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...?

Liver 🤮

I hated all food as a kid, my heart used to sink at looking at a plate of food and I would always feel sick after eating and would vomit after a big meal. I could never chew meat and would always spit it out. Love food these days though.

Mine was chops. They were so tiny and the edible round bit in the middle was the size of a 10 pence piece. I never understood how they were meant to fill me up. I had a big appetite and can eat anything ( loved liver, for example, still do. It's one of my favourite meals).

I never buy chops. If my OH wants them, he orders as a starter in the takeaway.

Meatloaf and stew.

The meatloaf used to have visibly raw beaten egg going through it.

The stew, everything went into the pot RAW, everything, with tap water and was then tarted up at the end, with a packet of oxtail soup with pearl barley in it.

Pretty much everything was absolutely average, but these two were head and shoulders above the rest.

Though give her, her due she never ever produced coddle.

Actually just typing this has made me heave.

@FinallyFluid, your 'recipes ' for stew made me laugh so much ! Raw ! Tap water - jeez 😳

School food was hideous too, powdered goulash mix that wasn't mixed in properly so you got clumps of powder, pickled beetroot which a dinner lady tried to make me eat by holding my nose so I would swallow it.

Liver with vascular content and belly pork with hairy nipples sent me straight to vegetarianism when I left home.

Oddly my favourite childhood dinner was liver with mash, cabbage and onion gravy. I still love it.
Mum didn’t really cook things I didn’t like so no real ‘yuck’ meals.

Tripe…dear god it was awful and boiled in milk. I was called ‘fussy’ for not wanting it but the thought makes me retch! A neighbour once said ‘I don’t blame her for not eating that it’s dog food…in fact I wouldn’t give it to the dog!’ When she moaned about me feign fussy.

The problem is my mum was a shit cook so most dinners were rotten. Veg had to be boiled to mush, roast potatoes were done in the chip pan but put into cold fat so rather than being crispy had a leathery skin round them. Chips were also put into cold fat and crammed in so half the chip was still white. She would beans on to heat at the same time as everything else so they were boiled dry. I hated most things she cooked with the exception of spaghetti bolognese, pork chops and chilli! I’d have lived on chilli! She also makes a great salad lol!

Tinned corned beef and lumpy mash 🤮

I've remembered a school pudding that gave me heart sink - pink sauce. It was, I guess, a sort of strawberry custard but there was just something about it. But you had to eat it, and on one memorable occasion when my usual begging to only be given a tiny bit hadn't worked, I vomited it up all along the school corridor - a memory clear as day after nearly 40 years.
My dad also loved mint sauce, which I hate (and to this day don't like mint in an foods, only drinks) and would insist on putting it on my food. Until that also reappeared on a day I'd sat and looked at my dinner for 2 hours..

Not my mum but my lovely old grandad before he got ill.

He would always make steak and kidney pudding and then bread and butter pudding for dessert. Always hated them both.

I can't bear to even smell either of them now!

Saturday meals - end of week so needed to be cheap to prepare - included

• boiled mutton and mash
• tinned salmon, mash and parsley sauce made with more water than milk
• 'broth' with boiling fowl, carrots, potatoes, pearl barley and greasy water

All absolutely vile.

I once said to mother, 'do you actually want me to be sick?' and she said, 'yes' thinking she was being terribly clever. So I washed down my ghastly sprouts with water, and promptly vomited the entire dinner all over her wanky glass dining table.

Fish, any kind🤢
Tripe🤢🤢
Liver
Tongue, I remember being about 8 or 9 and seeing my mum pressing a tongue. I could see the curved tip on the outside of the rolled up thing. That was when I realised that it was actually a tongue we were eating. I was so sick.
Also potted heid, scotch broth, eggs and marrowfat peas.

My papa (mum's dad) was born in 1892, so a Victorian who had lived through both wars and horrible deprivation. He liked all of the above and other traditional Scottish poor folk food. It was a nightmare even though my mum was a wonderful cook.
I became vegetarian at 14 and rejoiced that I didn't have to eat any of that stuff ever again.

My papa w

I've just remembered one, corned beef hash.

Corned beef sliced and put in a sandwich I'm fine with, but it has no place anywhere else.

Faggots 🤢

I love liver

The one I really dreaded was cold meat and salad, especially if the meat was leftover roast lamb- all that congealed fat. The "salad" was an undressed arrangement of lettuce, tomatoes cut with a zig zag edge, cucumber, bleeding beetroot and sometimes egg hard-boiled grey. All this wilted somewhat in the heat from the accompanying boiled potatoes. One option was to drown the whole thing in salad cream; but I didn't like that either.

Broth. Boiled ham with that horrible smell filling the house and pearl barley which made me gag.

Fish in parsley sauce, blurgh

Anything with custard on it. Custard makes me physically sick.

My mother was a terrible cook and hated it anyway! I never actually turned my nose up at anything though as far as I can remember. The corned beef pie and salmon pie we had at school was a completely different matter! 🤮

Stew and Dumplings

Chicken chasseur, god I hated it. And it was normally served with boiled potatoes which I also hate!

Cheesy tuna pasta bake. Hot tuna 🤮 still makes me boak just tho think about it!