Time for a bad/ bizarre Christmas food thread

[SantaHasABigYuleLog]

Inspired by the shit presents thread tell us about your horror food stories.

I’m from the southern hemisphere, Christmas was all about bbqs, lots of MASSIVE fancy salads, grilled/roasted veg, roasts (mainly lamb), curries, grilled seafood and a million and one desserts. Usually by the beach or in someone’s garden. Huge family and friends gathering together.

My first ‘family’ Christmas in the UK was with my British boyfriend’s family I was expecting the charming, cosy TV scene (I don’t know why, I had visited their house before) It was his parents and sibling, starter was prawn cocktail - a couple prawns were still frozen, one small just cooked chicken (the fat was still jiggly), boiled potatoes and boiled brussels sprouts. No music was playing, no one said anything and the heating wasn’t on either (they were rich by the way so not a money thing) No seasoning at all - not even salt or pepper. After we were done b/f’s father picked the chicken skin and fat from everyone’s plate and ate them.

It was a massive culture shock for me.

Well that's not a typical Christmas dinner. 😁
The eating of the chicken skin would have made me feel sick.

the chicken skin would have made me feel sick

Oh my stomach was turning. It wasn’t crisped up at all so was that beige colour and flabby and just gross to look at. I don’t like after 8’s but had to grab a couple!!

I count After Eights. Like eating toothpaste dipped in cheap dark chocolate...

@SantaHasABigYuleLog Did you stay with this BF?

Well that isn't typical i bet your heart sank though what horror you had moved to.

Not typical. They are just rubbish cooks.

Yes and we're married 😂
We spent just one other Christmas day with them but other that we’re on our own or go away. He was never close to his family - he’s the black sheep.

Not Christmas but New Year’s Day (which is a big deal in Scotland). Had just met boyfriend (who is DH of 40 years) and he invited me to his extended family gathering. It was a buffet and every dish was minging, the worst was a macaroni cheese that just tasted of flour and a mussel cocktail swimming in vinegar. His mum is a terrible cook, bless her.

She was probably really proud of that mussel cocktail!

My mum produced Stovies on New Year's Day - gag, I hate it to this day.

Ah but were they corned beef stovies or sausages????

Probably sausages. I can really only remember the uncooked onions.

My mum is a pretty terrible cook. But nothing beat the year that we (DH, me, 3 primary aged DC) went for Christmas day and there was a salad buffet with triangles of white bread and margarine.

Corned beef or sausages in stovies??? Noooooo. You want stewing steak that’s cooked until it’s falling apart with lots of onions and gravy. Anything else doesn’t deserve to be thought of as stovies as they’ll never be as good as that.

We used to live overseas and came back for Christmas. We hired a charming country Airbnb ( which turned out to be a damp, chilly death trap ) and hosted everyone. Decided to do Christmas dinner in the evening ( don’t know why). Put the turkey in. Went back to check it to find that the oven had tripped the fuse and the turkey was still totally raw. We couldn’t be arsed to wait till 11pm for it to cook so we just had trimmings and veg.

Back in the 70's my mum and dad were hosting and cooking for both sides of the family. So about 15 people. They both stuffed the turkey but left the giblets in.....egg and chips for dinner that year 😂😂😂

One year my in-laws were hosting and we called them about the arrangements some time early November and my mil said “yup, that’s it. All done. Ready to go” I ask what was all done. She replied “the dinner. All shopped, cooked and now frozen”

oh dear… on the day the prawns in the prawn cocktail had previously been bought frozen from Iceland, defrosted, mixed with some sauce then refrozen. Then defrosted sort of, but were definitely off.
the meat was dry and gravy-less, the sprouts were now so soggy they appeared to be swimming in their own green juice, the roast potatoes were still hard and icy in the middle and the pigs and blankets were so tough(burnt) you couldn’t get a knife through them

That must be where my mum went wrong :)

This has properly made me 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Dry chicken, Paxo stuffing (ugh) with raw onion mixed in, Bisto gravy (ugh) woody carrots cut into rounds, overcooked sprouts, lumpy mashed potatoes. Non crispy roast pots. Utterly disgusting. My mother was a terrible terrible cook.

first year at then BFs (now DHs) parents they didn't have roast potatoes and had never catered for a veggie before so while they tried, they had basically got something from the supermaket (can't remember what, I suspect I have wiped it from my memory) and they have meat in the stuffing, and almost no vegetables.,

I am fairly laid back about the exact contents of my plate if someone is cooking for me but I did have a little cry after my lunch of mashed potato and random ready meal.

Even worse, only 1 pudding (christmas pudding, birds custard),no crackers, and Christmas tea was literally just leftovers. I had cheese sandwich (mild cheddar, only cheese in the house). Then I had another little cry.

It was the first Christmas without my mum so christmas at my dads would also have been shit but no roasties devastated me for some reason.

next time we were there I absolutely "helped" with the cooking😆

My sister is very much a stick things in the oven type of cook - baked chicken and veg, fish and chips, bacon. Everything goes in the oven, nothing wrong with that she just doesn’t have the patience for chopping, prepping, stirring etc. She wanted to impress her new Asian boyfriend so invited us all round hers for a Christmas Day curry one year. My parents and I told her we’ll go early to help her but she insisted on doing it all herself and we were just to go over at a certain time. Oh my days was she heavy handed with the chilli powder!! We could only manage a few bites it burned!! We just ended up chucking a whole litre of milk in there but it was still so hot. Bless my sister she was in bits and her poor sod of a bf told me later he had expected turkey and potatoes!! 😂Anyway they’re married now with two kids and we still talk about chilligate every year.

My aunt is well known for her love of getting everything from M&S and not particularly liking cooking - fair enough 🤷🏻‍♀️ But one year she caught the domestic goddess bug. She ‘made’ Christmas Pudding ice cream. It had potential but she boozed it up so much it didn’t really freeze and was just ran some bits of Christmas Pudding swimming in what looked like evaporated milk. It was minging!

Christmas is not the time to suddenly catch the domestic goddess bug. 😁

My dad’s partner cooked everything a couple of days before Christmas and because she didn’t like the microwave everything went back on the hob or in the oven. The potatoes were soggy and hard at the same time. The turkey had been sliced and placed in gravy, then boiled to heat it up. I didn’t know it was possible for something to dry out while sitting in liquid but the double-cooked roasted-boiled turkey was the toughest I’ve ever had

Oh that sounds utterly grim and definitely not the typical British Christmas!

I can’t think of any Christmas horror stories.
Apart from the year we felt we had to to eat Christmas lunch at my in laws and then Christmas dinner at my parents’! We hadn’t the heart to say no to either. We were supposed to eat around 12 at in laws which we felt would be almost do able as long as we didn’t overdo it, but fil was cooking and was a bit drunk so lunch wasn’t ready until about 2:30. Then we had to eat pretty much the same at my parents at 5. I was ill.
Christmas dinners at my grans in the 80’s was awesome. We had to extend the dinner table with a wallpaper table and there were too many of us for the kitchen so we took up the entire living room. Christmas Top Of the Pops would be on TV and we drank my grans home made ginger wine (not alcoholic) that blew our heads off. I also helped myself to a few drinks of advocaat when I was about 10 and no one noticed!