To think that my mum is an appalling cook?

[NeonMuffin]

Growing up I was a very fussy eater and there was a lot that I wouldn't eat. I didn't touch any greens or veg, only boiled potatoes that kind of thing. It was only as I got older and started eating out etc that I realised it wasn't that I didn't like these things it was that my mum is a terrible cook.

I know that sounds mean, but it's true she never cookers anything properly. An example is when she makes a roast dinner she will boil the veg for up to an hour until it's turned to mush and tastes of nothing. Everything goes on for an hour, cauliflower, broccoli and she boils carrots until the water goes orange. Meat is not cooked unless it's cremated. A favourite of hers is to cook her meat the day before, then serve it freezing cold with hot gravy over the top (boak). It's just disgusting.

The problem is she keeps asking me around for tea and I know it will be a roast and the thought of if just turns my stomach so I keep rebuffing her but can't forever. Short of upsetting her and causing offence by telling the truth I don't know what else to do?

AIBU?

My mil cooks ready stuff from Iceland and that's about it
When I first met my husband the only spag vol he had ever tried was out of a tin!

My mum was 65 a couple of weeks ago, And the thing is my grandmother, her mum, was a very unadventurous cook but her food, whilst traditional/ conservative was very tasty and well cooked.

My mums younger sister is a really excellent cook. We were never very close to her growing up, so weren't often in her house for meals etc. She lived in the nearest big city to my parents and when i was about 12 I must have shot up height wise as absolutely none of my clothes fitted me and I was looking very neglected. I begged my mum to bring me to the city so I could get some real jeans (as opposed to supermarket ones) I had some money saved. For some reason my aunt offered to take me shopping and she was / is very stylish and to my 12 yrs old eyes impossibly glamorous so I was very happy with this. She offered to have me stay for the weekend. I was delighted but a little worried how I would survive food-wise as my mum had me pegged as 'fussy'.

I will never, forget that weekend.....it was a revelation to me food wise (and fashion wise!). I can remember every single meal I ate for 3 days it made that much of an impression on me. She picked me up on the Fri afterschool and we drove to her house, her ds must have been about 6 or 8tmths then and our older cousin was going to babysit us that night as aunt and uncle were going to a black tie dinner thing.

We stopped at the supermarket en-route and she bought freshly baked jam doughnuts which I loved but my mum rarely bought, crusty white bread, steak etc.

We go home & I realized she was only cooking for me as they were going out and she grilled a fillet steak with sauteed potatoes and peas for me. I have NEVER seen a steak grilled before! It was seasoned with salt and pepper and had some butter melted onto it. I quite literally never tasted meat as good in my life and I practically licked the plate!

For breakfast she made door-stop crusty bread toast with jam and milky coffee with hot milk and let me have some.

Dinner that night was a homemade chicken pie, I can still see the little ceramic blackbird in the middle. I ate all round me and remember the actual taste of much of it. I was 12 then. I am 44 now.

On the sunday I had to go home and back to my mums cooking and I pined for that steak and pie for a very very long time.

My mum went to catering college btw, was a trained chef :o

My mum isn't a bad cook, but she will interfere with recipes in odd ways & combine flavours that don't really work. As children she would mix random tins of soup together to make enough for everyone - oxtail with cream of chicken is horrible

If I cook for her she'll ask for the recipe & keep chipping in with suggestions as to how she would "ring the changes" then make it for me at some point & it's just not that nice

redmayneslips - that was such a lovely post.

My Mum (RIP) was a diabolical cook. She would have been the first to admit it. On the night she died she left steaks cooking in the oven, fergawdssake. She hated cooking - but I am always grateful for that, because it's what prompted me to find out how things should be cooked, and I started getting books out of the library (this was before the internet and Google) with recipes in, and cooking for the family from around age 12 onwards. Before that I use to sneak slices of ham up to my room and 'cook' them on a knife blade over a candle - I just found the idea of cooking so interesting. I was 27 before I discovered that liver was not only edible, but delicious, if cooked the right way - Mum always made leather out of it! She was a great lady in many ways, but cooking was not her strong point.

Redmayne that's lovely. Please say you've told her that?

My dm is a great cook but Dh is a salt fiend so always thinks she under seasons. dgm also excellent and as a family generally we are all pretty good. On the other side again, all pretty good, mil doesn't have a really wide range but very tasty, her partner is excellent and does most of it. He says he likes cooking for us as we appreciate it. And we do :)

But I think it's probably quite daunting to join-my Dh is a good cook himself and we've learnt things together, I didn't really cook fish before meeting him. My SIL doesn't come from a family that cooks and was, I think, a bit overawed that we all generally cook from scratch (thrift!). She's trying but my db was always the fussiest and he's unconfident trying things let alone cooking much new. And I do think 'food porn' has made some more worried about it rather than less-if you're not sure anyway watching someone flinging lovely jubbly handfuls into pots must be baffling!

My final point is that I'd have loved Clarissa Dickson Wright to cook for me

I did tell her when I had grown up and she barely remembered having me to stay that weekend, never mind that it opened my eyes to the fact that food could be delicious and pleasurable and not something to be 'endured' each day. The gas thing is I remember her saying to my mum 'oh she was no bother to look after, she is a pleasure to cook for, loves her food' as she dropped me home. And the look on DM's face!! She had it drummed into me that I was not to be rude and to eat whatever was given to me etc. She had NO idea how much I loved that properly cooked food.

And I was such a skinny, tall, awkward looking kid, I really could have used a bit of 'feeding up'. I am a very good cook now and really try my hardest to cook tasty home-cooked meals for dc, much to my DM's astonishment. DS will eat pretty much anything and dd survives on fresh air a lot of the time - I am hoping she will grow out of it.

Virtually everything my mother cooked tasted brown.

ButThenHerOtherIssuesMadeThisPaleIntoInsignificanceTiggaxx

Your post made me laugh OP as when I first met dh he had a list as long as his arm of foods he didn't like. I love food and do most of the cooking so I kind of ignored him and he quickly realised it wasn't the food but his mother's cooking

Watching MIL cook is the most bizarre experience. She seems to be totally incapable of planning the different elements of a meal and bounces randomly round the kitchen doing whatever enters her head next. Carrots on before roast potatoes etc.

We do grin and bear it though. Thankfully it's not very often!

redmayneslips that posts has just made me mouth water.

My Nana never, ever had sliced bread in the house. It was always a crusty cob. Yummy.

Both my parents and the ILs are mid 70s.

My parents - brought us up to cook mainly from scratch with garlic onions, herbs, spices, very little salt, steaming, stir frying in a wok, curries etc.

ILs - to this day never use any seasoning except salt, boil everything to mush, use the cheapest of the cheap ingredients and as much readymade as possible. FIL is a brilliant baker though, far better than either of my parents.

My mother is an appalling cook. I remember her stew which was veg and mince boiled in water for a while. That was it, no stock, no seasoning, no herbs, nothing. It was vile. Not even onions.

My father did pretty much all the cooking. He was of the boil the hell out of veg and cremate everything else school of cookery. But at least his food had some flavour - salt and/or burnt was the flavour but better than fuck all.

My MIL is a good cook. I love cooking and have taught dh as well.

You're lucky you have a mother who cares enough about you to cook for you and invite you over, you're also lucky your mother is still alive. She probably hates your cooking too.

Does make you wonder about some of the fussy eaters you know doesn't it? (that's a joke before I get lynched by irate super tasters by the way!)

My DParents are both truly excellent cooks. So i feel lucky! They used to fight over who would cook so i never cooked until i was in my 30s and met DH.

MIL on the other hand was a dreadful cook,despite going to finishing school in France where they rather focused on cooking. her specialty was to cook pickled cabbage in white sauce. (DH loves it to this day). She was so bad, that FIL took over the cooking- in the late 1950s and he was out to work every day with along commute.

I love to cook. And hope that i have inherited my Dfather's ability to 'see with food' if you know what I mean. He can just read a recipe and tweak it in his head so it comes out like magic.

My ex-SIL is such a terrible cook that her teenage children post photos and comments on line about her latest offering. She takes it all in good humour - she is capable of both undercooking and burning different components of the same meal - her attempts at homemade Yorkshire pudding are particularly repulsive. Her mother was an equally terrible cook (similar to the OP) but she knew it wasn't her strongest point and was happy to have help in the kitchen when we went to visit.

I don't think it's an age thing - my mother is a fantastic cook. I learnt to cook from her and now both my teenagers are capable of cooking a decent meal.

My Mum is like this OP. She's terrible and knows it though...she NEVER cooks now we've all left home. She eats ready meals and cake!

Oh, and FIL is well into his 90s now and he has taught me how to make the best salads ever. He eats salad every day for lunch (with grilled meat). He basically used fresh herbs instead of lettuce as the base ingredient- so he uses parsley, coriander and basil as the green leaf of each salad. Truly unbelievable. His daily salad is a handful of basil,coriander, parsley, chopped tomatoes, black olives, avocado, roasted beetroot, boiled egg and sliced anchovies. With grilled chicken or salmon or lamb.

mmmmmmm.

My mother is not a good cook. She was always more concerned with nutrition than taste. She used to cook lots of vegetarian food, and was very concerned about "complete protein". We used to get platefuls of bland, chewy brown rice and beans.

Of course, as an adult I have discovered wonderfully spiced and flavoursome vegetarian dishes.

One of the most bizarre things she used to cook was rice pudding. She always used to underestimate how long it would take to cook, so we would get a bowl of hot, sweet milk with crunchy rice grains in it. Regularly!

Thank goodness for OP..I have been trying to deal with this for years..Beetroot Jelly anyone?

My nan's cooking is dreadful. Topside of beef? Shoe leather... nothing came with gravy so it was like saw dust. Horrible. We just take her out to 'treat' her...

Both my DM & DMiL are now turning into dangerous cooks. Use by dates are completely disregarded, their fridges are rammed full of mystery pots and packs of dog ends from the deli counter. Kitchen surfaces are covered with 'bargain' purchases of slowly decomposing vegetables

I can no longer face eating anything which has been prepared in their kitchens.

My lovely MIL can actually good pretty much anything really well - except custard.

Before we married, DH told me about some custard that she'd attempted at Christmas more than a decade earlier. It was so bad that FIL tipped it outside for the birds. But even suburban wildlife wouldn't touch it, and overnight it solidified into rock.

Bugger me if it isn't still there on the wall at the edge of their patio. Hard as diamond and still pale yellow.

My parents are amazing cooks, my dad was in the catering trade for 30 years & I still get nervous cooking in front of him. Interestingly, my mum couldn't cook until she left home to marry my day & he then taught hr how to cook.

OP can you buy your mum a slow cooker for Mothers Day?!! She can cook loads of things on the low temp setting & it will be a bit more palatable than it is now.