Awful meals your parents made as a child - lighthearted

[Workinghardeveryday]

I remember my mum used to put half a tomato on any meal that didn’t have veg, I hated it, still do.

Bread and butter pudding made with skimmed powdered milk, absolutely disgusting!!

Tuna sandwiches in my packed lunch that had not been drained properly, so all the bread was wet and soggy - everyday!

Do you have any to share

Haddock in milk. Scarred for life. Absolutely stank too.

I really love this with mash one of my comfort foods.

We used to have fried herring coated in oatmeal - absolutely vile and full of bones.
As a special treat my parents would have cod roe. Thankfully it was never forced upon us. It gave me the creeps as I thought it looked like a brain.

My mum once made a casserole with banana in it. I think she hadn't realised they were maybe meant to be plantain?

We got takeaway that night 😂

We call that ‘fish ‘n’ milk’ in Dundee and I loved it. It also had a bit of butter on it. I still do something similar with properly smoked haddock and spinach added to the pan just before serving.

My grans fish ‘n’ milk’ was delicious. She’d serve it with potato’s and green peas but there was always a need for a slice of plain bread to mop up the remaining sauce left on your plate.

I loved herring in oatmeal but I can’t recall many bones. And cods roe was also much appreciated by this gannet.

Faggots. Dread to think what was in them🤮

Anything with white sauce. Only the British would deliberately engineer a sauce that didn't taste of anything.

I think it originated in France.

My mum used to give us meat paste sandwiches, though she wouldn’t eat them herself. Ham paste, beef paste, chicken paste. She drew the line at fish paste, thankfully. Weirdly she and dad would eat potted hough but spared us as we ‘wouldn’t like it’. We didn’t hate the paste as we didn’t really know what it was (primary aged). Can still taste the salt and feel the cloying texture now of the meat paste and the way it dried your mouth out as you ate it. This was the late 80s. I think it was a result of her childhood poverty plus an inability to cook; I don’t blame her, it’s just unpleasant. I became a fierce vegetarian from my early teens.

I always thought that I hated mashed potato, turns out I hate my mum’s mashed potato. I don’t know what she does to it but it’s still vile, watery, tasteless and lumpy.

I ate very well growing up and I still like the small jars of paste we’d have on a warm roll with butter some mornings. That and a cup of very hot tea. It was a lovely breakfast. In fact I still buy the paste when I’m in the UK and bring it back to where I now love.

And potted hough? I haven’t had it for many years but that was also delicious.

White sauce aka bechamel is French. Hence why it's named after Louis de Bechamel

My dad had obsessive ideas about eating and health. At home, we largely ate boiled chicken breasts or veal (!) that was cooked to the texture of an old boot, plus boiled veg or salad.

Thankfully, I spent most of my time with my grandparents and my granny was a wonderful cook, so fed me amazing food.

@PollyThePixie my dad is from Dundee so I'll blame him for bringing it into my life 🤣 my brother and I have never fully recovered

My mother was a great cook and still is but my problem was presentation especially for packed lunches at school and days out. So jam sandwiches folded in half but more like beaten to death. Chips thrown into plastic sandwich bags with home made meatballs which all became soggy. Bless her she even squirted tomato ketchup in the sandwich bag which looked like dog poo bag and I was expected to eat that. I use dino shape sandwich cutters and make my sons lunch box look presentable hoping my little cupcake will eat it. How times change 😂

I still haven’t recovered from kidney soup..🤢

Rabbit stew - all the bones were in it and the thought of soft and crumbly vetebrae still makes me shudder. Again it was when the housekeeping money was running low

@helibirdcomp my friend's sisters always refused to eat rabbit stew at home. So did she once she realised it was the family "pet" they were eating. Her dad used to buy them to fatten them up 😢

Boiled bacon and cabbage. The bacon wasn't sliced, it was in one big piece, often with hair still on the skin. Cabbage always boiled to death. My heart used to sink when I smelled it cooking.

Stew with some sort of awful pulse in. I only realised I like stew when I made it myself as an adult 😂.

Goodness, some of these are the stuff of nightmares! Must have been lucky with my DM’s cooking - can’t think of anything I really didn’t like.

@Knullrufs , one of my GMs loved fat* - she preferred it to the lean, so if she was with us, she’d have mine. My folks didn’t make me eat it - when I was maybe 4 my father tried to trick me into eating some by wrapping it in potato. Once it got to the back of my throat I gagged - after that they accepted that I was never going to tolerate it. I ate everything else though.
*She lived into her late 80s in good health, never remotely overweight.

Some of my favourite childhood meals are here!

Sandwich spread sandwiches (still eat these now)
Meat/Fish paste sandwiches
Mince, mash and dumplings was one of my absolute favourites
Crispy pancakes were a close second.
Tuna, sweetcorn and mayo/salad cream jacket potato
Corn beef hash
Tinned salmon and cucumber sandwiches
Fray Bentos pie

My mum is an excellent cook though and can make an amazing meal out of the sparest of ingredients. There were too many kids and not enough money and now I can see a lot of the meals we had as kids were because they were cheap and filling. We never realised it at the time though.

The one meal I didn't like was stew. Not because it was awfully made, I just don't like stew!

Worst meal by far was Thursday night'.s meal of vinegar soaked tripe and elder, which was like a raw wash leather with half a raw tomato.I still heave at the thought of it. Monday night's meal wasn't much better, a half of an orange with some buttered brown bread.My parents were not poor, just a funny taste in food.

Chicken Maryland served with a banana

https://www.thespruceeats.com/chicken-a-la-maryland-recipe-1375478