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!

A takeaway on a Friday. Cooked breakfast by my dad on a sunday.

Picnics on family holidays: piles of different sandwiches in tin foil. Crisps. Boiled eggs with salt to dip. A far cry from what my mum would pack now which can only be described as a "waitrose picnic"

The Stars in Their Eyes final- every year we made a chart of various categories and scored the contestants out of 10 in each to figure out who should win.

Melon and ginger people: I need to know more as I want to try this. What type of melon? Just ginger or salt too? Presumably had to be powder not fresh?

@Chaotic45

Loving this thread. My childhood was quite chaotic and hearing from those who had a more routine type of upbringing fascinates me. From the outside looking in it sounds safe and predictable and calm.

What did you all actually eat on the set days?

Sunday - Cooked breakfast. Roast for lunch. Homemade bread, jam and cake for tea

Monday - tea was always leftover meat from the roast (the meat was warmed up in the hot gravy), served with potatoes and two veg

Tuesday - winter - it was stew and dumplings made in the pressure cooker. Summer - it was meat served with veg and new potatoes with mint

Wednesday - fish fingers, peas and mash

Thursday - home made spaghetti Bolognese

Friday - home made chips with baked beans with burgers/fish/sausages (you got to choose)

Saturday - lunch - Heinz tomato soup with french loaf. Dinner - we always went out to a local restaurant

When I met DH he had set meals and hadn't realised that people did any different.
Saturday they had a 'Sunday dinner' with either beef or pork. They couldnt have it Sunday because it was wash day and his mum literally spent all day doing a whole weeks wash in the twin tub including all bedding.
Sunday they had leftover roast meat and salad.
Monday they each got their own tea because his dad felt 'funny' on his first day back at work, so something like bacon and eggs.
Tuesday was lamb chops, Wednesday was boil in the bag Chinese ready meals, Thursday she cooked something like shepherds pie, Friday was pek chopped pork and chips.
His dad ate every meal sat in his chair in front of the tv with his plate on a folded newspaper. The first time I was invited for a meal DH handed me a newspaper and his mum brought the plates of food in. I didn't know what the paper was for. Christmas dinner was the only meal eaten at the dining table, but his dad refused and still ate it on his knee.

@DCIHoops that’s so similar to our weekly menu!

We didn’t go out for food, other than on our yearly holiday. I remember starting to go to town with friends at 12 or 13 and passing a cafe; my friend pointed out that they did amazing milkshakes in there. I was so shocked - why would you go out for a milkshake?!

@ AllTheWhoresOfMalta I’m so pleased I read that. My family all referred to the tv remote as the “didge” shirt for didgeridoo! 😂
@Coffeebiscuitsrepeat my welsh grandparents referred to a toe poking out of a sock as a “blodyn tatws” (potato flower)

Powdered ginger on melon, pepper on vanilla ice cream, mashed potato and ketchup butties.

[quote Raella50]@DCIHoops that’s so similar to our weekly menu![/quote]
yes! The food was the same when I went to friends houses for tea but not always the same sequence and the same portions

No bare feet in the house
No pjs except when actually in bed
No drinks with meals
No biscuits
Couldn't have people drop in unexpectedly
Disorganised christmasses where mum would be shopping and wrapping on Xmas eve - I found it really stressful
Never had pasta ever
Only take away we ever had was a very occasional chippy
Never went on days out really apart from maybe when on holiday

Never eating a Sunday Roast or Christmas Dinner at lunch time. I have never been able to face so much have food at lunchtime.

Soaking dried apricots in water so they are... not dry. I don’t know why. They did not taste good!

I can remember drinking cups of tea at a very young age. Under 5, certainly. Might be a 70s thing though rather than a specific family quirk.

My mum ran around after my dad ALL the time. He didn’t left a finger to the housework until I was in my teens. I was gobsmacked, on a sleep over with a friend, to see her dad doing the ironing. My dad wouldn’t have known where to find the iron.

We had Yorkshire pudding with golden syrup for a snack (and of course with roast dinner) home made in a big tin

Roast dinner was at 1pm (cooking started around 7am)

Tittie I serve broccoli with nearly every meal for ds he loves it (or spinach)

The ginger on melon - just the powdered ginger on half a bog-standard yellow melon,whatever they're called. No salt tho, that's just weird
Windscreen wipers were screenwipe weepers, still hesitate to say the 'correct' term.
No talking at all at mealtimes except to say "thank you for a lovely dinner and may I get down please" at the end.
Nothing to drink with meals (except Xmas Day when we kids were given a small glass of ginger wine (hic).) Pretty sure that mum didn't realize it was alcoholic.
I'm sitting here by the light of my laptop laughing like a loon at the random 3am fire drill That sounds fun!
Sunday teatime there was always tinned fruit and that tinned cream stuff.
Camp coffee, remember that? Think it was chicory..

Vaguely remember powdered ginger on melon, sugar on tomatoes, and sugar sandwiches, but most other stuff is long gone and forgotten.

@dcihooops, that is our weekly menu!!

Actually, looking back, not sure why evening meals in the week and on Sunday were called ‘tea’ but Saturday evening meal was always ‘Dinner’. Hmm - maybe it’s because we went out?

@Badtasteflump

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...

Hell to pay? I wonder if your parents or maybe one of them were on the ASD spectrum? My sister thinks my father may have been and he was wont to fly into a rage if things were not done correctly. He did definitely have OCD (I do myself but mine manifests more in intrusive thoughts). Mind you my dad was angry generally and had other triggers for his rages too. I think there was a lot going on with him neurologically!

The no drink with dinner thing stops you overeating - if you have bariatric surgery you are not able to drink within 30 mins either side of food, as it washes it down and stops you feeling full. Apparently. I can't eat a meal without a drink of some sort available though.

I still put sugar (well, Truvia) on strawberries.

@ToffeePennie

Have you seen The Royal Tenenbaums?

Your post made me guffaw, but seriously was you dad ex army (and bonkers)?

*your

Back in the 1960s & 70s there wasn’t the range of types of melon available that there are now. There was only the yellow honeydew melon, often sold under ripe. Yet they were seen as exotic, and treated as a luxury. Even restaurants served them with powdered ginger (in little pepper shakers) or made into “boats” and decorated with glacé cherries on cocktail sticks.

Halves of grapefruit were sprinkled with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar and grilled till bubbling... the hight of chic!

Strawberries were often sprinkled with sugar, I was agog when I first had them sprinkled with black pepper!

At home we always had Yorkshire pudding served separately with gravy before serving beef.

Reading the newspaper from 7 or so. I was expected to have an opinion I could defend on any current topic. We used to debate everything over the dining table.
My mother changes the curtains/cushions and accessories every season in the sitting room.
No shoes in the house
My mum would put washing up liquid on any left overs.
Women got plates half the size given to men.