To ask for your weird family behaviours that you didn't realise weren't normal until you were older?

[Coffeebiscuitsrepeat]

1. We called a toe poking through a sock hole a "potato".

1. Whoever made the most mess at the dinner table "won the prize"... And the prize was to clean up the mess!

My parents both always cooked every type of meat, particularly red meat, to well done ++++, the texture was like boot leather. Even sausages were cut in half and cooked so they were dry and shrivelled. I thought this was normal and liked the taste at the time.

However mind was completly blown when I tried a normally cooked steak aged around 25! And juicy lamb cutlets! Even now I can't believe how tender they can be!

We always had our Sunday roast at 1pm. We used to get treats at the weekend sweets etc and call it a pig out.

We used to have a 'starter' before Sunday dinner of a big Yorkshire pudding & gravy, just on it's own. I thought my friend's family were a bit strange when I was having Sunday dinner with them and they just had a 'mini Yorkshire on the same plate as their roast.

My dm is insomniac.....I never knew until I was a teenager that it was not normal for someone to be awake in the house 24hours a day.

Calling the remote control “the didgeridoo“.

Not being allowed the light on to read past bedtime but having a specifically brought torch for reading with. Pretty sure it fucked up my eye sight!

And just remembered another one - on a Sunday we would have a bowl of water and a bowl of salt on the table. We would all have celery and would have to dip it in the water then in the salt before taking a big old salty bite. It was disgusting 🤮

Our meals weren't the same every week, but they were quite predictable. Roast on Sunday, cold meat & chips or something else made with the meat on Monday (shepherds pie, for example), chops, gammon and pineapple, stew, fish in parsley sauce, chicken in tinned cook-in white wine sauce (my favourite, requested on my birthday, thereby rejecting my mum's cooking). Roast beef was like leather :(

We used to have a 'starter' before Sunday dinner of a big Yorkshire pudding & gravy, just on it's own.

That is How Yorkshire Pudding is supposed to be served, if you are from Yorkshire. Made in a big tin, and cut into rectangles - none of these little round things on the plate with the meat. Sacrilege! I should know, my DM was from Yorkshire and it was always served like this.

Now DF who was a Lancastrian would eat his cold sometimes, with jam!

Not mine but at a friends house, he would always have a bowl of raw vegetables with his Sunday dinner, but separate from the Sunday dinner plate called his “raws”.

We weren’t allowed to watch any commercial TV channels because my mum said they were “common” - years later she admitted she just didn’t want us to ask for any of the products on the adverts.

We had salt and Philadelphia cheese with melon!

@bargebill par Carks here too!

My mum always put sugar on strawberries and then put them in the fridge for the sugar to cristalise. I didn't realise you could eat them without sugar until I was an adult.

We open bananas by biting it open from the end (not the end it hands from).

*hangs

I was 14 before I knew that children and teens were allowed to speak without consequences as my bio father firmly believed in children being seen and not heard. From the age of 2 my sister, my brother and me could be relied upon to go anywhere at all and we would behave absolutely perfectly and never make a sound. School teachers, strangers and friends of my bio father couldn’t get over it 😂 Now of course it’s difficult to get me to shut up. I love these threads.

@katew355

My mum also put powdered ginger on melon. Though haven't done it for years.

Also the forced monotony of my childhood was something I didn't realise was strange until years later. Every week day evening and weekend had routines we stuck to religiously. For example, Saturday we would visit certain relatives in a strict time frame. Everybody had to join in. Sunday was other specific relatives, Monday evening we would have a relative visit us and we would all have to sit with them, Tuesday another one, etc. Deceased relatives would get a weekly visit from all of us at the cemetery. As I got older and wanted to start doing my own thing, there was he'll to pay if I dared suggest not conforming to the weekly plan. Actually I think I'm going off on a whole different thread here...

My lovely mother used to bake what she called 'Love Bread' and take it around to a friend or contact who she felt might've needed cheering up. She made two loaves: we had one and the other family had one.

She is so kind and I think that's rare. As I get older I think the quiet Christianity she embodies has a lot going for it.

Also powdered ginger on melon here! :)

Yes set meals every day. Saturday was cold ham , baked beans and boiled potatoes. Vanilla ice cream with home made hot chocolate sauce .

Everyone pretending like they don’t hate each other 😂

@katew355

We called them potatoes too! Our weird thing was using one of my dad's socks as a stocking at Christmas. It didn't really hold anything other than a tangerine and a 10p coin. My mum also used to put powdered ginger in melon which I've never seen anyone else do x

We used to have powdered ginger in melon.... mentioned it to OH the other day... looked at me like I had suggested we put coccaine on!

@Peregrina

We used to have a 'starter' before Sunday dinner of a big Yorkshire pudding & gravy, just on it's own.

That is How Yorkshire Pudding is supposed to be served, if you are from Yorkshire. Made in a big tin, and cut into rectangles - none of these little round things on the plate with the meat. Sacrilege! I should know, my DM was from Yorkshire and it was always served like this.

Now DF who was a Lancastrian would eat his cold sometimes, with jam!

I did that on our first Christmas together, as the only meat we could afford was a tiny, hand sized piece of beef that was reduced to clear, so I made it to ensure neither of us felt shortchanged.

DP grew up in farming country - when he saw an enamel pan with a big slab of puffy goodness come out of the oven, he beamed and said he hadn't seen that since his paternal grandparents had died.

It's far, far better than those pointless puffs of air.

We never had a take away or went out to eat, not even to a cafe or pub. Well, actually, tell a lie, my dad going to the chip shop for just one bag of chips, no sausage/kebab/sauce or anything else. You had a few chips and a slice of bread. It was quite a treat. But made us all horribly uncomfortable when we started going out. My first meal out I was 21 and felt so out of place, had to think what they did on the t.v. to get the waiters attention etc. My brother, goes out twice a week without fail pre lockdown.

when my ma used to tuck me in at night and I would find the glow of her cigarette in the gloom of my bedroom comforting!! Seems so strange now but was quite the norm in those days (for lots of people, anyway)