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...?

Reading some of these I was really lucky both my mum and dad are and were brilliant in the kitchen and I enjoyed everything they cooked just couldn't stomach rice pudding or those type of puddings that they used to feed us at school

Casserole made with tinned stewing beef with butter beans. Bleugh.

Salad of ice- burg lettuce, chunks of cucumber, cubes of cheese and raisins. No dressing. The cheese and raisins were supposedly the height of sophistication.

Omg Shepard's Pie. My mother is a great cook but her Shepard's Pie was disgusting.

Tbh I've tried other Shepard's pies and they're not great shakes, so it's probably a dish I was never going to like, coupled with my mother's obsession with keeping butter out of our food that made for an especially gross version

Egg and chips. It didn't make my heart sink but actively made me angry

Possibly because it was served when my mum was having a standing up to my dad day, so it was served with an invisible slice of "Fuck you!" which I was in the firing line for too.

I don't remember my mother all that well because she was ill with cancer and died when I was young.

Weirdly, I do remember that she wasn't a good cook. We pretty much ate the same meal: some protein like steak, pork chops, chicken fried with a plate with canned vegetables (to this day, I will NOT eat canned green beans and carrots!), and the saddest iceberg lettuce salad. Every other week, she'd make something specifically Mexican (both her parents were Mexican-born) like tacos or enchiladas to please my Mexican-born father. It wasn't fantastic but edible.

I can barely remember her face or anything specific (I was 10 when she died) but I remember the days she would get in the kitchen with her apron. It was always a very bad sign. She didn't cook normal meals well but she thought she could cook beef tongue, tripe, kidneys...

Why?

If this thread shows one thing it is that offal needs to be approached with great caution. And possibly also a licence.

Mince and tatties. It was cheap and my dad liked it so we had it 2/3 times a week. I couldn’t stand it.

Liver.

Tripe. I eventually refused.

Potted heid. I can’t explain just how awful it is.

I must be in a minority for actually liking liver. DH (who is a brilliant cook) does an amazing Venetian-style dish in which the liver is chopped finely then pan-fried very quickly with onions and dry sherry.

My pet hate is boiled ham. I've never been able to face it since the time when, as a child, I once bit into a ham sandwich and my teeth bounced on the gristle. It's not usually a problem because there's usually an alternative, but on one occasion we were invited to dinner by a South African couple who served us what they described as a "traditional Rhodesian dish", which consisted of slices of ham, rolled round bananas, and smothered in cheese sauce. DH said it was absolutely disgusting even for anyone who liked ham.

Liver and kidney. Literally made me gag.

Two I remember from school dinners, both as veg with the main meal (but never optional): tinned plum tomatoes served whole - the juice would pollute whatever pie, mash etc you had on your plate, and when you cut into them it was like a horror film, as more juice squirted out, and they just tasted watery and metallic. And my all-time worst veg experience: stewed celery: all the worst bits about celery: stringy bits, 'unusual' flavour, multiplied, and soggy: I can cope with raw celery, as it has a nice crunch, but this was vile.

The only meals I can think of that I hated were toad in the hole bleugh was always a bit overly crispy, also a weird thing they termed "fry up" which was leftovers from Sunday dinner fried fuck knows what that was all about. In my younger years most things were homemade (poor) it tended more towards beige as I got older and my older siblings moved home. My mother was utterly over cooking by the time I was a teenager, can't say I blame her.

I still enjoy a spam fritter from the chip shop

My mum wasn’t one for pandering to my likes and dislikes, I was brought up in the 60’s so mum cooked whatever and that’s what we had. If I didn’t like it hard luck! I hated braising steak I called it brave steak at the age of about 4. Mum still cooked it and dished it up for me to eat regardless UNTIL she overheard me playing with my dolls and apparently I said “ you have been so naughty I’m going to give you brave steak for dinner “ Obviously I don’t remember it and I certainly didn’t say it for effect but not even my mum was that hard hearted so I never ate brave steak again! Well until I was about 12 when she called it savoury mince and I thought it was great !

My mum wasn’t one for pandering to my likes and dislikes, I was brought up in the 60’s

I was born in the mid 70s and I don't think pandering to the children's likes and dislikes was the done thing then, either. It was put on your plate and you either ate it or left it. But if you left it you wouldn't get anything else until the next meal.

I was born in 77 and no pandering here either, generally it was ok, as I'm not fussy and will eat most things and nothing really grim was ever served up.
It still strikes me as a bit weird though that we only ever had brown bread, or that we had to have tinned peas with frozen fish, or that we were served microwaved jacket potatoes.
My brother and I didn't like those things and they weren't hard to change.
It wasn't a financial issue, nor was it a health issue, so just why?

It wasn't a financial issue, nor was it a health issue, so just why

I put forward this theory upthread, although my mum by the standards of the 70s was seen as an old mum (31 when she had me - nowadays that would be very average) - that having grown up in wartime and post-war rationing, my parents had the mindset that any decent quantity of meat was something to be thankful for.

That's the thing though, all other meals were fine, we went out to eat often which was probably unusual in the 80's.
Just the weird refusal to buy white bread, the horrid tinned peas and microwaved potatoes.
It makes no sense.

There were other things I wasn't hugely keen on, but they weren't weird!

Nothing, I don't think.
I ate everything

Oh I remember some great horrors.
There is the spaghetti & tomato sauce made from tomato puree and condensed milk - no seasoning.
Rice pudding or semolina served with tinned fruit as main meal usually on a Wednesday.
Lentil stew.
Some sort of pasta soup with tinned vegetables and grizzly/ hard bits of meat.

Some sort of pasta soup with tinned vegetables and grizzly/ hard bits of meat. I expect that was someone's version of minestrone.

Salad. During the summer, we had to endure salad for dinner once a week (think it was a Tuesday!) My mum's idea of a salad was to bung a whole lettuce leaf, a whole tomato and a chunk of cucumber on your plate. She sliced the hard boiled egg because she liked using her little egg slicing gadget. And there was usually a whole scallion or two set lovingly on top! No coleslaw, dressing, mayonnaise or anything like that. She wouldn't even have known what they were! The ham was from the local butcher, though, and was delicious.

Tongue 🤢

Did anyone else's mums used to slice the top of the spring onion and then dip into cold water to make the tops curl?? And the tomato halves cut into zig zag shapes?

To be fair I used to love her salad teas in summer. But then I was the weird child who would order cheese salad or a ploughmans in a pub or restaurant rather than sausage and chips 😂

Liver lambs heart grim

Boiled fish with parsley sauce.

"How lovely, ammoniated gelatin in warm spunk again. Thanks Mum!"