Things you didn't know weren't normal

[Applescruffle]

What are things you thought every one or every family did until you became an adult or entered a new relationship?

I'll start. I thought that everyone ate the leftover yorkshires after a roast dinner as desert eg: fill them with cream and fruit or custard or something, basically use them like you would a pancake... no?

I thought everyone peeled mushrooms, I didn't know that not only do people not peel mushrooms, lots don't even know they have peel!! 😱

I'll probably think of more.

Nb: I'm not meaning to trigger anyone's childhood or relationship trauma, I just mean lighthearted things x

I never even wash mushrooms - just brush any dirty looking bits off. Nobody’s died.

My DM used to peel them though - and peel new potatoes! She eventually had a Kenwood attachment for peeling new potatoes.
I once thought that was normal.

My Yorkshire student landlady back in the dark ages used to serve Yorkshire pud with sultanas in as a first course, with gravy. Found it weird at first but did really like it.
In this family we’ve always shared towels. After all you only use them on nether bits after a bath or shower, so I don’t get the 🤮.

One of my eyes is longsighted and the other is short. I close my eyes as to whichever is required of my eyes are tired and I need to look at something in particular close up/far away. I thought everyone was like this and only found out a few years ago it's not the case.

I love food blogs and recalled this from your post -

https://eatwithgusto.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/afternoon-tea-fairy-bread/

In this family we’ve always shared towels. After all you only use them on nether bits after a bath or shower, so I don’t get the 🤮.

You're cleaner after a bath or shower but far from sterile plus you're constantly shedding skin cells so a warm, damp towel full of skin cells is a great place for bacteria to grow.

I peel mushrooms.

I had never heard of these as a child either and was confused and grossed out when I found out about them.

I didn’t know you were supposed to wait till everyone had been served before you started eating or that everyone should have finished the meal before you left the table.

There is a Scottish dish called "stovies" and I was an adult when I found out that it's not a standard recipe. Apparently it's a regional thing and the main components change to make it a totally different meal, but with the same name. To me, it's tinned corned beef, potatoes and onion cooked in beef stock and mixed together into a thick bowl of stodge. Heart clogging warming stuff.

A friend said he was making stovies and asked if I wanted to stay for dinner, then presented me with a plate of stewed sausages, potatoes and gravy. Turns out, some people even make it with mince! My gast was flabbered that day.

@Commonhousewitch we always had mash and roasties with Sunday dinner. We also had Yorkshire puddings and gravy before the meat and with treacle (golden syrup) on for pud. The usual dessert with a roast was rice pudding- which I hated but had to eat before I was allowed to leave the table. It really spoiled the lovely roast. Much prefer the savoury course.
I also thought it was normal to have tinned fruit with Carnation milk for Sunday tea served with a slice of thickly buttered white bread. You had to have all three or nothing. I was amazed that my friend was allowed tinned fruit without the bread and carnation. I liked the fruit and syrup but hated Carnation and the butter- so often had no Sunday tea.
@letshaveachangeshallwe My mind is 🤯realising that not everyone has head-music. Can’t quite believe it- just asked my my husband (of 30 years) and he’s now looking at me strangely. I never knew he couldn’t hear any. I do get ear worms as well- quite different and certainly not as pleasant, you can’t turn down the ear worms and they drive me mad!

@BarelyLiterate I've got a friend who bins anything that's already been opened, as well as anything within a day or two of being 'out of date' (either way - so she'll bin something that still has a day left before its 'best before' or 'use by' date).

She would, for example, bin two perfectly good chicken breasts from a packet of four if she'd only used two of them. She won't freeze them because she's paranoid about unfreezing food and cooking it in case it's still 'raw' or 'frozen' in the middle. I've also seen her throw away bagged salad and virtually a whole cucumber having used only a tiny portion from them.

I've tried reasoning with her to absolutely no avail. She's so wasteful. Her garden is also full of plastic grass and even plastic plants, though, so go figure.

Back on topic.... I thought it was perfectly normal to keep tomatoes OUT of the fridge, along with things like mustard, ketchup, brown sauce, chutney and anything pickled once they'd been opened. My DH stuffs every sort of opened condiment onto the top shelf of the fridge and never rotates or checks through them to see if there are any empty jars up there. I can almost hear the shelf creaking under the weight of it all!

Mushrooms definitely DO have peel!!

I get some people don't peel them but I don't understand the peel deniers. There is very obvious peel. I am not imagining the peel nor did I imagine peeling them 😂

I'm also asking for a friend, is it not normal?

There is a Scottish dish called "stovies" and I was an adult when I found out that it's not a standard recipe.

I'm Scottish and I've never had Stovies or ever knowingly been in the same room as them. I struggle to know exactly what it is because as you said the ingredients vary and I don't know what makes them stovies. It's all very odd.

Don't know how old you are, but back in the late 60s /early 70s there was a story going around that you could get high on a mixture of aspirin and coke. It was also said you could get a high from smoking dried banana skin. How many made themselves sick doing this, I wonder?

Re Fairy Bread, I came across this via a friend from NZ. (I'm UK).

Also just discovered the word claggy in this thread.

The version I grew up with is delicious, and I say that as someone who doesn't really like corned beef! This is what I call stovies: https://www.glasgowfoodgeek.co.uk/post/stovies-recipe

My friend's version is what I would call stewed sausages. Like this:

And the mince version just sounds like mince and tatties to me!

Ha, I still do this and definitely picked it up as a child, being waved off from grandparents and aunties houses. I feel like it’s bad luck if I don’t wave someone off if they leave the house (which is a bit weird, now I think of it! 😅).

oh and it has to be peanut butter AND butter on toast!

I might try fairy bread today, am intrigued

My second link didn't post! This is the sausage one:

Same 😂

In our house the kids have their own coloured towels, and they put them over their bedroom radiators to dry.

DH and I have an en-suite and keep our own towel on a specific spot on the towel radiator.

Um… do people wear knickers under PJs??????????
oopse 🙃
I’m with you mum (and my mum who told me the same!).

@inappropriateraspberry

When mum was out we would do a banana split with maraschino cherries and dessicated coconut, perhaps also a square of cooking chocolate grated!

My grandma made us corned been hash every Ash Wednesday and I was in my 20s before I realised this wasn’t a normal thing. My MIL not only peels mushrooms, she also washes carrots then peels then washes them again post-peeling.

I don't peel mushrooms, but my mother used to.

When I was a child I assume mushrooms must have been gathered from fields - they certainly looked like the mushrooms we occasionally find when out on walks now, rather than the pure, very clean ones you buy in the supermarket these days. So peeling them made sense as they were grubby, often a bit slug-chewed and frequently had blobs of animal dung garnished with scraps of grass stuck to them.

Is it normal to wear knickers in bed? Asking for a friend. 🤔😉