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

Just remembered another one.

’Eat your fat!’

Tended to come from older relatives.

I can still remember my grandmother telling my brother, ‘Eat your fat or you’ll turn queer.’ He was about six.

So yeah. My grandmother might have been a homophobic arsehole. Who ate fat.

Tins of tomatoes just tipped out over horrible sausages, with no extra seasoning.

Tripe swimming in vinegar 🤮

We used to have liver, and hearts sometimes, I didn't mind them, but couldn't touch them now.....or tripe yuk. My parents loved it.
I think that offal products were cheap and available during WW2 and rationing, so my parents would have probably lived on them as youngsters.
My mum was a good cook but her shepherd's pie was awful. Fried mince with no seasoning and swimming in fat 🤮

Ratatouille.

Tinned tomato soup with added potatoes and carrots to stretch it further, not awful but not exciting and not enough protein.

DM was a very good cook. School meals in the 60s at primary school, OTOH....oddly enough the desserts were scrummy but the mains were revolting. Lumpy mash, cabbage boiled to death... and we had a dinner lady, Mrs Netting, who put the fear of God into us. She was a tiny little woman but by golly was she hard. I can still see her scraping all the leftovers into one big pan, talking all the time.

My Mum was a brilliant cook, but for some completely unfathomable reason insisted on serving tinned peas with fish and chips.
The rest of the time it was frozen peas or even fresh in summer.
Me and my brother hated the tinned peas and told her, yet she continued to serve them.
Why?

I loved the tinned salmon. I think I was easily pleased. However, school lunches were a hell of their own. I used to lie awake worrying about what we would be given (and we had to eat absolutely everything - I remember one poor girl bringing her tomato soup straight back up when she was forced to eat it). There was some kind of pie made of cardboard and blood which was indescribably awful. That's what gave me the most sleepless nights. Things improved when my parents switched me to packed lunches.

A collection of beans : kidney, butter, broad, haricot etc in a tomatoey sauce sort of like a ratatouille lumped on a jacket potato. I think Mum had batch cooked a load of portions of this filth and put in freezer as a quick go to on her busy nights. I hated it, mind I was a fussy ungrateful sod 🤣

I like liver.
Cold fried egg sandwich,, yum.
Tripe with salt, pepper and vinegar,, heaven.

For years I thought I didn't like mayonnaise because my mum made 'egg mayo' sandwiches with salad cream!

I actually love mayonnaise. Can't stand salad cream. Who knew!

Actually my mum was an excellent cook so I was very lucky there. Sadly I have my grandmother's genes and my attempts at cooking produce abominable results!

The single traumatic culinary event I remember (unless you count finding bay leaves in sauces - if you're going to use the bloody things at all at least fish them out before serving!!) was the shock of taking a big mouthful of her 'Summer Pudding' thinking it was made with trifle sponges and realising it was bloody BREAD!! I still feel let down about that!

Definitely the liver. Why and how was that so popular?!
Also for some reason we often had skate - disgusting fish.

We had boiled potatoes with packet gravy, frozen veg and a source of protein - lamb chop/pork belly/chicken drumstick practically every night for years. If very unlucky it might be a Bernard matthews spam burger. Or, even worse "bolognese" made from mystery meat (frozen mince which had possibly never seen an animal)

Puddings were better after muller corners were invented. I don't remember ever being made breakfast or lunch - I ate a lot of toast. The only plus was I was "naturally slim". no wonder I've more than made up for it when able to buy my own food! As an aside my mum used to get ox hearts from the butcher for the dogs - which I ate! Desperate times!

Mum - Spaghetti and mince. No sauce or seasoning, just rubbery grey fried mince dumped on rubbery white spaghetti

Dad - His roast potatoes, which he made by rolling raw potatoes in hot oil, coating them with flour and putting them in the oven for two hours. They were like shoe leather. I never understood why people raved about roast potatoes until I left home and got a Delia Smith cookbook which explained how to make them properly.

In their defence - my mum's cakes were brilliant and her apple pie was the best; and my dad can cook a good curry.

My mum used to give us raw eggs mixed with soya sauce and plain white bread for breakfast every now and then (she's chinese). I wouldn't eat it now but at the time I didn't mind it. What I really didn't like though was hot milk on my cornflakes (always served with hot milk in winter, cold milk in summer) even more so once the cornflakes had gone soggy. She knew I didn't like it but she said it was better for my health so I had to eat it. Also didn't like liver or kidneys. My mum tried to trick me into eating/liking them by saying it was beef but there's no mistaking it! She was always worried about giving us food poisoning so it was probably over cooked (texture was dry & powdery). I've never tried it as an adult/cooked by someone else though so I don't know, maybe that's just how it is!

Tinned chilli con carne in the 70s, followed by a Bakewell tart which had been put under the grill until the icing turned black …. dear old mum 🤣

I had a friend who's daughter would only eat the yolk of an egg, so her husband had the cold whites in his sandwiche's for work.

My grandpa was in the American Navy when he was young and my grandma would make him his favourite Navy meal , SOS, which stands for shit on a shingle.

American biscuit ( like a savoury scone), mince, and white sauce. No flavour other than salt and pepper, no veg. I couldn’t leave the table until I had eaten it. It was so grey.

Chicken paste sandwiches 🤢 as a teen my parents both worked full time and we had an awful lot of frozen and instant food, things like smash, oven chips and frozen omelettes. To this day my DC have never eaten a potato smiley face (not from me anyway) I just can’t face it 😂

Faggots and peas.
Tinned hamburgers (that came in a watery “gravy”) with plain boiled spuds.

School lunches: disgusting hard beans with watery tomato sauce and a dry cheese roll, semolina or tapioca with jam, (used to ask for ‘just jam please’ 🤣), gristly watery grey stew, luncheon meat slice with ‘salad’.
Home: embraced the ghastly sixties convenience revolution (grandmothers good cooks) all unseasoned tasteless grey and veg boiled to death and smelly sprouts, liver ugh never ate since, hearts with veins, grey gristly mince, scrambled eggs with white blobs where not mixed properly 😳Only enjoyable meals were roasts.
Was such a revelation when went to friend’s house and ate tasty properly cooked food with spices herbs and seasoning.

My mum was an excellent cook but I did really dislike junket. I still ate it though as it was the 70s and there was zero indulgence of fussiness.

Oh my days ! Yes - loved these although nutritionally I'm sure they were lacking
Fave was the minced beef ones

Any sort of fishy sandwich (tuna, fish paste 🤢 ) that made the bread taste fishy.

Likewise having a banana in my lunchbox made the bread in my sandwich taste banana-y.