Monstrosity of a meal

[Jumping2feet]

I was going to eat prawn salad for dinner. Delicious and easy.

Then I saw the purple sprouting broccoli and mushrooms I bought last week. So I decided to cook pasta and use up the veg. In my head this would all go with pesto and a bit of chilli. It doesn't. I haven't eaten it. It's vile. Never mind the waste which I can't even think about. So now dinner is a bottle of beer. Thankfully only myself to please.

What monstrosities have others created that should never have seen the light of day?

Yep. It's a thing in Mexico - Mole. Utterly repellent even when cooked by a Michelin starred chef.

My mum went through a phase of cooking things with Campbell's condensed soups in the early 90s (I presume they must have been doing some kind of aggressive promotional campaign at the time).

Bless her, although my mother has many talents, a natural cook she is not and each and every one of the weird soup mash-ups looked (and often tasted) like vomit. Even the dog wouldn't touch them.

Kippers and cauliflower, courtesy of DGM's best friend I was staying with after doing A levels. Her cooking was at best hit and miss, but that one stood out.

yeah i mean love chicken love chocolate but not together thanks

The best mole I've ever had was made by an abuela (grandmother), but I've had plenty of good ones in restaurants too. The chocolate adds a subtle earthiness and the the chili adds warmth without burning.

Not something I'd make myself though. Mole takes time. Like, days. You can't shortcut it. I imagine if you did try to whip it together, it would be awful. I'm sorry you all had bad experiences with mole. It's really delicious done properly.

I have had a few disasters.

But my older DS has sensory processing disorder so feeding him is really really difficult. Once I gave him a thorough lecture about the cost of food and how he had to at least try.

I served his meal (a roast turkey thingie in a tray that was a shove in the oven job). Then went and got a few things and then sat down at the table toi eat mine. DS was sort of doubtfully pushing bits of turkey around the plate and I was getting annoyed. Then I took a bite of my own turkey and nearly spat it out. Something had gone wrong in the production and it was SO SO salty it was completely inedible. I exclaimed; 'We can't eat THIS!!!' Poor Ds flung his fork down with a relived sigh and said 'thank GOD you agree'.

So we got fish and chips. DS still talks about 'remember that time with the turkey?'

As for my grandmother - she was a shocking cook, but very proud of her ability. She also thought refrigeration was a new fangled thing that probably was sent by the Russians to spy on us so she never had a fridge. (This is in my home country.... and she lived a really really really HOT area... as in well over 40 degrees celsius hot as standard.

her homemade brawn used to sit out next to the kettle for days on end while it got steadily green. She'd cut off those bits and everyone was expected to have brawn sandwiches. I won't even get started on her fondness for poached lambs brain sandwiches.

Dessert wine instead of white wine in a pasta sauce does NOT work!

I do understand the odd cooking disaster - we all have them - but I don't get it when people serve up bizarre combinations or make up weird dishes. They might not cook but...they live in the world? And EAT? And presumably occasionally go to restaurants or pubs or cafes or even supermarkets? Why, as an inexperience cook, make something up instead of just buying a pasta sauce and putting it on some pasta?

Oh! Amd I just thought of another one. I actually went out and made King Charle's Coronation Quiche. You know, the spinach and broad bean one.

Dear Lord it was awful. DH is both vegetarian and very very tolerant of food and even he could not eat it. I was on a thread at the time and I think that some people made it muc more successfully than I did. I just thought I'd wait for Waitrose to start producing it in nice little packs.

I don't think they ever have...... and that has to mean something.....

Tears running down my face at @Allwelcone asking if it was porridge and mince.

On closer inspection it does look like that. Don't know why but I can't stop laughing at giving a porridge and mince cake to to kids!

How cute ;)

I made a slimming world friendly crustless quiche. It was absolutely vile. Smelt and tasted of eggs farts. Im not exaggerating when I say I had one mouthful and threw up violently. Now when I need to be sick but it's not coming I think of that.

My mother in law once made us a cabbage pie.

The cabbage was the crust.

In the 80s (when I was late teens) I went away for a few days with a group of friends. We agreed that, to save money so we could spend more on beereach of us would take a few ingredients and 2 of us would cook dinner each evening rather than eating out. Not long before that, I had eaten the most amazing dhal at an Indian friend's house and asked for the recipe. I insisted that my friend and I would cook for the group and fully expected them to be incredibly impressed at my culinary skills.

My friend had written down a list of ingredients and some basic cooking instructions but no specific quantities etc- it was clearly a family recipe. I didn't recognise quite a few of the ingredients so assumed that a) they were spices and b) an stock cube and some curry powder would be a good substitute. I decided to ignore the instructions about cooking on the hob in a large pan so instead I just shoved red lentils, large lumps of raw onion, several pints of stock and a teaspoon of curry powder (anxious not to make it too hot for my friends) in a casserole dish and left it in the oven for an hour. The result was a sloppy, tasteless sludge. Served in HUGE bowls with a similarly sloppy over-cooked rice. If you imagine bile served with wallpaper paste you're pretty close.

Brussels sprouts curry was a new low.

Brussels sprouts curry was the least unappealing lunch option on the ward when I had DD2. I asked my husband to bring in my clothes because I wasn't waiting for dinner, and had a home birth next time.

This has made me howl.

You mean sprouts mexicane? 😂

A barbeque.

My friend hated them and I couldn't understand why until we went to his mother's.

To me a barbeque lasts an afternoon and as food is cooked you eat a sausage or a burger with alcohol and chat until the next things is ready. Rinse and repeat.

His mother's barbeque.

Everything to be barbequed goes on at the same time and on the hottest bit so it chars on the outside and is raw inside, it is then put in the oven in foil until it is the consistency of carboard.

While that is happening the table is set outside with a cloth, plates and cutlery, some bread rolls and tiny salad.

The rockhard meat is brought out of the oven and put on a plate in the centre of the oven.

You eat everything in about 15 mins and then you go in and do the washing up.

I've just remembered another belter. My mother's one and only attempt to make Cornish pasties. She started by boiling raw mince with frozen peas, pulverised frozen carrots and a handful of Bistro granules, for about 3 hours "to tenderise the meat". Then she made a sort of very tough, oily pastry dough, which she fashioned into ten large, leathery carapaces that stood freely even when raw. She spooned in the mullered mince mixture, now sitting in a grey puddle of sludge and oil-globules, pinched them shut and baked them until they were rock hard and bone dry.

No seasoning, no herbs, no flavour. Looked just like a dirty great pile of old shoes, and smelt no better.

My mum did the opposite.

I'd had potato waffles at a friend's house, I was about 11. So my mum bought some and served them with a fried egg.

They did not have potato in them and sweet waffles do not go with fried eggs.

She made me eat them.

Her cooking could be a bit hit and miss.

Once put diced pork and herbs in a slow cooker with stock and chunky root veg. Left it on low all Day practically, ended up with vegetable mush with herby pork chunky jerky.... not my finest hour. I am usually competent so no idea what I was thinking.

Oh god I’ve got firm for this - usually if I use a Rachel Ray recipe book I have. It all looks so cosy and lovely but I just don’t think our British tastebuds can handle the American-ness of it!! One that springs to mind was sausages and grapes in balsamic vinegar with beetroot pink polenta. What could go wrong 😂
My girls have never refused to eat a dinner at all until that one.

My ex made me poached eggs. I got in from work at 6pm, these poor eggs had been cooking since he got in at 3pm because "I didn't know how long they take and they just didn't go brown" 🤦🏻‍♀️

You could have used it as a hockey puck.

Venison Wellington. Took 6 hours to make (felt like 6 days) and was horrible. Total waste of money and was binned after 3 mouthfuls!

He was expecting them to go brown so he cooked them for 3 hours!?!? 🤣