What was your worst childhood meal?

[TheChosenTwo]

Humour me while I’m waiting for everyone to wake up!
Dc asked us yesterday what our worst meals were when we were growing up, the one where the answer to ‘what’s for dinner?’ made your heart sink!
Mine was fish pie, dc1 was lamb hotpot, mil said liver and onions and db was spaghetti bolognaise. Anyone else bored and want to add?

Corn beef hash was the worst.

I just want to speak up in defence of spam fritters. They were literally my favourite thing at school dinners, and I still like them today. I buy the frozen ones and do them in the air fryer.

Oh, my mother's custard was several steps of awful away from Bird's!

Not to be graphic but it had the exact texture of vomit.

I think she honestly just didn't know what custard was meant to be and was too stubborn to accept it when she found out! My brother says he once gave her lovely fancy M&S vanilla custard and she told him pityingly that she could show him how to make it 'properly'.

If I remember they were boil in the bag

@SarahAndQuack FFS there’s no hope! Just never mention custard ever again !

It's the only solution!

@WilfredsPies spaghetti on toast was one of my faves as a child ! also ‘Buitoni’ tinned ravioli does anyone remember that.

My mother would make beautiful smelling chicken stock in the pressure cooker and then throw in carrots, potatoes and onions for another hour or two to practically macerate in it with add another 2-4 pints of cold water to 'make it less strong' and, worst of all, pour cold skimmed milk into bowls before putting a scant ladleful of the stock on top.

Combined with the complete absence of seasonings or texture, the barely warm, flavourless yet overpoweringly sweet from boiled root veg liquid put me off soup that didn't come from a tin, as at least that had some salt in it - except that she also added extra water and milk to that as well.

Second worst was bacon. She only bought unsmoked, an abomination in itself, and then soak it in milk overnight to 'get the salt out', rinse it three times under the tap, dunk it back in milk again for an hour and then show it the grill briefly until the residual milk began to bubble and drip. I'd eat liver (although she also made that brick like and wouldn't dream of seasoning it or adding a fruity sweet/sour sauce to brighten it up a bit, so the mashed potatoes made with cold skimmed milk and margarine would have to do some seriously heavy lifting there), but I drew the line at eating bacon.

Food at home was pretty good and we weren't made to clear our plates, just expected to try things.

However, 1970s school dinners were disgusting... another one with liver and bacon when I was 5 - which I was made to eat, gagged, tried to get it down with water and was sick 🤮. My mum wrote a note that I wasn't to be made to eat food again.
There was some kind of abomination of a chicken pie which was orange and curry = yellow stew, goulash = orange stew, spaghetti bolognaise = mince + tinned spaghetti... I used to think I was fussy, but the food was just awful!

Liver and bacon
Stuffed hearts
Boiled potatoes and mincemeat with peas and carrots
Pie and mash with liquor
Jellied eels I refused to eat
All disgusting things my mother doesnt cook anymore.
I don't think people do these dishes anymore actually but I assume they were popular at one point.
Reading the list now it sounds like the menu of a victorian workhouse😂

Chips, PEK and beans. Yuk.

Tinned tomatoes on toast.
Tinned tomatoes are uncomfortably sour to begin with.
They also made the toast gagtastically soggy

It was a long time until breakfast.

I was moaned at for being a "fussy" eater. I just like food cooked well with flavour. I eat a much more varied range of food than DM. I'm still "fussy" though

My mum was/is an amazing cook so nothing we got given at home. But as an 80s kid, I used to dread free school milk. Every day there’d be a delivery of small glass bottles with a gold foil lid. In the summer months it would warm up (always sat outside ready for break time). Occasionally you’d get a straw but mostly not. And ohmygod the lumpy, creamy top and the taste of warm cow’s milk 🤢. I won’t forget it, ever. The only good thing Thatcher did was get rid of free milk at schools.

Sweet potatoes and kidneys

My worst school milk memory is when they put it by the radiator for a couple of hours if it was freezing outside. 🤢

My mum’s lovingly prepared salads. Whole lettuce leaves. Whole scallions. Whole tomatoes. All delicately dumped on the plate with a chunk of cucumber. No salad dressing or coleslaw. Occasionally fresh beetroot. She did, however, buy the most fantastic cooked ham from the local butcher to go with it. So I forgave her! The rest of the time she was a plain but consistently decent cook and a fabulous baker. I learned a lot from her.

Some sweet and sour pork thing that tasted like perfume.

Tinned meatballs

Tinned salmon

and this abomination !

I however love semolina 😋

Noooo and tapioca can sod off like a blob of jam is going to make that better

Liver & onions
Faggots
I can’t really decide & both were served with fairly dry boiled potatoes. The 70s cuisine was limited.

My Mum was a good cook but I spent most of my childhood being force fed. School food was the worst. But I look back fondly on the power of winning the force feeding battles. Character building surely?

A teacher once held my nose til I opened my mouth then shovelled some food in and held my mouth shut. I swilled it into slush and dribbled it out onto her hand. WIN. She never did that again.

Cotton hankies were perfect for filling with food to empty later. Mum was once emptying pockets before washing my tunic and fished out a handful of lumpy chocolate semolina. 😂

I had an excellent hamster technique - fill cheeks with gristly meat, eat pudding, spit gristly meat into the loo later.

Chuck hard peas onto the floor, taking care to throw them sideways so they scattered at someone else’s feet.

Get a certain pupil to eat my food as I was stood outside the staff room with my bowl, not allowed to go out to play until it was finished.

The best was the time three of us had been left alone in the dining room to finish the rhubarb crumble. One of us (can’t remember who) looked up at the ceiling and noted a couple of lumps of food that someone had previously flicked up there. Which seemed like a brilliant idea. Up went three bowlfuls of rhubarb crumble. A week or so later a teacher happened to look up and see it expressing shock. * Innocent faces all round. 😇🤭😉😆

@ShamedBySiri I am sorry that was terrible for you

Our school dinners weren't bad... but 9ne time we were given "Vegetable Crumble". I've blocked out most of the memory except the name.

Probably more meat in it then the burgers we got at Secondary!

Ham served with broad beans in their skins in parsley sauce is number one on my list of all time low meals. The ham was fine, the rest revolting.

My mam used to do us crispy pancakes at the end of the weeks when food shop was due 🤢 them rank filled with creamy cheese and cheap ham. They were disgusting. But I choked them down. I see them in the freezer aisle in asda and still feel sick at the sight of them