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
Liver and Onions
Boiled bacon and cabbage

I grew up in the 70s and was never made to eat anything I didn’t like. Don’t get that one op

Tbh, everything my mum cooked was overcooked and grey from the pressure cooker so tasted and looked like crap.

I hated school meat and potato pie, overcooked cabbage and tinned or dried peas. I can't bear coley (now know as pollock) particularly the smell. But my mother only cooked this for cats, not humans, so I never had to eat it.

My MIL was the world's worst cook, nothing she cooked was really edible, let alone nice. My husband tells horror stories about her stuffing overcooked potatoes with overcooked cabbage - she thought he wouldn't notice it!

@Weedsnseeds1

Popcornbetty simple prose cannot describe the reality of her cooking. Evenwhen following a recipe, her substitutions are hair raising. "I made lamb tagine, I couldn't get preserved lemons or dried apricots, so I used bananas and canned peaches instead, it was delicious and X (taste bud dead bloke she has hooked up with after my father died) loved it".

This just made me laugh out loud! I am known to follow a recipe and substitute 75% of the ingredients On the rare occassions I follow an entire recipe it usually tastes crap lol

Home made vegetable soup.
There would be a huge pot of it and it would last several days and any leftovers would get tipped down the toilet. The tipping process with the slopping noise really grossed me out.

The worst thing was "pork bones", as cooked by my Nanna. Slices of fatty meat with little bones in it, served in...Well, I can't call it gravy, as it was just the water that the meat had been cooked in. I don't even know what it was. Maybe pork belly but I have only ever cooked it in one piece - if you cook it in slices, does it have horrid little bones in it? It was grey and floppy and ugh.

Sometimes we had pork bone pie, which was slightly better because the pastry was nice.

Stew was ghastly too. She never thickened the gravy, so it was like beef swimming in greasy water. The meat was always gristly. When I reminisced about the terrible stew to my Mum, years later, she said Nanna always chose meat with plenty of gristle because she liked it.

Her puddings, though, were lovely.

Offal especially kidneys. Back in the 70s we didn't have an extractor hood so the kitchen used to smell like a urinal for hours afterwards.
The whole experience put me off offal for life.

Lentil burgers, they had peanut butter in them 🤢

kitchen used to smell like a urinal for hours afterwards

🤢🤢🤢.

I agree re broad beans. Horrible, grey, and STINKING!

Brain’s faggotts or stew done in the pressure cooker.

Big slab of liver and bacon cooked casserole style for hours. And also boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce - a chewy grey block of fibrous fish which was impossible to get down. So much 70's/90's food was so grim and also my mum was a dreadful cook!

We were so poor for a lot of my childhood, we used to have to live upstairs in winter as my parents couldn't afford to heat the whole house as it was those god awful storage heaters (still remember the clicking noise they made).
Mum refused to work though.

Worst dinner from back then, by far, was minced beef, in gravy, with macaroni. Truly vile.
Going to friends houses for dinner was such a luxury back then. To eat fish fingers, chips and then Arctic Roll or a Sara Lee cake. Never wanted to go home!

Fish (smoked haddock or even cod) in parsley sauce. I cannot stand the stuff and even now find parsley absolutely revolting. Turns out I don’t mind fish- I just thought I did. That sauce. 🤢

Lamb chops and pork chops. My mum is very talented at drying meat out until it has the texture and flavour of leather. I'd chew and chew and not be able to swallow.

I’d forgotten about “yellow fish” - smoked haddock. It always made me nauseous. When I moved out and bought fish from a fish monger I discovered smoked haddock without the dye. It was a revelation. As was cooking bolognaise with actual minced beef rather than a tin of beef and onions.

MIL was a terrible cook. Frozen broccoli was boiled for 25 minutes because “it needs to be cooked” and the layer of fat on roast pork was sliced and served along side the meat 🤢

We were also poor but my mum did work, not highly paid though, she cleaned offices.

Those Findus savoury frozen pancakes with the vile fillings. Even now I'm still exhibing signs of trauma when thinking of them. This is made worse by the fact they were linked to the horse meat scandal and then made even worse by the fact I had a horse as a child.
I'm now a vegetarian, along with half this thread by the looks of things!

Everything my mum cooked in the 80s made my heart sink

Then eventually she have up and we had findus pancakes, frozen pizza and jacket potatoes for about 10 years

Why were vegetables boiled for hours until they turned a different colour? Meat was tough and chewy. We were all relieved when she stopped trying and we got a microwave

Any time my Dad cooked, especially when he made it up, although he also could screw up recipes.

I could barely touch my school dinners because of the smell from the school kitchens. It was a fatty and sweet smell, but also a little bit like sweat and sick. And everything tasted of it too. I think maybe it was the cheap margarine they used in everything mixed with the smell of over cooked veg.

@samthebordercollie

Marmite and cucumber sandwiches. And I like marmite!

Omg I love this and still eat them now. My kids think I'm vile! 😂

Stuffed hearts
Liver and bacon
Sliced tongue in sandwiches
And finally .... boiled egg curry