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...?

Like a lot of PPs, Liver and bacon. I mean, why? It’s a liver ffs.
Lambs’ Hearts. See above.
And something that must have been conjured by the Devil himself, Bacon Roll. No, I don’t mean crispy smoked bacon in a lovely crusty baguette. I mean disgusting, fatty, flabby stringy bacon boiled, boiled, with onions in a roll of sweaty suet pudding, the suet pudding being barely cooked and utterly anaemic. I have no idea why this monstrosity was inflicted upon us, thankfully usually only monthly. 🤮

Liver, bacon and cabbage. Plus mashed potatoes and roast potatoes. We HAD to eat it or couldn’t leave the table. This was at primary school. Luckily I was the only girl on a table of 8. I would sneakily scrape the meat and cabbage to one of lads plates.

So many of these meals are fabulous, if cooked correctly. I guess we have advantages our parents didn’t in the culinary field.

Thanks everyone, you've given me a trawl through all the long-forgotten (thankfully) dinners that I endured in the 60's and 70's.

Was there some bizarre recipe book, I wonder, and all our mothers had the same one?

Fish paste sandwiches, anyone?

Dare I say Baby Boomers were not the best cooks . My Mum worked full time (70's) and threw anything on a plate , as long as you could boil or fry it .

Pork chops and mash potatoes. To this day 40 years later I never eat either .

Liver and onions
Chewy roast lamb
My Dad's homemade coleslaw with raw onions in it

Liver and bacon
Or
Steak and kidney pie

And after I left home I avoided eating shepheds pie for years. Not because I dislike it but because we had it for dinner so often.

I don’t remember anything my mum made that I didn’t like (I say my mum because I can remember every single time my dad cooked as it was so rare) but she would insist on putting peas in risotto. I hate peas. Always have. I’d pick them out every time and every time she’d get annoyed.

She still gets annoyed now but I don’t like them!

Some hilarious responses! Liver seems to be a majority vote of awful childhood meal memories. I'd forgotten about Ox tongue and tripe (yuk!) and I had to google a couple of the responses, like potted heid, which does look quite revolting!

weedsneeds1 - your tale about your mum's stew is hilarious and divebar 2021's tale about beetroot in a white sauce - good grief....!

Keep 'em coming!

Did anyone else's dad grow runner beans?

We would have runner beans with everything for what seemed like months on end. The worst was when he found a few he'd missed when picking, great long tough stringy things that had to be pushed through a bladed torture instrument, took ages to cook, forever to eat and even longer to digest.

Yes @Tambora although it was my grandad. Loved those runners! He wooed his second wife with runners from his allotment

I also loved liver and bacon.

Mashed carrot and swede, makes me heave altho' I know some who love it

Boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce. I’m a huge fish and seafood lover as an adult but I fucking hated those pieces of cod. I swear to God you could taste the plastic too. Worst memory of all was my Dad sitting at the table with me saying we weren’t getting up until I ate it all. Mum and sister had already left the table and I could hear the joyous strains of The Generation Game on TV which I loved, but after eating basically nothing on my plate- I didn’t like eating anything that had even touched the evil sauce- I was made to sit there until I had eaten it. Cold it was even worse than warm! Can’t remember what happened in the end- there’s not a chance I actually ate it- but I’m not still sat there now so my Dad must have got bored 😂

Liver. It was just utterly vomit inducing. Thankfully it wasn't on the menu all that often and it seemed to be the one thing my parents did allow me to dislike.

I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about runner beans or broad beans either.

Most things with meat. I went vegetarian at 12 as most meat really triggered my IBS. I later realised it must have been partly stress related because I can eat meat fine now.

Liver & onions with mashed potato was the absolute worst. Vile, vile vile. I'm pretty unfussy, will eat most things now. I think I'd have to be starving to death before I'd eat liver though.

And my mother hated all root vegetables. Carrots, swede, parsnips - all of them. The only way I ever got to eat them was boiled for hours in a stew, watery & tasteless. I thought they were horrible things until I tried someone else's cooking at university, it was a revelation.

Corned beef hash. I didn’t need to ask, I could smell it cooking when I walked in from school and I died a bit inside every time.

Any pastry pies, DF used to cook us a minced beef roll type pie thing when DM was on nights, yuck.

Serve this with boiled potatoes (not new) and you have a combination I can't stand to this day.

Liver with VESSELS in it.

Oh god, I remember this too, @PermanentTemporary! Luckily my mum only served us liver once, as she didn't like it either! She was actually a very good traditional English cook, and I still miss her kedgeree and cheese and spinach pie.

My worst childhood meal lamb's brains with cheese was served at a friend's place and I ate it so as not to offend. But I'll never forget the smell, the gooey glutinous wobble or how it looked like the deathly, horrific slime from a horror movie. When I describe it to DD she cries out "Mum! You're making me sick, please stop!"

Liver, rissoles (what the heck even is a rissole?)

On a Friday my Nan used to do this yellow fish with an egg on top.Definitely not . There was no question of prefered taste. You didn't get a choice you had to eat it. I'm not even sure what the fish was called.
Also liver. Mind you show me a kid who does like liver. I love it now though.

Good thread btw

Stew, cottage pie, casserole 🤢

Still won’t eat any of them