My mother also used to say 'Just leave the kidney at the side then!' if we had steak and kidney pie. But everything was permeated with the taste of kidney **

Another one for Liver especially with the tubes as I called them in it 🤮

Cowboy stew was another "delight" fatty bits of pork in a watery sauce with baked beans in it.

Liver and onions 🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮
I still remember having to sit at the table until I’d finished it, eating tiny bites and crying my eyes out because I hated it!

Corned beef hash

Square sausage, fried bread and tinned tomatoes normally meant that it was the end of the 2 week benefit giro and the electricity was about to go off.

Liver. And sauerkraut.

I was a child in the 70s and we were fairly poor so I had to eat whatever I was given. My mum used to make a steamed bacon suet pudding thing. Cheap and filling but awful salty stodge which gave me a raging thirst. My arteries are furring up just thinking about it

Frikadellen (sp) the way the British army wives used to cook it. My mum used to fry them like burgers and they were yum. But most my friends mums used to boil them to mush and they were vile

Not a meal but I couldn't stand the taste of smash it made me physically sick and it didn't matter what mum did with them I just couldn't eat them. I also couldn't stand the taste of cheap packet noodles

Corned beef hash or belly draft

Butterbeans and tinned pilchards.
I went to a convent school (briefly), and the meals were so bad we used to reckon that cooking them was a penance for the sisters!

Baked stuffed marrow with bland mince and other chopped stuff
Pukesville